Walt, Even Randomer

Disc 4

Juno and the Paycock, 1930, b&w. Barry Fitzgerald, Maire O’Neill, Edward Chapman, Sidney Morgan, Sara Allgood. 1:25.

I honestly don’t know what to make of this one—a family drama set in Ireland during The Troubles, occasionally punctuated by gunfire, but with seemingly little going on except steady drinking and broad Irish accents. The print’s decent, the soundtrack’s very noisy, and the picture—well, I found it hard to watch all the way through without nodding off and, indeed, may have missed part of the second quarter. (It doesn’t help that people’s heads were frequently cut off—which could be a remastering problem, but otherwise reflects really poor cinematography.) I clearly wasn’t the target audience—I read “taut” in an IMDB review and, well, just didn’t see it. Of course, I haven’t read the drama it’s based on. Charitably, $0.75.

Sabotage, 1936, b&w. Oskar Homolka, Sylvia Sidney, Desmond Tester, John Loder. 1:16.

I’d already seen this—but that was on a movie set that came with a failed DVD magazine, not one of the 50-classics sets. So I watched it again. Probably just as well: This print was better quality, although the sound’s damaged. A movie theater owner—”Verloc,” played by Homolka—is also a saboteur in London; his American wife doesn’t suspect anything, but the greengrocer’s assistant next door to the theater is actually a Scotland Yard agent. At the climax, he manages to get her much younger brother blown up in act of supposedly delivering a film canister and package (on a slow-moving London bus)—and shows the banality of evil in his attempts to justify or ignore his actions to her. (One IMDB review sees

Not great Hitchcock, but it is a thriller. I was not at all enthralled last time around (particularly because the movie was supposed to be DOA, which sounded like a much better movie). This time? It’s taut and well-directed; I’ll give it $1.50.

The Skin Game, 1931, b&w. C.V. France, Helen Haye, Jill Esmond, Edmund Gwenn, John Longdon, Phyllis Konstam, Edward Chapman. 1:17.

An odd one, dealing with property conflicts and morality. One family’s been established in a rural area for generations and has tenant farmers as well. A brash upstart businessman buys out a neighbor and moves to oust their tenants—and then moves to buy another property that would effectively surround the family, vowing to build factories to make their lives miserable. In the process of an auction that the upstart wins (paying too much for the property), the businessman’s daughter-in-law faints after one of those special effects that Hitchcock liked so much he’d repeat it until you were sick of it (the face of someone else at the auction keeps swooping towards her as though it was a ghost). Turns out the daughter-in-law Has A Past.

All turns out badly for almost everybody involved. The noble family head has abandoned his principles to save his view (and, although he’d forgotten entirely about them, his tenants); one life’s been lost; a whole family’s been driven out of the area.

This one moves right along, with a fair amount of suspense. It has some of the awful cinematography of some other early Hitchcock sound pictures, with heads cut off and the like, and there are problems with the soundtrack—at times making dialogue nearly unintelligible. Still, I’ll give it $1.25.

Number Seventeen, 1932, b&w. Leon M. Lion, Anne Grey, John Stuart, Donald Calthrop, Barry Jones, Ann Casson, Henry Caine, Garry Marsh. 1:03.

This is a strange one, slow in parts, heavy on comic turns and problematic identities, with some thrilling aspects—and in the end seeming, well, odd. There’s a vacant house that may be a safe house, a corpse who isn’t a corpse, a squatter who’s a pickpocket but also honest as the day is long, a bystander who’s not all that innocent, a neighbor girl who—well, I never did figure that one out. A remarkable, if long, climax set on both a speeding train and a speeding bus, hammering home the lesson that it may be a bad idea to kill the entire crew of a locomotive if you don’t know how they work.

In the end, this seemed more heavy-handed comedy than deft thriller—and there are a few more of the “heads? Who needs to see heads?” shots. The sound’s not great. Odd though it is, it’s always interesting, so I’ll give it $1.25.

The Man Who Knew Too Much, 1934, b&w. Leslie Banks, Edna Best, Peter Lorre, Frank Vosper, Hugh Wakefield, Nova Pilbeam. 1:15.

The last movie in the set is also one of the best, ending on a high note. A thoroughly satisfying thriller with a consistent plot, reasonable complexity, a seemingly-incidental bit near the beginning that turns out to be crucial to the finale, and Peter Lorre as a villain. (What? You expected maybe a romantic lead?)

The plot involves a possible political assassination and a child held for a form of ransom. Other than that, there’s little reason to discuss the plot—and good reason not to, if you haven’t seen this one. Occasional problems with sound in a generally-solid print are all that reduce this to $1.75.

Bonus: Hitchcock Trailers,

But the last movie wasn’t the last thing on the set. Instead, although not listed on the disc label, there’s this remarkable bonus—19 trailers for Hitchcock movies, nearly an hour in all, with 19 chapter marks in case you want to find a specific one. (Given Mill Creek’s usual practice of having four chapters per film, this is special treatment.)

Quite a range of trailers (including one for the remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much), including a few narrated or introduced by Hitchcock—including a six minute item for Psycho that includes maybe three seconds of footage at the end. None of the trailers are for the films on this set. Excluding uncredited war movies and Hitchcock’s TV stuff, IMDB shows 32 Hitchcock movies later than the ones in this set, so it’s a broadly representative collection, including most of his most famous movies. Good sound, good picture, good fun. Even though it’s not a movie at all, it’s easily worth $1.00.

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So, there it is: The last disc of a four-disc set. But it’s not the end of the story. That involves three more pieces:

1. The total “value” of the set–that is, adding up all the dollar amounts. I’ll include that in the whole-set essay in a forthcoming Cites & Insights–not the August issue (that includes the first half of the Comedy Classics set), but probably September (unless there’s too much other stuff).
2. What you’d need to spend to get these pictures on other DVDs–or whether that’s even possible. (In the case of the trailers, I doubt it, unless you purchased all 19 flicks…) I’ll also include that in the whole-set essay.
3. Something that might be posted on my serious blog: Whether this set is “legitimate”–that is, whether these movies are in the public domain. That turns out to be, potentially at least, a complicated question, although the fact that an established business with a street address, with goods readily available through major distributors, hasn’t been served with a C&D notice is some indication…

Meanwhile, I realize that I’ve never seen all that many Hitchcock movies. We’ll add a couple of more recent ones to our Netflix queue. I’m guessing I’ll never be a Hitchcock fanboy–he was clearly a superior director some of the time, but there’s flaws a-plenty in much of his earlier work. No big surprise: Few directors have anything close to a spotless record.

Made for Each Other, 1939, b&w. John Cromwell (dir.), James Stewart, Carole Lombard, Charles Coburn, Lucile Watson, Eddie Quillan. 1:32.

At times, this movie seems like a comedy in the classical sense—a play in which some people survive until the end. There’s more drama than light-hearted humor, although there are a few funny scenes. James Stewart’s a young New York lawyer (who apparently makes almost no money) who goes to Boston to take a deposition and, while he’s there, meets and weds a beautiful young woman (Carole Lombard). His mother lives with them and treats her badly; his boss (and a nefarious associate) prevents him from going on a honeymoon cruise; he has no money but almost always has at least one servant (and there’s that cruise thing). Then there’s a baby; they desperately need more money and he should be named a partner, but instead he meekly accepts a 15% pay cut…and soon, it’s New Year’s Eve and the baby contracts a rare pneumonia. Along the way, one standing joke is that the head of the lawfirm (Charles Coburn, who does a fine job) can only hear you if he opens his jacket and you yell into his pie-plate-size hearing aid microphone.

Laughing yet? It gets funnier. The only way to save the baby is with a new serum—but there’s none in New York, Johns Hopkins sent all of theirs (apparently the only supply anywhere) to Salt Lake City; the latter can spare a little, but there’s a terrible storm—and a pilot wants $5,000 to fly it back. We get several minutes of a (different) pilot in an open-air plane flying through storms and even bouncing off a mountainside at one point, then the plane catching fire and the pilot parachuting with serum package in hand. Of course, everything works out—the baby’s saved, the father gets his partnership, the mother comes around, and all of the happy ending is in the last two minutes.

The print’s pretty good, the sound’s fine, the acting is also fine. Not exactly a laughathon, but well made and enjoyable. $1.25.

That Uncertain Feeling, 1941, b&w. Ernst Lubitsch (dir.), Merle Oberon, Melvyn Douglas, Burgess Meredith, Alan Mowbray, Eve Arden. 1:24

Jill Baker (Merle Oberon) keeps getting the hiccups and is persuaded to see a psychoanalyst (Alan Mobray). She becomes disillusioned about her husband (Melvyn Douglas) and meets a strange but interesting pianist (Burgess Meredith), who she becomes involved with.

The husband plans to use psychology to get her back. After all sorts of incidents, it works—but it’s a very lightweight movie. Still, Burgess Meredith does a fine job, as do Oberon and Douglas—and the young Eve Arden (with her instantly-recognizable voice) has a small but significant role. Here’s the problem: For one reason or another, I didn’t review this right after seeing it—and after four days, I’d almost completely forgotten the plot and the performances. “Lightweight” may overstate it. Still, and despite some soundtrack damage, I’ll give it $1.25.

The Great Rupert (aka A Christmas Wish), 1950, b&w. Irving Pichel (dir.), Jimmy Durante, Terry Moore, Tom Drake, Frank Orth, Sara Haden, Queenie Smith, Chick Chandler. 1:28 [1:25].

A movie about vaudeville, the virtues of local investing, passing along good fortune—and a dancing squirrel. The squirrel’s trainer has to depart a basement apartment for lack of funds, sets the squirrel (The Great Rupert) free to roam, and runs into another vaudevillian family, the Amendolas, father played by Jimmy Durante, who’s fled their last residence for similar reasons and wangles their way into the apartment without paying in advance. Meanwhile, the landlord finds out that a worthless gold mine he’d been conned into investing in is paying off, to the tune of $1,500 a week for his share. He won’t deal with banks and doesn’t trust his wife or musician son, so he stuffs the bills into a hole in the wall near the floor.

