Dunnock, Mildred

Tennessee Williams Film Collection (A Streetcar Named Desire 1951 Two-Disc Special Edition / Cat on a Hot Tin Roof 1958 Deluxe Edition / Sweet Bird of Youth / The Night of the Iguana / Baby Doll / The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone)

Streetcar Named Desire 2 Disc SE Cat on a Hot Tin Roof Deluxe Edition Sweet Bird of Youth Night of the Iguana Baby Doll Roman Spring of Mrs. StoneFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: NR UPC: 012569750647 Manufacturer No: 75064

A much-needed DVD tribute to one of the essential American playwrights, The Tennessee Williams Collection gathers six Williams titles and one vintage documentary. Taken together, it's a potent introduction to the specific terrain (geographical and emotional) of this brilliant writer. The set is anchored by Warner's deluxe two-disc treatment of A Streetcar Named Desire, which has copious extras (among them a fine 90-minute documentary about director Elia Kazan). The multi-Oscar-winning Streetcar is one of the better stage adaptations in film history, and it captures the electrifying Marlon Brando, re-creating his stage role, in the part that changed American acting: the brutish New Orleans sensualist Stanley Kowalski. Vivien Leigh won an Oscar opposite him, as the faded (except in her own mind) Southern belle Blanche DuBois, whose arrival in the Kowalski home leads to disaster.

Kazan also directed Baby Doll, which Williams scripted from a couple of one-act plays. This outrageous sex comedy casts the excellent Carroll Baker as the 19-year-old wife of middle-aged Karl Malden, who anxiously awaits the day he can finally consummate his maddening marriage; immigrant cotton magnate Eli Wallach shows up at Malden's crumbling plantation house just in time to take the bloom off the rose, as it were. Famous for being condemned in 1956, Baby Doll remains a very modern (and gloriously dirty) movie. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, directed by Richard Brooks, faithfully brings three of Williams's indelible characters to the screen, even if the script discreetly changes the original stage text: the hot Maggie the Cat (Elizabeth Taylor), her reluctant husband Brick (Paul Newman), and Brick's rich Big Daddy (Burl Ives). All three performers act the lights out.

Sweet Bird of Youth reunites Paul Newman with director Brooks, and also showcases Geraldine Page's performance as an aging film star tagging along with young stud Newman to his Southern home town. Some of Williams' more depraved touches are toned down, but the milieu is unmistakable and the movie is intense. The Night of the Iguana gives Richard Burton perhaps his finest hour onscreen: as Williams' dissolute defrocked priest, playing tour guide in Puerto Vallarta to tour groups of nattering biddies. The movie has director John Huston's sympathy for life's losers, as well as a trio of women built to torment Burton's reverend: Ava Gardner, Deborah Kerr, and Sue Lyon. The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone, based on Williams's novel, is not a great movie, but gives Vivien Leigh a good workout as a wounded actress dallying with Italian gigolo Warren Beatty.

Tennessee Williams' South is a 1973 documentary featuring some marvelous observations from Williams, as he holds court for filmmaker Harry Rasky. It also has long scenes from his plays, enacted by good folks such as Maureen Stapleton, Colleen Dewhurst, and Burl Ives. Especially valuable is a Streetcar sequence with Jessica Tandy re-creating her original role as Blanche. Williams himself reads the narration from The Glass Menagerie, a privileged moment. This is not an exhaustive Williams set (Joseph Mankiewicz's Suddenly, Last Summer and Sidney Lumet's The Fugitive Kind are among the best Williams films), but it maps out the steamy, tortured landscape awfully well. --Robert Horton

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Deluxe Edition)

Elizabeth Taylor has never been sexier than as Tennessee Williams's hot-blooded Maggie "The Cat" Pollitt, prowling around her boudoir in a slinky white slip. That's how you know her alcoholic, ex-football-player husband, Brick (Paul Newman), must have more than just his leg in a cast. It's the 65th birthday of wealthy (but dying) southern patriarch Big Daddy (Burl Ives), and his sons Gooper (Jack Carter) and Brick have come to suck up to him for $10 million in inheritance money. Gooper is a family man and father to a brood of "no-neck monsters"; youngest boy Brick is papa's favorite (as if you couldn't tell from the fellow's names), but hasn't sired progeny. Maggie is definitely in heat, but Brick refuses to sleep with her because he suspects her her of being unfaithful with his best friend, who recent committed suicide. Although toned down for the movies, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is vintage Tennessee Williams. The film was directed by Richard Brooks (In Cold Blood, Blackboard Jungle, Elmer Gantry). --Jim Emerson

