This page includes an expanded version of the Amazon products offered in the sidebar, not just Warren William DVD’s on Amazon but VHS as well. There’s also a link to an eBay search–both the Amazon and eBay links are affiliate links which means I receive a small percentage for each purchase you make going through them. Thank you for using them.
Warren William on eBay:
My Warren William Amazon Store never really showed up properly in this space so I’ve created a brand new Warren William Shopping Guide elsewhere on the site. I’ll leave this page here though because there’s some valuable nuggets in the comments section regarding some tougher to find Warren William titles.
Furthermore there are some shops scattered around the net and on various platforms where you can hunt down some of the rarer, never in print, Warren William titles in formats such as DVD-R. We’ve often discussed them in the past in our comments section and I will begin moving those comments to this page.
Available on Amazon for just $2.99 -
I guess this is the best place to update my several references to the Warren William sets offered “only to private customers” by eBay seller truth3152: he now has a very nice website, casablancadvds.com, where you can shop directly for the four 4-DVD Warren William sets listed above (and of course many other goodies). If you are just starting out as a WW fan, here is your chance to pick up 16 of his movies, including several of the very best, in one fell swoop. (His various Perry Mason and Lone Wolf movies are also available on the same site in sets devoted to those characters.)
On the downside, another seller mentioned more than once on the WW site as a wonderful source for old movies on DVD, vintageclassicmovies.com, was discontinued early this year. I only had a chance to order a couple of title there (both The Mind Reader and The Match King, if I recall), but I really miss it!
Thanks, Jeffers, always appreciate these updates. I ought to create a post or a page especially for them … in fact I think I’ll add that to the “to-do” list. That way whenever anyone comes upon something new they can keep our few sources updated. Ah, great idea, thanks again my friend!
Thank you, Jeffers. I’m trying to assemble a WW film collection and this will help a lot. Recently, I bought Under Eighteen and Beauty and the Boss from the Warner Archive’s site. Wonderful prints.
Casablancadvds.com also has a four-disc Kay Francis set, as I imagine you will have already discovered.
I believe Dr. Monica has already mentioned the new Warner Archives releases of several Kay Francis titles, including “Living on Velvet” with (ta-da)Warren William. In addition, I see that Finders Keepers (www.otrdvd.com) has added “The Mind Reader” under its New Releases (describing it as “a cute little film”!). And, in case anyone might not search deeply enough, it shouldn’t be overlooked that one of the “15 Crime Mystery Movies Chester Morris, Warren William” turned up by Cliff’s eBay Deep Search is “The Match King”! Newcomers, “The Mind Reader” and “The Match King” are titles you won’t want to miss. Now, we just need to find a current source for “The Mouthpiece” and almost all the really essential WW films will be covered.
Thanks for adding, Jeffers, hope you like the new page.
I just received the email announcing Warner Archives new titles and headed over to Amazon to load Living on Velvet (1935) into our little shop, but they don’t have it available from there as of yet.
But, yes, Living on Velvet is now available through Warner Archives.
Also, probably a good place to note that my September Now Playing Guide arrived today and Madame X (1937) is scheduled to air on TCM the morning of September 1 at 9 am. It’s really a Gladys George showcase but if you’re Warren William tastes gravitate towards Imitation of Life (1934) then this is right up your alley.
Also, and it gets a little iffy this far in advance, a big one is set right now for the evening of October 4: Skyscraper Souls (1932) at 9:45 pm. Again, I’ve been burned before going this far in advance, but they have SS scheduled on Monday 10/4 as of right now.
I suppose it would be okay to mention again the contents of the four WW sets that are now available on casablancadvds.com:
1. Skyscraper Souls; The Dark Horse; Employees’ Entrance; Three on a Match
2. Lady for a Day; Gold Diggers of 1933; Imitation of Life; Living on Velvet
3. Dr. Monica; Don’t Bet on Blondes; Times Square Playboy; Satan Met a Lady
4. Under 18; Bedside; The Secret Bride; The Man in the Iron Mask
Now that I look at the list again maybe only Skyscraper Souls and Employees’ Entrance are among WW’s VERY best, but all are nice to have available!
And here are the titles currently available on ScooterMoviesShop.com:
Arsene Lupin Returns; The Dragon Murder Case; The Case of the Black Cat; The Dark Horse; Skyscraper Souls; The Secret Bride; Passport to Suez; The Lone Wolf Takes a Chance; The Lone Wolf Spy Hunt; The Lone Wolf Meets a Lady; The Match King.
Scooter’s products have an almost-commercially-released appearance (illustrated discs, as well as case inserts with illustrations and blurbs), and fulfillment is dependable though not always very rapid.
The Perry Mason and Lone Wolf titles are of course also available on the casablancadvds sets for those characters; I failed to mention before that casablancadvds also has Arsene Lupin and Philo Vance sets that include WW’s entries in those series.
Thanks as always, Jeffers.
