November 2009: TV History

by John Gallagher

TV HISTORY: The latest sets of collectible Walt Disney Treasures showcase a true Baby Boomer’s delight – the first two seasons of ZORRO (1957-59). The live-action series made a star out of Guy Williams, doing double duty as foppish Don Diego de la Vega and the masked freedom fighter, based on the Johnston McCulley stories immortalized on the silver screen by Douglas Fairbanks in 1920 and Tyrone Power in 1940. ZORRO: THE COMPLETE FIRST SEASON is introduced by Leonard Maltin, with 39 pristinely restored and remastered episodes, and the rare two-part ZORRO: EL BANDITO and ZORRO: ADIOS EL CUCHILLO from the 1960 anthology show WALT DISNEY PRESENTS. Extras include a Zorro pin, a postcard picture of Williams, and a documentary on Zorro’s literary and cinema history. In ZORRO: THE COMPLETE SECOND SEASON, Maltin presents another 39 episodes, plus ZORRO: POSTPONED WEDDING and ZORRO: AULD ACQUAINTANCE from the 1961 WALT DISNEY PRESENTS and two featurettes. The second set has a different pin and picture; both six-disc collections feature over 18 hours of content and is highly recommended for fans of swashbuckling adventure.

THE BARBARA STANWYCK SHOW (1961) returns from obscurity in a new collection from E1 Entertainment. The success of THE LORETTA YOUNG SHOW inspired this anthology series, with a different story introduced each week by Stanwyck, who, like Young, fully embraced television as the glory days of the studio system were fading to black. Each episode features Stanwyck, with guest stars including Lee Marvin, Milton Berle, Ralph Bellamy and Vic Morrow. Jacques Tourneur (CAT PEOPLE, CANYON PASSAGE, NIGHT OF THE DEMON) directed five stories, Robert Florey (MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE, co-director of Chaplin’s MONSIEUR VERDOUX) two, with other directors on the series including classic TV greats David Lowell Rich, Don Medford and Richard Whorf. There are 16 shows in total, including the pilot, ranging across all genres, reflecting the versatility that made Stanwyck such an important and beloved movie star, with an unwavering standard of excellence in script, direction, production and performance. Robert Osborne provides an essay about the program, and there’s a wonderful clip of Stanwyck accepting her Emmy Award for Best Actress for the show. THE BARBARA STANWYCK SHOW: VOLUME 1 is a real surprise and many thanks to E1, The Archive of American Television, and the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Foundation for restoring these shows.

Koch Vision has also been releasing some fantastic vintage TV product. From 1953 to 1959, pioneer journalist Edward R. Murrow conducted informal interviews from CBS in New York for his PERSON TO PERSON show, remote feeds in which his subject (s) were taped in their own homes. The results were fascinating, revealing, personal dialogues with some of the 20th Century’s greatest figures. EDWARD R. MURROW: THE BEST OF PERSON TO PERSON, hosted by CBS news anchor Bob Schieffer, collects 32 original interviews; the list says it all: Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, Milton Berle, Marlon Brando, Sid Caesar, Carol Channing, Dick Clark, Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, Bette Davis and Gary Merrill, Sammy Davis Jr., Kirk Douglas, Billy Graham, Andy Griffith, Oscar Hammerstein, Helen Hayes and Charles MacArthur, Charlton Heston, Gene Kelly, John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Jerry Lewis, Liberace, Art Linkletter, Sophia Loren, Dean Martin, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, Norman Rockwell, Eleanor Roosevelt, Frank Sinatra, Elizabeth Taylor, Danny Thomas, Esther Williams, Jonathan Winters, and my favorite, Marilyn Monroe with producing partner Milton Greene and his wife Amy. This three-disc set with more than seven hours of programming is essential viewing.

Koch Vision (in association with The Archive of American Television) has also released STUDIO ONE ANTHOLOGY, seventeen restored dramas broadcast live during TV’s Golden Age from 1949 to 1956. New York was the center of production, a beehive of creativity for actors, writers, directors and crews. The six-DVD set includes TWELVE ANGRY MEN, WUTERING HEIGHTS, DINO, 1984 and JULIUS CAESAR, with casts featuring Jack Lemmon, Art Carney, Charlton Heston, Lee Remick, Eva Marie Saint, Sal Mineo, Leslie Neilsen and Elizabeth Montgomery in some of their first professional gigs, and two teleplays by Rod Serling years before THE TWILIGHT ZONE. The many extras include a seminar on the series at the Paley Center for Media, an excerpted interview with frequent director Paul Nickell, an historical overview/rediscovery featurette, and a 52-page booklet with contributions from Gore Vidal and classic TV historian/author Larry James Gianakos (www.kochvision.com).

