The DVD Report #6

This week’s DVD releases run the gamut from the original Nancy Drew, personified by the delightful Bonita Granville, to Jack Benny in drag in a long lost treasure, to Chris Cooper at his nutty best.

The new Nancy Drew seems to be marketed to nine- and ten-year-olds, the kind of film you plop a child down to see, but wouldn’t be caught dead watching yourself. This is a far cry from the originals, based on the long-popular mystery novels, which were aimed at general audiences.

Nancy Drew has had many incarnations over the years. Pamela Sue Martin (Dynasty) made a forthright Nancy in the 1977-1978 TV series, which alternated with The Hardy Boys with Shaun Cassidy and Parker Stevenson as ABC’s alternative programming to 60 Minutes, Sunday evenings. The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries – Volumes One & Two are now available on DVD and starting today, so are the originals.

Produced in 1938 and 1939, the original films starred 15-year-old Bonita Granville, just two to three years after she became the youngest actress then nominated for an Oscar as the brat in These Three.

Released by Warner Bros. under the tongue twisting title of The Original Nancy Drew Movie Mystery Collection, the set includes Nancy Drew Detective, Nancy Drew Reporter, Nancy Drew Trouble Shooter and Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase. Only Nancy Drew Reporter has been previously available on public domain DVDs of varying quality.

What sets the originals apart is the casting of the exuberant Granville, the equally talented Frankie Thomas (Tom Corbett, Space Cadet) as her friend Ted (inexplicably re-named Ned in the shallow new version) and John Litel (Dodge City) as her detective dad. It’s a pity the series never continued beyond the first four films, but at least we have those. Granville later achieved even greater success as producer and occasional director of the long-running Lassie TV series.

Charley’s Aunt is an old warhorse, first performed on Broadway in 1893 and on film in 1915. Successfully re-made in 1925 with Syd Chaplin (Charlie’s brother) and as an early talkie in 1930 with Charlie Ruggles (Love Me Tonight, Ruggles of Red Gap), the property is better known today as the source material of Frank Loesser’s musical Where’s Charley?

The highly successful 1941 film version of Charley’s Aunt with Jack Benny (To Be or Not to Be) has finally been released on DVD. This is the first time any of the various versions have been made available in any home video format. Directed by Archie Mayo (The Petrified Forest, Angel on My Shoulder), this triumphant mistaken identity farce in which Benny masquerades as his friend’s aunt, was a major production that also starred Kay Francis, James Ellison, Anne Baxter, Edmund Gwenn, Reginald Owen, Laird Cregar, Arleen Whelan and Richard Haydn.

While most serious filmgoers were catching up with last year’s Oscar entries, Universal came out with one of the new year’s best films, Breach, in which Chris Cooper (American Beauty, Adaptation.) plays FBI agent Robert Hanssen who sells secrets to the Soviet Union. Ryan Philippe (Gosford Park, Flags of Our Fathers)has one of his best roles as the young spy who tries to catch him.

Universal is releasing the James Stewart Screen Legend Collection, a curious mix that includes the previously available The Glenn Miller Story and Shenandoah, along with three new to DVD releases: Next Time We Love, You Gotta Stay Happy and Thunder Bay.

Stewart had one of his best early starring roles opposite Margaret Sullavan(The Good Fairy, Three Comrades) in Next Time, We Love (1936), ominously re-titled Next Time We Live for British audiences. Though not as memorable as the team’s future pairings in The Shop Around the Corner and The Mortal Storm, it’s still worth a look.

You Gotta Stay Happy (1948) is a late screwball comedy that simply doesn’t work. Stewart’s co-star is Joan Fontaine (Letter From an Unknown Woman, Ivanhoe) who was never adept at comedy, and with whom he has absolutely no chemistry. This is one of the films that nearly sank Stewart’s career in the late 1940s.

Director Anthony Mann (The Naked Spur, The Man from Laramie) helped Stewart emerge from his slump with a series of tough westerns in the early 1950s. Though not the best of the Stewart-Mann collaborations, 1953’s Thunder Bayis one of two that is not a western. Stewart has much better chemistry in this tense fishing yarn with Joanne Dru (Red River, All the King’s Men) than he ever had with Fontaine.

The previously released The Glenn Miller Story (1954) is the other Stewart-Mann non-western collaboration. This, though, is one of their best. It’s a film that does full justice to both the biography genre and the music, which was the absolute best of its era. It won an Oscar for sound and Mann won a Directors Guild of America nod for his direction. June Allyson (Best Foot Forward, The Good News) is Stewart’s co-star.

The underrated Civil War drama Shenandoah (1965) provided Stewart with one of his last great roles. He’s both tough and poignant as a widower with a large family who refuses to take sides in the war. Directed by Andrew V. McLaglen (McLintock!, The Rare Breed), the film also provides good supporting roles for Rosemary Forsyth, Doug McClure, Patrick Wayne, Katharine Ross and Phillip Alford (To Kill a Mockingbird).

