People seem surprised, or amused, when I tell them that we’ve added more than 300 new movies to my book, TCM Presents Leonard Maltin’s Classic Movie Guide. It wasn’t hard to do: my colleagues and I took note of what was playing on cable movie channels and what was being released for the first time on DVD and Blu-ray. I tend not to list films that only survive in archives and aren’t accessible to the public: this is first and foremost a user’s guide.
The new inclusions are incredibly diverse, ranging from European silent films to Hollywood B movies of the 1930s and ‘40s, from a Mary Pickford vehicle to an early Milos Forman feature from the 1960s. “New” titles featuring Clara Bow, Joe E. Brown, Mary Pickford, Conrad Veidt, and Wheeler and Woolsey share pages with features directed by Fritz Lang, Jules Dassin, Julien Duvivier, Frank Borzage, Paul Fejos, Victor Fleming, and even John Ford.

Since our last Classic Movie Guide came out I’ve been keeping a list of additions and corrections, but until my cohort Spencer Green and I began work in earnest we didn’t realize how much there would be to do.
The Philo Vance mystery isn’t called Bishop Murder Case, but The Bishop Murder Case. The Olsen and Johnson comedy isn’t Fifty Million Frenchmen but 50 Million Frenchmen. For his early Hollywood effort Danger—Love at Work, the director was credited as Otto L. Preminger; he later dropped the middle initial. We always listed Thank You, Mr. Moto as a 1938 movie but it turns out it debuted in December of 1937.
Our primary source for credits is always the film itself. We generally trust whatever it says onscreen, although even here there are exceptions, as when a studio carelessly misspells someone’s name. For further corroboration we attempt to find source material from the time of the film’s release.

Naughty Marietta is also a better movie than I indicated in my earlier write-up. It is just one of many films my colleagues and I have revisited and rerated for this edition. We don’t take these changes of heart lightly, be they positive or negative, but when a film looks better than it did the first time around, or hasn’t aged well, it seems foolish to stand by an outdated opinion.
It’s been great fun to dive into this material, as vintage movies remain my first love. I’m honored that Turner Classic Movies is “branding” the new edition of the Guide and hope that diehard film buffs will find it useful—and enjoyable.