But the space behind the hole is now occupied by The Great Rupert, who finds these bills distracting, so he sweeps them away—right into the hole in the roof of the basement apartment, where they come fluttering down just after Mrs. Amendola prays for a little money. And the next week—after they’ve spent the money, between paying off debts, buying shoes for their beautiful daughter, and lending the rest to people in similar circumstances—she prays again, and another $1,500 comes fluttering down.

So there’s one plot. Others involve Amendola’s daughter (who’s a harpist), the son upstairs (who likes her—and it’s mutual—and plays tuba: he composes a piece for “two forgotten instruments” to play with her), a show-biz type who also likes her (and keeps taking her out for meals, but gets nowhere), the son getting conned into a worthless oil investment, and eventually simultaneous visits from the local police, IRS and FBI, all wanting to know where the family’s getting all the money. Meanwhile, as the landlord notices, “and Amendola” keeps showing up on various small businesses (because Mr. Amendola keeps lending or investing in them), all of which seem to be doing very well.

There’s more—but I shouldn’t give it all away. The ending is, well, as it should be but also more than a little peculiar. All in all, a fun movie, but the print’s severely damaged, with missing chunks of dialogue and visual damage. Given the damage, I can’t give this one more than $1.00.

Something to Sing About, 1937, b&w. Victor Schertzinger (dir.), James Cagney, Evelyn Daw, William Frawley, Mona Barrie, Gene Lockhart, Philip Ahn, Kathleen Lockhart. 1:33 [1:27].

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner. It’s easy to think of James Cagney as a tough guy, but he was also a first-rate hoofer and pretty good singer, and those talents shine in this romantic comedy. He’s Terry Rooney (or, rather, that’s the character’s bandleader name—his real name’s Thaddeus McGillicuddy), and bandleader/singer who’s been invited to Hollywood for a movie. He leaves, getting engaged to his singer/girlfriend just before getting on the train.

In Hollywood, the studio head makes sure that Rooney never realizes the extent of his screen chemistry and talent, trying to keep him from wanting a good contract. Rooney assumes he’s a disaster (and gets in a fistfight on set, which turns out to be staged to get a better film sequence) and has his fiancé fly out to Hollywood, where they get married and, with the picture wrapped, take off on a tramp steamer to the South Pacific. (This seems to be an era in which the train is the preferred way to go coast-to-coast, but you can fly if you’re in a hurry.)

Well, sir. The movie’s a big hit, Rooney’s a Big Star. When he returns, the studio exec wants to sign him up for seven movies (years?), but the contract says he has to be single. They come up with a gimmick: His wife will use her real married name (Mrs. McGillicuddy), live next door, and act as his personal assistant. Which is fine, but a female star makes a play for him, which an agent pushes on the press as a hot new romance—and his wife gets tired of it all.

That’s more of the plot than you really need. Let’s just say it all ends up as a romantic comedy should, with a few great song-and-dance numbers along the way (including on the tramp steamer, where they’re the only passengers and most of the show is crew entertaining one another, flawed a bit by the clearly visible accordion, guitar and harmonica sounding a lot like a string-and-brass ensemble). The print’s pretty good with a little damage. (One oddity is revealed in the IMDB trivia area. I noted that the studio was Grand National, which I knew only for B westerns—and it turns out this movie broke the studio financially.) I’ll give it $1.50—not great, but a winner.

Easy Virtue, 1928, b&w, silent (with possibly-related music). Isabel Jeans, Franklin Dyall, Eric Bransby Williams, Robin Irvine, Violet Farebrother, Frank Elliott. 1:29.

Another silent, another non-thriller. This time, the focus is on a woman who becomes a symbol of “easy virtue.” First, she’s divorced by her apparently-abusive husband because she might have spent some time without chaperone with a painter as he was preparing her formal portrait. This is scandalous—particularly because the painter died and left her his estate. Did she actually commit adultery? No indication, and it seems not to matter.

She goes off to the South of France to hide. She meets and falls in love with another Englishman, and it’s mutual. He doesn’t want to know her background. They marry. He brings her back to his family’s country estate. And his mother, a wildly overdrawn harridan, just despises her, with a passion. (His mother also keeps pushing his former girlfriend in his way…) The husband is, unfortunately, a mama’s boy; the mother manages to turn him against his wife even before The Truth Emerges.

As you’d expect, the mother eventually figures out that Larita, the wife, is Larita, The Scandal. The father thinks that’s all irrelevant. The old girlfriend, remarkably, wants to make things right between the couple. And there’s a climax with a houseparty at which Larita’s first husband shows up. It all ends with an uncontested second divorce ending with paparazzi (they weren’t called that then) facing her down and her telling them to go ahead and shoot, because there’s nothing left to kill.

It’s melodrama. The mother overacts so badly as to be ludicrous—she’s the Wicked Witch of the Manor, but in this case triumphant. Larita mostly smokes and doesn’t seem to have a wide range of expression. There are nice touches, however. The price that follows is generous—for true Hitchcock completists only, but it is a good print. $1.00.

Jamaica Inn, 1939, b&w. Charles Laughton, Maureen O’Hara, Leslie Banks, Marie Ney, Robert Newton. 1:48/1:38

Hitchcock’s fan letter to Cornwall—or not so much. A young woman (O’Hara) newly orphaned travels to live with her aunt at the Jamaica Inn on the Cornish coast—but the coach won’t even stop there, instead leaving her off at the local squire’s mansion down the road. He takes her to the inn, and the real plot begins.

The innkeeper (who has no guests) has a pirate gang that deliberately causes shipwrecks (by hiding the nearby light), loots the ships and kills any survivors. But, as it turns out, the innkeeper reports to…well, if you’ve seen many older Westerns, you can guess: The most respectable local citizen, which is to say, the squire. There’s also suspicion among the cutthroats because they don’t seem to be getting as much loot as they should, and the innkeeper manages to turn that suspicion on to the newest member—who, as it turns out, is from The Authorities, trying to crack the case. We find that out after they hang him, the young woman rescues him (don’t ask), they make their way to the squire’s house…

Lots more plot, a fair amount of suspense, loads of bad-weather scenery and a mixed ending. Charles Laughton overplays the self-satisfied squire to the extreme, but that might be right for the occasion. It’s no masterpiece, but it’s worth $1.50.

The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog, 1926, b&w, silent (unrelated musical score). Marie Ault, Arthur Chesney, June, Malcolm Keen, Ivor Novello. 1:23.

The box says this is Hitchcock’s first thriller. It certainly has some Hitchcock trademarks—in-camera special effects, for example. Otherwise, “early Hitchcock” may be the most important thing to say. That, and that this is a mediocre-to-poor print. Frankly, I almost gave up part way through: Between repetition and other effects probably meant to create a mood but done in a way I found maddening, and the visual quality, it barely seemed worthwhile. Some of the plot devices were obvious devices, the kind of thing a spoof movie would highlight.

The basic plot: “The Avenger” is shooting fair-haired women every Tuesday (or every other Tuesday) evening in London, following a geographic pattern. A lodger shows up at the home of one fair-haired “mannequin” (model? entertainer?) (acted by “June,” no other name given) with one apparent aspect of the killer…and the girl is sort of involved with a high-handed police detective who’s assigned to the case. As things progress, we get stupidity on all sides, a lynch mob and a happy ending. Thrilling? Well, maybe I’m not the right audience. I found it mostly annoying and wildly overacted (but, of course, it’s a silent). I’d only recommend this for completists, and given the print quality I’ll say $0.75.

The Ring, 1927, b&w, silent (with apparently-unrelated orchestral music). Carl Brisson, Lillian Hall-Davis, Ian Hunter, Forrester Harvey, Harry Terry, Gordon Harker. 1:56.

The plot’s simple enough. We start in a carnival (lots of carnival fun scenes), part of which is a challenge for anyone who can stay in the ring more than a round with a boxer billed as “One Round” Jack Sander. Handsome man charms the ticket-taker (who, as it turns out, is the boxer’s fiancée) and cold-cocks Sander—and later reveals that he’s the champ, and if Sander’s good enough, the champ will hire him as a sparring partner.

That happens, and the couple marries—and it’s also obvious from the start that the wife has eyes as much or more for the champ as for her husband. Husband fights his way up the card. Along the way, we get typical early Hitchcock special effects, a wedding-party scene with Sander’s trainer (Gordon Harker, one of Hitchcock’s early regulars) chugging beer until he passes out, a much later party scene in Sander’s flat with crazed flapper dancing (would they really be playing a phonograph record, piano, and ukulele simultaneously while gesticulating as though they’d gone mad?) and more.

I don’t know quite what to make of this one. Extended boxing scenes. Over-acting from the hero (and others, but he’s got the wild eyes also typical of silent Hitchcock). Another movie for lip-readers. A fairly good print most of the time. Some gratuitous racism (including the n-word in one of the few titles, there for no reason at all). Not a thriller as such, and really not much of a plot. Hitchcock wrote as well as directing. (I’m fascinated by the extent to which IMDB reviewers who love Hitchcock can turn any of his pictures into a flat-out masterpiece.) This version appears to be missing quite a few minutes. Call it $1.00.

Young and Innocent, 1937, b&w. Nova Pilbeam, Derrick de Marney, Percy Marmont, Edward Rigby. 1:23.

