Rue, Jack La

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

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

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

Captains Courageous

The award-winning 1937 version of Kipling's classic Captains Courageous finds spoiled-rotten brat Harvey Cheyne (Freddie Bartholomew) well on the way to becoming a horrible adult, under the illusion that money can buy all happiness. The little monster falls off a cruise ship, and is fished out of the drink by Portuguese fisherman Manuel (Spencer Tracy) and brought back to his fishing boat. Though the overprivileged lad initially chafes at being put to work aboard the smelly vessel, he eventually learns the value of a day's work and learns lessons in life that make him a functional person and bring him several steps closer to manhood. Despite Tracy's indeterminate accent, he excels in his role as the boy's friend, and enthusiastic performances from the rest of the cast bring this coming-of-age tale to life. It's a film that has lost none of its sentimental appeal (or occasional hamminess) over the years and should have an all-ages appeal to fans of Hollywood classics. --Jerry Renshaw

The fishing schooner We're Here has just pulled up a different kind of fish: rich 10-year-old Harvey Cheyne who tumbled off the side of a sleek ocean liner. Harvey will have to wait months before the We're Here returns to harbor months that will transform him from a spoiled whiner into an honorable young man - all because of the life lessons he learns from Manuel the humble fisherman who befriends him. From Rudyard Kipling's classic Captains Courageous thrills with its seagoing action grand scale and all-star cast. But what gives it full-masted magnificence is the chemistry between Freddie Bartholomew (Harvey) and Spencer Tracy (Manuel). Tracy won his first Best Actor Academy Award for his towering portrait of the father we all wish for: virile patient wise and protective. Set sail for cinema glory.Running Time: 112 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: TELEVISION/CLASSIC UPC: 012569676749 Manufacturer No: 67674

Robin and the Seven Hoods

In prohibition-era Chicago the corrupt sheriff and Guy Gisborne a south-side racketeer knock off the boss Big Jim. Everyone falls in line behind Guy except Robbo who controls the north side. Although he's outgunned Robbo wants to keep his own territory. A pool-playing dude from Indiana and the director of a boys' orphanage join forces with Robbo; and when he gives some money to the orphanage he becomes the toast of the town as a hood like Robin Hood. Meanwhile Guy schemes to get rid of Robbo and Big Jim's heretofore unknown daughter Marian appears and goes from man to man trying to find an ally in her quest to run the whole show. Can Robbo hold things together?Running Time: 124 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY/CLASSICS UPC: 883929007578 Manufacturer No: 1000036692

"My kind of town, Chicago is...." The last film venture by the Rat Pack finds Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr. in an update of the Robin Hood legend, set in Chi-town in 1928. The boys play gangsters who become Jazz Age Merry Men; Bing Crosby is their eloquent spokesman. As usual, women are in short supply within the featured cast, but the film is colorful enough anyway with its period trappings. By the time this movie was released in 1964, the Zeitgeist was already shifting toward the Beatles, and Frank, Dean, and Sammy looked like your father's entertainment. But while this film is no knockout, director Gordon Douglas (Young at Heart) makes it a pleasant enough way to say good-bye to the Rat Pack's life together on film. --Tom Keogh

A Farewell to Arms

The 1932 version of A Farewell to Arms owes as much to the shimmering house style of Paramount Pictures as it does the novel by Ernest Hemingway. If Hemingway purists can get past the romanticizing of the book, however, this film offers its own glossy appeal. On the Italian front in World War I, an American ambulance driver (Gary Cooper) falls in love with a nurse (Helen Hayes, before she became the official First Lady of the American The-a-tah). Cooper was a Hemingway friend in real life, and later played the hero of Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls; his boyish simplicity is just right for director Frank Borzage's heartfelt approach. Image Entertainment's DVD release is a stunningly gorgeous improvement on the muddy prints of this film that had been circulating for years, a fitting tribute to the Oscar-winning cinematography of ace cameraman Charles Lang (this is the kind of lush black and white that can capture the glow from a cigarette as it plays across Cooper's darkened face--a breathtaking touch). The jaded battle scenes show the influence of the hit film version of All Quiet on the Western Front, especially in a gripping montage depicting Cooper's progress alone through the war zone. Hemingway would have none of it, of course; he once disdainfully wrote that "in the first picture version Lt. Henry deserted because he didn't get any mail and then the whole Italian Army went along, it seems, to keep him company." This is first and foremost a love story, however, and as such it succeeds beautifully, right through to the remarkably intense ending. --Robert Horton

An American soldier and an English nurse share an ill-fated romance in World War I. Based on the novel by Ernest Hemingway.

The Kennel Murder Case

The Rat Pack Collection (Ocean's 11 / Robin and the 7 Hoods / 4 for Texas)

4 FOR TEXAS -- Gamblers Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin are Wild West wild cards. With Anita Ekberg Ursula Andress the Three Stooges and Charles Bronson. OCEAN'S 11 -- The kicky original! Sinatra and pals have a sure way to beat Vegas: Rob 5 casinos at once! With Dean Martin Sammy Davis Jr. Peter Lawford Joey Bishop and more. ROBIN AND THE 7 HOODS -- His kind of town Chicago is. Sinatra Dean Martin Peter Falk Bing Crosby and more in a breezy gangster spoof.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY UPC: 012569734777 Manufacturer No: 73477

Robin and the Seven Hoods

"My kind of town, Chicago is...." The last film venture by the Rat Pack finds Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr. in an update of the Robin Hood legend, set in Chi-town in 1928. The boys play gangsters who become Jazz Age Merry Men; Bing Crosby is their eloquent spokesman. As usual, women are in short supply within the featured cast, but the film is colorful enough anyway with its period trappings. By the time this movie was released in 1964, the Zeitgeist was already shifting toward the Beatles, and Frank, Dean, and Sammy looked like your father's entertainment. But while this film is no knockout, director Gordon Douglas (Young at Heart) makes it a pleasant enough way to say good-bye to the Rat Pack's life together on film. --Tom Keogh

My Favorite Brunette

Road to Utopia

I feel sorry for people who can't appreciate Hope and Crosby "road" pictures. This is the fourth in the series, and has the boys masquerading as the killers Sperry and McGurk, from whom they've stolen the map to a gold mine, but which really belongs to Dorothy Lamour, but which... and you know it really doesn't matter anyway. The point is they've got this thin plot on which to hang a series of hit-and-miss jokes, coming fast enough to make it just all right and a certain amount of time to see who gets Dorothy Lamour, while maintaining their fierce and friendly and wisecracking rivalry. They're in the Klondike this time around, which doesn't stop the film from working in a glimpse of Dorothy in her sarong. Along the way, animals talk, including the humorist Robert Benchley, whose thoroughly dispensable introduction and running commentary I wouldn't dispense with for anything. This is arguably the goofiest of the road pictures. My favorite joke is when Bob is bested in fishing with Bing. Bob remarks, "My worm must have B.O." Bing comes back with "Couldn't B.U." You may not care where you're going, just as long as you're with them. Put it there, pal, put it there. --Jim Gay

X Marks the Spot