The DVD Report #153: April 27, 2010

Oscar repeated its record twelve Best Picture nominations of 1934 the following year.

1935’s Oscar race gave us equal helpings of action, drama, comedy and music – three nominations for each genre.

Action was very much in the forefront this year with Mutiny on the Bounty; Captain Blood and The Lives of a Bengal Lancer all in the running for Best Picture. Frank Lloyd’s Mutiny on the Bounty won, of course, but Lloyd, who had already won two Oscars for Best Direction, didn’t come close to winning a third. John Ford picked up his first of four for directing The Informer with write-in candidate Michael Curtiz (The Informer) besting Lloyd and the third nominee Henry Hathaway (The Lives of a Bengal Lancer).

Presenting the true story of England’s most famous mutiny, which occurred on April 27, 1789, 221 years ago this week, Mutiny on the Bounty recounts the tale of hardship aboard the HMS Bounty counterbalanced with the charms of the island paradise, Tahiti, and the discovery of the pristine Pitcairn Island. Charles Laughton as the infamous Captain Bligh, Clark Gable as mutineer Fletcher Christian and Franchot Tone as the neutral Byam were all nominated for Best Actor, losing to fourth nominee Victor McLaglen for The Informer.

Errol Flynn who rose to fame as the doctor turned pirate in Captain Blood had begun his screen career in his native Australia as Fletcher Christian in an earlier version of the tale which concentrated on the then present day life of the descendents of the mutineers.

Captain Blood was a rousing adventure about a doctor (Flynn) who becomes a pirate in the Caribbean in 1685 in order to fight injustice. Olivia de Havilland, Lionel Atwill and Basil Rathbone co-star.

The British Raj in 1750 was the setting for The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, another rousing adventure with stalwart performances by Gary Cooper, the afore-mentioned Franchot Tone and Richard Cromwell as the three heroes, backed by Sir Guy Standing and Sir C. Aubrey Smith.

All three of these action classics are available on DVD.

Classic drama was also very much in the forefront this year with The Informer; Les Miserables and David Copperfield all vying for Oscar’s attention.

John Ford’s The Informer, which in addition to Ford and McLaglen’s Oscars, won for Best Screenplay and Best Score and was nominated for Best Picture and Best Editing. It also had the distinction of being the first film to win the prestigious New York Film Critics Award for Best Picture and Director. A landmark film in its day, it is a bit under-appreciated now primarily for two reasons, the superiority of many subsequent Ford films and the fact that its story of the “Irish troubles” has been handled much more realistically in the years since. The film, itself, was shot on a shoestring and looks it despite Ford and company’s masterful efforts to conceal its small soundstage filming.

Having a far longer shelf life, Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, directed by Richard Boleslawski, in addition to having been filmed several more times, has also been immortalized in a London and Broadway musical about the 19th Century miscarriage of justice. This, however, remains the best film version of the story with standout performances by Fredric March as Jean Valjean and Charles Laughton as Javert.

An even more celebrated tale of 19th Century injustice, however is Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield, also filmed many times, but sublimely directed here by George Cukor with a cast that was seemingly born to play their parts – Freddie Barthomew as David the boy; Frank Lawton as David the man; W.C. Fields as Micawber; Edna May Oliver as Aunt Betsey Trotwood; Roland Young as Uriah Heep; Basil Rathbone as Murdstone; Maureen O’Sullivan as Dora; Madge Evans as Agnes; Lionel Barrymore as Dan Peggoty; Lewis Stone as Wickfield; Jessie Ralph as Nurse Peggoty; Herbert Mundin as Barkis; Hugh Williams as Steerforth and Lennox Pawle as Mr. Dick chief among them. It doesn’t get much better than that.

All three of these drama classics are available on DVD.

In the comedy vein, Oscar nominated three films that had been made previously as silent films.

Booth Tarkington’s comedy of manners, Alice Adams won the Pulitzer Prize in 1922 and was promptly filmed as a vehicle for Florence Vidor. George Stevens’ 1935 version, however, is the definitive version with a marvelous performance by Katharine Hepburn as the small-town girl who yearns for something more, ably supported by Fred MacMurray, Fred Stone, Hattie McDaniel and others. Hepburn’s Oscar nominated performance is generally considered the best of the nominees that year.