Sort of a thriller, sort of a romantic comedy. Guy sees drowned woman from cliff, runs down to see what’s what, runs off to find help—just as two women stroll along and see her (strangled with a raincoat belt), and assume he was fleeing the scene. Police make the same assumption, find that the woman had purchased a story from him (he’s a writer), turn this into “victim was paying off suspect,” and assert they have a fool-proof case, enough so no further investigation is required.

He escapes, going out to try to find the raincoat (he knows where he lost it) and prove he’s innocent by returning with raincoat and belt (what? you can’t buy another raincoat and substitute belts? they’re uniquely identifiable?). The daughter of the chief constable gets involved, driving him hither and yon after first finding him annoying. Long scene in a posh hotel with a Gentleman of Low-Cost Leisure putting on the ritz. In the end, only a wildly implausible situation saves the day. There’s never any sort of resolution as to why the murder happened or why the suspect was framed: As a murder mystery, it’s a washout. (Also, I find it hard to accept that having a band perform in blackface for no reason at all was so normal in 1937 that it doesn’t even deserve comment in most reviews.)

Good mostly for the humor, although I suppose it’s suspenseful enough. Enjoyable on the whole. I’ll call it $1.00.

Million Dollar Kid, 1944, b&w. Wallace Fox (dir.), Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Gabriel Dell, William ‘Billy” Benedict, Louise Currie, Noah Berry, Herbert Heyes, Johnnny Duncan. 1:05.

Yet another East Side Kids flick—but one of the more heartwarming, if you can deal with the premise of this large band of young adults with no jobs, no visible means of income but also a firm opposition to any actual criminal activity. (“Young adults” gets to be more of a stretch over time…)

In this one, the Kids hear about muggings taking place on their turf that could damage their reputation. They encounter one of them: three punks taking on an older man. They fight off the punks, rescue the man…and find his wallet in the trash, money intact. Then the cops pick them up, but the man comes to the police station and identifies them as his saviors. He convinces them to drop by his house (there’s a nice little class-warfare scene involving the butler) where he shows them a well-equipped gym and invites them to use it. They also meet his daughter, a looker who Muggs falls for instantly.

Rest of the plot? One son’s a pilot overseas; the other seems a little lost (and spends his time in a pool hall filled with unsavory characters). The daughter’s semi-engaged to a Frenchman who seems a little off…and her father’s managed to alienate most of the servants so she’s not sure who can cook or serve at a party she wants to throw. The Kids provide the cook and servant, and along the way discover that the Frenchman’s a grifter with a phony accent (and reveal that to her in the right way), the son was one of the muggers (but he’s mostly confused, not really bad), and manage to convince the son to clean up his act. All sweetness and light, and occasionally amusing—and for a change the Kids get along pretty well with the cops. Unfortunately, the sound track is noisy and there are just enough missing frames to be annoying. $0.75.

Bowery Blitzkrieg, 1941, b&w. Wallace Fox (dir.), Leo Gorcey, Bobby Jordan, Huntz Hall, Keye Luke and the usual gang. 1:02 [0:59]

This time the plot concerns Muggs being sent to reform school on a phony charge, getting out as long as he’s training (as a Police Athletic League rep) for a boxing tournament, claims by a local hood that he’s getting Muggs to throw the bout and lots more. The culmination: Muggs donates blood to save his pal (that’s all involved with the bout-throwing; it’s complicated and has to do with some of the less ethical or more stupid ESKs) on the day of the Big Bout…but all comes out OK in the end, of course.

That’s a short summary because I didn’t write it up right after seeing the film, and there was really no long-term memory of the movie. It was OK, better than some, and—as with most of these—really for people who love Leo Gorcey and the gang. For that crowd, I’ll give it $1.

Three Broadway Girls (aka The Greeks Had a Word for Them), 1932, b&w. Lowell Sherman (dir.), Joan Blondell, Madge Evans, Ina Claire, David Manners, Lowell Sherman. 1:19.

Not an East Side Kids picture—instead, a comedy about three gold-diggers, whose methods are tipped off by an opening title, noting that half of the women in the world are working women—and the other half are working the men. It’s amusing, and all three women are interesting characters, but it’s also a bit forced: One of the three repeatedly undermines any chance for happiness or love by the others, and you’d think the other two would freeze her out at some point. But that would be serious, and there’s nothing serious about this flick. It’s amusing, it’s distinctly amoral in a pre-Code way, and I’ll give it $1.25.

Swing High, Swing Low, 1937, b&w. Mitchell Leisen (dir.), Carole Lombard, Fred MacMurray, Charles Butterworth, Jean Dixon, Dorothy Lamour, Anthony Quinn. 1:32 [1:22]

Comedy? Really? Maybe a musical romantic “comedy,” but even that’s a stretch. Maggie, working on a cruise ship, meets Skid (Fred MacMurray), just getting out of the army, while on her way through the Panama Canal locks. She winds up with him in a nightclub, there’s a brawl, they wind up in jail, she’s stranded… He turns out to be a great trumpet player.

Events ensue. They get married. He gets a great offer to play in New York—and he’ll send for her later. He’s a big hit. Except that another woman, the singer in New York, Anita Alvarez (Dorothy Lamour), makes sure he’s always broke and, when Maggie takes a ship to New York on her own, makes sure he doesn’t get the telegram to meet her…and takes him back to her room.

Maggie gets a divorce. He falls apart completely—even though he’s really never spent much time with her and has always treated her badly, as far as we can tell. It all ends well, I guess—but I never quite see why she doesn’t just dump this self-centered schmuck and go marry the cattleman who clearly loves her. Maybe I’m just not romantic enough. Maybe the missing 10 minutes is important.

Ah, but it has Lombard, MacMurray, Lamour and more—there’s also Charles Butterworth doing a fine turn as a piano player and others doing good work. Well photographed, reasonably well acted, some good music. As a comedy, though, it’s a washout. Charitably, $1.25.

Rich and Strange, 1931, b&w. Henry Kendall, Joan Barry, Percy Marmont, Betty Amann, Elsie Randolph. 1:32 [1:23].

I’m not sure what to make of this, but I do know that without Hitchcock’s name, I’d write it off as a pointless, sketchy picture with mostly unlikable characters and a plot that makes little sense. It involves a married middle-class couple (with a blowhard husband) of little means who suddenly acquire an inheritance. They go on a cruise, in which he’s terribly seasick for many days and she befriends a dashing Commodore (Marmont). When he gets better, he’s befriended by (and takes a liking to) a supposed princess. (There’s an absurd “old maid” also [Randolph], interfering with everybody.) The princess is a gold-digger and after digging all his gold (there wasn’t that much), departs. The woman should leave with the dashing man who clearly loves her and will take care of her, but she’s devoted to her unfaithful, boorish husband. Then, on their return voyage (on a lesser vessel), there’s some sort of accident, they’re trapped in their cabin and abandoned, but they get out and are picked up by a Chinese junk. And wind up back at home.

Hitchcock makes heavy use of title cards as transitions. I found them reminiscent of silents but a poor substitute for some flow, in a movie that feels like a set of isolated incidents. Some IMDB reviewers call this a dark comedy, but I found nothing particularly amusing, unless it’s the annoying overplayed “old maid.” All in all, this was more irritating than enjoyable, but Hitchcock completists might enjoy it. At best $0.75.

The Thirty-Nine Steps (aka The 39 Steps), 1935, b&w. Robert Donat, Madeleine Carroll, Lucie Mannheim, Godfrey Tearle, Peggy Ashcroft, Wylie Watson. 1:26 [1:23].

Now this is more like it. A proper thriller that plays fair with the viewer and is good, solid, well-directed entertainment. I won’t give you the whole plot just in case you haven’t seen this one, but it involves a female spy-for-hire, a mysterious alien protagonist (he’s Canadian!), espionage within Britain by foreign agents, police misunderstandings (quite understandable ones), feats of prodigious memory, and a lot of Scotland. You get murder (but no gore), shooting, trains and bridges, political humor, music halls…and charming innkeepers.

I could probably poke tiny holes in the plot, but no more so than any good thriller. The acting’s fine—low-key, which suits the plot. The print’s not perfect, but pretty good, and this one’s a classic–an easy $2.

Secret Agent, 1936, b&w. John Gielgud, Peter Lorre, Madeleine Carroll, Robert Young. 1:26.

In this delightful romantic comedy… OK, it’s an espionage thriller—although there is some comedy and some romance. Set in World War I, it involves a hush-hush British spy organization (but with “R” rather than “M” as the head), a returning soldier who’s conveniently “died” in the press as he’s being recruited to do a little counterespionage, a beautiful woman posing as his wife…and Peter Lorre being Peter Lorre, as over the top as you’d expect.

Well directed, lots of interesting camerawork and segues, well acted, suspenseful. The final third is action-packed, with much of it on a train (always great for thrillers). The climactic point seemed a bit contrived, but only a bit. Another classic, and another easy $2.

Champagne, 1928, b&w, silent (unrelated music). Betty Balfour, Gordon Harker, Jean Bradin, Ferdinand von Alten. 1:26 [1:25].

Another very early silent (this time with wholly unrelated classical music, some of it Elgar). The madcap daughter of a wealthy New Yorker flies off in his plane to meet up with her boyfriend (the father does not approve, thinking him a golddigger) who’s on a cruise to France. She gets over to the ship, apparently abandoning the plane in the process. They argue (he feels that she’s calling all the shots), he’s seasick a lot (Hitchcock seems to love mal de mer), she meets a sinister man…

Next, we’re in Paris, where she’s entertaining a bunch of young flapper-types, changing gowns every two minutes, generally living it up. Her father shows up and tells her he lost all his money; they’re penniless. Let’s see…she goes to sell jewels and has the case full of them (which she’s dangling like any other purse) snatched. The young man shows up, with a good job, and offers to take care of her and her father but she refuses. She’s sharing a dismal little apartment with her father. The sinister man shows up from time to time—especially in the club where she gets a job as a hostess.

