Universal Classics

[Big Magilla]

I hate to complain, we get so few "classic" films on DVD, but this Carole Lombard collection is a huge disappontment. Only two of the six films in the set, Hands Across the Table with Fred MacMurray and Ralph Bellamy and The Princess Comes Across with MacMurray and a slew of great character actors, are good. The William Powell starrer, Man of the World, is unidstinguishable from scads of other talky early talkies, Love Before Breakfast, too farcical for its own good and We're Not Dressing and True Confession truly bizarre.

We're Not Dressing is about a spolied heiress shipwrecked on an uninhibited island with singing sailor Bing Crosby, drunken souse uncle Leon Errol, singing best friend Ethel Merman, gigolo Ray Milland and Burns & Allen as themselves. With that cast it should be fun. It isn't.

The grotesque True Confession has Lombard getting rich as a presumed murderess who gets off scot free thanks to the machinations of her lawyer-husband, again MacMurray. There are three - count 'em - three absolutely dreadful over-the-top performances by Edgar Kennedy as a dumb cop, Porter Hall as a nasty D.A. and worst of all, John Barrymore, a mere three years after he and Lombard sparkled in Twentieth Century, as a drunk who wiggles his ass and makes fart noises with a balloon.

[Big Magilla]

Universal will also be releasing a Cecil B. DeMille collection on May 23rd which will include The Sign of the Cross, Four Frightened People, Cleopatra, The Crusades and Union Pacific.

The gem of the collection is Four Frightened People (Claudette Colbert, Herbert Marshall, Mary Boland, William Gargan), which has never been released on video and is seldom shown on TV.

[Big Magilla]

I suspect there will be a second Dietrich collection that will include The Song of Songs, Desire and Angel as well as Shanghai Express and Dishonored.

It should accompany releases of such other "glamour" queens as Barbara Stanwyck, Jean Arthur and Claudette Colbert, all of whose early work is now owned by Universal.

[Eric]

Pity the Dietrich collection won't include Shanghai Express or Dishonored.

[Big Magilla]

Universal, which owns the rights to pre-1950 Paramount films, as well as their own catalgoue, has been slow to release its bounty of film classics, but when they do, they release them in bulk at reasonable prices. This is from The Digital Bits:

Universal has announced a trio of new "Glamour Collections" for 4/4 (SRP $26.98 each): Carole Lombard: The Glamour Collection will include Hands Across the Table, Love Before Breakfast, Man of the World, The Princess Comes Across, True Confession and We're Not Dressing. Marlene Dietrich: The Glamour Collection will include Blonde Venus, The Devil Is a Woman, Flame of New Orleans, Golden Earrings and Morocco. Finally, Mae West: The Glamour Collection will include Go West Young Man, Goin' to Town, I'm No Angel, My Little Chickadee and Night After Night.

I'm puzzled by the inclusion of My Little Chickadee, which is already available as part of the W.C. Fields collection. She Done Him Wrong, which is the only other Mae West title to have been released on DVD albeit as a single disc, would have been a better choice.