A best-seller in 1915, Harry Leon Wilson’s Ruggles of Red Gap was twice filmed as a silent, in 1918 with Taylor Holmes and again in 1924 with Edward Everett Horton. Leo McCarey’s enormously popular 1935 version with Charels Laughton is, however, the definitive version. As the English butler won by a crass American in a poker game, Laughton is outstanding in every scene, no more so than when he is the only one in a barroom full of Americans who can recite the Gettysburg Address. Charlie Ruggles, Mary Boland and ZaSu Pitts are outstanding in support.

Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night's Dream was filmed at least three times as a silent in 1909, 1913 and 1925, and would be filmed several more times over the years, but it is Max Reindhardt’s film of his acclaimed stage production with a galaxy of stars that remains the one to see. James Cagney, Joe E. Brown, Olivia de Havilland, Dick Powell, Mickey Rooney, Ross Alexander, Jean Muir and Ian Hunter give voice to the beloved characters. The film’s exquisite cinematography was the first and only write-in candidate ever to win an Oscar. The official nominees had been Barbary Cost; The Crusades and Les Miserables.

All three of these comedy classics were released on DVD. Alice Adams has been discontinued by Warner Bros. but can still be found.

Musical tastes come and go. Of the three musicals nominated for Best Picture, one remains a classic of the genre while the other two were passing fancies.

Mark Sandrich’s elegant Top Hat was the second Astaire-Rogers film he directed. Almost a remake of The Gay Divorcee in temperament and style, it featured the same basic boy-meets girl plot as the previous year’s smash hit albeit with Irving Berlin’s music in for Cole Porter’s and Helen Broderick substituting for Alice Brady as the addle-brained wife of Edward Everett Horton. Erik Rhodes was back and Eric Blore was added to the stock company as Astaire’s acerbic butler.

Eleanor Powell’s tap dancing was the highlight of Broadway Melody of 1936, a reviewdirected by Roy Del Ruth. The teaming of Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy in the operetta Naughty Marietta, directed by W.S. Van Dyke, proved so successful that they made seven more through 1942.

Both Top Hat and Broadway Melody of 1936 are available on DVD. Naughty Marietta is available only as an import.

1935 films that have had a more lasting impact on audiences than either Broadway Melody of 1936 or Naughty Marietta include Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps; James Whale’s Bride of Frankenstein and Clarence Brown’s Anna Karenina, all three of which are available on DVD.

New DVDs worth checking out include It's Complicated and The Barbara Stanwyck Collection featuring amongst others, All I Desire and There's Always Tomorrow.

-Peter J. Patrick (April 27, 2010)

The DVD Report #152: April 20, 2010

Comedy is seldom rewarded by Oscar, but in 1934 not only did a comedy win Best Picture, but its two closest competitors were also comedies.

Frank Capra’s screwball classic, It Happened One Night was the first film to sweep the major Oscars for Best Picture, Actor (Clark Gable), Actress (Claudette Colbert), Director (Capra) and Adapted Screenplay (Robert Riskin), a record that was eventually tied by One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest ’s Nest and The Silence of the Lambs.

Its closest rivals in the Best Picture race were the comedy-mystery, The Thin Man, directed by W.S. Van Dyke, and the musical-comedy, The Gay Divorcee, directed by Mark Sandrich.

Gable and Colbert made a great team, but The Thin Man’s William Powell and Myrna Loy and The Gay Divorcee’sFred Astaire and Ginger Rogers made greater ones, at least in terms of screen immortality. Gable worked with Colbert only once more in 1940’s disappointing Boom Town,whereas Powell and Loy co-starred in twelve films together including five sequels to The Thin Man, and Astaire and Rogers made a total of ten together, all of them musicals.

