It’s been ages since I dove into the manufacture-on-demand titles coming out of Warner Archive, 20th Century Fox and Sony Pictures, and frankly I haven’t had as much time to explore them as I would like. Given that, here are the highlights from the past couple of months of releases.
Show Boat (Warner Archive) – The 1936 production of the classic musical by Oscar Hammerstein II and Jerome Kern (adapted from the novel by Edna Ferber) is still considered the best version of the Broadway hit. Directed by James Whale, who was most famous for his horror films Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein, it stars Irene Dunne as the dreamy daughter of Cap’n Andy (Charles Winninger), the captain and proprietor of the floating paddlewheel playhouse in the 19th century south, and Allan Jones as the riverboat gambler who becomes her leading man onstage and lover offstage. This version co-stars Paul Robeson as Joe, who sings the show-stopping “Ol’ Man River,” and Helen Morgan (in her final film role) as the singer is forced to leave the show when authorities discover that she has Negro blood in her, both of them reprising their roles from the original stage productions (Morgan on Broadway, Robeson in London).
It features a minstrel number with Irene Dunne in blackface (which, offensive as it is to our sensibilities, is at least true to the show’s era) and all of the black characters are servants or otherwise subservient to the white characters. Yet the film also acknowledges the reality of segregation and bigotry in the Jim Crow south and shows a theatrical community where the white and black characters share scenes and songs and experiences as colleagues. Whale’s sympathy is unmistakable, thanks to his powerful treatment of Morgan’s character and the direction of the “Ol’ Man River” scene, which ends with a montage of expressionism images reflecting the spirit of the lyrics and music. A superb film version of one of the classic American musicals and a very good presentation of the film. No supplements.
What Price Hollywood? (Warner Archive) is one of the wittiest and more interesting Hollywood movies about Hollywood culture ever made. It’s a shame it’s not better known. This 1932 comedy stars Constance Bennett as an aspiring actress waiting tables at The Brown Derby who gets her big break when a drunken film director (Lowell Sherman) invites her to film premiere. In some ways it plays as a rough draft for A Star is Born with its tale of a director drinking his way down the ladder while his discovery rises to stardom, and in its own way it is a love story, though the love between bubbly Bennett and the sardonic Sherman is platonic, a matter of friendship and loyalty. Neil Hamilton (who played Commissioner Gordon in the 1960s TV series Batman) is quite the stiff as Bennett’s suitor, a snob of a millionaire polo champion and Gregory Ratoff parodies every blustery studio boss of the 1930s as the producer.
It is the rare movie about moviemaking that actually shows technicians doing real jobs on a set and a director actually directing actors with practical suggestions. Sherman was a director in his own right as well as a leading man and he brings a little of his experience in front of the camera. The script is filled with witty lines and offhanded observations of the mercenary nature of show business but the main characters have a warm and playful rapport. Director George Cukor embraces it all, finding authenticity under the phoniness and showing a marriage breaking up under the gaze of non-stop media attention. It’s an underrated classic of 1930s Hollywood: smart, snappy, mature, and engaging. No supplements.
Dr. Kildare Movie Collection (Warner Archive) collects all nine films of the original Dr. Kildare series proper, the long-running movie franchise that inspired the sixties TV series. Originally played by Joel McCrea in the 1937 feature Internes Can’t Take Money starring Barbara Stanwyck, the character was taken over by Lew Ayres in Young Dr. Kildare (1938), the first of a series of nine programmers, all co-starring Lionel Barrymore as the wise Dr. Gillespie, seven of the nine with Laraine Day as nurse May Lamont, and all but one directed by Harold S. Bauquet. Like the Andy Hardy films, these were more lavish than the usual B-movie series, with notable character actors (Nat Pendleton and Emma Dunn co-star in a number of films) and young starlets from the MGM stable dropped into various episodes, such as Lana Turner in the second Ayres film Calling Dr. Kildare (1939).
The set is filled out with The Secret of Dr. Kildare (1939) with Lionel Atwill, Dr. Kildare’s Strange Case (1940), Dr. Kildare Goes Home (1940) with Gene Lockhart, Dr. Kildare’s Crisis (1940) with Robert Young, The People vs. Dr. Kildare (1941) with Bonita Granville and Red Skelton, Dr. Kildare’s Wedding Day (1941) with Skelton and Nils Asther, and Dr. Kildare’s Victory (1942), Ayres’s final appearance as Kildare and the only film in the series directed by MGM stalwart W.S. Van Dyke (of The Thin Man series). As a bonus, the set includes the unaired Dr. Kildare TV pilot from 1960 with Lew Ayres returning the role. They took a second crack at it with Richard Chamberlain taking over the role, which is the one that made it series.
