Classic Hollywood Films Bypass Retail Outlets

2009

Warner Archive Announces online download service and DVD on-Demand copies from their vintage Hollywood Library

Below: Marie Dressler, a top money-making star in the 1930s. Her hit film from 1933 "Tugboat Annie" is one of the vanguard of offerings available from Warner's new download service.

The news is going around cinema circles that Warner Home Video is bringing their Vintage Hollywood Library online for download and for special DVD purchase.

ONLINE SERVICE FROM WARNER ARCHIVE

Writer Lou Lumenick has an article on the New York Post about the new service from Warner's:

I have seen the future of classic movies on DVD, and it's exciting.

I recently spent hours sampling titles from Warner Archive, a new initiative that makes dozens of hard-to-find old movies available on demand -- on disc as well as via download.

Warner is initially offering 150 never-on-DVD titles, with at least 20 more to be added every month, for $19.95 each ($14.95 for download). Vintage TV shows and theatrical live-action shorts are to be added in coming months.

Available exclusively at wbstore.com, they span the 1920s (Greta Garbo in "Love") to the 1980s (Kristy McNichol in "Just the Way You Are"), but the bulk are much-requested titles from the 1930s and '40s.

Lemick says later in his article that the entire 6,000+ films at Warners will eventually be online for purchase.

Update: This from Lumenick at his NY Post blog:

If you're having trouble ordering from Warner Home Video's new on-demand DVD and download site that I wrote about a couple of posts back, it's because the demand has far exceeded the studio's wildest expectations on opening day. I just got off the phone with a jubiliant WHV honcho George Feltenstein, who reports that within two hours of the site going live this morning, orders were placed for 140 of the initial 150 titles. "And they might have gotten orders on those other ten by now,'' he tells me. "It's more traffic than we can handle.'' He said the top-secret on-demand project was in the works for two years, "well before the retail landscape for DVDs started to shrink.'' George said the hugely ambitious goal is to make Warners' entire 5000-title catalogue, including hundreds of titles from MGM, RKO and other studios, available, a project that "may take 10 years to accomplish.'

Looking through the lists on their web site (helpfully divided by decade, though unhelpfully I was finding 1930s titles among the 1920's lists) many of the films in the selection are well known through regular airings on Turner Classic Movies channel. I hope the reported initial success of the venture will prompt other libraries of classic films to also go online (for example Fox, MGM, Universal).

Original Page May 2009

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