And Now for Something a Little Different

Out of idle curiosity, I just looked up The Best of Warner Bros.:  100 Film Collection to find out the cost after hearing it plugged on TCM.  Gee, it's a mere $597.98!  (Buy it "cheap" on Amazon for $383.49.)  Actually, if I didn't already have most of the movies and had a few extra hundred dollars to blow, it does provide a large number of good movies, along with a few fillers like The Clash of the Titans.  BUT, what  blows my mind is that a significant number of those movies are actually made by other studios, primarily MGM.  Okay, so Warner Bros. may OWN them now ... Big Deal!

I went through the first 41 movies listed, covering 1927 to 1959.  (My interest in movies fades with every decade after the 1930s!)  Of those 41 movies, I came up with 18 being produced by MGM and four more by other studios.  I'm sure my numbers are correct within a movie or two, just lack the energy to double-check my findings.

Grand Hotel, Mutiny on the Bounty, Night at the Opera, Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Citizen Kane, Mrs. Miniver, Singin' in the Rain, Ben-Hur, etc....these are NOT movies produced by Warner Bros.!  I mean, Louis B. must be turning over in his grave.

Warner Bros. made a lot of good movies overlooked by the collection.  Only one Bette Davis movie made the list, Dark Victory, and the lady made a number of great movies in her time at Warners:  Now Voyager, Watch on the Rhine, Mr. Skeffinton, The Man Who Came to Dinner, The Letter, Jezebel, The Petrified Forest ... all would qualify for a "Best Of" collection.  But, NO, they have to use the best of MGM instead.

I checked out about a dozen reviews of the collection.  Not one mentions the use of movies made by other studios.  Do they not know this?  Do they think having the legal rights to a movie in 2013 makes a movie a Warner Bros. production?  Yeah, I know, does anyone really care.  I just feel insulted on behalf of all those people who worked so hard to make good movies for their studio - for MGM, for Columbia, for RKO, for Universal, for 20th Century - and NOT FOR WARNER BROS.!!