There were twelve nominees for Best Picture this year, the most in Oscar history. Rounding out the list were Sidney Franklin’s The Barretts of Wimpole Street; Cecil B. DeMille’s Cleopatra; Frank Borzage’s Flirtation Walk; Lloyd Bacon’s Here Comes the Navy; Alfred L. Werker’s The House of Rothschild; John M. Stahl’s Imitation of Life; Victor Schertzinger’s One Night of Love; Jack Conway’s Viva Villa! and Irving Cummings’ The White Parade.

Of the twelve nominated films, only five are available as regular DVD releases: It Happened One Night; The Thin Man; The Gay Divorcee; Imitation of Life and Cleopatra. Flirtation Walk is available from the Warner Archive. Presumably The Barretts of Wimpole Street; Viva Villa! and Here Comes the Navy, all of which are controlled by Warner Bros., will eventually be so released as well. One Night of Love is controlled by Columbia and The House of Rothschild and The White Parade by Fox.

Claudette Colbert had the distinction of starring in three of the nominated films, a record she holds to this day.She was the runaway heiress pursued by reporter Gable in It Happened One Night; the enterprising businesswoman in Imitation of Life and the Queen of the Nile in Cleopatra.

The quintessential screwball comedy, It Happened One Night,retains its charm, winning new fans with every generation. Imitation of Life is perhaps better known by its 1959 remake, but the original, though dated, is still essential viewing for the performances of Colbert, Louise Beavers and Fredi Washington in the first Hollywood film in which white and black actresses share the screen more or less as equals.

The DeMille version of Cleopatra, while superior to the overblown 1960s version, seems tame compared with latter day interpretations of the character, particularly in the TV series, Rome. It has, though, two scenes that will forever remain fascinating – Colbert’s bath is asses’ milk and her death by asp bite.

Myrna Loy’s long climb to movie stardom was secured with The Thin Man in which she trades barbs with suave, sophisticated William Powell with the best of them. The film’s release followed by three weeks that of Manhattan Melodrama, in which Powell and Loy were part of a triangle that included Clark Gable. That film, which won an Oscar for Best Original Story, is notorious as the film John Dillinger saw just before he was shot and killed by the FBI outside a Chicago theatre.

Manhattan Melodrama is available as part of the The Myrna Loy and William Powell Collection on DVD.

The Gay Divorcee was the second film in which Astaire and Rogers were teamed, the first in which they had star billing. The film is from a Broadway musical with music and lyrics by Cole Porter. It is, however, the non-Porter song, “The Continental”, written for the film, which won the first Oscar for Best Song.

The collegiate musical, Flirtation Walk is one of Frank Borzage’s lesser films. It is also one of the lesser films in the canons of stars Dick Powell, Ruby Keeler and Pat O’Brien. Why the Warner Archive has seen fit to release it before either The Barretts of Wimpole Street or Viva Villa! ! is a mystery to me.

The Barretts of Wimpole Street, based on a famed stage play, is one of the great love stories of the 1930s. The first of two filmed versions, it starred Norma Shearer as Elizabeth Barrett, Fredric March as Robert Browning and Charles Laughton as Edward Moulton Barrett with a supporting cast headed by Maureen O’Sullivan and Una O’Connor that was sheer perfection. Released shortly after the imposition of the Movie Production Code, Laughton, whose incestuous minded father’s character was heavily censored, famously said of his role “they couldn’t censor the gleam in my eye.”

As notorious for an incident off screen as for anything on, Viva Villa! ! starred Wallace Beery in one of his most famous roles as Pancho Villa, with Leo Carrillo as his brother and Stuart Erwin as the reporter thorugh whose eyes the story is told. Erwin was a last minute replacement for the fired Lee Tracy who, during the film’s location shooting, urinated over the balcony of his hotel on a passing parade of military dignitaries.

The House of Rothschild was one of George Arliss’ best films, a highly entertaining film about a rather dry subject – banking. One Night of Love was a sumptuous musical fest about an aspiring opera singer played by the legendary Grace Moore. Here Comes the Navy is a serviceable service film with featuring James Cagney and Pat O’Brien in their first on-screen teaming. The White Parade is a forgotten film about nurses.