"I'm not living with you" Maggie snaps at Brick. "We occupy the same cage that's all." The raw emotions and crackling dialogue of Tennessee Williams' 1955 Pulitzer Prize play rumble like a thunderstorm in this film version whose fiery performances and grown-up themes made it one of 1958's top box-office hits. Paul Newman earned his first OscarO nomination* as troubled ex-sports hero Brick. In a performance that marked a transition to richer adult roles Elizabeth Taylor snagged her second. Her Maggie the Cat is a vivid portrait of passionate loyalty. Nominated for six Academy AwardsO including Best Picture* and also starring Burl Ives (repeating his Broadway triumph as mendacity-loathing Big Daddy) Judith Anderson and Jack Carson Cat on a Hot Tin Roof sizzles.Running Time: 108 min.System Requirements:Running Time 108 Mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: NR UPC: 012569698529 Manufacturer No: 66985

Peyton Place

Nominated for nine Academy Awards in 1957, Peyton Place has become synonymous with torrid soap opera. Though the novel by Grace Metalious is even more sensational, the movie provides plenty of tantalizing story turns--secrets, adultery, rape, bitter parents, frustrated teenagers, suicide, and murder. Multiple storylines deftly interweave: Allison MacKenzie (Diane Varsi), an ambitious young girl struggling with the neurotic fears of her mother (Lana Turner, in a career-reviving performance) and the neurotic fears of the boy she loves (Russ Tamblyn), while her best friend Selena Cross (Hope Lange) fights off the brutal advances of her drunken stepfather. The movie had to sanitize the novel's New England town in order to get some of the more unsavory plot turns past the censors; ironically, the glossy "normal" surface makes these events all the more shocking, paving the way for David Lynch's Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks. --Bret Fetzer

Peyton Place is the sensitive and poignant story of coming of age in a small New England village whose peaceful facade hides love and passion, scandal and hypocrisy.

The Nun's Story

Fred Zinnemann's epic drama is a splendid showcase for Audrey Hepburn, who stars as the young nun Sister Luke, who is deeply spiritual yet conflicted about whether or not she can conform to convent life. Though the film is a mesmerizing--and quite leisurely--two and a half hours, its plot is fairly simple--young Gabrielle (Hepburn) enters the convent pledging her life to God, learns the disciplines associated with the life, receives her dream assignment of going to the Congo as a missionary nurse, and once there, is forced to face whether she is meant for the rigorous life of poverty, chastity, and most difficult of all, obedience. The film does a marvelous job of portraying the challenges of cloistered life without being either off-putting or overly romantic. And Hepburn, sometimes with only her eyes, communicates all the drive, faith, and conflict of a young woman so torn. --Anne Hurley

Story of Gabrielle Van Der Mal who gives up everything to become a nun facing incredible odds in the Congo and then at the mother house in France at the outbreak of World War II.Running Time: 151 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA UPC: 012569739864 Manufacturer No: 73986

Kiss of Death (Fox Film Noir)

Richard Widmark's bravura debut as snickering gangster Tommy Udo, and particularly his infamous encounter with an old woman in a wheelchair, enjoys such pop cachet that the movie itself has been somewhat underrated. More's the pity. Henry Hathaway's third entry in 20th Century-Fox's series of post-WWII thrillers is just about the best of the bunch. These films incorporated the semidocumentary techniques and wondrously persuasive on-location shooting Hollywood learned from Italian neorealism and the wartime filming of some of its own best directors. Kiss of Death is more fictional than documentary in thrust, with a solid script by ace screenwriters Ben Hecht and Charles Lederer. But that only makes its imaginative, atmospheric use of real places and spaces--e.g., a superb opening robbery sequence in a New York skyscraper--the more remarkable.

Victor Mature belies his rep as one of the Hollywood star system's bad jokes with his intense performance as Nick Bianco, a career criminal driven to turn squealer. Nick's motivation is family values: although he had gone to Sing Sing (yes, they filmed there, too) as a stand-up guy, "the boys" failed to take care of his wife and daughters as promised, with devastating results. Despite the best efforts of an assistant D.A. (Brian Donlevy), Nick is forced to lay everything on the line to rescue his family's future. The movie abounds in evocative texture, thanks to the no-frills excellence of Norbert Brodine's camerawork and an exemplary supporting cast including Millard Mitchell (as a sardonic police detective), Karl Malden (another D.A.), and Taylor Holmes (a flannel-mouthed Mob shyster). Kiss of Death was remade twice, as a Western titled The Fiend That Walked the West and as a straight thriller again in the '90s. --Richard T. Jameson

Henry Hathaway's directorial skills brought a heightened sense of realism to crime dramas in this classic 1947 original that marked Richard Widmark's Oscar -nominated debut. When a small time crook (Victor Mature) gets a twenty year sentence for robbery, he refuses to reveal his accomplices, even after a D.A. (Brian Donlevy) offers to help him. But he changes his mind once he learns that his wife has committed suicide and a psychopath (Widmark) has threatened his children.

