New Documentary is Centerpiece of Warner Home Video's Year-Long Celebration of Studio's 85th Anniversary –
You Must Remember This: The Warner Bros. Story; You Ain t Heard Nothin Yet (1923-35); Good War, Uneasy Peace (1935-50) Tonight at 09:00 pm PBS (ch 29) All Upcoming Airings Clint Eastwood narrates the history of Warner Bros., which opens with You Ain t Heard Nothin Yet (1923-35), about the movie studio s first years, when its top star was a dog named Rin Tin Tin…
“As you can see, Part One is on PBS tonight! I just hope Schickel told Eastwood how to pronounce Errol name – in an earlier 2-part special (“Here's Looking At You, Warner Brothers”) that aired on TCM about ten years ago, Eastwood repeatedly pronounced “Errol” as if it were spelt Earl… “
Thanks for the Tip, from ArnoFlynn…
— David DeWitt
Anonymous
September 30, 2008 at 3:36 am
I watched it last week with great interest. I thought it was quite good – very well written and produced, as one would imagine with Schickel involved. However, I wish they had given more time to Errol! It seemed like he was on the screen just a few minutes, and then they moved on to Bogie. And Olivia, I thought, definitely got shortchanged! I may be wrong, but it seemed like they gave a lot more time to Bette, Bogie and Cagney than to either Flynn or de Havilland. Which is odd, since Shickel has always said that, next to Cagney, Flynn was his favorite actor. And Eastwood STILL pronounces Errol “EARL” !!! Cringe.
But the farewell scene from “Boots” was very nicely done, and the comment by Epstein about he and the other Warners writers vicariously living their sex lives through Flynn (who would sit at their table in the WB commissary and regale them with what he had done the night before!) was fun, and something I'd never heard before.
Also, some fascinating rare footage of “Uncle Raoul” talking about Errol. Vince Sherman was also included (although not with reference to Errol), and that was nice.
And the later clip from “Objective, Burma!” – where William Prince, cut to pieces, dies (off camera), and Henry Hull goes into his “Let's wipe the sub-human Japs off the face of the earth!” rant was incredibly powerful in the context it which it was placed.
All in all, a classy piece of work, well up to the AMERICAN MASTERS standards. It will be out on DVD soon, and I highly recommend it if you missed it on PBS.