Ellison, James

The Gang's All Here

Here's one of Hollywood's great excursions into surrealism: The Gang's All Here, the legendarily over-the-top wartime musical. Director Busby Berkeley threw every demented idea that every swirled out of his teeming brain into this madcap affair, and decades later the film was still wowing 'em as a campy jaw-dropper.

The plot is the nonsensical stuff of homefront musicals, with chorus girl Alice Faye waiting for soldier boy James Ellison to return from the war, little knowing he is engaged to another woman. But the real point here is the crazy production design and the flabbergasting numbers--most famously, Carmen Miranda's "The Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat," which includes a chorus line of women dancing while holding giant bananas over their heads. It might have been dreamed up by Salvador Dali after an acid trip. Alice gets her due with the equally crazy "Polka-Dot Polka," and Benny Goodman and his orchestra are also around. So are such reliable second bananas (you should excuse the expression) as Edward Everett Horton and high-kicking Charlotte Greenwood.

The DVD extras include a 20-minute documentary on Berkeley's peculiar art, plus a charming 25-promotional film featuring Alice Faye reminiscing about her old pictures and extolling the virtues of physical fitness (made for the Pfizer drug company while Faye was their spokesperson). A deleted comedy scene and two episodes from the long-running radio show Faye did with husband Phil Harris are also included. The print itself is a source of controversy; the colors lack the "pop" of the original Technicolor, and the film looks dimmer and vaguer than its original glory. Here's hoping a cleaner, fuller version will emerge. --Robert Horton

Her girl-next-door looks combined with a sultry singing voice made Alice Faye one of Hollywood's biggest stars in the Golden Age of Cinema.Eadie Allen (Alice Faye) is a chorus girl who dreams of becoming a star. While working at a New York nightclub she meets Sergeant Andy Mason (James Ellison); they fall in love but he is shipped off to war. As Eadie becomes the headliner at the nightclub Andy comes home a war hero. But complications arise when Eadie finds out Andy is unofficially engaged to another woman. It's up to Eadie's friend and nightclub co-star Dorita (Carmen Miranda) to set things straight. The Gang's All Here is filled with leggy chorus dancers and lavish musical production numbers including Faye's flashy neon finale "The Polka Dot Polka."System Requirements:Running Time: 103 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: MUSICALS/MUSICALS Rating: NR UPC: 024543520092 Manufacturer No: 2252009

Charley's Aunt

Charley Wyckham and Jack Chesney pressure fellow student Fancourt Babberly to pose as Charley's Brazilian Aunt Donna Lucia. Their purpose is to have a chaperone for their amorous visits with Amy and Kitty niece and ward of crusty Stephen Spettigue. Complications begin when Fancourt in drag becomes the love object of old Spettigue and Sir Francis ChesneySystem Requirements:Runnining Time: 80 Mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY Rating: NR UPC: 024543440642 Manufacturer No: 2244064

Nothing says comedy like a man in a dress, and Charley's Aunt is the archetypal man-in-a-dress comedy. In desperate need of a chaperone so they can woo their sweethearts, two college lads named Jack and Charley persuade their friend Fancourt (Jack Benny, one of the all-time great radio and television comics) to masquerade as Charley's aunt from Brazil, who had failed to arrive. Of course, the aunt also shows up (and is also in disguise), but not before Benny has had ample opportunity to run amok in petticoats while being chased by fortune-hunting beaus. Though the story's social milieu is woefully dated--the need for a chaperone is just the beginning--the movie has a number of classic comic bits that remain funny. Charley's Aunt doesn't suit Benny's dry style of humor as perfectly as does his next film, To Be or Not to Be, and Benny's English accent is a bit hit and miss, but he milks his wig and bloomers for all they're worth. Also starring Kay Francis (Trouble in Paradise), Edmund Gwenn (Miracle on 34th Street), Laird Cregar (Heaven Can Wait), and a very young Anne Baxter (All About Eve). Extras include a chipper commentary from film historian Randy Skretvedt (who rattles off dozens of Jack Benny anecdotes) and a goofy promotional short in which Benny, Tyrone Power, and Randolph Scott compare their upcoming roles. --Bret Fetzer