Both The Hustler (1961) and The Verdict (1982) have been previously available in bare bones DVD releases. Now both films are getting the Special Edition treatment from Fox.

Arguably featuring Paul Newman’s best screen performances, these two films both contain commentaries by Newman, the former with co-star Piper Laurie (Carrie, The Thorn Birds), and the latter with director Sidney Lumet (Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon).

Previously available as a Region 2 release, Fox continues its release schedule of MGM-owned films with 52 Pick-Up (1986) directed by John Frankenheimer (The Manchurian Candidate, Seven Days in May) from a novel by Elmore Leonard (Get Shorty, Jackie Brown). Though not one of Frankenheimer’s very best, the film contains his unmistakable style and paves the way for such later films as Ronin. The often diffident Roy Scheider (The Seven-Ups, Still of the Night) has one of his best roles opposite Ann-Margret (Carnal Knowledge, Joseph Andrews).

If you can’t wait for Region 1 catch-up releases, Britain’s Optimum Releasing has given us three new reasons for switching to a region free player with the Region 2 releases of The L-Shaped Room, The Family Way and The Raging Moon.

Leslie Caron (Lili, Gigi, Fanny) had her best screen role ever in her Oscar nominated turn as the pregnant French woman who seeks refuge in an English boarding house in The L-Shaped Room (1962 UK, 1963 US). Directedby Bryan Forbes (Whistle Down the Wind, The Stepford Wives), this poignant kitchen sink drama was quite controversial in its day and still packs an emotional wallop. Caron gets strong support from Tom Bell (Holocaust, Prime Suspect) as a young writer who comes to love her, Brock Peters (To Kill a Mockingbird, Lost in the Stars) as a conflicted jazz musician, and Dame Cicely Courtneidge as a retired music hall performer.

The Family Way (1966 UK, 1967 US) provided Hayley Mills (Pollyanna, The Parent Trap) with her first grown-up role as well as her first scandal. She moved in with her director Roy Boulting, 33 years her senior, whose fifth of six wives she eventually became. The film has never been released in any video format in the US, though it was briefly available as a cropped DVD in the UK. Restored to its original brilliance, the once-controversial film is about a young married couple unable to consummate their marriage due to their living conditions. Hywell Bennett is the groom, John Mills (Tunes of Glory, Ryan’s Daughter) as his gruff father, the wonderful Marjorie Rhodes as his understanding mother and Murray Head (Sunday Bloody Sunday) is his mod younger brother. Rhodes deservedly won numerous awards for her fine performance.

Forbes was also the director of The Raging Moon (1971), known in the US as Long Ago Tomorrow, the sea change resulting in a new Burt Bacharach-Hal David title song sung by B.J. Thomas. Malcolm McDowell (If… , A Clockwork Orange) had one of his best roles as a fun-loving footballer who suddenly falls victim to a disease that paralyzes him from the waist down. Nanette Newman (Mrs. Forbes) is equally fine as a fellow wheelchair-bound patient with emotional problems of her own. The two fall in love under the watchful eye of nurse Georgia Brown (London and Broadway’s Nancy in Oliver!). Newman and Brown won BAFTA nods while the Bacharach song and the film itself won Golden Globe nominations. The film is available in the US in a cropped VHS version as Long Ago, Tomorrow.
Also just released in Region 2 is a 21-disc Cary Grant set that traces his career from his early days at Paramount through his mid-career days at RKO, and finally his late-career work for Universal. Included in the set are two of his best films not on DVD in Region 1.

Oddly, Universal, which owns the US rights to pre-1950 Paramount films, has never seen fit to release the Oscar nominated She Done Him Wrong (1933) on DVD in Region 1. It’s odd because they’ve released just about every other Mae West film, including the follow-up Mae-Cary I’m No Angel twice. Thanks to the region 2 release, we can once again find glory in West asking Grant if he has a gun in his pocket or is just glad to see her before she asks him to come up and see her some time.

None But the Lonely Heart (1944) won Grant the second of his two Oscar nominations and Ethel Barrymore (The Farmer’s Daughter, Pinky) an Oscar as his dying, poverty-stricken mother. Surprisingly, it hasn’t been released by Warner Bros., which owns the rights to the RKO films, despite their heavy release schedule. The film, from a novel by Richard Llwellyn (How Green Was My Valley), was the only film directed by writer Clifford Odets (Golden Boy, Sweet Smell of Success). Barrymore is magnificent.

Also included in the set are non-Region 1 available The Last Outpost, The Toast of New York, In Name Only, Once Upon a Honeymoon and Mr. Lucky. Of these, only the latter two were made available on VHS in the US.

Peter J. Patrick (June 12, 2007)