UNIVERSAL: Sam Raimi’s DRAG ME TO HELL (2009) is the best horror movie in years, a return to his roots in the EVIL DEAD trilogy. One of our greatest genre directors (A SIMPLE PLAN, THE QUICK AND THE DEAD, the SPIDER-MAN movies) with an unerring, visual comic-book style and the ability to make us jump out of our seats with organic scares, Raimi and brother Ivan’s screenplay is a supernatural thriller par excellence. Alison Lohman (an 11th hour replacement for Ellen Page) gives a physically grueling performance as the victim of a gypsy curse, and the director pours on the chills, thrills and spills for a tight 99 minutes, with a spectacular prologue and an effective surprise ending. The DVD includes the original theatrical version, and an unrated director’s cut, along with production video diaries hosted by co-star Justin Long that explore the making of the stunt and effects-laden picture in penetrating detail.

BRUNO (2009), Sasha Baron Cohen’s follow-up to last year’s smash hit BORAT, is fleetingly hilarious, often disgusting, and frankly doesn’t stretch the short vignettes from his cable series DA ALI G SHOW into acceptable feature-length the way he did with his previous movie. In other words: for fans only. The DVD includes deleted, alternative and extended scenes. The deleted sequences do include some truly funny bits with LaToya Jackson, white supremacist Mel Lewis, and various models and designers at NYC Fashion Week, short episodes that prove BRUNO works best in small doses. Cohen and director Larry Charles also provide audio commentary revealing how they set people up for their faux documentary.

Universal Studios Home Entertainment pays long overdue tribute to the wonderful Claudette Colbert, one of the greatest stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age, with THE CLAUDETTE COLBERT COLLECTION, part of the studio’s acclaimed Backlot Series. The set spans Colbert’s Paramount years with five selections from 1933-1943, and a sole Universal entry from 1947. THREE-CORNERED MOON (1933) is often hailed as the first screwball comedy (though I’ll put my vote in for Gregory LaCava’s 1932 THE HALF-NAKED TRUTH instead). Directed by Elliott Nugent, co-starring Richard Arlen and Mary Boland, it’s the story of the wacky Rimplegar family of Brooklyn who are hit hard by the Depression; in reality only the first part of the picture is really comedic. MAID OF SALEM (1937), directed by Frank Lloyd (MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY), is a lavish, well-done period picture set during the 1692 witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts, with Colbert accused of witchcraft by young Bonita Granville. In 1935, after winning the Best Actress Oscar on loan to Capra and Columbia for IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT (1934), Claudette was teamed at her home studio Paramount with newcomer Fred MacMurray in two exceptional and successful Wesley Ruggles romantic comedies, THE GILDED LILY and THE BRIDE COMES HOME. MAID was their third co-starring effort (two more, NO TIME FOR LOVE and THE EGG AND I) are included in this set). Ruggles also directed I MET HIM IN PARIS (1937), a frothy, rarely shown romantic comedy set in Switzerland, with Melvyn Douglas and Robert Young vying for La Colbert’s attentions. Mitchell Leisen directed Colbert in three Paramounts – MIDNIGHT (1939), ARISE, MY LOVE (1940), and this collection’s NO TIME FOR LOVE (1943), a pleasant if implausible romcom with Claudette playing a photo journalist covering a tunnel construction project, falling for engineer MacMurray. The pair were teamed again for Chester Erskine’s hugely popular THE EGG AND I (1947), playing a husband and wife who buy a chicken farm. It’s good, warm rural fun, famous as the film that introduced Marjorie Main and Percy Kilbride as Ma and Pa Kettle, spawning their own series of a dozen films. Pick up this collection for your favorite vintage film fan and encourage Universal to keep opening their vaults (which includes 700 Paramount pictures from 1929 to 1949).

SONY: While the notion of Woody Allen and Larry David teaming up for Allen’s WHATEVER WORKS (2009) certainly sounds promising, David’s character is simply too unlikeable to watch for very long; this kind of role has usually been played by Woody, who was able to bring an amiability to his trademark schnook. Evan Rachel Wood does shine, however, as the Southern runaway taken in by David’s obnoxious over-educated intellectual. She’s clearly one of the best of her generation, as witnessed by her work in THIRTEEN, DOWN IN THE VALLEY, KING OF CALIFORNIA, ACROSS THE UNIVERSE, and THE WRESTLER.