Films that Oscar might have nominated instead of Flirtation Walk, Here Comes the Navy or The White Parade include Rowland V. Lee’s The Count of Monte Cristo with Robert Donat in what is still the best of this oft-filmed rousing adventure; Mitchell Leisen’s Death Takes a Holiday with Fredric March in the best of several film versions of this old chestnut; Borzage’s Little Man, What Now? with Margaret Sullavan and Douglass Montgomery poignantly portraying young newlyweds; John Ford’s World War I classic, The Lost Patrol with Victor McLaglen and Boris Karloff; Ray Enright and Busby Berkeley’s delightful Dames with Dick Powell, Ruby Keeler and Joan Blondell; Rouben Mamoulian’s Queen Christina with Greta Garbo in perhaps her greatest role; Josef von Sternberg’s divinely mad The Scarlet Empress with Marlene Dietrich, Sam Jaffe and Louise Dresser and Cedric Gibbons’ erotically charged Tarzan and His Mate with Johnny Weismuller and Maureen O’Sullivan.

All except Little Man, What Now?, which is controlled by Universal,are available on commercial DVD, though The Count of Monte Cristo seems to have been discontinued. Death Takes a Holiday is an Amazon,com exclusive.

New DVDs worth checking out include Avatar.

-Peter J. Patrick (April 20, 2010)

The DVD Report #151: April 13, 2010

The eligibility period for the 1932/33 Academy Awards was the longest in Oscar’s history, running from August 1, 1932 through December 31, 1933.

Ten films were nominated for Best Picture including Lloyd Bacon and Busby Berkeley’s 42nd Street; Frank Borzage’s A Farewell to Arms; Mervyn LeRoy’s I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang; Frank Capra’s Lady for a Day; George Cukor’s Little Women; Lowell Sherman’s She Done Him Wrong; Sidney Franklin’s Smilin' Through; Henry King’s State Fair; Alexander Korda’s The Private Life of Henry VIII and the winner, Frank Lloyd’s Cavalcade.

Cavalcade, which Fox has been promising for imminent DVD release since 1998, is still unavailable in the format. The film, based on a Noel Coward play, doesn’t hold up particularly well mainly due to the change in acting styles over the years. Oscar nominee Diana Wynyard and Clive Brook are technically excellent but their British stiff upper lip characterizations are alien to modern audiences. Faring much better is Una O’Connor who all but steals the film as the maid who wins the lottery and lords it over her former employers. The film, which traces the lives of a British upper class family from the Boer War to the early 1930s, does have its moments including a wistful scene aboard the Titanic and a prophetic ending that predicts War World II.

Although the Oscar eligibility period included five months of 1932 only three films from that year are among the Best Picture nominees: A Farewell to Arms; I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang and Smilin' Through.

Ernest Hemingway considered A Farewell to Arms to be the best film version of his any of his novels. Gary Cooper and Helen Hayes never looked so good thanks to Borzage’s trademark lyricism and Adolphe Menjou has one of his best roles as Cooper’s World War I sergeant. The film, which is in the public domain, has had many DVD releases but the only one worth looking at is the Image release re-mastered from a pristine print owned by the Selznick estate. Most prints run 79 minutes. The Image version runs 89 minutes, restoring the ten minutes of material cut by the censors for its theatrical reissues over the years.

A landmark film in many ways, I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang is based on the true story of a man imprisoned for stealing a loaf of bread. An American Les Miserables, Paul Muni’s Oscar nominated performance is the best and least affected of all his portrayals of real life characters. The film which changed the penal laws in Georgia and other states, has one of the most devastating endings in film history, a happy accident caused by a power outage.

I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang is available from Warner Home Video as part of its Controversial Classics Collection.

A much loved romance in its day, Smilin' Through is rather hokey by today’s standards and is of interest primarily for the performances of Norma Shearer, Fredric March and Leslie Howard. It’s not yet available on DVD, though it is expected to show up as a Warner Archive release soon.

