The other night on my webcast, Leonard Maltin and I got to talking about movies we liked but which are difficult to see. He mentioned the 1940 version of Swiss Family Robinson produced by RKO and starring Thomas Mitchell, Edna Best, Freddie Bartholomew and Tim Holt, with narration by an uncredited Orson Welles. As Leonard explained it, when the Disney folks made their 1960 version of Swiss Family Robinson, they purchased the RKO version and removed it from circulation.
Leonard is right, as he always is, but it had apparently slipped back into circulation. Reader-of-this-site Steve Feustel wrote me to say that the 1940 version and the 1960 one are both streaming these days on Disney+. (I don't have that channel by the way. I decided not to spring for it until I get through all the currently-unwatched Disney DVDs I have in this house. Which I just might do by the time the virus is gone but not much before.)
In the meantime, reader-of-this-site Daniel Frank informs me that The Art of Love, which is the film I mentioned, is coming out on DVD and Blu-ray in September from Kino Lorber. I am cautiously recommending this film because I last (and first) saw it when it was released in 1965 which is, after all, 55 years ago. I liked it a lot then. I might not now.
It has a good cast: James Garner, Dick Van Dyke, Elke Sommer, Angie Dickinson, Carl Reiner, Ethel Merman, Roger C. Carmel and Jay Novello. It was written by Mr. Reiner and directed by Norman Jewison and was for some reason advertised as "Ross Hunter's The Art of Love." That was back when producers sometimes got possessory credits.
If you want to trust the tastes of me when I was thirteen years old — and I sure wouldn't — you can advance order a copy of the DVD here and the Blu-ray here. Or you can wait 'til I get a copy, watch it again and tell you whether it's as good as I thought it was then. I'm a little cautious because when a few years ago I told Dick Van Dyke that I really liked it, he gave me a startled look and said, "Really?"