It all winds up with a romantic-comedy ending (the father was just teaching her a lesson, the young man’s really OK, the sinister man…well, I won’t reveal that one). All in all, I found it OK as a bit of fluff. Not much more than fluff, though. There’s a problem shared with other Hitchcock silents: If you don’t lip read, you’re missing a lot; there are relatively few intertitles. Let’s say $1.00.

Blackmail, 1929, b&w. Anny Ondra, Sara Allgood, Charles Paton, John Longden, Donald Calthrop, Cyril Richard. 1:24.

At first, I wondered whether this was a mislabeled silent: There’s no real dialog for the first eight minutes, although lots of conversations take place for lipreaders in the crowd. I guess that’s a mannerism, as is the frequent use of old ahooga car horns in the music track. (Checking IMDB, this was apparently his first talkie, which may explain it.) The plot: Scotland Yard detective’s girlfriend is a little bored with him, goes walking with an artist, winds up in artist’s flat, stabs (and kills) artist when he misreads her intentions. She walks around in a seeming daze for some time—actually, she seemed to be in a daze throughout the picture, or maybe she’s just a very subtle actress.

Scotland Yard investigates the murder but come up with nearly nothing—and her boyfriend is one of those investigating. He removes a glove from the scene that he thinks (correctly) belongs to her. Next thing we know, a stranger who was nearby the murder scene is walking in to the shop where she works (and lives?), aiming to blackmail them based on having the other glove. But the stranger’s an ex-con, and…well, he flees, he dies in the chase, she wants to confess but there’s nothing to confess to, and the movie ends. Sorry if these are plot spoilers, but it isn’t much of a plot.

It also isn’t, to my mind, much of a thriller, despite some Hitchcockian visual devices. The actors seemed remarkably flat and uninteresting, the blackmail peril never really developed, she was—in fact—acting in self-defense and… I guess you have to be a Hitchcock fan. (Reading the first few of many enthusiastic IMDB reviews, it does seem clear that I’m insufficiently fond of early Hitchcock.) I’ll give it $1.25.

A note about copyright claims

It has been suggested that this set may not be legitimate, as some early Hitchcock films entered the public domain in the U.S. and later, in a remarkable case of repressive international law, were returned to copyright retroactively. All I know is this: Mill Creek Entertainment, which has been in business for some years and has a physical address and set of officers listed on its website, continues to produce and feature this set; Amazon and other vendors continue to sell it.

All four movies on this disc star the East Side Kids in various permutations. My tolerance for repeated doses of these charming JDs is limited, so I interleaved Hitchcock and East Side Kids movies.

Clancy Street Boys, 1943, b&w. William Beaudine (dir.), Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Bobby Jordan, Noah Beery. 1:29/1:06 [1:05]

Muggs’ late father used to brag to his brother that he had seven kids, slightly exaggerating from the one. Since then, the brother—a wealthy Texan—has been sending seven birthday checks each year. Now the brother’s coming to town… And Muggs’ uses the Kids to act as his brothers (and one sister). A slick local hoodlum somehow uses this as an excuse to kidnap the Texan. The kids save the day.

Not terrible, but nothing special. Huntz Hall in drag (as the sister) may be a highlight. I guess you have to be a fan. Some missing clips. Charitably, very charitably, $0.75.

Pride of the Bowery, 1940, b&w. Joseph H. Lewis (dir.), Leo Gorcey, Bobby Jordan, Kenneth Howell, Mary Ainslee, Bobby Stone, David Gorcey, Kenneth Harlan. 1:01 [1:00]

This time, Muggs wants to train as a boxer for the Golden Gloves—and his pal sets up a way to get him fresh air and lots of training. How? By signing the whole gang up for a Civilian Conservation Corps camp. After initial issues, Muggs and the gang take to the situation fairly well (the $22 a month going back to his mom doesn’t hurt). The movie involves boxing and honor, and portrays Muggs as a prince among kids, maybe too much so.

I liked this one better. Maybe it was the outdoors or the filming (which seemed more natural than some, although the print has some damage and a persistent flare in a lower corner). Maybe it was the plot and the acting. It certainly wasn’t a laugh-fest, but it was more enjoyable than I expected. As a one-hour second-feature, I’ll give it $1.

Smart Alecks, 1942, b&w. Wallace Fox (dir.), Leo Gorcey, Bobby Jordan, Huntz Hall, Max “Slapsie Maxie” Rosenbloom, Gale Storm. 1:07 [1:05]

The plot this time: The Gang wants uniforms to play baseball, but has no money. Older brother (or friend?) of one of them drops by in suit, offers money—but they assume it’s “dirty money” and they don’t take dirty money. Turns out they’re right—he’s a lookout for bank robbers. One thing leads to another, there’s a scene in which one of the robbers (Rosenbloom) grabs nearly half of a cake that a nurse (sister of one of the gang, played by Gale Storm) baked for the gang and Muggs retaliates by spiking extra frosting (and adding alum to coffee).

The rest has to do with loyalty in various ways. Probably fine for what it is, although unless you’re a big fan of Muggs’ malapropos and gestures, most of the humor is in the cake-doctoring scene. The print’s good and it’s over an hour, but I can’t give it more than $1.

Mr. Wise Guy, 1942, b&w. William Nigh (dir.), Leo Gorcey, Bobby Jordan, Huntz Hall, Billy Gilbert, Guinn Williams, Joan Barclay. 1:10 [0:58].

It’s clear that the only way I could make it through four of these is by breaking them up with early Hitchcock flicks—but it also works the other way around. Still, it’s a relief to get to the last one; if only I wasn’t aware that the next disc has two more.

Let’s see. There’s one good comic moment, very near the beginning: The gang are outside a bakery, a brick comes through the window, the cops show up and start to haul them in—and the baker says “nah, I’m just clumsy, that was me.” After that, the plot revolves around an escaped convict who supposedly drowned trying to swim to shore, a “stolen” truck that the gang gets blamed for—and all get sent to the reformatory, where they have spiffy uniforms and seem happy enough, a robbery gone bad that winds up with an entirely innocent older brother of one of the gang (who was forced to drive a getaway car) convicted of murder…and, of course, the gang saving the day.

I can’t think of anything particularly good or bad to say about this one. It just seems like more of the same old, same old, and you really have to love Leo Gorcey to much care about this group of semi-juvenile semi-delinquents. Charitably, $0.75.

How do these all relate? Only in that none of them deserves a full post, I’m not inspired to start the next C&I essay just yet (or my next print-magazine column), I’m really not inspired to flesh out the PoD workshop proposal…so it’s another random musings post.

UPDATE: Portion of post, and two comments, removed; I don’t need the hassle.

Dollhouse

Didn’t do it for us. [Remainder of commentary removed. Life is too short.]

Checkpoints

Since I don’t do video editing (or download videos) and not a whole lot of photo work anyway, the 250GB drive on my main computer (the cheapo Gateway notebook) has way more than enough space–heck, I’d never come close to filling the 80GB drive on my 5-year-old XP system. It’s OK by me that Gateway partitioned off 11GB or so as a recovery drive (E:), and I’ve become inured to the 10s of gigabytes that Vista and the various programs require.

But I did note that the drive was down to something like 139GB free out of 221GB–still at least twice as much room as I’m likely to need, but still…I figure I’ve got less than 15GB of stuff, almost all of that MP3 versions of my music collection.

So, since I use the McAfee Security Center, which includes disk maintenance tools, I thought I’d run the QuickClean process, which checks for and lets you delete various temporary and unneeded files–including, notably, System Restore Points. I probably run this two or three times a year…

And now I have 173GB free. Why? Oh, a gigabyte or so of cached files, a few registry entries (no real space, but worth cleaning up periodically), perhaps a hundred megabytes or so of various temporary files and internet cruft…and 31+GB of system restore points!

Since it’s been weeks since I’ve made any system change that could require a restore, this seems safe enough. I’m a little surprised that it was this much space–I don’t really do all that many things that should set restore checkpoints. It might be friendlier of Vista to provide a rolloff point, so maybe only the 10 most recent restore points are saved…but, I guess, hard disk space is now so cheap and plentiful that it’s not necessary.

How much space is used by system restore checkpoints on your system? Do you care?

Sales

A brief update on sales of The Liblog Landscape 2007-2008 and other books may be in order.

For February, so far, three copies of Liblog (all Lulu, none since 2/12); two of Academic Library Blogs (both CreateSpace/Amazon); one of Public Library Blogs (CreateSpace/Amazon); one of Balanced Libraries (CreateSpace/Amazon).

One commenter asked whether I’d sent out review copies of Liblog Landscape. I haven’t yet; it’s an expensive and slow process, frankly, and experience with First Have Something to Say (lots of review copies, a grand total of one print review) isn’t encouraging.

Why do I mention this? Not as a plea for you to go buy these things–but as a checkpoint in desires to do further research. If I was doing a new (single) study to update the two library blog projects, I’d do it every differently–fewer blogs, more analysis, and probably a questionnaire to as many blog “owners” as I could locate to get “the other side”–known readership figures, success stories, etc. I might also do something similar if I continued the Liblog project (which is nearer & dearer to my heart).

But either of those would involve a lot of work and inherently produce book-length results. It’s not just the oddity of spending that much time for a possible few dozen book sales, it’s the fact that the results are only reaching a few dozen people or libraries–which hardly makes it worthwhile. That’s not a plea; it’s simply reality. I’m good at ignoring reality, but maybe not that good. Sponsorship might solve some of these problems, but that would imply the existence of sponsorship.

[And yes, that is also one reason I have yet to move forward with a possible "How to do short-run books good for your library and community" workshop: It's another effort-vs-results quandary. A different one, to be sure.]

No common thread

Not much ties these together. Such is life, sometimes.

