The 1957 film version of Cole Porter’s Silk Stockings, newly upgraded to Blu-ray by Warner Archive, is an uncanny representation of lasts. Porter’s score was the last he wrote for Broadway, although 1957’s Les Girls, written directly for the screen, would contain his last original music. Porter’s music, of course, not only lives on but is still used in films and on TV today. “Night and Day” and “Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye”, for instance, are heard in this year’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.

Silk Stockings was the last musical for its three stars, Fred Astaire, Cyd Charisse, and Janis Page, all of whom continued their celebrated careers in non-musicals, with Astaire returning briefly to song and dance eleven years later in Finian’s Rainbow in which most of the singing and dancing was left to others. It was also the last film completed by Rouben Mamoulian, the innovative director of such early talkies as Applause and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, who would be fired from two later attempts, 1959’s Porgy and Bess and 1963’s Cleopatra, to be replaced by Otto Preminger and Joseph L. Makiewicz, respectively.

The musical version of 1939’s Ninotchka, Silk Stockings features Charisse in the role immortalized by Greta Garbo in the Lubitsch comedy with Astaire and Paige taking on the roles played by Melvyn Douglas and Ina Claire in the earlier film. All three are good, but the film is at its best when Paige is on screen, especially in her interpretation of “Stereophonic Sound,” the song satirizing then contemporary Hollywood.

Warner Archive has also newly released a Blu-ray upgrade of Howard Hawks’ 1944 film To Have and Have Not, the first on-screen pairing of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, but the last of their four films together to be released in the high definition format.

To Have and Have Not takes its title from Ernest Hemingway’s novel of the same name, but is far from faithful to the source material. See Michael Curtiz’s 1950 film The Breaking Point with John Garfield and Patricia Neal for a more faithful adaptation.

Bogie and Bacall are, of course, great together and the main reason the film still holds up, but Walter Brennan, the film’s principal supporting player, does a masterful job as Bogie’s pal.

Although made just eight years later, Richard Brooks’ 1952 film Deadline U.S.A., released for the first time in the U.S. on both Blu-ray and standard DVD by Kino Lorber, gives us a much older looking, but equally forceful Bogart.

Bogie is a crusading newspaper editor who must race to complete his exposé of Mafioso Martin Gabel before his paper is sold after its last three issues are printed. Kim Hunter as his estranged wife, and especially Ethel Barrymore as the folding paper’s publisher, add their luster to the film’s star power.

Another film with no previous U.S. release, Anatole Litvak’s 1962 film Five Miles to Midnight, has also been given a Blu-ray and standard DVD release by Kino Lorber.

Sophia Loren, fresh from her Oscar win for Two Women, gives one of her better performances of the era when too many of her English-language appearances seemed phoned in. She plays the frantic Italian-born wife of American Anthony Perkins with whom she lives in Paris where they both have jobs. Ne’er-do-well Perkins survives a plane crash in which he is presumed dead, and convinces her to put a claim in for the accident insurance he took out in the airport. She agrees, if only in the hopes of getting rid of the husband whose shenanigans she has grown tired of. Perkins is good, if a bit over-the-top in this role. Gig Young and Jean-Pierre Aumont have supporting roles.

A contemporary thriller, Ariel Vroman’s Criminal has an interesting premise, but a lackluster script to support it.

Ryan Reynolds is a CIA operative who is captured, tortured and killed by enemy agents whose leader (Michael Pitt) plans to start World War III by releasing ICBM’s he has hacked into. Reynolds’ boss, Gary Oldman, has doctor Tommy Lee Jones transplant Reynolds’ memory into death-row inmate Kevin Costner’s brain in order to track Pitt down and kill him. From there, everything, including the plot, goes downhill.

Criminal is available on both Blu-ray and standard DVD from Lionsgate.

Warner Archive, in addition to its increased release of Blu-ray upgrades, continues to release standard DVD versions of films and TV series long unavailable on standard DVD or, in some instances, even VHS.

Newly released on standard DVD only by Warner Archive are three fine examples of the latter, 1963’s Act One and two better-than-average seasons of TV series, 1962-1963’s The Eleventh Hour – Season 1 and 1975-1976’s Medical Center – Season 7.

Moss Hart’s autobiographical Act One, written by the legendary playwright four years before his death at 57 in 1961, was filmed by Dore Schary with an impressive cast less than a year later. Unfortunately, the film does not have the authenticity of Hart’s book, but its concentration on 1929-1930 gives us an interesting peak into the lives of the Broadway denizens of the era including Hart (George Hamilton), George S. Kaufman (Jason Robards, Jr.), and Hart’s family and friends including George Segal, Jack Klugman, Eli Wallach, Sam Levene, Sam Groom, and Bert Convy as a pre-Cary Grant “Archie Leach”.

MGM had hoped to duplicate the success of their phenomenal 1961 series Dr. Kildare with The Eleventh Hour the following year. The new series gave us Wendell Corey and Jack Ging as older and younger psychiatrist and psychologist in the mold of Raymond Massey and Richard Chamberlain as the iconic Drs. Gillespie and Kildare. While the series was well-regarded by critics, it failed to capture an audience and the following year Ralph Bellamy was brought in to replace Corey with a two-part episode that began on Dr. Kildare.

Maybe it was the dark plots that turned people off, but the first season of The Eleventh Hour does have its moments, especially in the episodes with George C. Scott as an embedded Russian spy and Walter Matthau as a trigger-happy father who kills his son’s drug dealer in broad daylight and expects to get away with it.

The seventh and final season of Medical Center starts off with a then-sensational two-part episode with The Brady Bunch dad, Robert Reed, as a noted surgeon who returns from a sabbatical asking his wife for a divorce prior to his undergoing sex reassignment surgery. His post-surgery appearance in wig and dress was quite a shock to audiences in the year before Bruce Jenner won his Olympic decathlon medal.

Not satisfied with turning the image of The Brady Bunch dad on its head, the next episode featured The Brady Bunch mom, Florence Henderson, considering abortion as an unmarried middle-aged pregnant nurse whose lover is on his deathbed.

The remaining episodes are just as good, but a bit less sensational. Chad Everett and James Daly, who would die a year later, were the stars of the series from beginning to end.

This week’s new releases include The Lobster and Murdoch Mysteries – Season 9.