While DVD companies continue to rush recent releases into the marketplace, classic films become harder and harder to find.

While we get a few crumbs here and there – the recent screwball comedy sets, the hits and misses form the Warner archives – there are still way too many classics languishing unreleased on commercial DVD in the U.S. and Canada and, indeed, most of the world. Here are a few of the films released between 1931 and 1970 that are among the most conspicuous by their absence:

Every few years Paramount reissues George Stevens’ Oscar winning 1951 film A Place in the Sun, which continues to be a cash cow for them, but neither Paramount nor Universal, which owns the rights to older Paramount films, has seen fit to release the original 1931 film of Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy filmed in 1931 under that title.

Directed by Josef von Sternberg (The Blue Angel, Shanghai Express) with all the intensity that was typical of the director, Phillips Holmes is every bit as strong as Montgomery Clift in the remake and Sylvia Sidney excels as the pathetic poor girl who clings to him. Sidney’s performance is much more nuanced, less whiny and annoying than Shelley Winters’ in the remake. Lovely Frances Dee is only on screen for ten minutes or so as the rich girl with whom he becomes infatuated, but makes as indelible an impression as Elizabeth Taylor did twenty years later.

Come to think of it, why hasn’t Universal released von Sternberg’s Shanghai Express in Region 1? It’s been available in Region 2 in the U.K. for years.

Oscar’s only Best Picture winner never released on DVD is 1933’s Cavalcade and there’s no excuse for it. Fox promised the film as far back as 1997, but apparently has never been satisfied with the look and sound of the transfer and now probably feels there’s no market for it. That’s just plain ridiculous. The film, which follows a British upper-class couple from the Boer War through World War I, is of significant historical value for its content as well as its Oscar win. Based on Noel Coward’s enormously successful stage and radio play, the faithful film version ends with the same prophetic warning of the coming of World War II.

Diana Wynyard and Clive Brook’s stiff upper-lip style of acting has long gone out of style, but Una O’Connor and Herbert Mundin as their servants remain as delightful as ever. The film, directed by Frank Lloyd (Mutiny on the Bounty) deserves a major DVD release.

A year after winning her Oscar for It Happened One Night, Claudette Colbert was nominated for an even better performance as a naïve young psychiatrist in Private Worlds, a film few today have seen. What a pity. The film, which was directed by Gregory La Cava (My Man Godfrey, Stage Door) remains fresh and appealing as do the performances, not only of Colbert, but of Charles Boyer, Joel McCrea, Helen Vinson and especially Joan Bennett as McCrea’s mentally challenged bride. Universal owns the rights to the film which has been shown in a restored print in special screenings within the last few years. Where’s the DVD?

There have been three film versions of Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II’s Show Boat, the immortal musical that is constantly revived on Broadway and throughout the musical world. The best of these, by far, was the 1936 version directed by James Whale (Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein). Whale fully captures the nuances of Edna Ferber’s novel as well as presenting the glorious songs to best advantage. The impeccable cast is comprised almost entirely of actors who originally played their roles on stage. Irene Dunne, who starred as Magnolia, was the understudy to the original leading lady and headed the touring version, which made her an overnight sensation. Helen Morgan famously originated the second female lead of Julie on Broadway. Allan Jones (Gaylord Ravenal) Charles Winninger (Cap’n Andy), Paul Robeson (Joe) and Hattie McDaniel (Queenie) had all previously played their roles in various stage versions. Only Helen Westley, subbing for Edna May Oliver as Parthy Ann, was new to the project.

Warner Bros. has supposedly been working on restoring the inferior 1929 version to release all three versions in a box set, but who needs all that? The 1951 version has long been available. We just want the great 1936 version.

When Leo McCarey won his first Oscar for directing 1937’s The Awful Truth, he reportedly said “you gave it to me for the wrong picture”. The film he was referring to was that year’s Make Way for Tomorrow, which a handful of critics, then, and every major historian now, agree was indeed the film he should have won for.

