[78-L] BIG news for Jolson fans from Warner Home Video

[Jeff Sultanof]

It's never too late, and miracles can happen. I've always liked "Mammy" ever
since I saw a horrible print of it on TV (Million Dollar Movie) at least
forty-five years ago. I had the laser disc box of Jolson as well.

Hopefully the other studios are watching what WB is doing with these archive
titles, and this will light a fire. George Feltenstein has said that sales
have been very good for this series.

Jeff Sultanof

On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 3:23 AM, Harold Aherne <leotolstoy_75 at yahoo.com>wrote:

> According to the press release posted at the Home Theater Forum, "Mammy"
> will
> indeed contain its Technicolor sequences (which were rediscovered only
> about 8 years
> ago; UCLA unveiled its restoration of the film in 2002). Here's a review of
> the restored
> version originally posted on alt.movies.silent:
>
> "A magnificent restoration, and if you’ve seen prints of this before as I
> have, well…
> you’ve simply never seen the film before!  All picture and sound elements
> of the
> film have been vastly upgraded, revealing (for the first time) just how
> lovely the
> photography is.   The Technicolor footage is composed of two segments…
> an entire reel mid-way through the film (the minstrel show performance
> during
> which Jolson accidentally shoots [Lowell] Sherman) and then, oddly, the
> closing
> three or four minutes of the film.  How strange (yet delightful!) to see
> Jolson in
> Technicolor in blackface!  While the quality of the Technicolor is far
> better than
> we usually see (on par with the "Li Po Li" number in SHOW OF SHOWS) some
> of the footage was either missing or damaged and needed to be momentarily
> replaced with sepia tinted footage from the B&W print in much the same way
> Marilyn Miller’s "Wild Rose" number was handled in the restored version of
> SALLY.
> The addition of Technicolor makes "MAMMY" something of an event… so
> tremendously different from the rather tired looking muddy print we’re used
> to
> seeing.  In addition, the print also included the film’s Overture and Exit
> Music discs."
>
> However, I've never heard anything about Technicolor appearing in "Big
> Boy". Mordaunt
> Hall's NYT review (13 Sep 1930) makes no mention of any colour, and he
> generally noted
> such things (on the very same date he discussed the colour scene in MGM's
> "Call of
> the Flesh" starring Ramon Novarro).
>
> There is a chance that WB may package the Jolson films together and offer
> them at
> a discount...I bought their package of 7 silents for $70 (purchased
> separately they would
> have cost $140). They also have a set of 5 WB musicals with Dick Powell
> and/or Ruby
> Keeler available for half the price that the individual discs would usually
> cost (the titles
> are, for the record, Flirtation Walk; Happiness Ahead; Shipmates Forever;
> Colleen;
> and Ready, Willing and Able (the latter one has the famous number where
> Ruby Keeler
> and Lee Dixon tap dance on the keys of a giant typewriter).
>
> -Harold
>
>
>
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