Death of a Salesman (Broadway Theatre Archive)

"Attention must be paid" to this abbreviated but superb 1966 television adaptation by Arthur Miller of his Pulitzer Prize-winning modern tragedy, starring the incomparable Lee J. Cobb and Mildred Dunnock recreating their original Broadway roles as the Lomans. In a career-defining performance, Cobb portrays the suffering Willy Loman--the middle-aged man at the end of his emotional rope--with Dunnock equally impressive as his patient wife, Linda. George Segal and James Farentino play their disillusioned sons, Biff and Happy. Shattering and unforgettable, this landmark television production has been digitally remastered and will endure for all generations to come. "In a word, superb." --New York Times. With Gene Wilder as Bernard.

The Trouble with Harry

Master of Suspense Alfred Hitchcock directs a delightful comedy-mystery set in New England. It stars John Forsythe Academy Award winner Edmund Gwenn Mildred Natwick and little Jerry Mathers. In addition it marks the noteworthy screen debut of Academy Award - winner Shirley MacLaine. What is THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY? Well it s the fact that he s dead and while no one really minds everybody thinks they are responsible.After several unearthings of the corpse plenty of humor a la Hitchcock and love affairs between the major characters the real cause of death is revealed and Harry troubles no one again. It s a delightful romp and a decidedly different movie from the Master of Suspense.System Requirements:Running Time: 100 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: ACTION/ADVENTURE/THRILLERS Rating: PG UPC: 025192831621 Manufacturer No: 28316

What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice?

The battle of wits is on! Oscar® winners* Geraldine Page and Ruth Gordon sharpen their claws on each other (Boxoffice) in this enjoyable piece of jolly horror (Los Angeles Times) about a lost fortune a mad heiress and a housekeeper hellbent on digging up the truth!Mrs. Marrable (Page) is a society matron who s had some shocking news. Her late husband left her only a stamp collection! Determined to maintain her extravagant lifestyle she takes advantage of an unlikely new source of income her housekeepers by robbing them not only out of their life savings but also their lives! The turnover rate for help speeds faster than a revolving door until Mrs. Marrable s latest hire (Gordon) develops a drive to unearth the terrible secret buried in the front yard!System Requirements: Running Time 101 Mins. Color Screen Format: 16x9 Widescreen (1.85:1) Language: ENG (Mono) Subtitles: ENG FR SPFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: MYSTERY/SUSPENSE Rating: PG UPC: 027616913241 Manufacturer No: 1007189

Love Me Tender

Elvis plays Clint Reno one of the Reno brothers who stayed home while he brother went to fight in the Civil War for the Confederate army. When his brother Vance comes back from the war he finds that his old girlfriend Cathy has married Clint. The family has to struggle to reach stability with this issue. Vance is involved in a train robbery while a Confederate soldier of Federal Government money. There is a conflict of interest when Vance tries to return the money against the wishes of some of his fellow Confederates.System Requirements:Run Time: 89 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA UPC: 024543227847 Manufacturer No: 2232784

Here's the alpha point of Elvis Presley's film career, the introduction of the raw-boned Mississippi boy into Hollywood pictures. E.P. takes a supporting role, and his entrance is delayed for nearly 20 minutes: kid brother to returning Civil War soldier Richard Egan, his character marries Egan's sweetheart Debra Paget when Egan is presumed dead. It's a chance for Elvis, his face still trembling with baby fat, to emote dramatically and finish tragically, both of which he does passably well. A serviceable Western, the film shamelessly shoehorns four Presley tunes into two sequences: E.P. crooning on mama's porch, and performing at a country fair (where starchy locals don't seem disturbed at the boy's gyrating hips and happy feet). All in all, a shrewd way to put a foot in Hollywood's doorway, and, of course, one of the last Presley movies to feel like a real film and not a vehicle for the King. --Robert Horton

The Pick-Up Artist

From the pen of James Toback comes this ridiculous talk-fest, in which people seem to say whatever comes into their minds, whether it's interesting, germane, or doesn't even makes sense. What story there is centers on Robert Downey Jr., an inveterate womanizer who meets the girl of his dreams--and the one woman immune to his charms. She's Molly Ringwald, and her drunken father (Dennis Hopper) is in debt up to his neck to the mob. So she agrees to go to Atlantic City with a surly mobster and his cronies (Danny Aiello and Harvey Keitel), who have more than gambling on their minds. Downey tries to save Ringwald, even as he attempts to convince her that he can curb his wandering eye and be faithful to her. These people never shut up, but you'll quickly wish they would. --Marshall Fine

Jack Jericho (Robert Downey Jr.) is a master in the art of meeting women, but the master has just met his match - the beautiful Randy Jensen (Molly Ringwald). In this hilarious, romantic comedy, a smug, compulsive womanizer who won't take no for an answer meets the woman of his dreams, only to find her impervious to his charm.