This week, the Warner Archive makes my holiday wishes come true by adding Heat Lightning to their ever-growing collection.

As I had mentioned previously, Heat Lightning is one of my favorite Ann Dvorak films. This  tale of a pair of sisters running a gas station/rest stop in the middle of nowhere (it was actually filmed in Victorville) whose lives are turned upside down by their bad taste in men is classic Warner Bros Pre-Code cinema.  Ann’s role is a supporting one, but her Myra, a restless youth feeling stifled by her surroundings and her protective older sister is one of the more interesting characters Dvorak played during her five years at Warner Bros.  Her breakdown scene towards the end of the film is heartbreaking and truly memorable.

Of course the film really belongs to Aline MacMahon. As Olga, she is tough, brassy, and independent, but proves to be just as vulnerable as the rest of us when an old flame (and bad penny) turns up on her doorstep. Aline and Ann work beautifully together and are completely believable as sisters. It’s unfortunate that the only other time they appeared in the same film, 1934’s Side Streets, they were given little screen time together.

Directed by Mervyn Leroy (who was also responsible for Three on a Match) and featuring a strong supporting cast of familiar 1930s faces like Glenda Farrell, Lyle Talbot, Preston Foster, Frank McHugh, Ruth Donnelly,  and Jane Darwell, Heat Lightning is sure to please any Pre-Code fan. Just look at that box art!

This is being advertised as a remastered print, but I am assuming this is the same one that has run on TCM the last couple of years.

Happy Holidays to me. Thanks Warner Archive!

This week, the Warner Archive releases another 1930s Ann Dvorak feature on DVD. College Coach co-stars Dick Powell, Pat O’Brien, Lyle Talbot, and contains a brief walk-on by a then little-known actor named John Wayne.

I talked a bit more in-depth about College Coach on a previous post which can be viewed here.

This makes three 1930s Dvorak films to be released by the Warner Archive in less than a month. Looking forward to what else they have in the works, especially if it’s Heat Lightning.

This week, the grand and glorious Warner Archive releases a handful of two-for-the-price-of-one double features of 1930s comedies. Low and behold, one set features our beloved Ann Dvorak in Side Streets & Stranger in Town.

Side Streets (1934) stars Aline MacMahon as, of all things, a furrier in San Francisco who has bad taste in men, namely Paul Kelly.  In terms of Ann Dvorak, Side Streets is wholly unsatisfying because she is barely in it with a minuscule role as the other woman . However, it’s watchable because Aline is so damn good. I am always fixated by how she clutches her purse throughout the film. Even in a scene where she is wearing pajamas, the purse is in hand. This affectation is never explained and I like to think Aline worked out an in depth back-story for her character, complete with poverty and a purse snatching.  The working title for this one was Fur Coats, which I think is much more appropriate. Interestingly, the title for the British release was A Woman in Her Thirties.

The other title in the double feature is Stranger in Town co-starring David Manners and Chic Sale. Ann’s part in this one is very typical of the many bland leading lady roles she was subjected to at the hands of Warner Bros.  between 1932-1936. In this one, her loyalties are torn between her grandfather and her new love who own competing grocery stores in a small town. This slight comedy was Ann’s second pairing with David Manners in 1932, the first being Crooner. This was also a reunion of sorts for Ann and Chic Sale. When Ann was a wee girl, she accompanied her mother on vaudeville tour in 1914 which also featured Chic on the bill.

The double set can be yours for a mere 19.95 and ordered at the Warner Archive.