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.