Kramer, Stanley

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

Spencer Tracy heads a hilariously zany cast that stars Hollywood's greatest comedians (Milton Berle Sid Caesar Buddy Hackett Ethel Merman Mickey Rooney Dick Shawn Phil Silvers Terry-Thomas and Jonathan Winters) and features cameo appearances by every joker and jester in the business from Don Knotts and Jerry Lewis to The Three Stooges. Nominated* for 6 Oscars® It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World is "an explosive motion picture experience" (Variety)!On a winding desert highway eight vacation-bound motorists share an experience that alters their plans and their lives! After a mysterious stranger divulges the location of a stolen fortune they each speed off in a mind-bending car-bashing race for the loot and the most side-splitting laughfest in history.*1963: Sound Effects (won) Cinematography Sound Song Score Film Editing.System Requirements:Running Time: 154 Min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY Rating: G UPC: 027616902740 Manufacturer No: 1006051

Stanley Kramer's sprawling 1963 comedy about a search for buried treasure by at least a dozen people--all played by well-known entertainers of their day--is the kind of mass comedy that Hollywood hasn't made in many years. (Another example from around the same time is Blake Edwards's The Great Race.) After a number of strangers (including Milton Berle, Jonathan Winters, Sid Caesar, Phil Silvers, and others) witness a dying stranger (Jimmy Durante) identify the location of hidden money, a conflict-ridden hunt begins, watched over carefully by a suspicious cop (Spencer Tracy). The ensuing two and a half hours of mayhem has its ups and downs--some bits and performers are certainly funnier than others. But Kramer, who is better known for socially conscious, serious cinema (Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?), is in a mood for broad comic characterization, and some of his jokes are so intentionally obvious (Durante literally kicks a bucket when he dies), they'd have a place in Airplane! Watch for lots of cameo appearances, including Jerry Lewis (who had called Kramer and asked him why he hadn't been invited to participate). --Tom Keogh

Inherit the Wind

Two of the juiciest roles in the American theater fall at the feet of Spencer Tracy and Fredric March, and both men make a meal of it. Inherit the Wind, based on the play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, is a slightly fictionalized account of the Scopes Monkey Trial, that galvanizing legal drama of the 1920s. When a young Tennessee teacher is prosecuted for teaching the theory of evolution in a public school, he receives unwanted public attention as well as the legal advice of a giant. Tracy plays the role based on Clarence Darrow, the eloquent defense attorney, and March storms his way through a part based on Williams Jennings Bryan, the failed presidential candidate (and famed orator) who prosecuted the case. Gene Kelly plays a character based on the acid-penned H.L. Mencken, reporting on the trial and caustically commenting on the absurdity of the human animal. Stanley (Judgment at Nuremberg) Kramer's direction is not especially subtle, but the verbal fireworks unleashed during the trial sequences are still stirring. Even the different styles of the actors are intriguing: March is all mannerism and false padding around the belly, while Tracy does his patented naturalistic grumbling. It would be nice if this story were a quaint period piece, but its issues and arguments keep reemerging in the headlines with each new generation. --Robert Horton

Two-time Best Actor OscarÂ(r) winners* Spencer Tracy and Fredric March go toe-to-toe in this thrilling re-creation of the most titanic courtroom battle of the century. Garnering four Academy AwardÂ(r) nominations**, including Best Actor (Tracy), and featuring Gene Kelly in a rare, critically-acclaimed dramatic role, Inherit the Wind is powerful, provocative cinema and "a heaping measure of entertainment" (The Hollywood Reporter)! The controversial subject of evolution versus creation causes two polar opposites to engage in one explosive battle of beliefs. Attorney Clarence Darrow (Tracy) faces off against fundamentalist leader William Jennings Bryan (March) in a small Tennessee town where a teacher has been brought to trial for teaching Darwinism. Let the trial begin...and watch the sparks fly!

