Check TCM when looking for classics

Well, it always happens. You can't get too definitive in a column like the one I wrote two weeks ago because invariably you miss something. In this case, a reader alerted me that although I had listed it as unattainable, "The Tarnished Angels" — one of those "Holy Grail" movies fans have yearned to see on DVD — is indeed out there.

As the old comic maestro Kay Kyser used to say, "That's right, you're wrong!" "The Tarnished Angels" came out a few months ago but I missed it.

In my defense, it's a Universal film but it's not among that studio's burn-on-demand Universal Vault Series. Rather, it was picked up for exclusive DVD release by Turner Classic Movies.

Yes, the best channel on cable television also has a website that has been selling a number of exclusively licensed titles from Universal, Columbia and RKO. That list I compiled a couple of weeks ago included many sites you can peruse when you're on the lookout for long-lost vintage movies but I failed to include one of the most selective.

At TCM's online shop you can find the excellent 1958 Rock Hudson drama "The Tarnished Angels" (both as a single disc and as part of a box set) and a lot of other titles you can't get anywhere else. (Well, except Amazon.com, where they are listed for inflated prices by sellers who purchased them at TCM!)

Although Universal and Columbia have their own manufacture-on-demand labels, and many RKO movies have been issued by Warner Archive (the Big Daddy of MOD websites), TCM also has several exclusive single-film, double-feature and box-set DVDs featuring long out-of-circulation titles, including these:

"Humphrey Bogart: The Columbia Pictures Collection" is TCM's latest acquisition, and arguably its most highly anticipated. This box set has five good films, three of them previously released on DVD: "Tokyo Joe" (1949), "Sirocco" (1951) and Bogie's last, "The Harder They Fall" (1956).

But fans will rejoice about the other two pictures, both making their DVD debut: "Love Affair" (1932), with Bogart in his first leading role (as a straight-arrow aircraft engineer!), and especially "Knock on Any Door" (1949), in which he plays a lawyer with a conscience who defends a juvenile delinquent (John Derek) — complete with the famous line, "Live fast, die young, leave a good-looking corpse."

"Jean Arthur: Comedy Collection" is another newly issued box, featuring a quartet of Arthur's lesser-known flicks: "The Public Menace" (1935), about a bumpy romance and marriage; the comedy-mystery "Adventure in Manhattan" (1936), co-starring Joel McCrea; the workplace romance "More Than a Secretary" (1936); and "The Impatient Years" (1944), with Arthur helping her returning-soldier husband readjust to civilian life.