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Secret bonus for people who read this far: While Balanced Libraries isn’t a big success (it has yet to reach 300 copies), it’s been reasonably well received and reviewed. If I conclude that it really is silly to continue any of the blog tracking, I’ve been toying with doing a second edition–one that would incorporate Library 2.0 and “Library 2.0″ as a standalone (but indexed) section, take some new approaches elsewhere, and update the whole thing. Comments welcome–even if (particularly if?) they amount to “Don’t waste your time.” I’m not going to make any decisions all that rapidly…

Last night, Chuck was back on with a new episode. Which I only learned because the local paper had a sidenote about it (it wasn’t flagged “new” in TV Guide, and we don’t watch a whole lot of NBC shows).

In 3D.

So, where do you get glasses? The NBC Chuck site sayeth not…just that the whole episode is in 3D (but you can watch it later, on the NBC site, in either 3D or 2D).

Other sites led me to believe that most grocery stores should have them. So, off to one that should. They said they’d had a stack, but they were all gone…oh, wait, one sheet of four pairs. (You can’t get one pair or two pairs, just four at a time.) Apparently, the Big Deal was a superbowl ad in 3D, not a half-hour TV show.

Up to this point:

• NBC does spectacular job of not saying where these glasses would be available–I mean, not on the website itself? Hello?
• Actual distribution mechanism doesn’t work all that well.
• Focus of distribution is a Monsters Vs. Aliens ad, not a 30-minute show.

So we tried the glasses. I wear eyeglasses all the time. My wife usually doesn’t (not when watching TV, for example). We have a first-rate, 11-year-old, CRT-based TV (a 32″ Sony XBR). We were getting a pretty decent signal.

My wife tried the glasses for about a minute, then stopped…dealing, instead, with the slightly strange color and focus issues of a 3D picture viewed in 2D. Why?

• The glasses darkened the picture so much that she could barely see at all out of one eye and mostly saw blurs out of the other.
• The glasses were so uncomfortable that she didn’t want to deal with them.
• Because of the first issue, she never really saw 3D effects.

I tried them a little longer, but eventually gave up as well.

• Yes, I saw the 3D, and it was in fact far more natural than most previous efforts.
• But the picture was too dark to enjoy, and I didn’t think 3D really added anything to the show.
• The glasses were not, shall we say, great when used in front of regular glasses, and hopeless behind regular glasses. If I don’t wear my regular glasses, I’d see nothing but blur…

After the show, I realized who would find the picture more acceptable: Owners of LCD TVs with “torch mode” settings (what you usually see in the showroom), bright enough to cause headaches under normal conditions. Torch mode might balance the darkness of the 3D lenses to yield a plausible picture. (And if you got a headache, you wouldn’t know whether it was torch mode- or 3D-induced.)

All things considered, I look forward to seeing Chuck in 2D next week…

What? You really expected a meaningful post with a title like that? Sorry.

Broadway Limited, 1941, b&w. Gordon Douglas (dir.), Victor McLaglen, Marjorie Woodworth, Dennis O’Keefe, Patsy Kelly, Zasu Pitts, Leonid Kinskey, George E. Stone. 1:15.

As a Hollywood starlet (Woodworth) and her producer [Kinskey] (and his secretary [Kelly]) get ready to go from a triumphant premiere in Chicago to one in New York—on the express train, the Broadway Limited—the producer gets the bright idea that the starlet would be more appealing with a baby. A railroad engineer [McLaglen] (who’s wooing the smart-mouth secretary) manages to come up with such a baby. The rest of the movie takes place on the train, in sleeping cars, dining car and lounge car (and, of course, the engineer—deadheading so he can take a vacation—has his very own sleeping room).

You see, a child has been kidnapped in Chicago and the kid looks a lot like the “adopted” baby. Oh, did I mention that a handsome but poor young doctor [O'Keefe], who would like to be wooing the starlet, is also on board? I didn’t quite understand the relationship of Myra Prottle [Pitts] to the others, but she’s as funny as you’d expect Zasu Pitts to be. The plot moves forward with that vigor that lots of little compartments on a moving train can give a screwball romantic comedy, with people bouncing in and out of rooms and many misunderstandings—and it’s a pretty good comedy, well played by all involved. Thoroughly enjoyable; not laugh-a-minute stuff, but very good. A few flaws, but the print’s generally fine. (Filmed with the cooperation of the Pennsylvania Railroad using real equipment and trackside shots. Apparently, this flick is loved by railroad fans for its authenticity.) $1.50.

The Stork Club, 1945, b&w. Hal Walker (dir.), Betty Hutton, Barry Fitzgerald, Done DeFore, Robert Benchley, Bill Goodwin. 1:38.

A little old man (Fitzgerald) loses his hat in the wind, and it winds up in the drink—and so does he. A hatcheck girl (Hutton) at the Stork Club, swimming nearby, saves him from drowning. At that point, he looks like a down-on-his-luck type. She gets him a job at the Stork Club as a busboy, which doesn’t work out.

But he’s not all that down-and-out. He’s wealthy, and instructs his lawyer—the wonderful comic writer, Robert Benchley, in a small and relatively straight part—to see to it that the girl’s taken care of, without mentioning him. Next thing we know, she’s in a 12-room penthouse apartment and has purchased two mink coats and a variety of high-end dresses…and, oh yes, has invited the poor old guy to move in (he takes one of the many rooms).

Now, her boyfriend shows up—he’s a would-be bandleader just out of the service—and makes the natural assumption on seeing a hatcheck girl in an uptown 12-room penthouse with fancy clothes and an old man hanging about. Oh, did I mention that she’s also a would-be singer, and a very good one at that?

You can guess most of the rest of the plot. The band can’t get work for a couple of weeks, so she has them all move into the other 12-room flat on the penthouse level. The wife who the old man told to go away four years ago wants him back—and he wants her back, but won’t admit as much. The hatcheck girl begins to assume that the Stork Club’s boss is the mysterious benefactor. Everything, of course, gets straightened out by the end. Well done, well played, decent print, a little lightweight. No belly laughs, but an enjoyable comedy of errors with quite a few songs. $1.25.

The Amazing Adventure (aka The Amazing Quest of Ernest Bliss), 1936, b&w. Alfred Zeisler (dir.), Cary Grant, Mary Brian, Peter Gawthorne. 1:20/1:02 (1:02 here).

A charming little movie, one that’s a full-fledged feature despite its short length (apparently 19 minutes shorter than the original). Cary Grant plays Ernest Bliss, a wealthy young London socialite, inherited wealth, who feels lousy. A physician informs him that he feels lousy because he doesn’t do anything and is sort of worthless; this physician also runs a clinic for the less fortunate. The physician says Bliss could never last a year on his own devices, without being propped up by his fortune. Bliss makes a bet: 50,000 pounds to the clinic if he fails to do just that, an apology and handshake if he succeeds.

The rest of the movie is about the socialite’s quest to make it on his own, starting with nothing but one suitcase of clothes and a five-pound note. Along the way, he meets and courts a young woman who’s not wealthy either—and who almost rejects him at the last moment because she needs money to care for her sister, and that makes money worth more than love.

All well played, and, come on, it’s a romantic comedy: Of course it all works out in the end. The print is OK, but the sound is distorted whenever there’s music—which, given that portions of the film are set either in a high-class nightclub or in a charming little everyday-folks restaurant that has music, is a real problem. Given that, I’ll say $1.25.

My Love for Yours (aka Honeymoon in Bali), 1939, b&w. Edward H. Griffith (dir.), Fred MacMurray, Madeleine Carroll, Allan Jones, Akim Tamiroff, Helen Broderick, Osa Massen. 1:35 [1:40].

Attractive, independent woman (Carroll) who’s executive VP of a department store, makes lots of money, has no room for marriage or kids—and whose somewhat older female friend (Broderick) notes the regret of being too independent too long. Opera-singer (Jones), dear friend of the VP who’s loved her from afar but knows she doesn’t love him. American man (MacMurray) who lives in Bali shows up, young girl in tow, and immediately falls for her—but he’s skeptical of the whole independent-woman theory. And there’s a young woman from Bali who’s wealthy and wants this guy for her very own. Oh, and there’s a wise middle-aged window washer (Tamiroff, in a good if small role).

Need I bother with the rest of the plot? No, I thought not. It’s a romantic comedy. The print’s fine. The sound’s fine. The acting’s OK (Fred MacMurray is a little too brash for his own good, but that’s in keeping.) And…well, it’s mildly amusing, no more than that. (There’s also a supposedly south-seas song with a one-line lyric repeated over and over, and it’s truly irritating.) A bit of a disappointment. $1.25.

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Next up, five more Hitchcock movies (all movies this time, two of them silent, I probably won’t start on them until after OLA).

But then there’s a problem–and maybe I’ll need to deal with it alongside the Hitchcock movies. To wit, Disc 5 of the Comedy Classics set is All East Side Kids–all four movies (and, I think, two on Disc 6) as well.

I’ve been watching the movies on these sets in order…and plan to continue. But four East Side Kids movies in a row… Hmm. Maybe two Hitchcock, two East Side Kids, three Hitchcock, then two more East Side Kids…

This four-disc DVD set is part of Mill Creek’s “Legends Series” and also a 20-movie pack. In this case, that means 18 early Alfred Hitchcock movies, all b&w, including six silents, and two episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. But there’s an extra: 55 minutes of trailers from movies throughout Hitchcock’s career. This isn’t some beautifully-remastered retrospective—but you’re getting 18 movies, two TV episodes and an hour of trailers for $8.50 or so. As with some other newish Mill Creek sets, this one uses double-layer single-sided discs rather than double-sided single-layer discs, so the labels are a lot easier to read.

Disc 1

Starting the first disc, I see significant upgrades in the presentation. The menu is DVD-like, not stills with menu. Alfred Hitchcock directed all of these, so I don’t repeat that.