Thanks to Sony for some of the best archival releases of the year -- the Screwball Comedy Collection, last month’s Sam Fuller set and now COLUMBIA PICTURES FILM NOIR CLASSICS I. Five noir greats are collected here, ranging from the well known to the obscure, and all beautifully restored. Fritz Lang’s brilliant THE BIG HEAT (1953) is the centerpiece, a brutal revenge drama with Glenn Ford as a cop avenging the murder of his wife (Jocelyn Brando, sister of Marlon) by gangsters headed by slick Alexander Scourby and unforgettable henchman Lee Marvin (this is the movie in which Marvin scalds moll Gloria Grahame with a pot of boiling coffee). Arthur Franz stars as THE SNIPER (1952), directed by Edward Dmytryk, an early Stanley Kramer case study of a murderous psychopath, evocatively filmed on location in San Francisco. Genre genius Phil Karlson helmed 5 AGAINST THE HOUSE (1955), a heist caper about five Midwestern college students who attempt to rob a Reno casino; Guy Madison, Brian Keith, Kerwin Matthews and Kim Novak star. THE LINEUP (1958), inspired by a popular 50s TV series is directed by another genre great, Don Siegel, a terrific crime movie with Eli Wallach outstanding as a cold-blooded hit man, also filmed on location in Frisco.  MURDER BY CONTRACT (1958) is another assassin saga, a favorite of Martin Scorsese, with the killer played this time by a pre-BEN CASEY Vince Edwards. This is the least known of these titles, a taut low-budget thriller directed by Irving Lerner (an uncredited second unit director and editor on Kubrick’s 1960 SPARTACUS, supervising editor on Scorsese’s 1977 NEW YORK, NEW YORK). Special features include Scorsese on MURDER BY CONTRACT, THE SNIPER and THE BIG HEAT (Scorsese included a clip from this film at the climax of MEAN STREETS), Michael Mann on THE BIG HEAT, Christopher Nolan on THE LINEUP, commentary by noir expert Eddie Muller and novelist James Ellroy (L. A. CONFIDENTIAL) on THE LINEUP, and commmentary by Muller on THE SNIPER.

MILESTONE: Kent Mackenzie’s forgotten yet seminal independent film THE EXILES (1961) has been painstakingly restored by the good folks at Milestone Film & Video. The movie is an absolute revelation. USC graduate Mackenzie enlisted a group of urbanized Native Americans in the Bunker Hill section of Los Angeles and created a documentary-style narrative fiction drama that is as important sociologically as it is cinematically. Clearly inspired by the Italian neo-realist movement, THE EXILES presents a compelling portrait of a people exiled from their tribal lands in the Southwest and transplanted into an L. A. ghetto. The two-disc set has an abundance of extras including four short films by Mackenzie, a variety of shorts about the rough Bunker Hill neighborhood, and papers from Mackenzies’s archive (www.milestonefilms.com).

MUSIC: On July 18, 2009, Paul McCartney performed the first concert at the New York Mets’ new Citi Field stadium, a baseball throw from the site of Shea Stadium, where Paul, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr played the historic 1965 Beatles show. Universal Music has released GOOD EVENING NEW YORK CITY and has included all 33 songs from the concert on two CDs and a DVD. McCartney/Wings highlights are represented (“Jet,” “Band on the Run,” “My Love,” “Live and Let Die”) but the set is top heavy with crowd-pleasing Beatles classics, including “Drive My Car,” “The Long and Winding Road,” “Eleanor Rigby,” “Back in the USSR,” “Something,” “I’ve Got a Feeling,” “Paperback Writer,” “A Day in the Life/Give Peace a Chance,” “Let It be,” “Hey Jude,” “Day Tripper,” “Lady Madonna,” “I Saw Her Standing there,” “Yesterday,” “Helter Skelter,” “Get Back,” and “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” GOOD EVENING NEW YORK CITY is clearly a must for McCartney/Beatles aficionados.

BOOKS: Manny Farber (1917-2008) was one of our most important and innovative film critics, with a wide-ranging influence on generations of film writers. The Library of America has just published what is the must-buy cinema book of the year, Farber on Film: The Complete Film Writings, edited by Robert Polito. Farber’s insightful, lively, revelatory writings are collected in a staggering 864 pages, arranged chronologically from early unpublished reviews for The New Republic and The Nation through his late 70s Film Comment articles (including an outstanding piece on Scorsese’s Taxi Driver). Setting new standards in film criticism, Farber championed Val Lewton, Raoul Walsh, William Wellman, Howard Hawks and Anthony Mann, among others, long before the advent of the auteur theory. Above all, Farber is simply a joy to read.

SOFTWARE:  Adobe keeps updating their revolutionary, award-winning Photoshop and Premiere products; the latest are Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 and Adobe Premiere Elements 8. Creating photos, making movies, using photos and videos together in slideshows – this is the best photo/editing program on the market. The latest incarnation enhances organization of pictures and video; recomposes photos; color corrects your pictures; allows comprehensive previews for adjustments; fixes shaky footage, color and lighting problems; balances audio elements; adds all kinds of graphics and animation; and enables you to share your work on the web with online album templates. As always, it’s extremely user-friendly, even for non-tech types!

                                                     John Gallagher

                                          jgmovie@gmail.com