Judgment at Nuremberg

Dramatization of the 1948 trials of four Nazi officials for war crimes.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: NR
Release Date: 7-SEP-2004
Media Type: DVD

Director Stanley Kramer's socially conscious 1961 film tackles the subject of the war crime trials arising out of World War II in an earnest and straightforward fashion, exploring the consciousness of two nations as they struggle to come to terms with the aftermath of the Holocaust. Spencer Tracy plays the American judge selected to head the tribunal that will try the suspected war criminals. As he sets about his task, he must confront the raw emotion felt by the German people, and his own notions of good and evil, right and wrong. Regarded as a classic, this stark rendering of one of the most pivotal events in the 20th century features a stellar cast including Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift, Marlene Dietrich, a young William Shatner, and Maximillian Schell, who won an Oscar for his role as counsel for the defense for those charged with crimes against humanity. Judgment at Nuremberg is important viewing not only for the history of film, but for the history of modern times. --Robert Lane

The Secret of Santa Vittoria

Simple hearted wily Italians band together to outwit occupying Nazis.System Requirements:Running Time: 139 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY/CLASSICS Rating: PG-13 UPC: 883904106357 Manufacturer No: M110635

On the Beach

Stanley Kramer's 1959 antiwar movie looks like everything Kramer did: subtle as a car wreck but undeniably affecting. Gregory Peck plays a submarine commander looking for survivors in Australia after a nuclear holocaust. Ava Gardner is among them and, somewhat improbably under the circumstances, becomes his love interest. Fred Astaire and Anthony Perkins are among the characters awaiting death from the gradual spread of radiation from the north. One might scoff at Kramer's implicit finger-wagging about nuclear politics in this mad, mad, mad, mad world, but it is hard to stop watching this compelling drama all the same. --Tom Keogh

The war is over. Nobody won. Only the inhabitants of Australia and the men of the US submarine Sawfish have escaped the nuclear destruction and radiation. Captain Dwight Towers (Gregory Peck) takes the Sawfish on a mission to see if an approaching radiation cloud has weakened, but returns with grim news: the cloud is lethal. With the days and hours dwindling, each person confronts the grim situation in his or her own way. One (Fred Astaire) realizes a lifetime Grand Prix ambition,another (Ava Gardner) reaches out for a chance at love. The final chapter of human history is coming to a close... From acclaimed director Stanley Kramer (The Defiant Ones, Inheritthe Wind) and screenwriter John Paxton comes this spectacular movie landmarka film masterpiece with a message that will resonate as long as the world has the power to self-destruct at its own fingertips.

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (40th Anniversary Edition)

Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn (who won the Academy Award® for Best Actress for her performance) are unforgettable as perplexed parents in this landmark 1967 movie about mixed marriage. Joanna (Katharine Houghton) the beautiful daughter of crusading publisher Matthew Drayton (Tracy) and his patrician wife Christina (Hepburn) returns home with her new fiance John Prentice (Sidney Poitier) a distinguished black doctor. Christina accepts her daughter's decision to marry John but Matthew is shocked by this interracial union; the doctor's parents are equally dismayed. Both families must sit down face to face and examine each other's level of intolerance. In GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNERdirector Stanley Kramer has created a masterful study of society's prejudices.System Requirements:Run Time: 107 Mins.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA Rating: NR UPC: 043396211001 Manufacturer No: 21100

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn (who won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance) are unforgettable as perplexed parents in this landmark 1967 movie about mixed marriage. Joanna (Katharine Houghton) the beautiful daughter of crusading publisher Matthew Drayton (Tracy) and his patrician wife Christina (Hepburn) returns home with her new fiance John Prentice (Sidney Poitier) a distinguished black doctor. Christina accepts her daughters decision to marry John but Matthew is shocked by this interracial union; the doctors parents are equally dismayed. Both families must sit down face to face and examine each others level of intolerance. In GUESS WHOS COMING TO DINNER director Stanley Kramer has created a masterful study of societys prejudices.System Requirements:Approx. 109 Min. Color StereoFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: COMEDY Rating:  UPC: 043396054196 Manufacturer No: 05419

Spencer Tracy's last performance was in this well-meaning, handsome film by Stanley Kramer about a pair of white parents (Tracy and Katharine Hepburn) trying to make sense of their daughter's impending marriage to an African American doctor (Sidney Poitier). The film has been knocked over the years for padding conflict and stoking easy liberalism by making Poitier's character in every socioeconomic sense a good catch: But what if Kramer had made this stranger a factory worker? Would the audience still find it as easy to accept a mixed-race relationship? But there's no denying the drawing power of this movie, which gets most of its integrity from the stirring performances of Tracy and Hepburn. When the former (who had been so ill that the production could not get completion insurance) gives a speech toward the end about race, love, and much else, it's impossible not to be affected by the last great moment in a great actor's life and career. --Tom Keogh

