Colorful Stanwyck in Black-&-White

Not everything that Ted Turner has touched has turned into colorizing fodder. Some of the most fascinating films in the MGM/UA library, owned by Turner, are being spruced up for release on laser in “glorious black and white.” Among the most contemporary are three movies featuring the engaging, emerging Barbara Stanwyck.

A compelling ‘30s double bill of “Baby Face” and “Night Nurse” ($40, extended play, digital sound) comes as part of a “Forbidden Hollywood” set hosted by Leonard Maltin of “Entertainment Tonight.” In fact, what’s offered is not what was forbidden but what was allowed--the kinds of free-wheeling films that eventually resulted in the Production Code.

The 1933 “Baby Face” (72 minutes) with George Brent (and John Wayne in a bit part) offers a wonderful view of the young Stanwyck as a tough, pragmatic woman who sleeps her way to the top. No coy sentimentality here, only a hard look at the ‘30s business world that learned how to keep women in their place.

So, too, the earlier “Night Nurse” (1931, 73 minutes), with an equally feisty Joan Blondell and a nasty Clark Gable, takes an unsentimental view of the medical profession and what it took for an ambitious young woman to make it as a nurse. As a pre-Code film, there are also plenty of glimpses of Stanwyck and Blondell getting in and out of their clothes--Frederick’s had nothing on sexy ‘30s laces and satins. Location shots of a younger Los Angeles are captivating. Director William Wellman obviously loved, for good reason, one sensational moving shot taken from a careening ambulance so much that he used it to open and close the film.

The tough Stanwyck, who later made “Double Indemnity,” could also play romantic comedy with the best of them, and she proves that in the charming “Christmas in Connecticut,” (1947, MGM/UA Turner, 102 minutes, extended play digital sound, $35).

The film, co-starring Dennis Morgan and Sydney Greenstreet, plays in sharp contrast to the gritty “Baby Face” and “Night Nurse.” And it comes with a delightful bonus: Warner’s ’47 “Acrobatty Bunny,” with an inventive Bugs outwitting a circus lion.

“Baby Face,” “Night Nurse” and “Christmas in Connecticut” also come with their original theatrical trailers, and “Connecticut” comes with 50 chapter stops, enabling the viewer to jump to any favorite scene within seconds.