Kino Lorber has released two films on Blu-ray that are as diametrically opposed as any two films of the 1950s could be.

The 1957 version of My Man Godfrey is an inferior remake of the classic 1936 screwball comedy while 1954’s action-packed Secret of the Incas, the inspiration for 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark, proves that sometimes remakes, or in this case a reimagining, can be superior to the original.

The My Man Godfrey remake was conceived as a vehicle for German actor O.W. Fischer in what would have been his first starring role in a Hollywood film. Fischer started the film but was fired after 16 days of work due to differences with director Henry Koster.

Although Koster was a master director in any genre, comedy was his forte. The director of The Robe was also the director of It Started with Eve, The Bishop’s Wife, and Harvey, and would later prove that he still had what it takes to make audiences laugh with Flower Drum Song and Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation among others.

The problem with this version of My Man Godfrey wasn’t the comedy. Martha Hyer, Jessie Royce Landis, Robert Keith, Jay Robinson, and Jeff Donnell are superb in the roles originated by Gail Patrick, Alice Brady, Eugene Pallette, Mischa Auer, and Jean Dixon. It was mainly with the changes that the writers made to the original and the lack of chemistry between the film’s two stars.

William Powell’s forgotten man was changed to an Austrian immigrant, which made some sense when Fischer was cast in the role, but none when he was replaced by urbane British actor David Niven who made no attempt to modify his trademark British accent. Cast opposite him was June Allyson, who at 40 was too old for the part of the zany twenty-something she was playing and looked it ,especially with Hyer, seven years her junior, playing her older sister.

Another casting choice that made no sense was Eva Gabor in the role of Godfrey’s former classmate, a role originally played by Alan Mowbray at his sarcastic best.

Allyson was at the time best known for her portrayals of supportive wives such as those of James Stewart in The Stratton Story, The Glenn Miller Story, and Strategic Air Command, William Holden in Executive Suite, and Alan Ladd in The McConnell Story. Looking to change her image, My Man Godfrey was her fourth remake in just two years. She was okay in the Norma Shearer role in The Opposite Sex, the musical remake of The Women, but inferior to both Claudette Colbert in You Can’t Run Away from It , the musical remake of It Happened One Night, and Irene Dunne in Interlude, a remake of When Tomorrow Comes.

Attempting to fill the shoes of Carole Lombard at her iconic best in My Man Godfrey was Allyson’s biggest mistake. She would make just one more film, 1959’s A Stranger in My Arms opposite Jeff Chandler, before retreating to guest appearance on TV. She came back briefly in 1972’s They Only Kill Their Masters in which she was fifth billed behind James Garner, Katharine Ross, Hal Holbrook, and Harry Guardino, but is best known to younger audiences for her TV commercials. Depends, anyone?

With a screenplay by Ranald MacDougall (Mildred Pierce, The Hasty Heart) and direction by TV director Jerry Hopper, Secret of the Incas is not a terribly well-known film but is often correctly cited as a direct inspiration for the Indiana Jones franchise. Not only do scenes bear a striking resemblance in tone and structure to scenes in Raiders of the Lost Ark, but the main character played by Charlton Heston is costumed identically as Harrison Ford would be in the later films. He wears a brown leather jacket, tan trousers, revolver, and fedora.

Filmed on location in Peru, Heston made this between The Naked Jungle, which was filmed in Panama, and The Far Horizons, which was filmed in the Grand Tetons of Wyoming, when he was at his on-screen authoritative best. It was two years after The Greatest Show on Earth and two years before The Ten Commandments.

Playing opposite Heston was Nicole Maurey fresh from her Hollywood debut as Bing Crosby’s wife in the flashback scenes in Little Boy Lost. She would go on to have memorable roles in such films as Me and the Colonel opposite Danny Kaye, High Time opposite Crosby again, and the classic sci-fi film The Day of the Triffids.

The supporting cast is led by Robert Young, Thomas Mitchell, Glenda Farrell, and Yma Sumac.

It would be Young’s last film. Although he had been a Hollywood fixture since playing Helen Hayes’ doctor son in 1931’s The Sin of Madelon Claudet, he would leave the film business playing a doctor again to concentrate on TV work beginning with Father Knows Best. Ironically, his last acting role, at 80, would be as another doctor, Marcus Welby, M.D., in a TV movie in which he reprised the second of three long-running TV series star characters. Owen Marshall, Counselor at Law was the third.

For Mitchell, it was a rare chance for the beloved character actor to play a hissable villain. No lovable drunk as in The Hurricane or Stagecoach or forgivable fool as in It’s a Wonderful Life for him here. No iconic tear-inducing death scene as in Only Angels Have Wings either. When he dies in this one, audiences cheered.

Farrell, a fixture in such 1930s films as Little Caesar and I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, would also have a TV doctor to thank for her late career fame. It was for the TV doctor show Ben Casey for which she won an Emmy in 1963.

Peruvian songbird Sumac, who was making her film debut in Secret of the Incas, would make just one more film, 1957’s Omar Khayam, but her voice would live on. She was last heard on the soundtrack of 2021’s No Time to Die.

Happy viewing, everyone.