Dale, Esther

The Awful Truth

One of the top five screwball comedies of the '30s, this helped to cement a genre that waxed golden until the end of WWII. Director Leo McCarey won an Oscar for Best Director for this 1937 romantic comedy--one of the most successful films of his career. Irene Dunne and Cary Grant are a squabbling couple who separate because of supposed infidelities on both sides. They part but cannot really keep away from each other. Grant finds himself hooked up with a socialite, Dunne becomes engaged to a millionaire hick played by the hapless Ralph Bellamy (as if he ever stood a chance as the "other" man!). When not dating others or baiting one another in a verbal war, Grant and Dunne wage a custody battle over their pathetic pooch. Gags, double entendre, witty remarks, snide comments, and fast-paced dialogue helped this to garner six Academy Award nominations. The Awful Truth was awfully good to Dunne and Grant, as both were breaking out of much more serious molds and this secured their positions. --Rochelle O'Gorman

On Moonlight Bay

sical about a family that moves to a small Indiana town and their tomboy daughter who begins a romance with the neighbor across the street who bears radically unconventional views on love and money.Running Time: 94 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY Rating: NR UPC: 085391137245 Manufacturer No: 113724

America's love affair with clean-cut, tomboyish, freckle-faced Doris Day got a boost with On Moonlight Bay, a period piece from 1951. The film's masterstroke: put Doris in an old-timey musical full of small-town family values and vintage songs. Another inspiration: pair off Doris again with that chesty-voiced man's man and future Rodgers and Hammerstein stalwart, Gordon MacRae (they'd already made Tea for Two and The West Point Story). The story is drawn from Booth Tarkington's Penrod tales, although the movie is also under the sway of Meet Me in St. Louis. The WWI-era family is anchored by parents Leon Ames (the pop from St. Louis) and Rosemary De Camp, with echt-Fifties boy Billy Gray (later of Father Knows Best) as Day's bratty younger brother. Mary Wickes, cinema's eternal sassy housekeeper, provides comic relief. So does radio crooner Jack Smith, who would later host You Asked for It on TV for many years, as Day's maladroit suitor (he's really funny--too bad Preston Sturges never got a hold of him). The material is so relentlessly wholesome you might have to pinch yourself that anybody really believed it, but audiences sure wanted to. The film's popularity prompted a sequel, By the Light of the Silvery Moon, with most of the cast intact. --Robert Horton

Monkey Business

Cary Grant plays an absent-minded scientist working on a youth serum with little success. One afternoon, one of his test monkeys gets loose and works up a formula of its own, which then gets dropped into their water cooler. Shortly, Grant is tooling around in a sports car with his boss's voluptuous secretary (Marilyn Monroe). When his wife (Ginger Rogers) investigates, she too gets a dose and drags Grant off for a second honeymoon of all-night dancing. Meanwhile, Grant's elderly boss (Charles Coburn) is eager to get his hands on the formula--only Grant's formula isn't having the proper effect. Monkey Business is probably most familiar to Marilyn Monroe cultists, but it's Grant and Rogers who have the central roles and make the most of them. Rogers's adolescent emotional meltdown at a hotel and Grant leading a gaggle of boys on a scalping raid are only two of the movie's many richly funny set pieces, all directed by the nimble hand of Howard Hawks (His Girl Friday, Bringing Up Baby, Ball of Fire, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes). One of the last of the classic screwball comedies. --Bret Fetzer

Marilyn Monroe, Cary Grant and Ginger Rogers star in this classic comedy about a chemist who discovers the secret of eternal youth. For years, Dr. Barnaby Fulton (Grant) has been working on a youth-restoring serum with little success - until the day a chimpanzee gets loose in the lab and accidentally concocts the exact formula Fulton has been searching for. The hilarity begins when, unbeknownst to anyone, the chimpanzee pours it into the office water cooler. For with each successive drink, everyone gets younger and younger. When Fulton's stunning secretary (Marilyn Monroe) and lovely wife get a taste of the potion, the chemical reaction is explosive and hilarious fun!

Dead End

Humphrey Bogart is "outstanding" (Variety) as a vicious gangster on the run in this "masterful gripping drama" (Motion Picture Daily) directed by William Wyler (Ben-Hur) and written by Lillian Hellman (The Little Foxes). Nominated* for four Academy AwardsÂ(r), including Best Picture, Dead End is powerful, entertaining and a true landmark in moviemaking. On the mean streets of New York's Lower East Side, Drina (Sylvia Sidney) hopes to save herbrother from a life of crime. But notorious hoodlum Baby Face Martin (Bogart) has come back to his old haunts looking for trouble and threatening to drag the boy down with him. Drina turns to her childhood friend Dave (Joel McCrea) for help. But can he stop Martin without becoming just like him? *1937: Best Picture, Supporting Actress (Claire Trevor), Cinematography, Art Direction

Curly Top

When Edward Morgan the rich trustee on an orghanage, first meets little Elizabeth and her older sister Mary, he is immediately entrancd and adopts them for an imaginary benefactor. Though both girls come to adore Edward, Mary falls in love with him, unaware he is having the same feelings about her. So it's up to Elizabeth to play matchmaker and bring her two favorite grown-ups together.

