The 1936 film version of Camille, newly released on Blu-ray from Warner Archive, was the eighth of fourteen film versions of Alexandre Dumas’ 1848 novel to date. It is also the most famous, featuring Greta Garbo in the title role in the film for which she would be nominated for an Oscar for only the second time in her illustrious career.

Directed by George Cukor, the sumptuously produced film portrays its title character in a more positive light than previous versions as attitudes toward prostitutes in films had softened at the time.

Garbo plays a courtesan, a euphemism for a kept mistress or prostitute with wealthy, powerful, or influential clients. Her name is Marguerite, but she is known for always wearing camellias, giving her the nickname of Camille. Between male keepers at the start of the film, a case of mistaken identity has her enticing handsome young Robert Taylor but dismissing him when she realizes that it is wealthy baron Henry Daniell she was meant to seduce. Infatuated with one another, Garbo and Taylor reconcile, part, get together again, part again, and eventually reconcile with the consumptive woman dying in his arms.

Meticulously restored by Warner Archive, the film has never looked better. Its sumptuous production design and costume design really stand out in this release as do the performances of Garbo, Taylor, and Daniell, as well as those of Lionel Barrymore as Taylor’s father, Jessie Ralph as Garbo’s faithful maid, and Laura Hope Crews as her money-grubbing fair-weather friend.

The film, which was copyrighted in 1936, had its world premiere in Palm Springs that year, but was not released commercially until January 1937, making it ineligible for the 1936 Academy Awards where Garbo would have been an overwhelming favorite.

Garbo was Oscar nominated for the first time for two 1930 films, Anna Christie and Romance, but lost to Norma Shearer in The Divorcée. She led the all-star cast of 1932’s Grand Hotel, which won the Oscar for Best Picture in its sole nomination. Garbo may well have received an Oscar nomination for 1933’s Queen Christina, but the film, which was released in New York in December 1933, was not released in Los Angeles until 1934 where it was forgotten by year’s end.

Garbo won the initial Best Actress award of the New York Film Critics in 1935 but failed to be nominated for an Oscar despite there being six nominees for Best Actress for the first and only time that year. The Oscar went to Bette Davis in Dangerous.

It is thought that MGM held back release of Camille in 1936 so that the studio could promote rising star Luise Rainer for an Oscar for The Great Ziegfeld, which she won. When Garbo won her second New York Film Critics award for Camille, she became the presumptive favorite for the Oscar, but she lost again to Rainer, this time for The Good Earth.

Rainer, unhappy with the roles she was given post-Oscar left Hollywood in 1938. Garbo was nominated for an Oscar for the third and final time for 1939’s Ninotchka but lost again, this time to Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind. She would retire from acting in 1942. She received an honorary award at the 1954 Oscars but was not in attendance. Nancy Kelly (The Bad Seed) accepted the award on her behalf.

Most of Garbo’s films have long been available on standard DVD, but only Grand Hotel and Ninotchka have been released on Blu-ray.

The Blu-ray release of Camille, like the previously released DVD, contains as a bonus the 1921 version of Camille, starring Alla Nazimova and Rudolph Valentino. It makes for an interesting comparison with Nazimova breaking tradition and dying alone clutching a book given her by Valentino who had not achieved the stardom he soon would with The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and The Sheik later that year.

Also newly released on Blu-ray from Warner Archive is 1955’s I’ll Cry Tomorrow, starring Susan Hayward as Lillian Roth, one of that year’s three high profile biographical films about famous singers from earlier decades released by MGM. The others were Love Me or Leave Me, starring Doris Day as Ruth Etting and James Cagney as her gangster husband, and Interrupted Melody, starring Eleanor Parker as Australia-born opera singer Marjorie Lawrence. Hayward and Parker were nominated for Oscars. Day wasn’t, but Cagney was for Love Me or Leave Me, a previous Warner Archive Blu-ray release.

Directed by Daniel Mann, I’ll Cry Tomorrow gave Hayward her greatest role to date playing a singer for the third time. She was previously Oscar nominated for playing an alcoholic fictional singer in 1947’s Smash-Up and the legendary Jane Froman in 1952’s With a Song in My Heart for which she expertly lip-synched to Froman’s voice. This time Hayward was allowed to do her own singing as Roth. She’s more than up to the task, but the film is more about Roth’s descent into alcoholism than it is about her singing.

Unlike Day, who had Cagney as her co-star, and Parker, who had Glenn Ford as hers, Hayward has a succession of lesser name actors who come into and out of her life from Ray Danton to Don Taylor to Richard Conte to Eddie Albert. They’re all good, but none of them really gets a chance to shine opposite Hayward. The real standout in the supporting cast is Jo Van Fleet as Hayward’s pushy stage mother. It was her third film that year. She had previously been seen in Elia Kazan’s East of Eden for which she won an Oscar as James Dean’s cathouse madam mother, and Mann’s The Rose Tattoo for which Anna Magnani won an Oscar over Hayward.

The film ends with Hayward as Roth entering the TV studio where her life story is about to be revealed on Ralph Edwards’ This Is Your Life.

In real life, Roth resumed her acting career, working until her death in 1980, most notably in 1976’s Alice, Sweet Alice. Hayward, who died in 1975, finally won her Oscar for 1958’s I Want to Live! in which she portrayed condemned murderess Barbara Graham.

Extras on the Blu-ray include the 1934 short, Story Conference, starring the real Lillian Roth.

Happy viewing.