Also recent and notable:
Free and Easy / Estrellados: Double Feature (Warner Archive) presents the talking picture debut of silent movie great Buster Keaton (previously released in a DVD set) in a double-feature presentation with the Spanish-language version, with was shot simultaneously with Keaton speaking Spanish with an entirely different cast.
Fibber McGee and Molly Double Feature (Warner Archive) pairs up the third and fourth big screen spin-offs of the hit radio comedy with Jim Jordan and Marian Jordan as the titular characters. Here We Go Again (1942) co-stars Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy (yes, the ventriloquist’s dummy gets his own billing) and Heavenly Days (1944) co-star Eugene Pallette.
Warner Baxter plays The Cisco Kid (20th Century Fox Cinema Archives) in the second sound movie to feature the wily western hero (the first film, In Old Arizona, is available on DVD and Blu-ray from Fox).
Crack-up (20th Century Fox Cinema Archives) from 1936 features Peter Lorre in one of his earliest American movie roles, playing a foreign spy in an airplane engineering company, and co-stars Brian Donlevy and Ralph Morgan.
John Barrymore spoofs his own image in The Great Profile (20th Century Fox Cinema Archives), a quasi-autobiographical film about a self-destructive actor, co-starring Gregory Ratoff, John Payne and Anne Baxter.
Winner Take All (Warner Archive) is a two-fisted, high-energy boxing picture from 1932, directed by Roy Del Ruth (who directed some of Cagney’s best films from this period) and co-starring Marian Nixon and Guy Kibbee.
The Crimson Blade (Sony Pictures Choice Collection) is one of Hammer Films’ rare forays into costume adventure, starring Lionel Jeffries and Oliver Reed as rebel soldiers in the English Civil War who capture King Charles I. John Gilling writes and directs.
Before they squared off in the South American noir Gilda, Rita Hayworth and Glenn Ford were paired up for The Lady in Question (Sony Pictures Choice Collection), a romantic comedy starring Brian Aherne as an inadvertent between the two young stars.
Margin for Error (20th Century Fox Cinema Archives) and Danger – Love at Work (20th Century Fox Cinema Archives) are two early directorial efforts by Otto Preminger and Forever Amber (20th Century Fox Cinema Archives) is a more lavish costume drama from Preminger a decade later.
Esther and the King (20th Century Fox Cinema Archives) and Sodom and Gomorrah (20th Century Fox Cinema Archives) are a pair of Biblical epics shot in Italy, the former directed by Raoul Walsh and the latter by Robert Aldrich. Neither can be considered optimum presentations, however. Esther is widescreen but no anamorphic and Sodom is pan-and-scan.
More releases:
The Gay Deception (20th Century Fox Cinema Archives), 1935, directed by William Wyler.
Kentucky (20th Century Fox Cinema Archives), 1938, with Loretta Young
Hold That Co-ed (20th Century Fox Cinema Archives), 1938, with John Barrymore
Maryland (20th Century Fox Cinema Archives), 1940, with Walter Brennan
Stardust (20th Century Fox Cinema Archives), 1940, with Linda Darnell and John Payne
Footlight Serenade (20th Century Fox Cinema Archives), 1942, with Betty Grable and John Payne
Girl Trouble (20th Century Fox Cinema Archives), 1942, with Don Ameche and Joan Bennett
I’d Climb the Highest Mountain (20th Century Fox Cinema Archives), 1951, with Susan Hayward
All of these are DVD-R releases, no-frills discs from studio masters, ordered online and “burned” individually with every order.
Warner Archive releases are available exclusively from Warner Archive:
Sony Pictures Choice Collection releases are available by order from Amazon, Critics Choice Video, Classic Movies Now, Warner Archive, and other web retailers.
20th Century Fox Cinema Archives releases are available by order only from 20th Century Fox Cinema Archives, from Amazon, Oldies.com and other web retailers.
Calendar of upcoming releases on Blu-ray, DVD, Digital, and VOD