[EDITOR’S NOTE: Today marks the beginning of Peter’s 4th year writing The DVD Report for Cinema Sight. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Peter for his wonderful work these past three years. Your insights and commentary have been an invaluable asset to me and to our readers and we wish you continued success! Now onto your latest report and a new layout…]

Nine of the ten films nominated for Best Picture of 1937 have been released on DVD in the U.S.

The winner, The Life of Emile Zola, directed by William Dieterle, is one of the better biopics Hollywood used to produce by the dozens, featuring Paul Muni in perhaps his finest performance as Zola.

Zola was one of France’s great writers, who was also a lawyer. About to become institutionalized as a member of France’s literary academy, the great man risked his reputation to defend Capt. Dreyfuss, the military officer falsely accused of treason. While the film tiptoes around the anti-Semitism that unjustly sent Dreyfuss to Devil’s Island, it is nevertheless made the highlight of the film at a time when anti-Semitism was again on the rise in Europe.

Nominated for ten Academy Awards, the film won three including Best Supporting Actor Joseph Schildkraut as Dreyfuss.

The other literary triumph of the year was Sidney Franklin’s film of Pearl Buck’s The Good Earth, also starring Muni, the previous year’s Best Actor winner, opposite Luise Rainer, that year’s Best Actress winner, who would become the first consecutive acting winner with her portrayal of the peasant Chinese wife, O-Lan. Rainer’s dialogue is kept to a minimum, her heavy Austrian accent not at all intruding on the character, her performance relying mostly on her soulful looks. Muni and the other non-Chinese actors do not fare as well but several real-life Chinese including the great Keye Luke are on hand to lend the portrayals a bit of realism.

The film’s spectacular special effects, which include a climactic locust swarming, is still admired today. The film also won an Oscar for Cinematography.

The stirring film version of Rudyard Kipling’s Captains Courageous, directed by Victor Fleming,provided Spencer Tracy with his first Best Actor Oscar. Though billed below 12 year-old Freddie Bartholomew, Tracy was a big enough star to make his supporting character of the fisherman who befriends the spoiled brat played by Bartholomew something memorable. Personally I have a problem with his Hollywood Portugese accent, but it’s nevertheless a good performance as are those of Bartholomew, Lionel Barrymore and Mickey Rooney. Great special effects, too.

The special effects in The Good Earth and Captains Courageous were nothing compared to those in Henry King’s In Old Chicago, a fictionalized story leading to the Chicago fire of 1871 that destroyed much of the city. It starred Tyrone Power, Don Ameche, Alice Faye and Alice Brady, who won an Oscar playing Mrs. O’Leary, whose cow started the fire.

Shangri-La, the utopia of Frank Capra’s film of James Hilton’s Lost Horizon was a magnificent concoction. The hidden world is stumbled upon by a group of plane crash survivors led by Ronald Colman in one of his greatest roles. Jane Wyatt, John Howard, Thomas Mitchell, Edward Everett Horton, Margo and Isabel Jewell are also quite good, but best are H.B. Warner, Oscar nominated as Shangri-La’s mountain guide and Sam Jaffe as the ancient High Lama.

The Dead End kids, later the Bowery Boys, made their debut in William Wyler’s film of Sidney Kingsley’s Dead End in support of Sylvia Sidney, Joel McCrea, Humphrey Bogart and Oscar nominated Claire Trevor. Billy Halop, the most charismatic of the kids, played Ms. Sidney’s brother. Other Dead End kids included Huntz Hall, Bobby Jordan, Leo Gorcey, Gabriel Dell and Bernard Punsly. Marjorie Main had a memorable cameo as Bogie’s “Ma”.

Perhaps the definitive screwball comedy, Leo McCarey’s The Awful Truth was actually the third of four film versions of an old play that appeared long before the introduction of the screwball comedy in the mid-1930s. Earlier versions are presumed lost and the 1953 remake is not very good, but there is something fortuitous about the pairing of Cary Grant and Oscar nominees Irene Dunne and Ralph Bellamy under McCarey’s direction that makes the entire film seem fresh and spontaneous. The rest of the cast is quite good, too, especially Cecil Cunningham as Dunne’s wisecracking aunt.

McCarey won the Best Director Oscar for it, although he famously accepted his award by saying “you gave it to me for the wrong picture”. I’ll have more to say about that later.