The Plainsman

Just maybe the most shamelessly enjoyable of Cecil B. DeMille's pseudo-historical epics, this rumbustious frontier saga offers a three-for-one Western legends combo--Wild Bill Hickok, Buffalo Bill Cody, and Calamity Jane, all cutting up in the 1870s, with George Armstrong Custer and Abraham Lincoln thrown in for good measure. (Wait a minute, Lincoln was assassinated in 1865--oh, never mind.) Truth to tell, Buffalo Bill doesn't really pull his weight, since (1) he is hopelessly distracted by virtue of having recently married and (2) he's played by James Ellison, an eternal juvenile normally relegated to second-banana duty in Paramount's Hopalong Cassidy series. However, Gary Cooper's Wild Bill and Jean Arthur's Calamity supply enough star power to light up the Dakotas and parts of Missouri.

Every once in a while, DeMille and his small army of writers stumble upon an actual historical fact. Bill Cody did fight to the death with an Indian chief named Yellow Hand. George Custer and James Butler Hickok did both buy the farm in the summer of 1876. (Custer's Last Stand is handled imaginatively, if cheaply, as a vision narrated by a wandering Cheyenne warrior--none other than C.B.'s son-in-law Anthony Quinn in one of his earliest screen appearances.) Jack McCall (veteran weasel Porter Hall) did find himself in Deadwood, South Dakota, at the same time Wild Bill was drawing aces and eights in a poker game ... though McCall was not necessarily affiliated with DeMille's favorite villain, Charles Bickford, in the business of running guns to the Indians. --Richard T. Jameson

I Walked with a Zombie / The Body Snatcher

Literary classics become screen horror classics when given the Lewton touch. Take the gothic romance of Jane Eyre reset it in the West Indies add the direction of Jacques Tourneur (Cat People) and the overriding terror of the living dead and you have I Walked with a Zombie. Frances Dee plays the nurse who witnesses the strange power of voodoo. Boris Karloff plays the title role in the Lewton adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's The Body Snatcher directed with subtle calculation by versatile Robert Wise. A doctor (Henry Daniell) needs cadavers for medical studies and Karloff is willing to provide them one way or another. Don't miss his scene with fellow horror icon Bela Lugosi.Running Time: 147 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: HORROR UPC: 053939724325

The Gang's All Here

Her girl-next-door looks combined with a sultry singing voice made Alice Faye one of Hollywood s biggest stars in the Golden Age of Cinema.Eadie Allen (Alice Faye) is a chorus girl who dreams of becoming a star. While working at a New York nightclub she meets Sergeant Andy Mason (James Ellison); they fall in love but he is shipped off to war. As Eadie becomes the headliner at the nightclub Andy comes home a war hero. But complications arise when Eadie finds out Andy is unofficially engaged to another woman. It s up to Eadie s friend and nightclub co-star Dorita (Carmen Miranda) to set things straight. The Gang s All Here is filled with leggy chorus dancers and lavish musical production numbers including Faye s flashy neon finale The Polka Dot Polka. Episodes-Bonus Features:**FULLSCREEN FEATURE**FILM HISTORIAN COMMENTARY**CARMEN MIRANDA ON THE ED SULLIVAN SHOW**JOHNNY CARSON BANANAS MUSICAL NUMBER**CHIQUITA BANANAS COMMERCIALS 1-5**THEATRICAL TRAILER**PIN-UP GIRL TRAILER**STILL GALLERYSystem Requirements:Running Time: 103 minsFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: MUSIC DVD/DOCUMENTARY Rating: NR UPC: 024543403678 Manufacturer No: 2240367

Here's one of Hollywood's great excursions into surrealism: The Gang's All Here, the legendarily over-the-top wartime musical. Director Busby Berkeley threw every demented idea that every swirled out of his teeming brain into this madcap affair, and decades later the film was still wowing 'em as a campy jaw-dropper.