The Defiant Ones

This 1958 variation on Huck Finn's adventures with Jim finds a white convict (Tony Curtis) chained to a black convict (Sidney Poitier) as they both escape their captors. With each man literally stuck with the other, racial conflicts take a back seat to survival. Directed by Stanley Kramer (Guess Who's Coming to Dinner), the film's obvious consciousness-raising is mitigated by a pair of raw performances from the stars, memorable appearances by Lon Chaney Jr. and Cara Williams, and Kramer's strong storytelling abilities. The award-winning script was cowritten by blacklisted writer-actor Nedrick Young. --Tom Keogh

Nominated* for nine Academy AwardsÂ(r), including Best Picture, The Defiant Ones broke new ground by delivering its message of racial tolerance through a fast-moving blend of action and suspense. It remains "a raw, powerful film that is as exciting as it is moving, real and literate"(Variety). Joker Jackson (Tony Curtis) and Noah Cullen (Sidney Poitier) are two convicts on the run. Escaping from a Southern work gang, the two men are bound together by an unbreakable iron chain and separated by an unbridled hatred towards each other. Relentlessly pursued by a posse and bloodhounds, they put aside their differences to survive. But when a lonely woman (Cara Williams) breaks their chain and deliberately sends Cullen to certain death, Jackson must decide what's more important: saving Cullen...or saving himself. *1958: Best Picture, Actor (Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier), Supporting Actor (Theodore Bikel), Supporting Actress (Cara Williams), Director,Story and Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen (won), Cinematography (won), Film Editing

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

Stanley Kramer's sprawling 1963 comedy about a search for buried treasure by at least a dozen people--all played by well-known entertainers of their day--is the kind of mass comedy that Hollywood hasn't made in many years. (Another example from around the same time is Blake Edwards's The Great Race.) After a number of strangers (including Milton Berle, Jonathan Winters, Sid Caesar, Phil Silvers, and others) witness a dying stranger (Jimmy Durante) identify the location of hidden money, a conflict-ridden hunt begins, watched over carefully by a suspicious cop (Spencer Tracy). The ensuing two and a half hours of mayhem has its ups and downs--some bits and performers are certainly funnier than others. But Kramer, who is better known for socially conscious, serious cinema (Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?), is in a mood for broad comic characterization, and some of his jokes are so intentionally obvious (Durante literally kicks a bucket when he dies), they'd have a place in Airplane! Watch for lots of cameo appearances, including Jerry Lewis (who had called Kramer and asked him why he hadn't been invited to participate). --Tom Keogh

Ship of Fools

SHIP OF FOOLS is set on a German ocean liner during the Nazi regime of the 1930's. In the high class section are several well-to-do people while below deck are a horde of sugar field workers returning to Spain after a season of work in Cuba. The ship is a hot bed of disillusionment prejudice anddelusions of grandeur.System Requirements:Running Time: 149 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA/CLASSICS Rating: NR UPC: 043396106321 Manufacturer No: 10632

An all-star drama in the grandest of Hollywood traditions, Ship of Fools is now a glossy, Oscar®-nominated relic from a bygone era, when actors were valued more than special effects. "Prestige" is the keyword in describing this high-toned Stanley Kramer production, and the passage of time brings the pros and cons of Kramer's filmmaking into stark relief. In adapting Katherine Anne Porter's acclaimed novel set aboard a German liner sailing from Mexico to Germany, Kramer and screenwriter Abby Mann (who shifted the story from 1931 to 1933) attempted to display the oncoming horror of Nazi Germany in microcosm, as represented by the ship's colorful variety of passengers, including maritally combative artists (George Segal, Elizabeth Ashley); a has-been baseball star (Lee Marvin); a pair of illicit lovers (Oskar Werner, Simone Signoret); a despondent divorcée (Vivien Leigh, shockingly garish in her final film); and several others who play symbolic roles with varying degrees of obviousness. Porter's potent themes are somewhat deflated by Kramer's pompous, heavy-handed approach, but powerful acting remains. Having lost what relevance it had in 1965, Ship of Fools is still fascinating as a showcase for well-drawn characters (including an observant dwarf, played by the late, great Michael Dunn) whose inner lives and outward interactions reflect a turbulent world irrevocably headed for war. --Jeff Shannon