The Bootleg Files: Disney’s Yellow Submarine

Posted on May 9, 2025 by Phil Hall

BOOTLEG FILES 906: “Disney’s Yellow Submarine” (cancelled animated feature from the early 2010s).

LAST SEEN: Bits and pieces of the pre-production planning are on YouTube and Internet Archive.

AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: None.

REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: Disney never made any of the material available for commercial sale.

CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: Not likely, unless a documentary on the subject is made.

Last month, this column shined its spotlight on “Strawberry Fields,” an aborted animated feature using covers of Beatles songs that was being produced in the late 1980s by Al Brodax, the producer of the 1968 classic “Yellow Submarine.” This week, we take a look at another piece of Beatles-related ephemera – a much-ballyhooed but quickly cancelled remake of “Yellow Submarine” that was planned for production and release by The Walt Disney Company.
Continue reading →

Every Bugs Bunny Ever: Bewitched Bunny (1954)

Posted on May 7, 2025 by Phil Hall

Bewitched Bunny (1954)
Directed by Chuck Jones
Story by Michael Maltese
Animation by Lloyd Vaughan, Ken Harris, Ben Washam
Music by Carl Stalling

“Bewitched Bunny” is notable for introducing Witch Hazel as Bugs Bunny’s first female adversary. A large, lumpy, green-hued character, she levitates to click her heels in merriment over her sorcery, cackling with glee over what she perceives to be a superiority over her long-eared foe.
Continue reading →

The King of Kings (1927)

Posted on May 5, 2025 by Phil Hall

The last major Jesus-focused film of the silent cinema era was Cecil B. DeMille’s 1927 release “The King of Kings.” The production offered heaping servings of DeMille’s vices and virtues as a filmmaker: an astonishing sense of visual spectacle and the uncanny ability to make an epic move at a swift pace, coupled with a bizarre sense of dramatic puerility laced with the obsessive need to improve upon holy source material with old-fashioned vulgarity.
Continue reading →

The Bootleg Files: George M!

Posted on May 2, 2025 by Phil Hall

BOOTLEG FILES 905: “George M!” (1970 television adaptation of the Broadway musical starring Joel Grey and Bernadette Peters).

LAST SEEN: On YouTube.

AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: None.

REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: It fell through the cracks.

CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: Not likely.

On April 10, 1968, the musical “George M!” opened on Broadway. The show offered a biography of the great entertainer George M. Cohan and featured a healthy serving of his classic songs. Joel Grey, coming off his Tony Award-winning performance in “Cabaret,” starred as Cohan and an up-and-coming Bernadette Peters played his sister Josie.
Continue reading →

Every Bugs Bunny Ever: Devil May Hare (1954)

Posted on April 30, 2025 by Phil Hall

Devil May Hare (1954)
Directed by Robert McKimson
Story by Sid Marcus
Animation by Herman Cohen, Phil DeLara, Charles McKimson, Rod Scribner
Music by Milt Franklyn

Jack L. Warner rarely interfered with his studio’s animation unit, but on one notable occasion he pressured producer Edward Selzer to make cartoons with a character that Selzer disliked – the Tasmanian Devil, which debuted in the 1954 “Devil May Hare” but was shelved from future appearances at Selzer’s command. Warner had the character brought back after the studio received significant mail from moviegoers that loved the Tasmanian Devil and wanted to see it in more cartoons.
Continue reading →

The Rogue Song (1930)

Posted on April 28, 2025 by Phil Hall

MGM’s 1930 film “The Rogue Song,” an adaptation of the Robert Bodansky-A. M. Willner operetta “Gypsy Love,” was the only sound-era production included on the American Film Institute’s 1980 list of the ten most wanted lost films. The inclusion of this title on the list was peculiar at many levels. For starters, its presence as the sole post-silent era entry, it inadvertently gave the wrong impression that few sound-era films were lost.
Continue reading →

The Bootleg Files: The Entertainer

Posted on April 25, 2025 by Phil Hall

BOOTLEG FILES 904: “The Entertainer” (1976 television film starring Jack Lemmon and Ray Bolger).

LAST SEEN: On YouTube.

AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: None.

REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: It fell through the cracks.

CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: Not likely.

Earlier this week, I received an email from New York City’s Film Forum announcing an upcoming retrospective series honoring Jack Lemmon on his centennial. While I surmised that the usual round-up of Lemmon classics would be screened, I wondered if Film Forum was able to secure a print of his most elusive work – the 1976 made-for-television adaptation of John Osborne’s “The Entertainer.” Alas, “The Entertainer” is not on the Film Forum schedule.
Continue reading →