Unique among home video releases, the Criterion Collection’s Original Cast: Company has been released on Blu-ray, sourced from a newly restored 4K digital transfer.

The holy grail for both documentary and theater afficionados, this rare look at Broadway behind the curtain was made the weekend just after Stephen Sondheim’s groundbreaking musical had its Broadway debut in April 1970. The occasion was the recording of the show’s original cast album, intended to be the first in a series of documentaries made about such recordings. Alas, the idea was abandoned and nothing further was done in that regard.

Directed by D.A. Pennebaker (Don’t Look Back), the documentary provides glimpses of the show’s legendary director Hal Prince (Something for Everyone, composer-lyricist Sondheim (A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum), orchestrator Jonathan Tunick (The Music Man), and book writer George Furth (on screen in What’s So Bad About Feeling Good?). Blu-ray extras include a lengthy interview with Sondheim and Tunick. Mostly, though, the recording was about the performers.

The show’s star was Dean Jones, best known at the time as the star of several successful Disney films including The Love Bug. Legend has it that Jones’ performance on stage was erratic but he’s perfect here, singing his heart out for posterity, especially on the show’s closing song, “Being Alive.” Nevertheless, Jones was out of the show a month later, succeeded by Larry Kert, the original Tony of West Side Story for which Sondheim wrote the lyrics to Leonard Bernstein’s score. In a rare move, the Tonys nominated the replacement instead of the original star for Best Actor at the 1970-1971 awards.

Company was nominated for fourteen Tonys and won seven including Best Musical, Director, Book, and two for Sondheim, music and lyrics being separate categories. Acting nominees, in addition to Kert, included Charles Kimbrough (The Hunchback of Notre Dame for Best Featured Actor, Barbara Barrie Breaking Away for Best Featured Actress, and Elaine Stritch (September) for Best Actress.

The highlight of the documentary is Stritch’s nervous exhaustion and near breakdown as she tries unsuccessfully to perform her soon-to-be signature song, “The Ladies Who Lunch” as perfectly as it should be performed. Unable to do it well into Sunday night, the producers allowed her to come back refreshed Monday morning when she nailed it. When she sings “everybody, rise!” at the end of it, you can bet they do, and still do. It remains the most exhilarating of live theatrical performances ever captured on film.

Stritch’s breakout role was a supporting one in the 1952 Broadway revival of Rogers & Hart’s Pal Joey. She had just one number, “Zip,” in which she performed a faux striptease a la Gypsy Rose Lee (Gypsy). Her character does not appear in the sanitized 1957 film version of Pal Joey but her song is given to Rita Hayworth’s character, in the starring role.

Pal Joey was originally released on Blu-ray by Twilight Time. It has recently been reissued by Columbia and is also available on Mill Creek’s nicely rendered 12-film set Rita Hayworth – Ultimate Collection

Warner Archive has released 1949’s In the Good Old Summertime on Blu-ray.

The tale of squabbling clerks who don’t know they’re romantic pen pals first saw the light of day as a 1937 Hungarian play by Miklos Laszlo called Parfumerie. It made its first appearance on screen in 1940 as The Shop Around the Corner, starring James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan. It was subsequently made into the 1963 Broadway musical She Loves Me, which was successfully revived in 1993 and 2017. A third film version, You’ve Got Mail, was revamped for the first internet generation with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan.

In the Good Old Summertime was a huge box-office success in 1949, coming on the heels of the Garland-Fred Astaire match-up in 1948’s Easter Parade. MGM went all out, changing the story’s locale from Budapest to turn-of-the-century Chicago and even shamelessly giving Garland a song called “Merry Christmas,” a rip-off of the sublime “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” which she introduced in 1944’s Meet Me in St. Louis.

The film has its charms, and for anyone who hasn’t seen The Shop Around the Corner or She Loves Me, it may be the cat’s meow. For anyone familiar with those works of art, though, it may be a disappointment.

Garland is perfectly fine as the naïve heroine, but Van Johnson doesn’t quite capture the charm of James Stewart, or later Tom Hanks, as the sensitive hero. S.Z. “Cuddles” Sakall (Christmas in Connecticut) as the befuddled shopkeeper and Spring Byington (The Devil and Miss Jones) as his bookkeeper and future wife are perfectly fine in support as is Buster Keaton (The Cameraman) as a fellow clerk.

Blu-ray extras include two short films imported from the previous DVD release.

Kino Lorber has released a Blu-ray a The Emperor Waltz, one of the oddest films ever directed by the great Billy Wilder and one that he hated, delaying its release for retakes for two years before finally allowing Paramount to release it in 1948.

Wilder made the film on the heels of his great success with the Oscar-winning 1945 film The Lost Weekend. A turn-of-the-century musical set in Vienna, Bing Crosby plays a salesman who falls in love with the emperor’s daughter (Joan Fontaine). The royal court, featuring Richard Haydn (And Then There None), Roland Culver To Each His Own), Lucile Watson (Watch on the Rhine), and Sig Ruman (To Be or Not to Be, objects to the impending marriage of commoner Crosby into the royal family. A disturbing subplot is the mating of Crosby’s male white dog and Fontaine’s female black dog in which Fontaine’s dog’s litter consists of three white dogs which are set for drowning by Ruman, obviously meant to draw a parallel to the mass exterminations in Nazi concentration camps. Oscar-nominated for its costumes and score, the film was a deserved flop.

Kino Lorber has also released a Blu-ray of Delbert Mann’s pleasant 1967 comedy Fitzwilly starring Dick Van Dyke as a butler who steals to keep his beloved employer in the luxury to which is accustomed. Edith Evans, in the same year in which she would win every award except the Oscar for The Whisperers, is his employer with resources of her own for making everything okay in the end. Barbara Feldon (Smile) and John McGiver (Midnight Cowboy) co-star.

This week’s new Blu-ray releases include Thoroughly Modern Millie and The Oh, God! Collection