TCM Classic Film Festival 2012: Red Carpet Interviews

I love your father’s films.
William Wellman, Jr.: Well, thank you. I do too.

They’re actually showing one that I haven’t seen, so I’m kind of excited about that.
WWJ: Are you going to be at Wings tomorrow?

I am going to be there come hell or high water. I actually wanted to talk to you a little bit about Wings, because a few years ago I was trying to watch all the Best Picture winners, and that was the hardest one to find because it was the only one not on DVD. And now it is! What are your thoughts on how it is finally on DVD?
WWJ: I guess Paramount, there were so many people coming and going, there was so much going on for years at the studio. I kept after them to do something with Wings, when I got a call late last year — I went out there and they told me what they were going to do. I was so excited.

The restoration job is fabulous. The sound effects that Ben Bird, four-time Academy Award winner,  is just fabulous. The original score from the original score is just fantastic. It’s wonderful.

Could you talk a little bit about Wild Boys of the Road? It’s one of my favorite pre-codes.
WWJ: It’s a shocking one. My mother is the co-star — she’s the one that dressed like a boy. My mother was a Busby Berkeley dancer and danced in many of the Berkeley films. The last film she did was Gold Diggers of 1933, and then she married my father so she didn’t want to work anymore.

Then my father talked her into doing Wild Boys of the Road. The way he dressed her looks like the same wardrobe of Louise Brooks in a film that my father did, a silent called Beggars of Life, which if you haven’t seen — you need to. It’s a wonderful film. Louise Brooks plays a character very much like my mother’s in Wild Boys of the Road.