1932 films of note that were not nominated include Victor Fleming’s Red Dust (Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Mary Astor); Josef von Sternberg’s Blonde Venus (Marlene Dietrich, Herbert Marshall, Cary Grant) and John M. Stahl’s Back Street (Irene Dunne, John Boles).

Blonde Venus is available on DVD from Universal. Red Dust is expected to be part of Warner Bros.’ long promised box set of Jean Harlow films. The 1953 remake, John Ford’s Mogambo with Gable, Ava Gardner and Grace Kelly is available from Warner Home Video.

Universal owns the rights to all three versions of Back Street including the 1941 remake with Margaret Sullavan and Charles Boyer and the 1961remake with Susan Hayward and John Gavin. It has long been hoped that all three versions would be released as a package but it’s yet to happen. Only the Susan Hayward version was ever available as a commercial release on VHS.

There was a mini British invasion in 1933. In addition to Cavalcade, two other highly successful films were set in the British Isles.

In addition to Cavalcade, Frank Lloyd directed Oscar nominee Leslie Howard and Heather Angel in the fantasy romance, Berkeley Square, which is not on DVD. The 1951 remake, I'll Never Forget You with Tyrone Power and Ann Blyth, however is available as part of Fox’s Tyrone Power Matinee Idol Collection.

The Private Life of Henry VIII, for which Charles Laughton bested Paul Muni and Leslie Howard for the year’s Best Actor trophy, is available from Criterion. Laughton’s landmark portrayal of the monarch is one of his two most acclaimed and most imitated performances. The other, of course, is his Captain Blight in 1935’s Mutiny on the Bounty.

Both of Laughton’s classics are available on DVD.

Another trend in 1933 was the resurgence of the contemporary musical. A popular genre in the early days of Sound, musicals about chorus girls and their problems quickly fell out of fashion. It took Busby Berekely’s uniquely cinematic choreography to bring the genre back to life beginning with the Oscar nominated 42nd Street and continuing with two other 1933 classics, Gold Diggers of 1933 with Joan Blondell, Aline MacMahon and Ginger Rogers and Footlight Parade with James Cagney, Joan Blondell and Ruby Keeler. All three are available on DVD from Warner Home Video.

The putting-on-a-show 42nd Street with Warner Baxter, Dick Powell, Ruby Keeler, Ginger Rogers, Una Merkel and a host of other stars has an appeal that has never waned. Revived for Broadway in 1980 and again in 2001, its evergreen plot was memorably spoofed in The Boy Friend, which sadly is among the missing on commercial DVD.

The first of many Damon Runyon penned stories to reach the screen, Lady for a Day remains the only one nominated to date for Best Picture. Oscar nominated May Robson became a star at the of 75 playing Apple Annie, the impoverished old lady, who with the help of the mob and various politicos under the mob’s control, poses as a member of the aristocracy when her convent raised daughter comes to town. It was the first of Frank Capra’s six directorial nominations, of which he later won three. The lack of success of his 1961 remake, Pocketful of Miracles with Bette Davis in Robson’s role, prompted his retirement. Both Lady for a Day and Pocketful of Miracles were released on DVD but have been discontinued although you can still find copies of both.

David O. Zelznick and George Cukor’s last film for RKO, the definitive version of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, came to the screen with the powerhouse cast of Katharine Hepburn, Joan Bennett, Frances Dee, Jean Parker, Paul Lukas, Douglass Montgomery, Spring Byington and Edna May Oliver. Ironically, Hepburn who gives one of her greatest performances as Jo, the eldest of the four sisters, was nominated and won the Best Actress award instead for her portrayal of the aspiring actress in the somewhat tedious Morning Glory. Both films are available on DVD.

The hilarious She Done Him Wrong and its follow-up, I'm No Angel,both starring Mae West and Cary Grant, kept Paramount from the verge of bankruptcy. Both are available on DVD.

