The Criterion Collection has released William Dieterle’s 1941 film All That Money Can Buy on Blu-ray under its Oscar qualifying title. Previous home video releases of the film, as well as its numerous television showings over the years, were under its better-known alternate title, The Devil and Daniel Webster, which was a slightly cut version of the film released in 1943.

The film had gone into production as The Devil and Daniel Webster based on the Stephen Vincent Benet short story of that name. RKO, the film’s distributor, insisted on a name change so that the film wouldn’t be confused with Sam Wood’s The Devil and Miss Jones which they were also distributing that year.

Previewed under the title Here Is a Man, the film was officially released as All That Money Can Buy in October 1941 to great acclaim, going on to earn a Best Actor Oscar nomination for Walter Huston as the devil who battles Edward Arnold’s Daniel Webster for the soul of farmer James Craig. The film won an Oscar for Best Score for Bernard Herrmann who was in competition with himself for his score for Citizen Kane.

The film also featured fine performances by Anne Shirley as the farmer’s wife, Jane Darwell as his mother, and Simone Simon as a temptress sent by the devil to lure the farmer. The film’s highly atmospheric setting adds greatly to the film’s success.

Extras include comparisons between the three versions of the film and a radio adaptation.

Arrow has released a Blu-ray of Don Siegel’s 1976 film The Shootist with more bells and whistles than one would have anticipated.

The film, a moderate success in its day, has grown in esteem over the years. Legend has it that the nearly fifty-year-old film about an old gunfighter dying of cancer was made as its star John Wayne was himself dying of cancer. That’s not true. Wayne, who lost a lung and a few ribs to cancer in 1964 was cancer free when the film was made. It returned three years later and spread rapidly, killing him in just five months.

The film was based on a novel that nobody wanted to make, having been turned down by a number of then-more popular stars including Paul Newman and Clint Eastwood. With Dino De Laurentis putting up half the film’s financing, Paramount reluctantly agreed to go along with Wayne as its star.

Wayne and Siegel were like oil and water. Wayne hated Siegel’s Dirty Harry and insisted on a supporting cast with which he was familiar. He got Lauren Bacall, his co-star from Blood Alley, as his landlady and possible love interest; Ron Howard, who he knew from The Andy Griffith Show, as her son; James Stewart, his co-star from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, in the small but pivotal role as the doctor who gives him the bad news; and John Carradine, whose relationship with Wayne went all the way back to 1939’s Stagecoach, as the undertaker he gets to pay him for his remains which he knows he will cut up into little pieces and sell as trophies.

Also in the cast are Richard Boone, Hugh O’Brian, Sheree North, Harry Morgan, and a host of recognizable character actors.

The film opens with a black-and-white montage of scenes from earlier Wayne films including Stagecoach and Red River and then switches to color for the main story in which Wayne’s character wants it known that he is dying in order so as to attract someone who will kill him on his feet so that he doesn’t die of the disease. In the end, of course, he will kill all those who come to kill him only to be shot dead by someone neither he nor the audience would have suspected.

Wayne, who was hospitalized by the flu near the end of the film’s production, had to be replaced by a double for the film’s climax but he returned for his close-ups and the chance to reshoot a scene in which his double shot a man in the back, something Wayne had never done in any of his films and refused to do in his last one.

In retrospect, the film holds up extremely well, containing one of the actor’s best performances, ranking alongside Red River, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, The Quiet Man, The Searchers, and his Oscar-winning turn in True Grit in that regard. His chemistry with Bacall works almost as well as his legendary chemistry with Claire Trevor in Stagecoach and Maureen O’Hara in Rio Grande and The Quiet Man.

Extras include the documentaries Contemplating John Wayne: The Death of a Cowboy and The Shootist: The Legend Lives On.

Paramount has itself released a newly remastered 4K UHD Blu-ray of John Ford’s 1962 film The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, previously remastered by Paramount just two years ago to critical drubbing. This time they got it right.

Immortalized by the line, “when the legend becomes fact, print the legend,” spoken by reporter Edmond O’Brien, the film centers on a U.S. senator (James Stewart) returning to the town where he achieved his notoriety as the fabled man who shot the notorious killer Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin). He’s in town for the funeral of a now-obscure gunfighter (John Wayne) who, to the surprise of no one in the audience, was the real man who shot Liberty Valance.

The film is beautifully played out in flashback with Stewart and Wayne vying for the affections of waitress Vera Miles, who eventually married Stewart.

While the film was critically acclaimed in its initial release, it was also heavily derided for its casting of Stewart and Wayne as characters thirty years younger than the actors who played them. Stewart was 54 and Wayne was 55. If you get beyond that, you will love the film.

Extras are carried over from the previous release.

Happy viewing.