HOME ENTERTAINMENT : ‘Garland’ Captures Magnificence of Judy
MGM/UA Home Video takes you on the ultimate date with Judy in its staggering “Judy Garland: The Golden Years at MGM”($125). The overwhelming five-disc set, which includes restored editions of “The Harvey Girls,” “The Pirate” and “Summer Stock,” is a bonanza for Garland fans and an incredible introduction for anyone not clear what the fuss has been about all these years.
Considering all that comes with it, it also is a bargain.
The joy of this set, however, lies not only in the beautiful restoration of these three films, but also in the outtakes, trailers and other treasures dug out of the MGM vaults and meticulously restored and annotated.
Producers George Feltenstein, Allan Fisch and John Fricke, who spent 2 1/2 years putting this collection together, include a detailed, full-color, six-page brochure that provides a more-than-thumbnail history of Garland’s career. Detailed notes on each of the films on the five discs are complemented by a clear program guide to the set’s incredible analog tracks and easy-to-follow notes of all supplemental material.
Included in the package are 30 complete theatrical trailers from Garland’s feature films, a portfolio of more than 400 photographs including stills from 20 Garland musical numbers and routines cut from MGM films, three complete musical outtakes and Garland short subjects including her first screen appearance as “Baby Gumm” (1929). The finale is fantastic.
Full use is made of the laser’s capabilities. On Sides One and Two, the left digital audio track offers the films’ soundtracks. On the “Harvey Girls” (1946), director George Sidney provides commentary on the right digital track.
Then, on the left and right analog tracks of all nine sides are recordings that go through more than 80 songs and routines (more than 160 tracks) from 14 Garland films, beginning with 1929’s tacky “A Holiday in Storyland” and continuing through numerous recordings made during Garland rehearsal, radio and personal appearances.
Recordings of never-before-released material include “All I Do Is Dream of You,” “The Curse of an Aching Heart,” “Your Broadway and My Broadway” and extended versions of such Garland film classics as “Mack the Black” and “Smiles.”
Making it all accessible and understandable is a key indicating which songs have been remixed from original multichannel recordings to stereo; which songs were deleted from release prints; which are alternate or partial alternate takes of songs used, along with alternate takes or additional material not released with films.
When viewed in combination with the recent 50th anniversary edition of the popular “Meet Me in St. Louis,” which also comes with a compact disc (1955, $100) in a magnificent restoration, and the studio’s earlier “The Ultimate Oz” set ($100), you have as close an overview of the incredible Garland career as we’re likely to get.
To top it off, the producers provide a complete list of the more than two dozen laser discs in which Garland is featured or appears. (And that’s without her numerous films with Mickey Rooney, which will be offered as another set down the line.) If you start watching and listening now, you could be through by Garland’s birthday on June 10.
Garland-contemporary juvenile singer Deanna Durbin, who joined her in a May, 1936, one-reeler and whose contract was then allowed to expire, ended up at Universal. Now MCA/Universal has released “The Deanna Durbin Collection” ($100), which provides a movie glimpse of her career, unfortunately without any of the kind of supplementary material that makes the Garland set so valuable. Films in that set are “Three Smart Girls,” “Three Smart Girls Grow Up,” “100 Men and a Girl” and “It Started With Eve.”
While it is great fun to see Durbin back in action, she deserves better in the laser format.
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