Warner Archive has stepped up production of its Blu-ray upgrades, releasing three more in late January. Production delays have cancelled plans for February releases, but six more are on tap for March.

Releasing at the end of January were Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Wife vs. Secretary, and The Long, Long Trailer, all of which, of course, look and sound better than ever.

1939’s Goodbye, Mr. Chips was one of the hallmark films of that year, often referred to as the greatest year in film history. It stands at the top of that year’s output along with Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Stagecoach, Love Affair, The Women, Ninotchka, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, all of which have had previous Blu-ray upgrades. Only Wuthering Heights of the year’s top ten films, remains without a Blu-ray upgrade.

Goodbye, Mr. Chips was a much-loved 1934 novel written by James Hilton the year after his phenomenal success with Lost Horizon. By 1939, Hilton had written the screenplay for Camille and seen Lost Horizon made into an Oscar-nominated film by Frank Capra. His later novel, Random Harvest, would become one of the best loved and most successful films of 1942, the year he won an Oscar for his screenplay for the even more loved and more successful Mrs. Miniver.

The film begins with a brief introduction to Charles Edward Chipping at his retirement just prior to World War I. It then takes us back to 1870 where the 25-year-old academic is seen as a shy, unsophisticated young man beginning his career as a classics teacher at a private English boys school. For the next quarter century, he will be regarded as quite stuffy by his students as well as fellow academics. That changes when he goes abroad for the first time at 50 where he meets and falls in love with Kathy, a fellow English tourist, a woman half his age, who he immediately marries. It is she who gives him his nickname of Mr. Chips, which will stick with him for the remainder of his 88 years.

The marriage softens Chips, who retains his kindlier side even after losing his beloved Kathy and stillborn son in childbirth. His students become his surrogate sons. Passed over time and again for promotion, Chips retires but is brought back and promoted to headmaster when the younger headmaster and many of the faculty are drafted for service in World War I. He will retire again but rent a room just outside school grounds, keeping in touch with his former students, dying in 1933 uttering one of the most immortal lines in film history.

Directed by Sam Wood (A Night at the Opera, Our Town, The Pride of the Yankees), the enduring popularity of Goodbye, Mr. Chips is based on the performances of its stars.

Robert Donat had a string of hits in the mid-1930s in such films as The Count of Monte Cristo, The 39 Steps, and The Citadel, receiving an Oscar nomination for the latter. Goodbye, Mr. Chips would be the role of his career, a performance that won him the year’s Best Actor Oscar over the formidable competition of Clark Gable in Gone with the Wind, James Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and Laurence Olivier in Wuthering Heights. He is a total delight, especially in his portrayal of Chips in his later years. His last scene, as he contentedly approaches death at 88, is unforgettable. Audiences wept then, and still do today.

Unfortunately, Donat’s subsequent career was scant, owing in large part to ill health. He died at 54 in 1958, receiving a posthumous Golden Globe nomination for his last role, that of a Chinese Mandarin in The Inn of the Sixth Happiness in support of Ingrid Bergman.

Playing opposite Donat, Greer Garson made her American film debut as Kathy. Billed below the title, her less than 25 minutes of screentime catapulted her to instant film stardom, earning her a Best Actress Oscar nomination, the first of six in a seven-year period that included Blossoms in the Dust, Mrs. Miniver, for which she won, Madame Curie, Mrs. Parkington, and The Valley of Decision. She would earn a seventh fifteen years later for playing Eleanor Roosevelt in Sunrise at Campobello.

Next to Goodbye, Mr. Chips, 1936’s Wife vs. Secretary is a bit of a letdown. It’s a serviceable comedy directed by Clarence Brown (The Human Comedy, National Velvet, Intruder in the Dust) but doesn’t benefit much from the star wattage of its cast.

Sandwiched between Mutiny on the Bounty and San Francisco, Clark Gable plays a millionaire magazine publisher with a faithful wife (Myrna Loy) and a faithful secretary (Jean Harlow). Egged on by his mother (May Robson), Loy comes to believe that there is something going on between Gable and Harlow. There isn’t until she leaves him. Waiting in the shadows for Harlow is underutilized rising star James Stewart. It’s okay, but highly predictable.

1954’s The Long, Long Trailer, directed by Vincente Minnelli (An American in Paris, Gigi), is an episodic film with Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz at the height of their popularity in TV’s I Love Lucy. The stars play characters very close to their TV personas with a supporting cast headed by Marjorie Main and Keenan Wynn wasted in bit roles. Unless you’re a Lucy completist, skip it.

Warner Archive’s March releases will be Camille, Confessions of a Nazi Spy, I’ll Cry Tomorrow, The Prince and the Showgirl, Neptune’s Daughter, and Flamingo Road.

On the streaming front, I caught this year’s surprise Oscar nominee for Best Animated Feature, The Sea Beast, on Netflix last night. Although the film reminds many of the animated How to Train Your Dragon series, its origins go back much further to Moby Dick and Captains Courageous. In fact, the classic 1926 film version of Moby Dick starring John Barrymore was called The Sea Beast. It’s an entertaining two hours voiced by Keith Urban, Zaris-Angel Hator, Jared Harris, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Jim Carter, Dan Stevens, and more.

I also caught Andrea Riseborough’s controversial Best Actress-nominated performance in To Leslie earlier in the week on Amazon Prime. The nomination caused a stir because of the last-minute campaigning by a handful of A and B list actors and actresses who screened the film for Academy member friends, some of whom suggested that they put Riseborough’s name in first place as she only needed a couple hundred votes to ensure a nomination. The Academy is reportedly considering revoking the nomination due to those shenanigans.

Riseborough is fine as a West Texas alcoholic who makes life hell for everyone around her until she sobers up at the end, but it’s not something we haven’t seen before. I was more impressed with the supporting performances of Marc Maron as a kindly motel manager and Owen Teague as the son she betrayed more than once.