The plot is the nonsensical stuff of homefront musicals, with chorus girl Alice Faye waiting for soldier boy James Ellison to return from the war, little knowing he is engaged to another woman. But the real point here is the crazy production design and the flabbergasting numbers--most famously, Carmen Miranda's "The Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat," which includes a chorus line of women dancing while holding giant bananas over their heads. It might have been dreamed up by Salvador Dali after an acid trip. Alice gets her due with the equally crazy "Polka-Dot Polka," and Benny Goodman and his orchestra are also around. So are such reliable second bananas (you should excuse the expression) as Edward Everett Horton and high-kicking Charlotte Greenwood.

The DVD extras include a 20-minute documentary on Berkeley's peculiar art, plus a charming 25-promotional film featuring Alice Faye reminiscing about her old pictures and extolling the virtues of physical fitness (made for the Pfizer drug company while Faye was their spokesperson). A deleted comedy scene and two episodes from the long-running radio show Faye did with husband Phil Harris are also included. The print itself is a source of controversy; the colors lack the "pop" of the original Technicolor, and the film looks dimmer and vaguer than its original glory. Here's hoping a cleaner, fuller version will emerge. --Robert Horton

Hopalong Cassidy - Call of the Prairie / Heart of the West

Gabby Hayes is not yet the sidekick in "Call of the Prairie," but he plays one of the heavies, Shanghai McHenry, while the future looks dim for junior sidekick Johnny Nelson (Jimmy Ellison). Johnny is framed by Shanghai's gang for the robbery and murder of the Bar-20 boss and, complicating the situation, falls in love with a beautiful girl who happens to be Shanghai's daughter! Can Hopalong Cassidy (William Boyd) save the day? Hopalong runs into crooked rancher Trumbull, who is trying to keep decent people from building a fence on their property in "Heart of the West." Determined to drive his stolen cattle, the rancher locks horns with the Jordan family and sends a stolen stampede towards our heroes.

Calendar Girl (1947) DVD [Remastered Edition]

Allan Dwan directs this timeless romantic musical set in the mid 1900s, in which he brings together the outstanding musical capabilities Bill Marshall, Jane Frazee, Janet Martin and the inimitable Kenny Baker, whose scintillating tenor is shown off to good effect. Janet Martin was one of the several young players under contract to Republic at the time. A2ZCDS have brought this old Hollywood Classic feature films on DVD. "Director Alan Dwan is at his best in this vintage romantic musical, which won him many accolades. Dwans portrayal of a struggling young musician on the lookout for a much-needed break is realistic and touching, with many an insightful scene depicting the inner struggles of artists who dream of making it big. The lively musical score by Jimmy McHugh, along with many spirited vocals, adds a lot of fizz to the narrative while the choreography is simply enchanting. Jane Frazees depiction of an innocent; naïve girl who inadvertently makes it big is especially laudable. A sprinkling of humorous scenes and some lively romantic banter make for delightful and engrossing entertainment. Experience outstanding musical drama in this timeless feature film, brought to you on DVD by A2ZCDS, which is at once thrilling, heartrending and entertaining!"

Hollywood and Vine

Hopalong Cassidy - Hopalong Cassidy / Bar 20 Rides Again

The early years of western film hero Hopalong Cassidy are captured in this rootin', tootin', six-gun shootin' classic double feature! The first film in this series, "Hopalong Cassidy" (60 min.), finds Bill and the cowboys of the Bar 20 up in arms against the cowhands of a neighboring ranch over some missing cattle that could ignite a range war. In "Bar 20 Rides Again" (63 min.), Hopalong and the boys find themselves pitted against a nefarious, land-grubbing outlaw who has set his sights on a girl and will stop at nothing to make her his own, even if it means killing one of the Bar 20 boys.

I Walked with a Zombie