The Lady Vanishes, 1938, b&w. Margaret Lockwood, Michael Redgrave, Paul Lukas, Dame May Whitty, Cecil Parker, Linden Travers, Basil Radford, Mary Clare, Emile Boreo. 1:37.

What a start for a set! I’d only vaguely heard of this first-rate movie before.

The movie begins in some Central European hotel, where too many people are stuck because the train’s snowed in. Lots of comedy with two stuffy English types forced to share the maid’s room, three apparently-wealthy young women having a final get-together before one of them goes off to marry someone with title and money who she may not love, and a young man rehearsing some heavy-footed folk dancers in the floor over the young woman’s room. Oh, and the former nanny for some children, headed back to England.

Next day, they all head for the train—but the nanny’s mislaid a bag and the young woman helps her out. In the process, a flowerbox pushed off a ledge from above, and quite clearly intended for the nanny, strikes the young woman on the head, not quite knocking her out…but she’s swooning as the train pulls away. She and the nanny find themselves sharing a first-class compartment with an Italian couple and a stern older woman; at one point, the two go off to have tea, using a special tea the nanny carries with her, and there’s interaction with the Britishers.

All of which is just setup—because when the young woman wakes from a nap, the nanny’s gone. And everybody says she was never there.

Well now. What a start for an intriguing plot, enriched by a psychiatrist on the train (picking up a patient at the next station to take to a hospital), the young man’s presence in the crowded, smoky coach car, and lots more. Throw in a nun in high heels, magic boxes, adultery, two people who think cricket is more important than possible abduction, international intrigue… The plot turns out to be intricate, confusing, suspenseful, enriched with humor and the kind of thing that really needs a master director—which, fortunately, it has. There’s even a little romance.

Any time I feel the need to watch the last quarter of a movie on our regular TV because I’m too intrigued to wait another day, I know I’ve got a winner. In this case, the story’s interesting, the direction is…well, Hitchcock, the acting is good, the photography is…well, again, Hitchcock. Great stuff, pretty much a masterpiece and enormously entertaining. Oh, and the print’s about as good as “VHS-quality” ever gets. A winner and a classic: As good as they get. An easy $2.50.

The Farmer’s Wife, 1928, b&w, silent (with music). Jameson Thomas, Lillian Hall-Davis, Gordon Harker, Ruth Maitland. 2:09.

Hitchcock wasn’t always devoted to suspense, not even suspense-crosses such as The Lady Vanishes. This early silent (with music that’s at least partly specific to the movie, since the only vocal portion, a men’s chorus, arrives at the point that a male glee club is starting up in the movie) is pure comedy—a cross between romantic comedy and British rural comedy.

Here’s the plot, in its entirety. A farmer—that is, the master of the farm—is a widower. After his daughter weds (some years later?), he decides he should marry again. With the help of his housekeeper, an attractive younger woman who’s intelligent and has a good personality, he draws up a list of possibilities. Then he goes after each one—basically arriving at their doorstep (or in one case confronting them during a party at another previous possibility’s house), saying he wants to get married again, and telling them they’re the one. Maybe a trifle more of an actual request, but not much. He gets turned down, in some cases with laughter, in one with a hysterical fit (after he says something mean about the woman after she rejects him). Finally, dejected, he comes to realize that he should have been looking closer to home…and finds his wife. (Who, notably, is by far the prettiest, nicest and most suitable of the lot.)

That’s it. Oh, there’s lots of mild comedy turns along the way, including an extended party sequence involving his handyman, who he’s loaned to one of his potential mates to announce people at her party—and the outfit the farmhand’s required to wear, with pants that he can’t close and is holding up all the time. But that’s it. You’ve just read the entire plot, spoilers and all.

I like the more natural pacing of some older movies. I’m not quite sure that this story is enough to hold up for more than two hours, even with Jameson Thomas’ remarkable facial expressions. It’s one of those silents where I wonder whether sight-readers would get a lot more dialogue—or whether all that stuff that doesn’t show up on cards is just nonsense. (One IMDB review says this version was recorded at “the wrong speed,” but that seems unlikely given the natural pace of everything in the film. I should learn never to pay any attention to IMDB reviews…)

Well-directed, to be sure, also well photographed, well acted and generally a good print. But it’s a bit slight to get more than $1.50.

The Manxman, 1929, b&w, silent (orchestral score, not apparently related). Carl Brisson, Malcolm Keen, Anny Ondra, Randle Ayrton. 1:30.

A fisherman on the Isle of Man is best friends with a rising young barrister—and is wooing a barmaid, but her father forbids that because he’s poor. So he goes off to Africa to seek his fortune, telling the barrister to take care of her in the meantime. Which the barrister does, with predictable results—especially once they get a telegram saying the fisherman’s dead.

Well, he’s not. He comes back with his fortune. He marries the young woman (apparently she’s to gutless to say she doesn’t love him, or maybe that’s Just Not Done on the Isle of Man), who turns out to be expecting, albeit not with his child. Some time after the child is born, she leaves and convinces the barrister—on the road to becoming Deemster, which is apparently what the magistrate is called on the Isle of Man—to hide her away. But she pines for more affection, tells the Deemster he has to make a choice, and goes off to take the child away from the fisherman. Who won’t give up the child.

She jumps into the ocean, but is saved—and shows up in court (on the Deemster’s first official day) on the minor charge of attempted suicide. The fisherman also shows up…and the father finally figures out what’s going on. As you might expect, there is no happy ending.

Or maybe that was all that was happening. This silent really requires you to read lips to get much out of it, with titles few and far between. The leads all seem to emote mostly with their eyes, and the barrister and woman both seem perpetually semi-hysterical. I think this is one primarily for Hitchcock completists; it’s not terrible, but it doesn’t have a lot to recommend it. $1.00.

The Cheney Vase (Alfred Hitchcock Presents), 1955, b&w. Darren McGavin, Carolyn Jones, Patricia Collinge, Ruta Lee. 0:25.

Remember when half-hour TV shows actually had 25 minutes and 30 seconds of show? In the case of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, that seems to means a 22-minute pocket drama and lots of time for Hitchcock to do his schtick before and after.

A ne’er-do-well gets canned from his job at a museum and, using a forged letter of recommendation (his girlfriend is the museum head’s secretary), gets a job caring for a disabled elderly art patron and amateur artist—who has The Cheney Vase, which the museum (and a shady German art dealer) wants to buy. He figures he can nab the vase, sell it and take off…and for some reason feels he needs to isolate the woman while trying to find it.

There is, as you might expect, a twist.

Darren McGavin is good in the role, but despite Hitchcock and “golden age” credentials, I thought this was pretty ordinary stuff. The print’s decent. Given that it’s less than half an hour, I’d never give it more than $0.75 unless it was a masterpiece; being generous, I’ll say $0.35.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (Alfred Hitchcock Presents), 1962, b&w. Diana Dors, Brandon De Wilde, David J. Stewart. 0:25

A carnival magician with a devilish appearance steps out of his trailer and sees a person sprawled unconscious over a grating—and discovers it’s not a drunken bum but a sick teenager. Rescued, the teen turns out to be an escapee from some institution, a little simple-minded. He thinks the magician is the devil and his wife (and assistant, in the usual short outfit) is an angel.

She’s no angel; she’s carrying on with a highwire man (and the kid sees them together, but he’s extremely gullible, so…). He watches the magic act and is terrified when the magician’s sawing her in half. Later, she confides to him that the magician really is the devil and that the magic’s in the wand (two conflicting notions, but…). Somehow, this is enough to convince him to kill the magician—and, in what ensues, leave the boyfriend passed out, drunk, in the magician’s trailer, and, eventually, well, if the assistant in the saw trick is unconscious…

There have been many nasty little stories based on the sawing-the-woman-in-half trick. This is one of them. Yes, Robert Bloch wrote it; yes, it’s Hitchcock. But it’s basically a nasty little piece of work. Give the show’s sponsor credit: This episode was deemed unsuitable and never shown as part of the series (until syndication). It should have stayed lost. Not worth a dime, and a blemish on the disc.

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Note: A briefly-present comment, deleted because it makes claims that are legally actionable, may be based on a misunderstanding.

Clearly, much of what Mill Creek Entertainment releases is in the public domain, and I give them credit for mining the public domain in a way that makes items readily accessible. But it’s also 100% clear that never, in any of its materials, does Mill Creek Entertainment assert that everything they release is in the public domain. All of the DVDs include the standard copyright warning (also on the boxes in many cases), and it’s fairly clear that some items from Mill Creek are not from PD materials.

Speak Easily, 1932, b&w. Edward Sedgwick (dir.), Buster Keaton, Jimmy Durante, Ruth Selwyn, Thelma Todd, Hedda Hopper, Sidney Toler. 1:22.

Buster Keaton—but this time in a full-length sound movie (another Buster Keaton Production). He’s a professor, Professor Potts, living a sheltered life and without enough savings to broaden his horizons. He gets a letter saying he’s inherited a fortune and takes off (although the letter’s actually a phony from Potts’ assistant/colleague, designed to get him to take a vacation).

He encounters a truly awful theatrical group, led by Jimmy Durante, and falls for one of its players. With his fortune backing it, the group goes to Broadway. There’s a fair amount of Keaton’s physical comedy and fish-out-of-water character throughout, including Potts’ first encounter with alcohol—and it all winds up in a remarkable 15-minute theatrical sequence, physical comedy of the highest order as the Professor unintentionally converts the sad-sack show into a hit comedy.

All in all, an enjoyable movie, and the last scenes are both funny and well-played. The print and sound track are both fairly good (with a few flaws). $1.75.

