Warner Archive has released the Crime Does Not Pay Complete Shorts Collection, 1935-1947:
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http://bit.ly/L15uCyCRIME DOES NOT PAY — THE COMPLETE SHORTS COLLECTION (1935-47) Here’s the legendary film series — in its entirety! MGM’s celebrated sensationalized shorts caused a sensation — and gave birth to radio and four-color incarnations that courted controversy as ardently as a mug does a moll. While the comic book almost singlehandedly brought an end to comics own pre-Code era, MGM’s smartly crafted series helped usher in the new. Proving to be a fertile training for the next generation of cinema creators eager to subvert and undermine the strictures of the Production Code, Crime Does Not Pay was seminal in the birth of Film Noir, the police procedural, and a new wave of “social message” movies. A furtive perusal of the credits reveals the shorts pack an intimidating line up of future masterminds like Fred Zinnemann, Joseph Losey, Jacques Tourneur, Felix E. Feist, George B. Seitz, Joseph M. Newman and Roy Rowland and soon-to-be-front folk like Laraine Day, Hugh Beaumont, Barry Nelson, Dwight Frye, Paul Guilfoyle, J. Carrol Naish, Darryl Hickman, Cameron Mitchell, Van Johnson and Neil Hamilton. This COMPLETE, Six-Disc Collection includes the Oscar® nominated short, “Don’t Talk,” produced in full cooperation with the Bureau and a precursor of sorts to TV’s The FBI. Also included is the special bonus non-Crime short “Eyes of the Navy,” which MGM also released as part of the series.