I just found a source I don’t think we’ve mentioned and submitted my first order … I’ll let you know how it goes.
myoldmanmovies.com
Pricing starts at $4.99 each and goes down from there based on quantity! Shipping is $2.50 First Class … or Free for 5 titles or more. Plus I found a coupon for an extra 10% off in this forum. Honestly I don’t expect much at these prices but frankly I’m satisfied in just having a bare bones playable copy of what I bought, anything more would be a pleasant surprise. Hey, I’ll cross my fingers for a pleasant surprise!
Warren William titles in stock at myoldmanmovies.com:
Arizona, Arsene Lupin Returns, Bedside, The Dark Horse, Don’t Bet on Blondes, Dr. Monica, Employees’ Entrance, The Firefly, The First Hundred Years, Living on Velvet, The Man in the Iron Mask, The Match King, The Mind Reader, Skyscraper Souls, Stage Struck, Times Square Playboy, Under 18, plus all Perry Masons and Lone Wolfs and a few more commercially available that you should probably get off of Amazon.
Pretty complete. I ordered The Dark Horse and The Firefly, two victims of my DVR crash of earlier this Spring (since supplemented with DVD Recorder to prevent further mishaps).
PS: Will be covering Skyscraper Souls here next, hopefully by this weekend, maybe not til next. Have to finish a non-WW review I started for my other site first (In Old Chicago for the curious).
I really have to thank everybody here for being so helpful with movie sources. Fans of stars who are on their second and third and even fourth boxed commercial sets don’t have a clue how hard it is for those of us with more refined (ok, maybe they’d say rarefied) tastes.
A question, though, if two sources sell the same WW film how do you know which one will be better quality? I’d prefer having one good copy of each film and not repeat what I did when I was trying to get all of Kay’s films. For instance, I have three copies of Confession and two copies of quite a few others.
No clue on that myself, Dr. M, I’ll hold out hope that Jeffers chimes in. Honestly, with films as hard to find as some of these as long as it plays start to finish I’m happy.
By the way, haven’t watched for quality yet but my My Old Man Movies order arrived this afternoon. Good sign I think, only took about 3 days.
Another question. I prefer to order the commercial copies sold on Amazon from your link on this page so in order to do it that way, do I just click the “Warren William Amazon Store,” link above?
Yes, clicking that link opens the store in another window and you have a lot more room to work with! I think you can search for anything Amazon carries from in there (though I’m not positive on that). It’s basically framed as my store, but the entire thing is Amazon right down to the payments and security, kind of like a super-customized affiliate ad.
Thanks again for using it! Every little bit helps in this line and if I can make money away from the collectibles it leaves me more time for writing.
Last question – for now, anyway. Do you have a link here for the casablancadvd site?
I think Jeffers mentions it up above, but here’s a clickable version casablancadvds.com.
Thanks for the link which I just used to order the four WW sets as well as Perry Mason and Arsene Lupin.
What’s the quality like on ScooterMovies? I wanted to order The Match King from them.
ALMOST all of the unofficial Warren William DVDs I’ve seen derive from TCM showings, as far as I can recall (digital copies of digital recordings). To my eyes, and on my equipment, they are pretty much indistinguishable in quality from Warner Archives releases (except for the telltale TCM logo that turns up from time to time). My listings of what I’ve found to be currently available don’t entirely correspond to where I got my own copies from “long ago” (less than 2 years, actually, I think), but I THINK that EVERYTHING that I myself have from ScooterMoviesShop is of TCM quality, as is VIRTUALLY everything from the seller behind Casablancadvds (the exceptions there being some detective-series titles that have apparently never been on TCM). “Stray” films being offered individually on iOffer (for example) are OFTEN of similar provenance and quality, but of course not dependably so.
Add myoldmanmovies.com to Jeffers’ list insofar as quality–caught a little of the copy of The Dark Horse I received from them last night and there was the TCM logo at the bottom right. Assuming the remainder of the recording was pretty much the same as having on TCM (yes, I fell asleep, but it WAS 6 am). So thumbs up to them, huge selection, great prices, quick ship, similar quality to what’s out there. I’ll be going back.
One more thing on myoldmanmovies.com, packaged only in a paper sleeve, which I’m completely fine with. But if you’re looking for some artistic packaging that’s the one thing you won’t get, it’s bare bones. And bare bones works for me … I’m running out of room!
I see that Scooter does still have The Firefly, even though it no longer turns up when you search “Warren William” on that site. I guess if WW isn’t one of the first two or three names in the cast, it’s worth searching for the title.
Alas, it appears that real or threatened legal action by Warner Brothers has resulted in casablancadvds.com no longer being able to offer … practically anything! If this means that Warner Archive (or, dare I think, Warner Home Video) is actually and imminently going to make all of that volume of wonderful material available themselves, more power to them, I guess. If they are not, I feel bad about the possibility that our humble efforts in the WW Shopping Guide may be being used as a stalking horse to go after unofficial sources who have been eking out a modest addition to their day-job livings while helping to fill in the enormous gaps left by the scheduling of authorized releases.
