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RKO Classic Romances, the new Blu-ray collection from Kino Lorber, gives us five Pre-Code tearjerkers, all of them preserved by the Library of Congress and restored by Lobster Films.

In chronological order, the films are Sin Takes a Holiday, released in November 1930; Millie, released in February 1931; Kept Husbands, also released in February 1931; The Lady Refuses, released in March 1931; and The Woman Between, released in August 1931.

The odd thing about these five films is that the leading ladies in all but one of them are well-remembered today, but their leading men are all but forgotten.

Constance Bennett, the star of Sin Takes a Holiday, had a career that outlasted her. She died eight months before the release of her last film, the 1966 version of Madame X, in which she played Lana Turnerโ€™s mother-in-law. Her co-star, Kenneth MacKenna had a career and a life that lasted almost as long, but most of his later roles were in distinguished but rather small parts in such films as the college president in 1960โ€™s High Time and as one of the judges in 1961โ€™s Judgment at Nuremberg the year before his death.

Bennett plays a poor secretary in love with her wealthy boss (MacKenna) who doesnโ€™t reciprocate her love but is close enough to her to ask her to enter in a marriage of convenience so he can hold off a predatory female who wonโ€™t take no for an answer. It takes a shipboard romance between Bennett and third-billed Basil Rathbone to make MacKenna jealous and realize he loves Bennett after all.

Helen Twelvetrees, the star of Millie is perhaps most famous for being accused of trying to kill her first husband by pushing him out of a seventh-floor window, his fall broken by landing on a second-floor awning. It was only after he regained consciousness that the truth came out. He had jumped in a failed suicide attempt. The actress herself died of a drug overdose in 1958 at 49. She was luckier than three of her co-stars, Robert Ames, James Hall, and Lilyan Tashman, all of whom died even younger. Ames (who had Cary Grantโ€™s role in the original 1930 version of Holiday) drank himself to death at 42 the year of the filmโ€™s release. Hall (who starred opposite Jean Harlow in Hellโ€™s Angels) drank himself to death at 39 in 1940. Tashman died of cancer in 1934 at 37.

In the film, a kind of Madame X with a happy ending, Twelvetrees leaves philandering husband Hall, giving up custody of her young daughter. Ames is one of the men who tries in vain to win her after the divorce. Tashman and Joan Blondell are her lesbian friends, first seen in bed together in negligees in the filmโ€™s then most shocking scene. Years later, another of her pursuers tries to seduce her now-sixteen-year-old daughter (Anita Louise) and she shoots him dead, leading to the filmโ€™s climactic court scene.

The title of Kept Husbands is misleading. There is only one kept husband, played by Joel McCrea (Sullivanโ€™s Travels) in one of his earliest starring roles. Top-billed Dorothy Mackaill (Safe in Hell) is the rich girl who keeps him in money he doesnโ€™t want or expect. Mary Carr, who played McCreaโ€™s mother, lived longer than anyone in these five films. The actress, whose films included films as late as 1956โ€™s Friendly Persuasion, died in 1973 at 99.

What The Lady Refuses is revealed in the last scene of this risquรฉ comedy-drama in which Betty Compson (The Docks of New York) is paid to seduce young John Darrow by his titled British father (Gilbert Emory) in order to get him away from gold-digger Margaret Livingston (Sunrise).

A former Oscar nominee, Compson continued to work in films through the 1940s. She lived well into her seventies, dying in 1974 at 77. Darrow had a long life as well, but he ended his screen career in 1936, the year he met his life partner, director Charles Walters (Easter Parade, The Unsinkable Molly Brown) and became a popular actorโ€™s agent. He died in 1980 at 72, two years before Walters. Character actor Gilbert Emory (Between Two Worlds) worked until his death in 1945 at 75.

Lili Damita was The Woman Between in real life as well as on screen. She made the film in which she is torn between her husband (O.P. Heggie) and his grown son from his first marriage (Lester Vail) between her own marriages to Michael Curtiz and Errol Flynn. She was the mother of Flynnโ€™s son, photojournalist Sean Flynn, who disappeared in Cambodia in 1970 at the age of 30.

Vail (Dance, Fools, Dance) was a longtime actor and director on Broadway as well as in film and TV, later married to Kay Francis, and then Mary Phillips after her divorce from Humphrey Bogart. He died in 1959 at 60. O.P. Heggie, best remembered as the hermit in The Bride of Frankenstein, died in 1936 at 58. Lili Damita died in 1994 at 85.

1936โ€™s Swing Time, directed by George Stevens, was the sixth of the nine films that Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers made together. Although it is generally regarded by critics as the best of the Astaire-Rogers films, many would disagree. I personally prefer their second and third films, 1934โ€™s The Gay Divorcรฉe and 1935โ€™s Top Hat, in which their mistaken identity and mixed motives plot contrivances were fresher. I will concede, however, that Jerome Kernโ€™s score is on at least equal footing with Cole Porterโ€™s and Irving Berlinโ€™s in the earlier films. Indeed, this is the one that gave us the Oscar-winning โ€œThe Way You Look Tonightโ€ as well as such other gems as โ€œPick Yourself Upโ€ and โ€œA Fine Romance.โ€

Criterionโ€™s newly released Blu-ray is a 2K restoration featuring new interviews as well as archival footage and audio commentary by Astaire biographer John Mueller, imported from the 1986 laserdisc.

At the other end of the musical spectrum is 1980โ€™s Canโ€™t Stop the Music, directed by Broadway and TV legend Nancy Walker, deemed so bad by the critics that it was largely credited with inaugurating the Razzie Awards where it won Worst Picture. All the same, this pseudo-biography of the Village People is loads of camp fun with ingratiating performances from Valerie Perrine, Bruce Jenner, Steve Guttenberg, Tammy Grimes, June Havoc, and Barbara Rush.

The Shout Select Blu-ray features new commentary and an hour-long new interview with Village Peopleโ€™s cowboy, Randy Jones.

The latest Marvel film to hit Home Video is Captain Marvel, which gives a new backstory to the character played by Brie Larson. Larson may grow into the character but seems to me to be a bit too tentative in this go-round. With its interminable CGI and you-can-spot-the-villain-from-the-first-scene narrative, I found this one to be watchable but forgettable. Samuel L. Jackson, Ben Mendelsohn, Jude Law, and Annette Bening co-star.

It’s available on Blu-ray, 3D Blu-ray 4K Blu-ray and standard DVD.

This weekโ€™s new releases include Us and Hotel Mumbai.

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