For my one-thousandth Home Viewing Report, I thought I would look at the film versions of a one-hundred-year-old Broadway play that was filmed three times, the first time 99 years ago.

The play is Maurine Watkins’ Chicago based on a real-life incident in which a cheating wife gets away with murder.

The lead character is named Roxie Hart. She is played in the first film version by silent screen actress Phyllis Haver who is excellent in the role created on stage by Francine Larrimore. Unlike other versions of the play, the other most significant role in the film is that of her cuckhold husband played by Victor Varconi, best remembered as Lord Nelson in 1929’s The Divine Lady opposite Corinne Griffith as Lady Hamilton.

Other major characters are mouthpiece Billy Flynn (referred to as William Flynn here) played by Robert Edeson, Rosie’s murdered lover played by Eugene Pallette, and prison matron Mrs. Morton played by May Robson. Velma Kelly, a character almost equal to Roxie in the musical version, is not a character in either the original play or the first two film versions. The most prominent other murderess in the play was a character named Go-To-Hell Kitty renamed Two-Gun Kitty here.

The 1927 version was produced by Cecil B. DeMille who allegedly directed the film although credit was given to second unit director Frank Urson who died in 1928 at the age of 41. This version was beautifully restored by the UCLA labs in 2006 and released on Blu-ray by Flicker Alley in 2020.

The watered down 1942 version called Roxie Hart starred Ginger Rogers in the title role with Adolphe Menjou as Billy Flynn given equal billing. George Montgomery was billed third as a reporter recalling the 1927 murder 15 years later. Amos is reduced to a minor character played by George Chandler. Sara Allgood is prison matron Mrs. Morton, and Spring Byington plays feature writer Mary Sunshine in that character’s first screen appearance. She was introduced in the original stage version but omitted from the first film version.

Under the Hollywood Production Code, a married woman with a lover couldn’t be shown, so the murder victim in this one is a lying show biz operator who promised Roxie a role in one of his productions and reneged on it. A last-minute plot twist proves that Roxie didn’t kill him, so she doesn’t get away with murder under the strict rules of the Production Code.

Also in the cast were Nigel Bruce as the business partner of the murder victim, William Frawley as the bartender Montgomery tells the story to, and Iris Adrian as the Go-To Hell-Kitty character now called Two-Gun Gertie.

The story was revived as the basis for the 1975 Kander and Ebb Broadway musical starring Gwen Verdon as Roxie, Chita Rivera as Velma, and Jerry Orbach as Billy Flynn. Amos, Mary Sunshine, Mrs. Morton, and Go-To-Hell Kitty are major supporting players in this version.

The original musical version ran just two years on Broadway but was revived in 1996 and is still running thirty years later. The 2002 film version won six Oscars including Best Picture and Best Supporting Actress for Catherine Zeta-Jones as Velma. Renée Zellwager as Roxie was nominated for Best Actress, John C. Reilly as Amos was nominated for Best Supporting Actor, and Queen Latifah as the prison matron was nominated for Best Supporting Actress. Those four actors along with Richard Gere as Billy Flynn had also been nominated for Golden Globes which Gere and Zellweger won in their respective categories. Zeta-Jones had been nominated in Best Actress, not Best Supporting Actress, thus losing the Golden Globe to Zellweger.

Released on 4K UHD and standard Blu-ray and streaming on Peacock, Anthony Maras’ Pressure is the screen version of David Haig’s 2014 London play in which Haig played James Stagg, a Scottish meteorologist attached to the Canadian RAF during World War II who persuaded Ike to change the date of the D-Day invasion of Normandy from June 5 to June 6.

Major characters in the play were Stagg, Ike, and Kay Summersby as his loyal secretary. The principal villain is Ike’s own meteorologist, Colonel Irving P. Krick. They are played in the film by Andrew Scott, Brendan Fraser, Kerry Condon, and Chris Messina. Also thrown into the mix is Damian Lewis as a twirling mustachioed Field Marshal Montgomery.

Stone is excellent, Condon is good, Fraser, Messina, and Lewis sadly are not. Fraser, who looks nothing like Ike, is buffoonish, while Messina and Lewis are ridiculously hissable villains.

A better examination of a World War II general is Joseph Sargent’s 1976 film, MacArthur starring Gregory Peck in his best late career performance as Douglas MacArthur from 1942 through the end of the war, followed by his post-war exploits in Japan, and his dismissal by Harry Truman during the Korean War.

Kino Lorber’s new combination 4K UHD-standard Blu-ray release of the film is an upgrade of their 2017 Blu-ray and includes that release’s excellent commentary by filmmaker and historian Steve Mitchell and historian Steven Jay Rubin.

Also newly released by Kino Lorber in a combination 4K UHD-standard Blu-ray set is Michael Curtiz’s 1958 film, King Creole.

Generally considered the best film ever made by Elvis Presley, the film features the rock-and-roll icon at his peak both as a singer and an actor, the latter thanks to Curtiz’s meticulous direction in which he guided Presley in downplaying his streetwise high schooler on the brink of manhood.

Presley gets excellent support from a superb cast that includes Carolyn Jones, Dolores Hart, Walter Matthau, Paul Stewart, and Dean Jagger.

The release features a brand-new commentary by film historian Imogen Sara Smith.

Shout! Factory has released a sparkling 4K UHD upgrade of Tim Burton’s 1996 film, Mars Attacks! .

While not everything works in this one, it’s certainly lively and funny where it should be with Jack Nicolson as a Clintonesque U.S. president whose First Lady is more Nany Reagan than Hillary. The best acting, however, comes from Natalie Portman as their teenage daughter and surprising hero Lukas Haas and Sylvia Sidney as his grandmother.

This release features a plethora of extras.

Happy Viewing.