Jeffers, I agree with you and have thought about stripping out the links at least. I’ve actually never published links to these type sites before precisely for the reason you mentioned, but I figured in our tiny corner of the net here it might be okay. The problem is, we want people to find these sites and other than starting a password protected post (not immune to interlopers itself) I don’t know how we spread the word. For our purposes right here we’re mainly concerned with pointing to where to find about 30 otherwise impossible titles. I’m sure Warner’s does plan to release them all, but I’m also pretty sure some of us would like the opportunity to see these flicks before 2014 or however long an official release takes!
PS: Saw the December TCM schedule posted today and 12/2 features an entire day of pre-code movies … but only one featuring birthday boy WW (Upperworld). Kind of disappointed.
Whatever else one thinks about the situation, it must be admitted that naming the site “casablancadvds” might not not have been the best choice if one hoped to fly under the radar of the WB legal department! Well, I hope (and expect) that Dr. Monica got her order and that the site did enough business in the month or so it was running as planned to at least cover whatever start-up expense was involved.
WB, if you are reading this, could you think about LICENSING the titles you aren’t planning to release for several years to such a dependable micro-entrepreneur?
New, or at least imminent, from the Warner Archive collection is “Smarty,” one of several pairings of WW with Joan Blondel; it also features Claire Dodd and Edward Everett Horton and is paired with “Merry Wives of Reno” on a double feature disc. WW is not in “Merry Wives,” and if anyone was thinking that a repairing with JB (his love interest in “Gold Diggers of 1933”) would be incandescent, well, not so much, at least in this case. I will be picking up this new release at some point, but not as an urgent acquisition.
Might it be possible that WB’s vexatious dawdling with regard to releasing WW’s MAJOR films signals a MAJOR set or two forthcoming at some point in our lifetimes??? Ah, dreams die hard …
Thanks, Jeffers, hadn’t run into news of the Smarty release yet. Not sure what I think of WB doing double features, but I guess if $20 or so is the price point they’ve got to stick with to make this work then I can’t argue about having a bonus feature on board (would prefer extras though).
Oh, I hold out hopes about that box set–I got it into my head and have kept it there from the time they released the pre-code set that focused on William Wellman. Our WW could easily rate similar treatment, but the way the classics have slowed from a trickle to a drip in general releases I’m not too sure if my optimism remains.
If I had to guess why Warner’s is sooo slow in releasing the top Warren William flicks to the Archive Collection it’d be this–he actually has the greater legacy of his co-stars in many of them. The Warren William movies released to the collection so far have come out because of Marian Marsh, Kay Francis and now Joan Blondell. That said it will be interesting to see what happens when they do a run of Loretta Young or Maureen O’Sullivan releases, we could see a couple of biggies there. But for titles like The Match King or The Mind Reader we’re probably going to have to get comfortable and wait for that distant time they decide to release a slew of WW pictures!
I’m not sure I even want to go here, but: I see that the Lone Wolf set formerly offered on casablancadvds.com has reappeared on that site (and is the top seller of their attenuated line).
“The Secret Bride” is now available from Warner Archive, either by itself or as part of a Barbara Stanwyck collection (as Cliff almost came right and predicted just above!). (I believe John Stangeland singles this out as one of the movies even the mnost rabid of current WW enthusiasts find it hard to interest themselves in, and indeed I’ve had a copy for a long time that I haven’t got around to viewing yet …)
Could I be dreaming? New to Warner Archives is … THE WARREN WILLIAM COLLECTION, a three-disc set containing (wait for it) “The Woman from Monte Carlo,” “Don’t Bet On Blondes,” and “Times Square Playboy.” All right, the list of films is anti-climactic, and almost makes you wonder if they picked them to “prove” demand for WW’s oeuvre isn’t that great. But it’s something–a start, let’s hope!
Sums up my feelings very well, Jeffers. As you posted this I was working on a new post announcing the collection with a little commentary tacked on.
Warner Archives is now releasing “Upperworld” as one of several Ginger Rogers titles … not as good over all even as “Times Square Playboy” or “Don’t Bet On Blondes,” maybe, but maybe potentially a better hook for getting newcomers intrigued about this Warren William fellow?
You’re quick on this, Jeffers! I’d only just tweeted out the link to my Upperworld review when a few minutes later you left this comment.
Yep, I guess this EE and SS fan is gonna have to wait for Warner Archives to do a bulk release on Loretta Young and Maureen O’Sullivan before I see my faves on any sort of semi-official release.
New to Warner Archives: WW starring as the Lone Wolf in Counter-Espionage and Passport to Suez (separate releases).
I’d have liked a Lone Wolf boxed set, but these two have appealing period graphics on the covers and, if far afield from his pre-Code classics, seem a lot more to draw new WW fans than The Woman from Monte Carlo.