One of the rare films to deal with the travails of old age, Make Way for Tomorrow is the poignant story of an elderly New York couple, played by Victor Moore and Beulah Bondi, who are about to lose their home to foreclosure. Two of their four children agree to take one of them. Bondi goes to live with son Thomas Mitchell, his wife Fay Bainter and their daughter. Moore goes to live with daughter Elisabeth Risdon. Eventually the two reunite for a brief time before Moore is shipped off to another daughter in California and Bondi, unbeknownst to Moore, goes to live out the remainder of her life in a nursing home.

What makes the film so great is that there are no villains. The elderly couple is seen as difficult as well as sweet and charming and the children put upon rather than selfish. Bondi, Bainter and Mitchell who would be reteamed to great effect in Our Town three years later are especially memorable. Six years after that, Mitchell could be seen as Bondi’s brother-in-law in It’s a Wonderful Life.

Criterion has been rumored to be working on a DVD release but thus far there has been no confirmation.

For years the TCM website has been conducting a survey to determine which films its viewers want to see released on DVD. 1940’s The Mortal Storm, directed by Frank Borzage (7th Heaven, A Farewell to Arms) has consistently been at or near the top of that survey yet Warner Bros. still hasn’t released it either as a standard DVD or as part of its archive program where one would have thought it would be among its first releases.

Set in Germany during Hitler’s rise to power, it was one of the first and best of the anti-Nazi movies to come out of Hollywood before the U.S. entered the war. Frank Morgan gives what is arguably his greatest performance as the beloved professor who is arrested by the Nazis for being a non-Aryan. Margaret Sullavan as his daughter; James Stewart as her friend and presumed lover; Robert Young, Robert Stack and Dan Dailey as young Nazis; Irene Rich as Morgan’s wife; Maria Ouspenskaya as Stewart’s mother; and Bonita Granville as her young ward all excel in a film that deserves to be seen by everyone.

One of the best films about growing up, 1945’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, directed by Elia Kazan (A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront) from Betty Smith’s acclaimed novel, netted two acting Oscars for Peggy Ann Garner’s Francie and James Dunn’s Johnny Nolan. It has long been available on DVD in Region 2, but not Region 1. Why not, Fox?

Six of Greer Garson’s seven Oscar-nominated performances have been released on Region 1 DVDs, but not 1945’s The Valley of Decision, directed by Tay Garnett (The Postman Always Rings Twice). This grand film version of Marcia Davenport’s bestseller is the only film in which the Irish-born Garson actually played Irish instead of British. It paired her with Gregory Peck in one of his best early roles and surrounded her with a superb supporting cast including Gladys Cooper, Donald Crisp, Lionel Barrymore, Dean Stockwell and Jessica Tandy, so why isn’t it available, Warner Bros.?

Olivia de Havilland won a celebrated court case against Warner Bros. by starring in two superb 1946 films, neither of which are on DVD. The Dark Mirror, directed by Robert Siodmak (The Spiral Staircase, The Killers), a suspense thriller in which she plays twins, one good, one evil, was scheduled for release by Paramount a few years ago but pulled at the last minute due to a regime change. The even better To Each His Own, directed by Mitchell Leisen (Remember the Night, The Mating Season) whose many wonderful films are mostly missing on DVD, is the one that won de Havilland the first of her two Oscars for what amounts to another dual role as a naïve girl and her later middle-aged self. De Havilland, who was only thirty at the time, is especially engaging as the gruff, fiftyish character she plays for much of the film. Universal owns the rights to this one. Rights to The Dark Mirror, originally released by Republic, have shifted to Lionsgate which doesn’t seem to be in any more of a hurry to release it than Paramount was.

Jane Wyman won a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination for her marvelous performance in 1951’s The Blue Veil, directed by Curtis Bernhardt (A Stolen Life, Interrupted Melody), a film that hasn’t even been shown on TV in decades. It was an RKO film, so if we keep our fingers crossed, Warner Archive will eventually release it.

