Warner honors the most popular movie stars of all time with the DVD release of Humphrey Bogart: The Signature Collection Volume 2.
Highlighting the collection is a deluxe new three-disc special edition of The Maltese Falcon, featuring a newly-remastered edition of the 1941 John Huston masterpiece, starring Bogart as Dashiell Hammetts definitive Sam Spade.
This new deluxe set is loaded with bonuses, including the 1931 version of The Maltese Falcon and the 1936 film, Satan Met a Lady, commentary by Bogart biographer Eric Lax, a recently recovered additional scene as well as vintage Warner Night at the Movies features.
Also in the collection are four more Bogart classics making their DVD debuts — Across the Pacific, Action in the North Atlantic, All Through the Night and Passage to Marseille.
Each film has been restored from the original camera negatives and has been digitally remastered, with each title enhanced with entertaining features. The new five film, seven-disc gift set will sell for $59.92 SRP; all titles are exclusive to the collection, except The Maltese Falcon 3-Disc Special Edition, which will also sell separately for $29.92 SRP.
Named AFIs top male movie star of all time, Bogart has been a cult figure throughout the world since the 1940s. Mostly, he played characters that were smart, playful, courageous, tough, and reckless–who lived in a corrupt world yet were anchored by an inner moral code. He also excelled portraying men with flaws and weaknesses that ultimately led to their downfall.
Despite untimely death (in 1957), Bogart was one of the most prolific actors in motion picture history, he appeared in 85 films which have demonstrated their enduring popularity by selling to date more than five million copies on video and DVD.
Bogart won the Best Actor Oscar for his performance in the John Huston’s cult movie-adventure The African Queen, opposite Katharine Hepburn, and earned two Oscar nomination, for Casablanca in 1943, and The Caine Mutiny, in 1954.
The Maltese Falcon 3-Disc Edition (1941)
Nominated for three Oscars, Best Picture, Supporting Actor (Greenstreet) and Screenplay (Huston), “Maltese Falcon” solidified Bogarts stardom and launched John Hustons illustrious directorial career. An all-star cast (including Sydney Greenstreet, Mary Astor, Peter Lorre and Elisha Cook Jr.) joins Bogart in this classic film noir story about hard-boiled detective Sam Spade (Bogart) and the gallery of lowlifes hes after to find his partners killer as well as the jewel-encrusted life size statue of a falcon. Filled with twists and turns, the crackling mystery masterwork was based on Dashiell Hammetts novel. The Maltese Falcon was added to the National Film Registry in 1989 and is #23 on the American Film Institutes (AFI) List of 100 Greatest Movies.
This all-new 3-Disc Special Edition is full of extras, including two features which preceded Bogies landmark Falcon — the 1931 pre-code version of The Maltese Falcon and the 1936 film, Satan Met a Lady, starring Bette Davis.
Disc One Special Features:
New digital transfer of 1941 movie from restored elements
Commentary by Bogart biographer Eric Lax
Warner Night at the Movies 1941 short subjects gallery:
o Vintage Newsreel, Oscar-Nominated Technicolor musical short The Gay Parisian
o Classic Cartoon: Oscar nominee Hiawathas Rabbit Hunt
o Trailers of The Maltese Falcon and 1941s Sergeant York
Languages: English & Franais (1941 movie only)
Subtitles: English, Franais & Espaol (1941 movie only)
Disc Two Special Features:
2 Previous movie versions of the classic Hammett caper:
o The Maltese Falcon (1931) with Bebe Daniels and Ricardo Cortez
o Satan Met a Lady (1936) with Bette Davis and Warren William
Theatrical trailers
Disc Three Special Features
New Documentary The Maltese Falcon: One Magnificent Bird
Robert Osborne Hosts Becoming Attractions: The Trailers of Humphrey Bogart
Breakdowns of 1941: Studio Blooper Reel
Audio-only bonus: 3 radio show adaptations featuring the movies original stars including a version starring Edward G. Robinson
Across the Pacific (1942)
The winning team from The Maltese Falcon is reunited for Across the Pacific. This crisply written wartime thriller reunites three Falcon leads — Bogart, Mary Astor and Sydney Greenstreet. The Maltese Falcons John Huston directs this reunion, and once again, the combination of stars and director comes up a winner. Like The Maltese Falcon, the film has the same irresistible mixture of darkness, double-cross and quirky humor. Here Bogart plays counterspy Rick Leland who trades romantic barbs with Alberta (Mary Astor), matches wits with sly Lorenz (Sydney Greenstreet) and swaps bullets with saboteurs of the Panama Canal.