Will Rogers Collection, Vol. 1 (Life Begins at Forty / Steamboat Round the Bend / Doubting Thomas / In Old Kentucky)

Disk 1: **LIFE BEGINS AT FORTY (BW) **LT# 1769 **Full Frame Feature (85:00) **Commentary by Anthony Slide **Restoration Comparison (3:00) **Trailer

Disk 2: **STEAMBOAT ROUND THE B (BW) **LT# 1798 **Full Frame Feature (81:00) **Commentary by Scott Eyman **Restoration Comparison (3:00) **Trailer

Disk 3: **DOUBTING THOMAS (BW) **LT# 10911 **Full Frame Feature (73:00) **Commentary by Anthony Slide **A&E Biography- Will Rogers: An American Original (90:00) **Restoration Comparison (3:00) **Movietone News **Will Rogers Memorial Fund **Stage Dedicated To Will Rogers In Hollywood **Trailer

Disk 4: **IN OLD KENTUCKY (BW) **LT #1799 **Full Frame Feature (86:00) **Commentary by Anthony Slide **Restoration Comparison (3:00) **Movietone News **Film Executives Visit Memorial to Will Rogers **Will Rogers off with Wiley Post to Arctic Circle **Trailer

The Wedding Night

One of the lesser-known satisfactions in Gary Cooper's career is this 1935 King Vidor film, an offbeat blend of romance, comedy, and tragedy. It begins in screwball territory: Cooper plays a novelist whose partying ways have stalled his career and made his new manuscript unpublishable. He and wife Helen Vinson like the high life (any resemblance to Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald is probably intentional), and she doesn't stick around while he tries to write a new book in a quiet Connecticut country house. The isolation puts him into proximity with a heartfelt young immigrant girl (Anna Sten), whose Polish community provides a subject for his new book.

If you think Cooper was a merely the High Noon guy, a lanky Western hero, this is one of the movies (among many) that dispel the idea: his utter naturalness is a gold standard for a certain kind of movie-star acting. Directing him on the set the first day, Vidor worried about the star's mumbling and forgetfulness with dialogue. "Imagine my amazement," Vidor later wrote, "when I watched our first day's work on the screen and observed and heard a performance that overflowed with charm and personality." Anna Sten was another issue: the Russian actress had been brought to the U.S. with great fanfare by producer Samuel Goldwyn, because he wanted to have his own foreign Garbo/Dietrich under contract. Her cool presence failed to generate audience interest, and Goldwyn gave up on her after The Wedding Night. She's a problem, but Cooper keeps it going, and the movie itself is unexpectedly warm. --Robert Horton

Old Acquaintance

Bette Davis and Miriam Hopkins--a pair of actresses who hated each other--re-mix their chemistry from The Old Maid in Old Acquaintance, an entertaining adaptation of John Van Druten's play. The action begins with Davis, a semi-famous author, returning to her small town and the home of old friend Hopkins. The later has opted for the settled life of husband and pregnancy, and she doesn't much hide her envy of Davis's success. Then the tables turn, as Hopkins pens a series of potboilers that sell much better than her friend-rival's. The movie keeps checking up on these two as the years pass, each wanting what the other has. It kicks around such staples as career vs. family, but what comes across most memorably in Old Acquaintance is the friendship between the two characters despite their rivalry; in that sense, the best scene in the film is the last scene. Hopkins has the flashy role, a silly ninny who seemingly never stops screeching, and Davis takes the more centered, self-effacing part. (By the way, Davis said that a scene in which she wears men's pajama tops caused a bit of a vogue at the time.) The men are in the background, although John Loder does a nice job of layering a gentle humor to Hopkins' long-suffering husband. Gig Young, in one of his earliest roles, is almost unrecognizable as a Davis paramour. Vincent Sherman (Mr. Skeffington) directed this example of the "women's picture," the kind of movie that kept Bette Davis the queen of the Warner Bros. lot. It was nicely remade by director George Cukor in 1981 as Rich and Famous, with Jacqueline Bisset and Candice Bergen. --Robert Horton

Mr. & Mrs. Smith

They're married for bitter or worse - until a technicality renders the union void. But now Mr. misses Mrs. and he's desperate to win her back. A rare and delightful foray into screwball comedy from suspense master Hitchcock. Year: 1941Running Time: 95 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY UPC: 053939680720

Before Hollywood had entirely typecast Alfred Hitchcock as the master of suspense, with Mr. & Mrs. Smith he was allowed to fashion an elegant romantic trifle starring Robert Montgomery and Carole Lombard. It probably won't replace Rear Window or Psycho in your affections, but the film is more than a curious footnote to the director's career. The two leads play David and Ann Smith, a devoted but endlessly squabbling couple who discover their three-year marriage isn't legal. When he unexpectedly hesitates to arrange a second wedding, she storms out in a huff and soon begins dating his solid, dependable business partner Jeff (Gene Raymond). The rest follows the formula laid down by such previous screwball comedies as The Awful Truth (1937) and Bringing Up Baby (1938): David employs fair means or foul to win back Ann's heart, causes all sorts of complicated mischief, then... well, three guesses what happens in the end.

The intriguing thing about the movie is how Hitchcock takes Norman Krasna's paper-thin script and adds sly undercurrents of menace. Violence seems about to erupt in the recurring scenes where Ann shaves her husband (suggestively holding a razor up to his throat)--and there's a touch of Vertigo in one scary moment when a jammed amusement park ride leaves two characters dangling helplessly high above the ground. Montgomery and Lombard keep the mood acceptably frivolous, while indicating the flawed nature of the marital relationship. From the evidence of this one-off, Hitchcock might have been among the best comedy directors in the business, had he so wished. --Peter Matthews

Fury

Film adaptation of Norman Krasna's "Mob Rule". Young lovebirds Joe Wilson and Katherine Grant want to get married but don't have the money. Katherine moves to another city where she can make more money.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA UPC: 012569690424

Tough stuff from director Fritz Lang (M), making his first American film with this 1936 story of an innocent man (Spencer Tracy) who escapes a lynch mob and then orchestrates his apparent murder at their hands. Tracy is superb, and the film is uncompromising, until studio interference takes some of the wind out of Lang's sails right at the end. But as the portrait of a character who comes to reflect the destiny he is trying to avoid, this is still essential Lang and a pre-noir classic. --Tom Keogh