In it Wyman plays a World War I widow whose fatherless baby dies a few hours after being born. Against her better judgment she takes a job as a nanny for widower Charles Laughton which begins a lifelong odyssey of caring for other people’s children, all of whom she becomes a bit too attached to for her own good. Laughton and the rest of the supporting cast including Joan Blondell (another Oscar nominee), Natalie Wood, Richard Beymer, Richard Carlson and Agnes Moorehead are first rate.

Nominated for seven Oscars, winner of one and the New York Film Critics Best Picture co-winner with The Apartment, 1960’s Sons and Lovers, directed by Jack Cardiff, deserves to be on DVD and is in Region 2, is, but is shamefully among the missing in the U.S. and Canada. The film version of the D.H. Lawrence novel gave us career high performances by Trevor Howard, Dean Stockwell, Wendy Hiller, Mary Ure and Heather Sears. Howard, as the gruff coal miner father of sensitive artist Stockwell, and Ure as the older woman with whom Stockwell has his first affair were nominated for their performances. Master cinematographer Cardiff (Black Narcissus, The African Queen) directs with a painter’s eye, though it was the film’s credited cinematographer, Freddie Francis (The Elephant Man, Glory), who won the film’s only Oscar. Fox is to blame for the film’s absence on DVD.

An actor’s showcase, 1960’s The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, directed by Delbert Mann (Marty, Separate Tables) from the play by William Inge (Picnic, Splendor in the Grass), was an exquisite study of a 1920s dysfunctional family headed by a womanizing traveling salesman played by Robert Preston and his put-upon wife played by Dorothy McGuire. Shirley Knight won an Oscar nomination as their daughter. Knight and Lee Kinsolving as the suicidal boy she loves won Golden Globe nominations, while Eve Arden as McGuire’s opinionated sister won a Laurel nomination. Angela Lansbury was also unforgettable as Preston’s on-again, off-again mistress. Warner Bros. owns this one so maybe we’ll see it soon as an archive release.

Jean Simmons was an early contender for a Best Actress Oscar for her grieving widow in 1963’s All the Way Home, directed by Alex Segal from James Agee’s novel, A Death in the Family, and Tad Mosel’s play, but the film was a box office disappointment and Paramount pulled it from its L.A. showcase after just six days. Oscar qualifying rules stipulate that a film must play seven consecutive days in L.A. Subsequently produced for TV in three separate versions, this remains the best and most difficult to find. In addition to Simmons at her best, the film features strong performances by Robert Preston, Aline MacMahon, Pat Hingle and young Michael Kearney.

Dame Edith Evans gave one of the greatest performances of all time as a lonely old lady who talks to her teacups in 1967’s The Whisperers, directed by Bryan Forbes (The L-Shaped Room, Séance on a Wet Afternoon), for which she won practically every acting award in the world except for the Oscar. The suspense story involving stolen money is secondary here to the rich character portrait provided by Evans. This one has never been given a DVD release even in the U.K. It’s a United Artists film so the rights belong to MGM/Fox now.

Patricia Neal returned to the screen with much fanfare after her near fatal series of strokes in 1968’s The Subject Was Roses, directed by Ulu Grosbard (True Confessions, The Deep End of the Ocean), as a strong-willed Bronx wife and mother just after World War II. Neal was nominated for an Oscar for her moving performance and Jack Albertson as her miserly husband won for Best Supporting Actor trophy while Martin Sheen as their conflicted homecoming G.I. son greatly advanced his career in what was largely a faithful transfer of the three-character Broadway play which starred Irene Dailey opposite Albertson and Sheen. An MGM film, Warner Bros, now owns the rights so let’s keep our fingers crossed for an archive release.

Melvyn Douglas and Gene Hackman won Oscar nominations for their corrosive performances in 1970’s I Never Sang for My Father, directed by Gilbert Cates (Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams). An unsparing look at aging and death, Douglas is the mean old man that son Hackman and daughter Parsons must cope with after the death of their put-upon mother, the lovely Dorothy Stickney. Columbia was rumored to be putting this out as one of their no-frills Martini movie DVDs but it has yet to happen.

That’s just seventeen of the gems still missing on DVD. I could easily come up with another eighteen more, but that’s enough food for thought for now.

-Peter J. Patrick (August 11, 2009)