With the DVD and Blu-ray releases of new films still at a post-pandemic premium, most new releases continue to be of classic films, many of them courtesy of Kino Lorber and Warner Archive. Newly released are four of note from Kino and three from Warner.

Two of the Kino releases are Cecil B. DeMille films, two are films noir, as are two of the Warner releases. The third Warner release is a musical which has something in common with the release of a recent film taken from a filmed Broadway/London musical, also discussed here.

DeMille’s The Plainsman, copyright 1936 but not released until January 1937, was that year’s first hit. Originally intended to be primarily about Buffalo Bill Cody (1846-1917), the casting of Gary Cooper as Wild Bill Hickok (1837-1876) changed the focus to his character. Jean Arthur, who had been his co-star in the 1936 megahit Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, was cast opposite him as Calamity Jane (1852-1903). James Ellison (I Walked with a Zombie) was cast as Buffalo Bill. Making her screen debut, Helen Burgess, who would die of pneumonia weeks before her 21st birthday shortly after the release of the film, was cast in the pivotal role of Cody’s wife, Louisa.

The film, which begins in 1865, takes the real-life romance of sharpshooters Annie Oakley and Frank Butler in Buffalo Bill’s carnival show of decades later as portrayed in Annie Get Your Gun and gives it to frontierswoman Calamity and lawman Hickok at which time he would have been 28 and she 13. In actuality, the two did not meet until shortly before Hickok’s death eleven years later. Fiction, however, continued to reign over fact as late as 1953 when, based on the success of the 1950 film version of Annie Get Your Gun, Warner Bros. made the musical Calamity Jane, in which Calamity (Doris Day) and Hickok (Howard Keel) were again romantically linked.

The film begins well with the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, moving on to its main settlers vs. Native Americans narrative in which all four stars excel, especially Arthur and Burgess. It then settles into a typical cowboys vs. Native Americans narrative, ending on a somber note as it focuses unflinchingly on Hickok’s death over a card game.

DeMille’s Unconquered, made ten years later, takes place a century earlier following the French and Indian War in 1783.

Cooper is back as DeMille’s leading man, having played the title role in 1944’s The Story of Dr. Wassell for the director in the interim. Paulette Goddard, who starred in DeMille’s 1942 film Reap the Wild Wind, was his leading lady.

The film opens in England where Goddard, convicted of the murder of a Naval officer, is given the choice between hanging and being sold as an indentured slave in the Americas. She choses the latter where she is sold to Cooper. It then moves to America where it focuses on the usual settlers vs. Native Americans scenario. Goddard gets in so many tangles that the film was dubbed “The Perils of Paulette,” a play on The Perils of Pauline.

The film received generally mixed reviews upon its release but was soon largely condemned as racist for both its treatment of Native Americans and its focus on a sole white slave while ignoring the plight of black slaves.

Kino’s two new noir releases are 1947’s The Web, directed by Michael Gordon (Pillow Talk), and 1948’s Larceny, directed by George Sherman (Big Jake).

The Web is a fast-moving thriller in which young lawyer Edmond O’Brien The Barefoot Contessa) and personal secretary Ella Raines (The Phantom Lady) are pitted against wealthy manipulator Vincent Price (Dragonwyck). William Bendix (Detective Story) co-stars as a savvy detective.

Larceny was John Payne’s first film since Miracle on 34th Street, the biggest hit of his career. Playing a grifter, it would completely transform his screen persona from nice guy to tough guy. Joan Caulfield (Blue Skies) is the war widow whose money he is out to steal, Dan Duryea (Scarlet Street) is his partner in crime, and Shelley Winters, in her first role since her breakout performance in A Double Life, has another showcase role as Payne’s jealous floozy.

All four films have excellent well-researched commentaries as are typical of Kino releases. My only complaint is that they all seem to have gotten their information from reading about the films rather than having heard of some of them before. Their mispronunciations of well-known personalities is cringe-worthy. For example, they say Rusevelt instead of Rosevelt for Roosevelt, Vyedor instead of Veedor for Vidor, Door-ee-uh instead of Door-yay for Duryea, Mih-lahnd instead of Mi-land for Milland, Hammersteen instead of Hammerstein for Oscar, and, most annoyingly, Go-dard instead of God-dard for Paulette as though she were Jean-Luc’s sister.

Warner Archive rarely does commentaries. 1946’s Step by Step, directed by Phil Rosen (Charlie Chan in the Secret Service), and 1948’s I Wouldn’t Be in Your Shoes, directed by William Nigh (Mr. Wong, Detective), are no exceptions.

Step by Step is an edge-of-your-seat thriller in which Lawrence Tierney (Reservoir Dogs) and Anne Jeffreys (Boys Night Out) are on the run from both the cops and the real killers of a government official.

I Wouldn’t Be in Your Shoes keeps you thinking, but the production values are so poor it makes you wonder why Warner would spend the money necessary to restore it. Don Castle (Gunfight at the O.K. Corral) plays a dancer who throws his shoes out of his rooming house window. The easily-traced shoes are then worn by a killer and returned to him. Elyse Knox (The Mummy’s Tomb) is the dancer’s wife who races against time to find the real killer while Castle is enroute to New York’s electric chair.

1949’s Take Me Out to the Ball Game, directed by Busby Berkeley, is a nicely done turn of the 20th Century musical starring Frank Sinatra, Esther Williams, Gene Kelly, and Betty Garrett and is best remembered for the Kelly and Stanley Donen’s choreography, which led directly to On the Town and, later, Singin’ in the Rain.

Kelly’s 1951 Oscar-winning film, An American in Paris, became the 2015 Broadway musical An American in Paris – The Musical, which was filmed in its 2017 London iteration and released theatrically in 2018. The Blu-ray release is a nice memento of that production, but it isn’t nearly as beguiling as the original film.

This week’s U.S. Blu-ray releases include A Quiet Place Part II and Shenandoah.