Cugat, Xavier

A Date with Judy

Shot in soft-focus Technicolor by Oklahoma!'s Robert Surtees, A Date with Judy offers a candy-colored version of the high-school musical. In a cozy seaside town, 16-year-old Judy Foster (tiny soprano Jane Powell) and poor little rich girl Carol Pringle (a stunning Elizabeth Taylor, dubbed) prepare for the school dance. When Carol's brother, Oogie (former child star Scotty Beckett), stands up Judy--on Carol's advice--she takes new soda jerk Stephen (Written on the Wind's Robert Stack). Though Stephen can't take his eyes off Carol, he concedes, "You're the prettiest girl in Santa Barbara--and you know it." Afterwards, the girls compete for his affections, while Judy's dad, Melvin (The Champ's Wallace Beery), takes rumba lessons from Carmen Miranda's Rosita in preparation for his 20th wedding anniversary. Carol's mild conniving aside, there are no bad guys here, and all's well that ends well. Notable numbers include Powell's "It's a Most Unusual Day" and Miranda's "Cuanto le Gusta" with the Xavier Cugat Orchestra. Aside from the ladies on screen, Dorothy Cooper and Pal Joey's Dorothy Kingsley adapted the script from Aleen Leslie's 1941 radio play, hence lines like, "Don't try to understand women, just accept them." With direction by Ivanhoe's prolific Richard Thorpe and choreography from Singin' in the Rain's Stanley Donen, MGM's A Date with Judy serves up wholesome entertainment for all ages. Special features include the original trailer and two shorts, Martin Block's Musical Merry-Go-Round #3 with Ray Noble and Buddy Clark and Tom and Jerry's Professor Tom. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

Interesting early postwar musical that combines the musicomedy warhorses of the '40s with the rising Hollywood stars of the '50s including the lovely Taylor. Choreography by Donen distinguishes plot of teenage doings before a big dance. Includes the songs "It's a Most Unusual Day" and "Cuanto La Gusta" (with Miranda!).System Requirements:Running Time: 113 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA/CLASSICS Rating: NR UPC: 012569648449 Manufacturer No: 1000015117

The Eddy Duchin Story

Mae West - The Glamour Collection (Go West Young Man/ Goin' To Town/ I'm No Angel/ My Little Chickadee/ Night After Night)

Sexy and curvaceous Hollywood icon Mae West made a name for herself with the five films gathered here. MAE WEST: THE GLAMOUR COLLECTION includes the films NIGHT AFTER NIGHT I'M NO ANGEL GOIN' TO TOWN GO WEST YOUNG MAN and MY LITTLE CHIKADEE. See individual descriptions for details.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: NR UPC: 025192845321 Manufacturer No: 28453

The triumph of personality is beautifully demonstrated in Mae West: The Glamour Collection, a bundle of five comedies featuring the never duplicated (if often imitated) Ms. West. Never altering her insouciant, sexed-up persona, Mae West sashays through these films like a tour guide in a well-lit bordello, cheerfully cracking herself up with a series of perfectly-timed one-liners. Since she wrote her own material, there was no separation between the lady (what a feeble word) and her scandalous dialogue.

If you doubt this, check out Night After Night, her film debut. The first half of the picture is an unremarkable gangster comedy: George Raft in his usual inert form, Constance Cummings the good girl, capable comic support from Roscoe Karns and Alison Skipworth. Then West blowses in, and it's all over. Within a minute she's tossed off an eternal signature line (hatcheck girl: "Goodness, what beautiful diamonds." West: "Goodness had nothin' to do with it, dearie") and disrupted the high-class aims of gangster Raft. The other actors look agog at this unapologetic force of libido. Watching this, you might recall the first time you ever saw Groucho Marx or Bill Murray on film--the movie itself disappears, replaced by gratitude that someone like this exists.

I'm No Angel followed her first starring vehicle (She Done Him Wrong, not included here), and its lunatic plot--Mae as a lion tamer taken up by New York society--does nothing to slow the barrage of sexual innuendo. West hums her way through the film with the kind of confidence that must have inspired countless fans to try something disreputable. Cary Grant is the bemused recipient of West's attention. Goin' to Town is nearly as good, as dance-hall gal Mae inherits an oil fortune, then sets her cap for the haughty Englishman working on her, uh, wells. West's style is undiminished (she was in her mid-forties already), although by this time the Production Code--concocted in part as a horrified response to her first films--was trimming her entendres.

Tamer still is the tongue-in-cheek Go West Young Man, although the spectacle of West (playing a "temperamental" movie star) leering after hunky Randolph Scott is pleasant. My Little Chickadee, made at Universal after her run at Paramount ended, is the legendary pairing with W.C. Fields. It's full of great bon mots from both drawlers, even if the sum is less than its parts. Disapproving Margaret Hamilton tells Fields of West, "I'm afraid I can't say anything good about her." Fields replies, "I can see what's good, tell me the rest." These five films are a good introduction to the rest. Beulah, peel me a grape. --Robert Horton

You Were Never Lovelier

A remake of an Argentine film The Gay Senorita You Were Never Lovelier was a follow-up to the 1942 hit You'll Never Get Rich and marked the last screen pairing of Astaire and Hayworth. In You Were Never Lovelier she proves once again to be a stunning dancer especially in shorty George and I'm Old Fashioned a sensuous moonlit duet with Astaire that is the high point of the film. Like Astaire Hayworth was a perfectionist and they spent days going over each number. It was difficult to find sufficient rehearsal space on Columbia's stages so the studio rented a funeral parlor at a nearby Hollywood cemetery. Every time a funeral came through rehearsals would stop until the last of the mourners had left! Their perfectionism p