Classic Comedies Collection (Bringing Up Baby / The Philadelphia Story Two-Disc Special Edition / Dinner at Eight / Libeled Lady / Stage Door / To Be or Not to Be)
by Ernst Lubitsch, George Cukor, Gregory La Cava, Howard Hawks, Jack Conway
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Ginger Rogers, John Barrymore, Katharine Hepburn, Marie Dressler, Wallace BeeryDirector: Ernst Lubitsch, George Cukor, Gregory La Cava, Howard Hawks, Jack Conway
Brand: POWELL,WILLIAM
Writer: Anthony Veiller
Writer: Donald Ogden Stewart
Writer: Dudley Nichols
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Black & White, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 613 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-03-01
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Warner Home Video
Movie Reviews of Classic Comedies Collection (Bringing Up Baby / The Philadelphia Story Two-Disc Special Edition / Dinner at Eight / Libeled Lady / Stage Door / To Be or Not to Be)
Movie Review: No Fillers Here: The Very, Very Best of 1930s Comedies.
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a tremendous collection of six black-and-white comedies from Hollywood's "Golden Age" (early 1930s-early 1940s), and there's not a runt in the whole litter.
In chronological order from release date, the first is MGM's all-star DINNER AT EIGHT (1933), in which two Barrymores, Marie Dressler, Wallace Beery, the incomparable Jean Harlow and others cross paths and unwittingly do their best to mess up a formal "dinner at eight" hosted by a ditsy society type (Billie Burke, a/k/a "Glenda the Good Witch" from THE WIZARD OF OZ). Speedy, occasionally manic acting, good lines, and social insecurities of all kind mark this bright offering from the trough of the Great Depression. Also included is a background bio of Jean Harlow, hosted by Sharon Stone. Turns out that Harlow was hardly the street-wise guttersnip the most of her screen roles portrayed. Highly recommended all around. Based on a hit Broadway show by Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman.
Nineteen thirty-six gave us LIBELLED LADY, a story of a rich heiress (Myrna Loy), her reluctant suitor (William Powell), who is in the pay of a ruthless newspaper editor (Spencer Tracy), who has his fiancee (amazing Jean Harlow)marry Powell's character because--well, it doesn't really make sense but this film is so consistently sharp and funny that it doesn't matter. It's a pity more people don't know about this one!
Another Ferber/Kaufman original ultimately led to 1937's amazing STAGE DOOR, in which the near-impossiblity of finding acting jobs during the Depression is plumbed with both pathos and humor. An incredible, and (except for Adolphe Menjou as a womanizing B'way producer) all girl-cast includes Lucille Ball, Ginger Rogers, Eve Arden, Katharine Hepburn and a very young Ann Miller. Most of the film takes place in the living room of an actress-only New York boarding house, and the girls constantly clash, creating great comedic situations and tons of wit: indeed, STAGE DOOR is usually said to have the most "bee-witchiest" diaog this side of ALL ABOUT EVE.
Nineteen thirty-eight gave us the brilliant BRINGING UP BABY, directed by Howard Hawks for RKO. It's a shame more people aren't familiar with this one; with the possible exception of 1959's SOME LIKE IT HOT, BABY is probably the most consistently funny and startling of all the screwball comedies. Did I say "screwball"? Well, Cary Grant is a shy palentologist, Katharine Hepburn plays the "madcap heiress" to the hilt, and the supporting cast includes the likes of Charlie Ruggles and May Robson. All of whom are driven to distraction by the dubious charms of a semi-tame leopard named "Baby," who can only be pacified when "I Can't Give You Anything but Love" is sung. Almost beyond brilliant in the mixture of cast, dialog, and incredibly rapid pacing. Sample line: Hepburn and Grant, hunting for Baby, stumble into a glen and she breaks her heel, then ad libs "I was born on the side of a hill." You may well laugh nonstop at this kind of whimsy that truly they don't make anymore.
A very well-known movie--often cited as the epitome of the Hollywood studio system--is 1940s THE PHILADELPHIA STORY. Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn are reunited, along with Jimmy Stewart to round up a cockeyed triangle on the eve of Tracy Lord's (Hepburn) marriage to (you guessed it) a total stiff. Things really get screwy when an impecunious reporter (Jimmy Stewart) starts to pay court to la Hepburn. Bright dialog, beautiful interiors and exteriors, a top-notch supporting cast including pre-adolescent Virginia Weidler as the resident smart-ass, all make this sterling dialog comedy the creme de la creme.
Finally we have 1942's surprisingly funny TO BE OR NOT TO BE, set in Warsaw during the Nazi occupation of WWII. Jack Benny is the hammy Shakesperean actor, and beautiful Carole Lombard his wife as together "the Turas" and friends try to put one (no, several) over on the occupying Nazis. Produced and directed by famed Ernst Lubitsch toward the end of his prolific career, all the Nazi's meanness is buried (almost plausibly) in an avalanche of situation comedy and witty dialog. There's a kind of slapstick romanticism to the fool-the-Nazis outings that gives this wartime wonder a special charm. Jack Benny's studied underacting, and Lombard's equally appealing overacting, are in masterly hands in this surprisingly effective outing (even then, people thought the Benny/Lombard casting wouldn't work). But it does!
Print quality is beyond reproach, except for LIBELLED LADY, which could have stood a trip through the wet-gate restoration process. (Curiously, the sound is cleaned-up and wonderful). BRINGING UP BABY and THE PHILADELPHIA STORY are both two-disc sets, very rare in this kind of collection, and brim with anecdotal material like interviews, docu-bios and MGM radio promos. Otherwise, side stuff is not plentiful but usually includes at least a trailer and a short feature and/or a radio adaptation of the screenplay. At this insanely low price, it's almost insane not to invest in these wonderful, top-notch screen classics you'll want to see again and again--and introduce to your friends and family.