Li’l Abner, 1940, b&w. Albert S. Rogell (dir.), Jeff York, Martha O’Driscoll, Mona Ray, Buster Keaton, Edgar Kennedy, Doodles Weaver. 1:18 [1:10].

Some IMDB reviewers felt that Speak Easily was an atrocity as a Buster Keaton movie. I disagree. I’m guessing they haven’t seen this—which, if viewed as a “Buster Keaton movie” (the sleeve lists him as the star), really is an atrocity. He plays Lonesome Polecat, a local Indian (I guess)…and about the best you can say is that he’s only in the movie for a few minutes, and at least he doesn’t have to deal with phony bugeyes, like Pansy ‘Mammy’ Yokum does, or false noses and other absurd prostheses like many other characters.

OK, it’s a comic strip movie. I get that. They do use makeup and whatever to make it look as much like the comic strip as possible—to the point of silliness. And, like some other comic strip movies, it’s…well, just not very funny, unless you’re enormously fond of Appalachian stereotypes. I’ll admit I was never a diehard Li”l Abner fan (actually, I don’t think any local paper ran the strip); maybe if I was, I’d love this flick. Maybe the missing eight minutes are wonderful. As it is…well, the print’s not too bad, so I’ll give it a reluctant $0.75.

It’s a Joke Son, 1947, b&w. Benjamin Stoloff (dir.), Kenny Delmar, Una Merkel, June Lockhart, Kenneth Farrell, Douglass Dumbrille. 1:03.

This movie features a self-caricature, Senator Beauregard Claghorn, a Southern gentleman who hates even the word North and who orates a fine bold streak—but who’s also totally under his wife’s thumb. It also involves a teetotaling Southern ladies’ club and the effects when Claghorn mixes up the grape punch—aided by a little boy who doesn’t really read and pours in several different bottles of “grape juice”—all of it highly alcoholic. The main plots are the relationship between his daughter (a lovely June Lockhart) and her beau, who Mrs. Claghorn doesn’t think is good enough for the daughter (but who he rather takes a liking to), money from his mint farm, and a race for the State Senate in which the incumbent is an old fool totally in the pocket of a gang and Mrs. Claghorn is put up for election by the ladies’ club.

Thing is, it’s funny. Claghorn thinks North Carolina should be Upper South Carolina; he still buys Confederate Victory Bonds. (He’s slender, well-spoken and fairly good looking; this isn’t playing on physical stereotypes. There are also no racial issues involved in the movie.) The title comes from Claghorn’s line whenever he says something, I say, says something he deems funny and gets the usual silent response. The acting suits the movie, the action is internally consistent, it moves right along. The 22-year-old June Lockhart is simply stunning and also good in her role (but then, isn’t she always?). (The Claghorn character as played by Kenny Delmar was a regular on the Fred Allen radio show. The Warner Bros. cartoon character Foghorn Leghorn was a takeoff on Claghorn.) The print and soundtrack are both fine. Since it’s just over an hour, I won’t give it more than $1.25.

Zis Boom Bah, 1941, b&w. William Nigh (dir.), Grace Hayes, Peter Lind Hayes, Mary Healy, Benny Rubin, Richard Gallagher, Roland Dupree, Huntz Hall. 1:01.

This one’s tough. On one hand, it’s a charming one-hour movie about college, family, song & dance, and kids redeeming themselves—and it has some characters playing themselves. The basic plot: A successful singer whose son (under another name and being raised by his grandfather) is attending college on her dime looks into how it’s going, finds the son is a spoiled young man and the college is in trouble, and cuts off his allowance. She buys the local student hangout (there’s some funny stuff here) and, through various means, winds up somehow saving the college and its football team and turning all the spoiled kids into polished entertainers.

So far so good. Decent print. Decent sound—with one big and, in this case, nearly fatal exception: Whenever there’s music, it’s distorted enough that it’s painful. In a movie that relies heavily on musical numbers, including most of the last quarter of the film, that’s a pretty serious flaw. With it, I can’t give this more than $0.75.

East Side Kids, 1940, b&w. Robert F. Hill (dir.), Leon Ames, Dennis Moore, Joyce Bryant, Hal Chester, Harris Berger, FrankieBurke, Dave O’Brien. 1:02 {1:00].

Now I remember one reason I put off buying this set: It has at least five movies with the East Side Kids, and I thought three such flicks in the Family Classics set was at least two too many. We shall see; it looks as though the name East Side Kids covered a lot of different casts.

In this case, there’s the bad-kid-turned-good-cop bit, with him opening up a club to keep the gang off the street—but his friend’s facing execution for something he didn’t do, and if that happens, some of the kids will be completely lost. Meanwhile, there’s another nogoodnik acquaintance involved with a counterfeiting ring. At one point, the copy himself is the suspect.

I guess it’s all vintage East Side Kids—but it’s before Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall and is better than the others I’ve seen. On the other hand, it wasn’t particularly funny. Judged as a comedy, I’m not sure it would get any score at all. Judged as a one-hour flick on its own merits—well, the print’s OK. Being very generous and assuming some folks just love the East Side Kids, $0.75.

I don’t often do link posts, but sometimes…

John Scalzi posted “The 10 Least Successful Holiday Specials of All Time” on December 1, 2004.

He’s linked back to it once in a while, including this year.

I didn’t start reading Whatever (Scalzi’s blog) until recently, so this is my first exposure to this list.

Go read it. And before you object “But wait! Where’s The Star Wars Holiday Special?”– well, read it again, and think about it a little (if you can stop laughing).

Then read the comments, including ones taking it Very Seriously.

As a Modesto boy, seems to me I have two choices for a proper seasonal special:

1. The Star Wars Holiday Special, which should be nicely aged by this time (since it’s 30 years old), but I’m not sure that would help. (And there’s no way to buy a legitimate copy of this show; let’s just say George L. isn’t likely to release it on DVD any time in this lifetime…)
2. A Christmas episode of either Buffy or Angel that includes Spike (yes, James Marsters is a Modesto boy)–but, as far as I know, there aren’t any of those. (I could be wrong about that for Buffy, since Marsters was on 92 episodes. I know of one Buffy Christmas episode, but Spike wasn’t in that one.) Oh well, Once More with Feeling might do in a pinch…

Let me make this clear: No, I am not under any circumstances suggesting that anyone send me a bootleg DVD of TSWHS. Dear Gaia, please, no. If you own such a thing, do Lucas’ reputation a favor and smash it into little pieces. Or not. Just don’t send it to me.

Indiscreet, 1931, b&w. Leo McCarey (dir.), Gloria Swanson, Ben Lyon, Monroe Owsley, Barbara Kent, Arthur Lake, Maude Eburne. 1:32 [1:13]

I’m of two minds on this one. On the one hand, it’s a nicely done romantic comedy with some remarkable comedic turns by Gloria Swanson (particularly when she demonstrates the “slight touch of insanity” in her family), a satisfying overall plot and generally solid acting. Yes, there’s some uneasiness between melodrama and comedy, and the occasional songs seem out of place—but it was fun overall.

On the other, the soundtrack’s sometimes damaged enough to be really annoying, and once in a while there’s visible damage as well. The missing 19 minutes would probably improve the movie.

Overall, it’s a good romantic comedy undone by the print quality, yielding $1.25.

Chandu on the Magic Island, 1935, b&w. Ray Taylor (dir.), Bela Lugosi, Maria Alba. 1:10 [1:06].

This is apparently a sequel to some other movie or movies (or recut episodes of a serial) with Bela Lugosi as Frank Chandler, aka Chandu the Magician. This one involves a Princess Nadji, a yacht, evil crewmen, the lost island of Lemuria, some dark-magic cat-worshiping religion and a proposed sacrifice to reanimate a dead ruler.

I could say that the print’s damaged in some parts and the sound’s questionable. Both of those are true—but I don’t think seeing this one in vivid Technicolor with crystal-clear surround sound and on a big screen would help. It struck me as incoherent even by the standards of Z mystic-”scifi” flicks. (There’s no science here, but plenty of fiction.) My charitable quick review: An awful mess, but devoted fans of Bela Lugosi might find something to like. For that, I’ll give a reluctant $0.50.

Hell’s House, 1932, b&w, Howard Higgin (dir.), Bette Davis, Pat O’Brien, Junior Durkin. 1:12.

Rural kid sees his mother get run over by a car (driver gets out, looks at victim, drives away; kid makes no move to remember license plate or, apparently, call authorities). Next scene: Kid shows up at urban home of aunt & uncle, who have a boarder who acts like a hotshot—and the uncle’s out of work. Next scene: Kid asks hotshot if he knows of a job; hotshot, who’s actually a bootlegger, hires kid to take phone calls but never say who he works for or where he lives. Next scene—this movie moves fast—cops show up, kid won’t talk, kid gets sent to reformatory for three years.

Then there’s a bunch of reformatory stuff, with a side plot of newspaper reporter trying to blow the lid off the terrible conditions there but not getting cooperation. Kid’s best buddy, another kid with a heart condition, tries to smuggle letter out for kid, gets caught, won’t snitch, goes to solitary, where the ticker goes worse. Kid knows this, busts out (in the outgoing garbage), pleads with hotshot to help. Despite hotshot’s not actually knowing anybody, he manages to get in to see the reporter, kid tells story…and, as the cops arrive, the bootlegger finally develops a heart and signs a confession. After which, of course, the reformatory gets cleaned up (the kid doesn’t go back). Oh, his friend dies.

Pat O’Brien’s the hotshot. Bette Davis is his girlfriend, who suspects he’s mostly a blowhard. Incidentally, the plot summary on the sleeve gets it badly wrong, having the kid escape because the hotshot Kelly is seeing too much of the kid’s girlfriend—but the kid doesn’t have a girlfriend in the movie.

