William A. Wellman’s incredibly timely Depression-era melodramas “Heroes for Sale” and “Wild Boys of the Road” (both 1933) are among six titles in the third volume of Warners’ “Forbidden Hollywood,” out today, along with other pre-Code gems “The Purchase Price,” “Other Men’s Women,” “Frisco Jenny” and the only MGM title in the otherwise all-Warner set, “Midnight Mary.” Not that you could tell the difference without the credits; Wellman imported not only Loretta Young to star by cinematographer James Van Trees from Warners for one of three MGM features of the ’30s that eschew Metro’s high-gloss look for Warner’s dimly-lit grit (the others are “The Last Gangster,” an Edward G. Robinson vehicle co-written, but not directed by Wellman; and Fritz Lang’s “Fury”). A bonus disc in the set features not only Richard Schickel’s famous full-length interview with Wellman from the ’70s, but a feature-length documentary on Wellman’s career that aired on TNT in 1994. It was produced by William A. Wellman Jr. who is better known as an actor. He played his father in Wellman Sr.’s last film, the ill-fated “Lafayette Escadrille” with Tab Hunter and a very young Clint Eastwood (It’s not on DVD, but Warners yesterday released the film Sr. had to do to get his passion project greenlit, “Darby’s Rangers,” as part of its new DVD-on-demand program).

I spoke with Wellman (his mother is “Wild Boys” co-lead Dorothy Coonan) who certainly shares his father’s gift for storytelling. He recalled showing Dad the script for one of his early acting gigs, the terrible 1960 horror film “Macumba Love” with Walter Reed and Ziva Rodann. “He said it was the worst script he had ever read and it would destroy my career,” Wellman recalled. “I did it anyway and after the premiere, he said ‘that’s the worst movie I’ve ever seen and you’ll probably never work again.’ It ended up making a ton of money and my agent sent me on an interview for a TV series, ‘Laramie,’ The producer said, ‘I saw you in ‘Macumba Love’ and I thought you were a young Montgomery Clift’ and they cast me in two episodes. That’s when it occured to me that there are a lot of people in this business who don’t know what they’re doing. I have played leads in a lot of bad movies.” Junior’s lengthy credits include “Dondi,” “Winter A Go-Go,” several Jerry Lewis movies and TV appearances spanning 45 years, most recently a “CSI” episode in 2007.