The original non-musical version of State Fair with Will Rogers, Janet Gaynor and Lew Ayres has never been released on commercial home video, but both the 1945 and 1962 musical versions are. Usually when one of two versions of a film is included as an extra on a DVD release, it’s the older version. In the case of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s State Fair, it’s the older version with Jeanne Crain, Dana Andrews and Dick Haymes that is featured and the newer version with Pat Boone, Ann-Margret and Bobby Darin that is hidden.

Among the great 1933 films that Oscar ignored: Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedmack’s immortal King Kong with Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong and Bruce Cabot; James Whale’s innovative film of H.G. Wells’ The Invisible Man with Claude Rains, Gloria Stuart and Una O’Connor; Fritz Lang’s haunting tale of a child killer, M with Peter Lorre in a star making performanc; Leo McCarey’s Duck Soup, arguably the best of the Marx Brother films and Zelznick and Cukor’s first film for MGM, the star-studded comedy-drama, Dinner at Eight with Marie Dressler, John Barrymore, Jean Harlow, Wallace Beery, Lionel Barrymore, Billie Burke, Lee Tracy, Madge Evans, Phillips Holmes, Karen Morley, Edmund Lowe, Louise Closser Hale, Grant Williams, Elizabeth Patterson and May Robson giving their all. All five films are available on DVD.

Among the new DVD releases worth checking out are the Blu-ray editions of Apollo 13 and The Natural.

-Peter J. Patrick (April 13, 2010)

The DVD Report #150: April 6, 2010

The Academy Awards were still evolving in their fifth year, which honored films released in Los Angeles between August 1, 1931 and July 31, 1932.

This year there were twelve competitive categories with eight films nominated for Best Picture but only three nominees each in the remaining categories, including three devoted to short films, split between cartoons, comedy and novelty.

The Best Picture Oscar went to MGM’s first all-star extravaganza, Edmund Goulding’s Grand Hotel from Vicki Baum’s novel about guests at the famed Berlin hotel. Greta Garbo, John Barrymore, Joan Crawford, Wallace Beery, Lionel Barrymore, Lewis Stone and Jean Hersholt headed the cast.

Its competition included John Ford’s Arrowsmith with Ronald Colman as the crusading doctor and Helen Hayes and Myrna Loy as his two wives; Frank Borzage’s Bad Girl in which Sally Eilers is decidedly a good girl married to the equally good James Dunn; King Vidor’s The Champ with Wallace Beery as the over-the-hill prizefighter and Jackie Cooper as his adoring son: Mervyn LeRoy’s fast-paced newspaper story, Five Star Final with Edward G. Robinson as the editor and Aline MacMahon as his faithful secretary; Josef von Sternberg’s intrigue filled Shanghai Express with Marlene Dietrich, for whom it took more than one man to change her name to “Shanghai Lil”, along with Clive Brook, Anna May Wong and Warner Oland; and two Ernst Lubitsch musicals: One Hour With You with Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald and The Smiling Lieutenant with Chevalier, Claudette Colbert and Miriam Hopkins. Unlike the prior Oscar year, all of these films were both popular and critical hits.

All but Five Star Final and Shanghai Express are available on DVD. Five Star Final is owned by Warner Bros. so it will likely eventually be released as part of the Warner Archive. Rights to Shanghai Express belong to Universal, which previously released it on VHS and in non-U.S. markets on DVD. Why it still hasn’t had a U.S. DVD release remains a mystery.

Although this was a strong roster, Oscar still managed to come up short by denying Best Picture nods to the year’s three instant classics: Rouben Mamoulian’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; James Whale’s Frankenstein and Howard Hawks’ Scarface.

Dr.Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde . Hyde was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Cinematography, but it lost the former to Bad Girl and the latter to Shanghai Express. It did, of course, win Fredric March the first of his two Best Actor awards for his thrilling portrayal of the good doctor turned murderous fiend in the first talking film version of Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic. However, he was forced to share honors with Wallace Beery in The Champ.

Beery had actually come in three votes behind March, but the powers that be declared that was close enough for a tie.

Frankenstein and Scarface were completely shut out of the nominations. The former presumably wasn’t considered high brow enough, while the latter was considered too violent, having come under attack by various blue nose groups.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; Frankenstein and Scarface are all available on DVD.