All a little too formulaic—and maybe it doesn’t matter in this case. While the print’s so-so visually, the soundtrack is so scratchy that I almost gave up on it several times. I can’t imagine most sane people would ever listen all the way through. Given that, it can’t earn more than $0.50.

The Evil Mind (or The Clairvoyant), 1934, b&w. Maurice Elvey (dir.), Claude Rains, Jane Baxter, Athole Stewart. 1:21 [1:08].

Maximus works as a stage clairvoyant, using his wife’s clues to say what she’s holding—until, in the presence of another woman, he suddenly makes a real and correct prediction. This happens a couple of times; he gets a big London stage engagement but the producer’s unhappy because he can’t do big predictions to order. Meanwhile, his wife’s becoming jealous of the young woman. This all leads up to his unwilling prediction of a tunneling catastrophe—one that, when it comes true, causes him to be put on trial on the basis that his prediction caused the catastrophe.

There’s little point in saying more about the plot. It’s not bad, actually, and there’s a nice twist involving why he only makes accurate predictions under certain circumstances. The print is jumpy at points, 13 minutes are missing and the soundtrack’s damaged at points as well, but not so much as to ruin the picture. It’s generally well-acted. While the sleeve lists Fay Wray (the wife) as the “legend,” I’d say Claude Rains’ faintly bizarre and very well played Maximus deserves more credit. The original title (”The Clairvoyant”) suits this better, as there’s nothing evil in Rains’ predictions. I’ll give it $1.00.

This feels like a very weak final disc—in a couple of cases, finding something to fill out the 50. Such is life.

I may exercise to the oldies, but once a week we watch a reasonably-current movie–and once in a while we run across a pleasant surprise.

If you haven’t seen Bobby, I strongly recommend it. It came out in 2006 (hey, I never said we were up to date). We were surprised by how the good the movie was–and how good at least the first featurette was (we haven’t watched the second yet).

The whole film is set in one day, in one hotel–June 5, 1968, the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.

It’s about some of the people there that day…and leads up to a historic event.

Emilio Estevez (Martin Sheen’s son who kept the Estevez name) wrote and directed and is one of a stellar cast in the movie–e.g., Harry Belafonte, Laurence Fishburne, Heather Graham, Anthony Hopkins, Helen Hunt, Ashton Kutcher, Shia LaBeouf, William H. Macy, Lindsay Lohan, Demi Moore, Christian Slater, Freddy Rodriguez, Sharon Stone, Elijah Wood…oh, yes, and Martin Sheen. Pretty much all of them do first-rate jobs even in smaller roles.

We like light entertainment, animated movies, romantic comedies–and this movie is far from any of those. We enjoyed it thoroughly, even in the hard-to-watch minutes near the end. You might too.

Buster Keaton Festival, all silent (with unrelated music), all b&w, all starring (and written and directed by) Buster Keaton. The Blacksmith, 1922, 0:21 [0:19]; The Boat, 1921, 0:20 [0:22]; The Paleface, 1922, 0:20; Daydreams, 1922, 0:18.

Maybe it’s because Keaton doesn’t deliberately act the clown. Maybe it’s because his pictures were really his pictures. Whatever the case, these work pretty well.

I’d seen The Blacksmith and The Paleface on earlier packs (where they counted as full movies). The Paleface is pretty clever, The Blacksmith is good physical comedy; I’d give each of them $0.35 to $0.50. The Boat tells a sad story of boat-building incompetence, very well done for maximum laughs (if you ignore the peril); another $0.50. Daydreams feels like a later picture than either The Blacksmith or The Boat—better photography, more plot, generally very good. I’d give it another $0.50. These aren’t slapstick, by and large; they’re something subtler.

That comes out to $1.70 to $2.00—let’s call it $1.75. That’s on the high side, but this is an enjoyable 80 minutes (or so) of silent comedy as done by one of the masters.

Buster Keaton Classics, all silent (with unrelated music), all b&w, all starring Buster Keaton. The Playhouse, 1921, 0:22 [0:20]; The Balloonatic, 1923, 0:22; My Wife’s Relations, 1922, 0:30 [0:23]; The Electric House, 1922, 0:22 [0:20].

The Playhouse (or Play House) begins with an astonishing five-minute sequence in which Keaton plays all the roles—the conductor, members of the orchestra, a comedy troupe, and even the audience (men, women and children alike)—and the playbill also shows him in all the roles and stage crew. (Given that this had to be done by in-camera multiple exposures, it’s nothing short of astonishing: At one point, there are nine Keatons on stage.) After that dream sequence, it’s another knockabout comedy set on stage, albeit with a cute side plot in which Keaton’s girlfriend is one of identical twins—and he can’t tell them apart. Two problems: The comedy troupe includes blackface, maybe “typical for its time” but still unfortunate—and the print’s bad enough that it blooms to white in the middle at some points. On balance, $0.35.

The Balloonatic starts at a funhouse and involves balloons and the wilderness—and it’s all gags (and, of course, Keaton’s indomitable incompetence) with a plot that barely holds together. Maybe I’ve seen the “holder with no bottom” three or four times too often in Keaton’s shorts. This felt forced. $0.20.

My Wife’s Relations is based on Keaton unwittingly marrying a big woman with four big, mean brothers (it has to do with Polish judges), being generally beleaguered—Keaton always seems to be a hapless creature—and other nonsense. Decent plot, almost entirely slapstick. Maybe the half-hour version makes more sense. $0.30.

The Electric House offers a Keaton newly graduated from college—but handed the wrong degree, certifying him as an Electrical Engineer when he should have been a Doctor of Botany. The bigwig handing out the degrees wants his new house electrified and offers Keaton the job, while he goes on vacation. Fortunately, the bigwig’s daughter tosses Keaton a book, Electricity Made Easy or something of the sort. The family returns to a remarkably “electrified” house—with stairs that become escalators, a dining room with self-seating chairs and a model train to serve dishes from the kitchen, an electrified pool table and more. Of course things go wrong in a variety of ways. This one’s worth $0.50.

Add them up and I get $1.35, which sounds about right: Watchable but somewhat disappointing, except for the first five minutes and the last short.

Steamboat Bill, Jr., 1928, Charles Reisner (dir.), Buster Keaton, Tom McGuire, Ernest Torrence, Marion Byron, Tom Lewis. 1:11 [1:09]

Not quite a feature-length film (or maybe it was for the time), this silent has a real plot, loads of physical comedy in Keaton’s best form, and a romance—and this time, Keaton wins out in the end. He’s the son of a steamboat operator, William “Steamboat Bill” Canfield, with a rundown sternwheeler, just in town (River Junction) from college in Boston—and his girl back in Boston is also in town. She’s the daughter of the bigshot, John James King, who’s introducing a spiffy new steamboat that will put Steamboat Bill’s clunker out of business—especially when King has it condemned. Naturally, King forbids his daughter from seeing Bill Jr. and Bill forbids his son from seeing the girl, in both cases saying “I’ll choose the right mate for you,” so there’s a little Montague-Capulet plot here as well. Father tries to turn son into a proper steamboater (part of which includes a hat-choice sequence that’s remarkably good fun), and there’s lots more.

Add a lengthy, involved storm sequence (with some astonishing and presumably dangerous stunts and special effects) and Bill Jr.’s unexpected bravery and competence, and you have quite a picture. (You may have heard of the classic and potentially deadly shot where the front of a house falls on Keaton, standing in the street—and happening to be just where an open window frame is. No stunt double, and supposedly some of the crew couldn’t stand to watch the filming.) And, for a change, the music is actually related to the film—a theater organ track that’s apparently composed for the picture, as it includes appropriate sound effects. Good print. Sigh. This is one I’ll probably watch again and it’s clearly a classic, but I’m hard-pressed to give more than $1.25 to a one-hour flick. Oh well, it’s 1:11 (or 1:09): $2.00.

As You Like It, 1936, b&w. Paul Czinner (dir.), Henry Einley, Elisabeth Bergner, Felix Aylmer, Laurence Olivier. 1:36 [1:27].

From Buster Keaton to William Shakespeare—well, why not? This is not a filmed play; they expand the scope to natural settings but retain the dialogue. Unfortunately, the first part of the film has a noisy soundtrack, which doesn’t help matters on something as dialogue-heavy as a Shakespeare comedy.

I won’t trouble you with the plot. It’s all Shakespeare, almost all in the forest of Arden; the film omits some of the play but apparently adds no new dialogue.

Laurence Olivier—not Sir at that point—stars. It’s a generally lively, solid performance. You need serious suspension of disbelief for the key conceit in the film: That Orlando (Olivier), deeply in love with Rosalind, cannot recognize her as either Rosalind or as a woman because she is wearing tights and a frilly shirt/blouse rather than a dress, even though she makes no attempt to disguise her hairdo or, really, her voice. But hey, it’s a comedy, and there are some fine monologues along the way (including “All the world’s a stage”). Because of the soundtrack and missing nine minutes, I can’t give it more than $1.25.

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Bonus for those who’ve made it this far:

Tomorrow I switch back to the other 50-pack (Hollywood Legends)–but to the final disc. That should take two to three weeks.

After that, I’ll go to Disc 3 of Comedy Classics. The question is:

What set should I alternate with Comedy Classics?

While there are actually several choices, it boils down to two possibilities:

• Start in on the Mystery Collection, 60 discs with 250 movies.
• Start in on Alfred Hitchcock: The Legend Begins, one of the smaller packs Mill Creek sent me when they replaced a defective disc in the Hollywood Legends set. It includes two episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, 18 of Hitchcock’s early films (from 1926 through 1939, all B&W, several silent), and 55 minutes of trailers for later Hitchcock movies. That’s four long discs. (It sells for about $8 at Amazon, but has sold as low as $5.)

I’m going to let you decide. I’ll choose whichever set gets the most comments by the time I finish the Hollywood Legends set.