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Summary of Classic Comedies Collection (Bringing Up Baby / The Philadelphia Story Two-Disc Special Edition / Dinner at Eight / Libeled Lady / Stage Door / To Be or Not to Be)
No Description Available.Genre: Feature Film-Comedy
Rating: NR
Release Date: 1-MAR-2005
Media Type: DVD
"The love impulse in man," says a psychiatrist in Bringing Up Baby, "frequently reveals itself in terms of conflict." That's for sure. For a primer on the rules and regulations of the classic screwball comedy, which throws love and conflict into close proximity, look no further. A straight-laced paleontologist (Cary Grant) loses a dinosaur bone to a dog belonging to free-spirited heiress Katharine Hepburn. In trying to retrieve said bone, Grant is drawn into the vortex surrounding the delicious Hepburn, which becomes a flirtatious pas de deux that will transform both of them. Director Howard Hawks plays the complications as a breathless escalation of their "love impulse," yet the movie is nonetheless romantic for all its speed. (Hawks's His Girl Friday, also with Grant, goes even faster.) Grant and Hepburn are a match made in movie heaven, in sync with each other throughout. Not a great box-office success when first released, Bringing Up Baby has since taken its place as a high-water mark of the screwball form, and it was used as a model for Peter Bogdanovich's What's Up, Doc?
Re-creating the role she originated in Philip Barry's wickedly witty Broadway play, Katharine Hepburn stars as the spoiled and snobby socialite Tracy Lord in The Philadelphia Story, one of the great romantic comedies from the golden age of MGM studios. Applying her impossibly high ideals to everyone but herself, Tracy is about to marry a stuffy executive when her congenial ex-husband (Cary Grant), arrives to protect his former father-in-law from a potentially scandalous tabloid exposé. In an Oscar-winning role, James Stewart is the scandal reporter who falls for Tracy as her wedding day arrives, throwing her into a dizzying state of premarital jitters. Who will join Tracy at the altar? Snappy dialogue flows like sparkling wine under the sophisticated direction of George Cukor in this film that turned the tide of Hepburn's career from "box-office poison" to glamorous Hollywood star.
MGM originally promoted Dinner at Eight by touting the "all-star cast," but this is no run-of-the-mill omnibus picture. On the contrary, rather than cramming as many big names as possible into a lumbering vehicle, the movie's impeccably crafted script (by Edna Ferber and Herman J. Mankiewicz) and direction (by George Cukor) gave some immortal screen luminaries a chance to shine. For sheer bravery, John Barrymore's achingly poignant performance as Larry Renault, a washed-up matinee idol who has "outlived everything but his vanity," is unmatched. Barrymore's brother, Lionel, is equally touching as shipping magnate Oliver Jordan. Oliver vainly tries to save his family's century-old firm, at the same time hiding his financial and health troubles from his wife, Millicent, played to hysterical perfection by Billie Burke. The Great Depression is presented in microcosm as Millicent frets about throwing the ultimate society dinner, oblivious to the world tumbling down around her. She is forced to invite to her precious party such undesirables as crass financier Dan Packard ("He smells Oklahoma!"). Even worse in Millicent's eyes than Packard (Wallace Beery, doing an impressive steamroller imitation) is his social-climbing wife, Kitty (Jean Harlow, never funnier). Be sure to watch for Harlow's brief encounter with Marie Dressler, who brings an extraordinary winking wisdom to the role of aging star Carlotta Vance. As the two enter the dining room in the film's final scene, Harlow makes an offhand remark that elicits from Dressler one of the great screen double takes of all time. Like so much of Dinner at Eight, the moment is priceless.
Newspaper comedy doesn't seem like an MGM genre--ink-stained wretches don't go with Adrian gowns and white deco furniture--but Jack Conway, the designated bull in the Metro china shop (Boom Town, Too Hot to Handle) does what he can to bring some dash and flair to Libeled Lady's wildly complicated script. Spencer Tracy is the tough city editor who goes to some spectacular extremes when socialite Myrna Loy files a $5 million libel suit against his paper for calling her a notorious home-wrecker; he hires celebrated ladies' man William Powell to seduce Loy and asks his long-suffering fiancée, Jean Harlow, to marry Powell temporarily so she can play the wronged wife when Loy and Powell are discovered together. The couples crisscross, with frenetic and not entirely unpredictable results, but much of the pleasure here lies in seeing these iconic stars being so thoroughly themselves. The dialogue strains for champagne wit, but the movie's most memorable moment is pure, rotgut slapstick--Powell's bout with an unruly fly-fishing rod.
This one's all about the ladies. In Stage Door, an absolutely terrific 1937 gem, a Manhattan boardinghouse for aspiring actresses houses an amazing roster of golden-era performers--some of whom, like their characters, were just breaking in. It's hard to say who's in best form here: Katharine Hepburn in blueblood mode, Ginger Rogers streetwise, Andrea Leeds suffering, Lucille Ball and Ann Miller impossibly young, and Eve Arden being, well, splendidly Eve Ardenish. The sassy comedy and sober life lessons are wonderfully mixed by the underrated director Gregory La Cava (My Man Godfrey), who captures the brashness of '30s female chatter in a much pleasanter way than the more famous The Women. Hepburn's sublime attempts to wrestle with the line about calla lilies being in bloom will make you smile long after the movie's over.