Among the other films that Oscar ignored were Ernst Lubitsch’s Broken Lullaby; W.S. Van Dyke’s Tarzan the Ape Man; Tod Browning’s Freaks and Clarence Brown’s Emma.

As much an anti-war classic as The Big Parade and All Quiet on the Western Front, Broken Lullaby was Lubitsch’s only dramatic sound film. Phillips Holmes starred as the sensitive French soldier, a violinist in civilian life, who kills a German soldier he discovers to be a fellow violinist and sets out to make amends to the dead man’s family. Lionel Barrymore as the dead man’s father and Nancy Carroll as his fiancé have two of the best roles of their respective legendary careers. Alas, it has never been released on home video in the U.S.

The initial entry in one of the screen’s most enduring franchises, the Johnny Weismuller-Maureen O’Sullivan starrer, Tarzan the Ape Man,was not the first film to feature the legendary jungle man but it was certainly the most popular spawning eleven sequels with Weismuller, several of which also starred O’Sullivan who had an extensive career beyond the Tarzan movies.

Tarzan the Ape Man is available on DVD from Warner Home Video.

Freaks is as close to an exploitation film as a mainstream film can get. The story of traveling carnival sideshow freaks who turn on the vicious trapeze artist who taunts them is both a great revenge flick and an examination of lives among the truly different. Wallace Ford and Olga Baclanova star in the film that was heavily censored in the U.S. and banned in England for thirty years.

Freaks is available on DVD from Warner Home Video.

Marie Dressler followed her Oscar win of the previous year with another nod for Emma in which she plays the devoted family nanny and later housekeeper, then wife of millionaire Jean Hersholt who dies and leaves her all his money leading to a courtroom showdown with three of his four children. Richard Cromwell is a standout as her favorite, the one stepchild who stands by her. Myrna Loy has one of her last roles as a “heavy”.

Emma is available from the Warner Archive.

Helen Hayes made her stage debut in 1905 at the age of five and her first film in 1910 at the age of ten. Eventually dubbed The First Lady of the American Theatre, she had a starring screen career that lasted only from 1931 through 1935 after which she returned to the stage, appearing only intermittently in films and on TV in the 1950s and 60s, not becoming a regular screen presence until 1970 and her second Oscar for Airport.

The Sin of Madelon Claudet, for which she won her first Oscar, was an old warhorse of a tearjerker for which her husband Charles MacArthur and his writing partner, Ben Hecht, spruced up the dialogue, giving it what today would be considered camp appeal.

Hayes plays a society woman who goes to jail for a crime she did not commit and after she is released turns to prostitution and petty crimes to support her illegitimate son from afar. The son grows up to be Robert Young, the doctor who treats the now homeless old lady he doesn’t know is his mother. Hayes makes it work.

The film was previously released by Warenr Bros. on VHS and will likely one day be released on DVD as part of the Warner Archive.

Like Hayes, the Lunts had a Broadway theatre named after them, The Lunt-Fontanne.

Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne were the American theatre’s most distinguished acting couple, appearing almost exclusively together from the 1920s through the 1960s, even winning Emmys for their performances in a splendid 1965 Hallmark Hall of fame production of The Magnificent Yankee.

Both had made a few silent films, but their only talking film was 1932’s The Guardsman, from the Molnar play in which they had starred in eight years earlier, in which he is an actor who disguises himself as another man to fool his apparently nearsighted wife.

The suspension of disbelief it takes to enjoy that kind of fluff is lost on modern audiences. A 1984 remake, Lily in Love, with Christopher Plummer and Maggie Smith, was a huge critical and commercial flop, but in 1932 the material was liked well enough to get both of the Lunts nominated for Oscars, she losing to Hayes, he to both March and Beery.

The Guardsman is another film that was released by MGM on VHS and will likely eventually be released through the Warner Archive.

New releases worth checking out include the Blu-ray debuts of Dreamscape; Cocoon and The Lord of the Rings Trilogy.

-Peter J. Patrick (April 6, 2010)