Lewis Milestone’s 1931 film The Front Page was the first of four film versions of Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur’s 1928 play, which has itself been revived four times on Broadway, first in 1946, twice in 1969 and most recently in 1986. Helen Hayes, MacArthur’s widow, played the mother of ace reporter Hildy Johnson’s fiancé in the second 1969 revival which starred Robert Ryan as editor Walter Burns and Bert Convy as Johnson. The 1986 revival starred John Lithgow and Richard Thomas in those roles.

The original play starred Osgood Perkins (Anthony Perkins’ father) and Lee Tracy as the combative editor and reporter. The Oscar-nominated 1931 film starred Adolphe Menjou and Pat O’Brien. Howard Hawks’ classic 1940 reworking retitled His Girl Friday starred Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell, the reporter in that version reimagined as a woman. Billy Wilder’s sour 1974 version went back to the original characters with Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon, albeit with Lemmon as the reporter receiving top billing. The feeble 1988 version with Burt Reynolds and Kathleen Turner retitled Switching Channels changed the names of the characters, replaced the newspaper setting with a TV station and again made the reporter a woman.

Kino Lorber’s restored Blu-ray release of Milestone’s version is from a print stored at the Library of Congress given to them by East Germany in 1971 in the midst of the Cold War. It is the only print they ever received from that country. While the editor and the reporter are the key characters in the film, it is very much an ensemble piece with Menjou and O’Brien heading the cast below the title. Had there been a category for Best Supporting Actor at the Academy Awards for 1930/31, Menjou might well have been nominated in that category instead of Best Actor along with fellow nominees Fredric March in The Royal Family of Broadway and winner Lionel Barrymore in A Free Soul who were also part of an ensemble.

Milestone, who had won an Oscar for directing All Quiet on the Western Front was again nominated for his direction of The Front Page, but unlike the anti-war classic, this first version of the newspaper classic does not lend itself as easily to modern tastes. For one thing, many of the actors, especially O’Brien, shout their lines to the rafters as though were performing on stage. O’Brien would do better in more modulated roles later in his career in films such as Angels with Dirty Faces and The Boy with Green Hair. Menjou’s crafty, subtler performance is the best in the film. The other outstanding performance is Mae Clarke’s as the streetwalker who throws herself out a window after being tormented by the reporters over her relationship with escaped prisoner George E. Stone. The film is an important one in the progression of films from silent to talkies, but Hawks’ 1940 version is the superior one. Still, it works better than the unnecessary 1974 and 1988 remakes.

John Fowles’ 1969 novel The French Lieutenant’s Woman was a huge success for the author of The Collector but it was thought to be untranslatable to film. Twelve years later Karel Reisz successfully adapted it by deftly telling its parallel stories of a brooding Victorian romance and a shallow modern one involving the actors playing the Victorian characters in a film within the film. Meryl Streep, in her first lead role, and Jeremy Irons are superb as the Victorian lovers, but only Streep registers as the modern actress. Irons comes across as a total jerk in the modern scenes, which is probably why the film, a huge hit upon its initial release, is little regarded today. Nevertheless, Criterion’s Blu-ray upgrade is nicely done.

Criterion has also provided a Blu-ray upgrade for Night and the City, Jules Dassin’s London-set 1950 film noir with Richard Widmark still in Kiss of Death mode as a despicable creep. This time he doesn’t throw any old ladies down the stairs in their wheelchairs, but he does cause a lot of mayhem and unintentional death as a small time grifter who can’t quite make it to the big time. Gene Tierney, Googie Withers, Francis L. Sullivan and Herbert Lom co-star with silent screen legend Charles Farrell (7th Heaven) also making an appearance. However, acting honors go to 71-year-old wrestling legend Stanislaus Zbyszko who first appeared on screen as himself in a documentary made forty years earlier. His performance is a knockout in more ways than one.

Kino Lorber has upgraded another well-regarded early 1950s film noir to Blu-ray. John Berry’s 1951 film He Ran All the Way was John Garfield’s last film, released a year before his death from a heart attack at 39, widely attributed to his blacklisting. The film’s director and screenwriters were also blacklisted, albeit for their alleged Communist sympathies, not for anything connected with the film which is a first-rate thriller in which small time hood Garfield befriends Shelley Winters and holds her and her family, consisting of father Wallace Ford, mother Selena Royle and brother Bobby Hyatt, captive. The always reliable Gladys George is seen all too briefly as Garfield’s mother and Norman Lloyd, who is still acting at 100, plays his buddy who is killed in the first reel.

Also from Kino-Lorber comes Robert Benton’s Still of the Night, the 1982 film Meryl Streep made between The French Lieutenant’s Woman and Sophie’s Choice. The film, which also stars Roy Scheider, is a mild thriller about a psychiatrist (Scheider) who falls in love with the mistress (Streep) of a murdered patient. The film is more stylish than mysterious, but it’s a pleasant enough time-filler. Jessica Tandy co-stars.

Yet another new Kino Lorber release is the long-forgotten War-Gods of the Deep, Jacques Tourneur’s 1965 film from Edgar Allan Poe’s City in the Sea, which despite its inherent cheesiness has been given a full-blooded Blu-ray upgrade worthy of the best films. Vincent Price stars in one of his patented egomaniacal master-of-all-he-surveys roles, backed by Tab Hunter, David Tomlinson, Susan Hart and a hen named “Herbert”. Hunter provides a nice on-camera interview of his remembrances of the film and his co-stars.

Universal has released a Blu-ray upgrade of Andrew V. McLaglen’s 1968 film Hellfighters the film John Wayne made between the critically lambasted The Green Berets and his return to critical prominence in True Grit, for which he would win his only Oscar. The film, not a box-office hit when first released, has developed a strong cult following over the years thanks to its unique look at the men who risk their lives battling oil fires and the marital strife it causes. Jim Hutton, Katharine Ross and Vera Miles co-star. Twelve years earlier Miles had played Wayne’s nephew Jeffrey Hunter’s love interest in The Searchers. Now the 39-year-old actress was playing the 62-year-old actor’s wife, more a reflection of his agelessness than her rapid aging.

Warner has released a Blu-ray upgrade of Hugh Wilson’s one-of-a-kind 1999 comedy, Blast from the Past, about a scientist and his wife (Christopher Walken, Sissy Spacek) who, during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, seek shelter in a fallout shelter beneath their home stocked with the ability to provide shelter and food for 35 years, the length of time it would take for contamination from a nuclear bomb to clear. When a plane crashes into their home they hear and feel the blast which they attribute to a nuclear bomb. Consequently they stay in the shelter for 35 years with their son born a week after they moved into it. Thirty five years pass and the naïve son, nicely played by Brendan Fraser, leaves the family nest to seek a girlfriend which he finds in the form of Alicia Silverstone.

I realize my brief synopsis makes it sound silly, but it isn’t. It’s actually quite sweet with all four stars along with Dave Foley as Silverstone’s friend providing ingratiating performances.

This week’s new releases include Blu-ray upgrades of Day for Night and Burn, Witch, Burn.