DVD Special Features:
Warner Night at the Movies 1942 Short Subjects Gallery:
o Vintage newsreel
o Patriotic Technicolor short Men of the Sky
o Classic cartoon The Draft Horse
o Trailers of Across the Pacific and 1942s Captains of the Clouds
New featurette Hollywood Helps the Cause
Breakdowns of 1942: Studio Blooper Reel
Subtitles: English, Franais & Espaol (feature film only)
Action in the North Atlantic (1943)
This World War II salute to the Merchant Marines is an action-filled voyage of a besieged freighter and shows how the role of these men supplying the war effort was the lifeblood of democracys arsenal. Humphrey Bogart, a World War I seaman and an avid recreational sailor, stars as First Officer Joe Rossi who, along with his captain (Raymond Massey), matches tactics with U-boats and the Luftwaffe. The tactics were so on target that this became a Merchant Marine training film.
DVD Special Features
Warner Night at the Movies 1943 short subjects gallery:
o Vintage newsreel
o Musical short Cavalcade of Dance
o Classic cartoon Greetings Bait
o Trailers of Action in the North Atlantic and 1943s Northern Pursuit
New featurette Credit Where Credit Is Due:
Audio-only bonus: radio show with George Raft and Raymond Massey
Subtitles: English, Franais & Espaol (feature film only)
All Through the Night (1942)
In this comedy thriller, Bogart had fun in the change-of-pace role of Gloves Donahue, a NY gambler and petty crook. Gloves is definitely more interested in his racing sheet and favorite cheesecake than he is in current events, until the baker gets bumped off, and that changes everything. The fun is winningly contagious in a spoof that pits him against Nazi spies. The wonderful supporting cast of shady, but good guys includes William Demarest, Jackie Gleason and Phil Silvers, all of whom seem to have stepped from Damon Runyons Guys and Dolls world.
DVD Special Features
Commentary by director Vincent Sherman and Bogart biographer Eric Lax
Warner Night at the Movies 1942 short subjects gallery:
o Vintage newsreel
o Joe Doakes comedy short So You Want to Give Up Smoking
o Classic cartoon Lights Fantastic
o Trailers of All Through the Night and 1942s Gentleman Jim
New featurette Call the Usual Suspects: The Craft of the Character Actor
Subtitles: English, Franais & Espaol (feature film only)
Passage to Marseille (1944):
Humphrey Bogart reunites with director Michael Curtiz and other key Casablanca personnel (including co-stars Claude Rains, Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet). Bogart plays Jean Matrac, a World War II French patriot who escapes Devils Island, survives a dangerous freighter voyage and becomes a gunner in the Free French Air Corps.
The film sailed into theaters on stormy seas. Controversy surrounded the scene in which Matrac machine-guns the helpless survivors of a downed plane that attacked the freighter. That a soldier of freedom would act ignobly brought protests from religious and censorship groups.
DVD Special Features:
Warner Night at the Movies 1944 short subjects gallery:
o Vintage newsreel
o Oscar-winning patriotic short I Wont Play and Oscar nominee Jammin the Blues
o Classic cartoon The Weakly Reporter
o Trailers of Passage to Marseille and 1944s Uncertain Glory
New featurette The Free French: Forgotten Unsung Victors
Breakdowns of 1944: Studio Blooper Reel
Subtitles: English, Franais & Espaol (feature film only)
Bogart’s Biography:
Humphrey DeForest Bogart was born on December 25, 1899, the son of a Manhattan surgeon and a magazine illustrator. He had a privileged upbringing but was expelled from an elite East coast private school, after which he joined the U.S. Naval Reserve.
In the early 1920s, he managed a stage company owned by a family friend and began performing regularly. In 1930 he got a contract with Fox and made his feature film debut in a short called Broadways Like That, co-starring Ruth Etting and Joan Blondell.
After five more years of stage and minor film roles, Bogart finally got his big break when he reprised his Broadway role as Duke Mantee in The Petrified Forest. He signed a contract with Warner Bros. and was on his way to mega-stardom with roles in such classics as High Sierra, Casablanca, The Big Sleep, Key Largo, The African Queen and, of course, The Maltese Falcon and the other films in this collection.
Bogart also had a storied personal life, having been married four times, the last to actress Lauren Bacall, with whom he appeared in four films. The first was To Have and Have Not, in 1944, with the 19 year old Bacall making her screen debut at age 19. The role marked the beginning of her great acting career as well as one of Hollywoods legendary love stories.
Bogie and Bacall were married in 1945 and their marriage thrived, despite a 25-year age difference, until Bogart died in 1957 from throat cancer. In her autobiography, By Myself, Bacall notes, No one has ever written a romance better than we lived it.
