John Wayne on DVD
October 24th, 2004 by Andre Soares
Paramount Home Entertainment and Paramount’s Worldwide Television Distribution, in association with the late John Wayne’s Batjac Productions, will be distributing several Wayne titles on DVD beginning in spring 2005.
The upcoming releases include Island in the Sky (1953), a rarely seen adventure film about a plane crash in sub-Arctic Canada; Hondo (1953), a Western that garnered Geraldine Page her first Academy Award nomination (as a supporting actress) based on a story by Louis L’Amour (erroneously nominated in — and later withdrawn from — the Motion Picture Story category); the comic Western McLintock! (1963), with Maureen O’Hara and Stefanie Powers; and a fully restored print of the rarely seen The High and the Mighty (1954), a highly popular aviation drama that received 6 Academy Award nominations (including nods for director William Wellman, and supporting actresses Claire Trevor and Jan Sterling), winning one, for Dmitri Tiomkin’s score.
Additionally, Paramount will release five other Batjac productions in which John Wayne does not appear: Ring of Fear (1953), a circus-set mystery yarn involving former Warner Bros. star Pat O’Brien and writer Mickey Spillane — as himself; Plunder of the Sun (1953), an adventure tale set in Mexico, with Glenn Ford, Patricia Medina, and Diana Lynn; William Wellman’s psychological thriller Track of the Cat (1954), with Robert Mitchum, Teresa Wright, Diana Lynn, and Tab Hunter; Man in the Vault (1956), a thriller featuring William Campbell and Anita Ekberg; and Bud Boetticher’s Western Seven Men from Now (1956), starring Randolph Scott as a former sheriff in pursuit of the seven men who killed his wife.
The DVDs are supposed to include several extras, including never-before-seen film "memorabilia" from Batjac’s library.
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