Another well remembered comedy, albeit one with dramatic undertones, is Gregory La Cava’s film of Kaufman and Ferber’s Stage Door. It starred RKO’s most prestigious contract player, Katharine Hepburn, and the studio’s biggest box office draw, Ginger Rogers, as rival actresses in a theatrical rooming house. They were supported by a bevy of talent including Eve Arden, Lucille Ball, Adolphe Menjou, Ann Miller, Gail Patrick and Constance Collier with newcomer Andrea Leeds receiving the film’s only acting nomination.

Show business was also at the heart of William A. Wellman’s A Star Is Born, with Janet Gaynor as the rising star and Fredric March as the declining one she’s married to. Adolphe Menjou, May Robson, Lionel Stander and Andy Devine had the principal supporting roles, but it’s the crackling intensity of the star performances, both of which were nominated for Oscars, that you remember.

A Star Is Born is a public domain title so beware the quality of the DVD you find. The discontinued Image version is by far the best.

The tenth nominee, Henry Koster’s 100 Men and a Girl, the only film never made available on DVD within the U.S., was a charming Deanna Durbin musical but had no business being on a list with the other nine over such unforgettable films as Make Way for Tomorrow; The Hurricane; The Prisoner of Zenda; Camille; Stella Dallas; History Is Made at Night; Night Must Fall and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, all of which, except for History Is Made at Night and Night Must Fall, have been commercially released on DVD in the U.S. History Is Made at Night is available in a reasonably priced import edition that will play on U.S. equipment.

A lovely film about old age, Make Way for Tomorrow is the film Leo McCarey was referring to when he scolded the Academy for giving him the Oscar for the wrong film. Not as successful as The Awful Truth at the box-office, it was nevertheless critically acclaimed in its day and remains a favorite of just about everyone who has been lucky enough to see it. Beulah Bondi, Victor Moore, Thomas Mitchell and Fay Bainter all give Oscar worthy performances as respectively the elderly in-the-way couple and their eldest son and daughter-in-law.

Mitchell was instead nominated for his portrayal of an alcoholic doctor in John Ford’s The Hurricane – Oscar voters have always loved alcoholics. Good as he is, he is overshadowed by Dorothy Lamour and Jon Hall as the photogenic leads, the acting of the incomparable Mary Astor, Raymond Massey and C. Aubrey Smith, and the spectacular special effects, the best in a year of incredible effects.

The Hurricane was a Samuel Goldwyn production and as such has long been out of circulation on DVD. Amazon partners are offering new copies for $150.00!

Filmed many times, John Cromwell’s film of Anthony Hope’s The Prisoner of Zenda remains the definitive version of the film about a mythical king and his double. Ronald Colman, Madeleine Carroll, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Mary Astor, Raymond Massey, C. Aubrey Smith and a young David Niven were all at the top of their game.

The lushest tearjerker of all time, George Cukor’s version of Alexandre Dumas fils’ oft-filmed The Lady of the Camelias is, of course, the definitive version thanks to the impeccable performance of Greta Garbo who won her third Oscar nomination opposite Robert Taylor, Lionel Barrymore and Henry Daniell.

The ultimate tearjerker, though, is Stella Dallas, a long-running radio soap previously filmed as a silent, this time around directed by King Vidor with Oscar nominated performances by Barbara Stanwyck as the uncouth but loving mother and Anne Shirley as her good as gold daughter.

Stella Dallas is also a Samuel Goldwyn production that was discontinued on DVD but unlike The Hurricane it can still be found at reasonable prices.

Called by Andrew Sarris the most romantic film in history, Frank Borzage’s History Is Made at Night is one of the director’s best, featuring pulsating chemistry between stars Jean Arthur and Charles Boyer. This is another film with spectacular special effects, its climax a Titanic-like collision of a ship and an iceberg.

A bit slow for modern audiences, Richard Thorpe’s film of Emlyn Williams’ Night Must Fall nevertheless remains intriguing for the sheer vibrancy of the acting of Oscar nominees Robert Montgomery as an “is he or isn’t he” serial killer and Dame May Whitty as the hypochondriac old lady who may be his next victim. Rosalind Russell is the woman in the middle.

The first feature length cartoon, Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs got no respect in its year of eligibility. It had to wait another year to receive its eight special Oscars – a full size one and seven miniature ones after it had proven to be a sustainable hit at the box-office.

New DVDs worth checking out include the Blu-ray debuts of M and The Karate Kid.