New life for old winners

The 76th Academy Awards on Sunday night provides a convenient opportunity to look at Oscar winners past. And it just so happens that several former academy champions -- ranging from “Grand Hotel” (1932) to “Rain Man” (1988) -- have recently made their special-edition DVD bows.

Warner Home Video has just unveiled several classic MGM Oscar winners from the studio’s golden era ($20 each).

In this Academy Award day and age it’s hard to believe that a best picture winner’s sole nomination would be in the top category, much less that it would win. Happily, 72 years after its release, “Grand Hotel” is still crackerjack entertainment. MGM’s boy wonder producer Irving Thalberg came up with the idea of taking some of the studio’s top stars and putting them together in a movie. The formula worked so well that producers have been doing “all-star” movies ever since.

Based on the book by Vicki Baum, “Grand Hotel” is a juicy potboiler revolving around the lives of a diverse group of people residing at a posh Berlin hotel. Greta Garbo plays a neurotic ballerina who falls in love with a charming cat burglar (John Barrymore). Lionel Barrymore is a dying factory clerk determined to live out his final days in luxury. Wallace Beery is a callous factory owner, and Joan Crawford is a “secretary” who does a bit more than take dictation.

The DVD includes a fact-filled “making of” documentary, delicious footage of the Hollywood premiere and “Nothing Ever Happens,” a 1933 spoof of the film.

MGM also took best picture honors with the engrossing 1935 seafaring epic “Mutiny on the Bounty,” based on the bestseller by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall about Captain Bligh’s mistreatment of his men that leads to a mutiny by his crew.

This rip-roaring entertainment stars Charles Laughton at his scenery-chewing best as Bligh; a muscular Clark Gable, sans mustache, as first mate Fletcher Christian and Franchot Tone as a novice officer.

Though Frank Capra won best director for his classic political comedy “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town” (1936), the film lost best picture to MGM’s lengthy, sentimental musical-biopic “The Great Ziegfeld.” William Powell gives the film zing as the famed showman Florenz Ziegfeld. Luise Rainer won her first best actress Oscar as his wife, entertainer Anna Held. Myrna Loy, who was frequently cast opposite Powell, adds spark to this big-budget release as his second wife, Billie Burke.

The digital edition includes a comprehensive look at the making of the film.

Gable was considered a shoo-in for the best actor Academy Award for his seminal role as Rhett Butler in “Gone With the Wind” (1939), but the Oscar went to British thespian Robert Donat for his sweet, inspiring performance as the shy, beloved teacher at a boys’ school in “Goodbye, Mr. Chips.” Based on the book by James Hilton, this lovely little film is told in flashback as the elderly “Mr. Chips” looks back on his life. Greer Garson, in her American film debut, is luminous as Chips’ beautiful wife.

The family drama “Mrs. Miniver” (1942) won several major Oscars, including best film, director (William Wyler), actress (Garson) and supporting actress (Teresa Wright). Though it’s well made and expertly performed, “Mrs. Miniver” now comes off as an overlong, didactic soap opera. Made before the U.S. entrance in World War II but released during the first year of our participation, “Mrs. Miniver” struck a chord with audiences who were trying to cope with the realities of the war. Garson plays the noble matriarch of a middle-class British family; Walter Pidgeon is her equally noble husband; handsome Richard Ney is her college-age son -- Garson and Ney later married -- and Wright is Ney’s upper-class wife.

George Cukor was always described as a “woman’s director,” and he directed Ingrid Bergman to her first Oscar in the stylish 1944 thriller “Gaslight,” based on the hit play “Angel Street.” Bergman gives a layered performance as a young woman who is being slowly driven mad by her conniving husband (an equally effective Charles Boyer). A teenage Angela Lansbury, in her film debut, received an Oscar nomination for her performance. Joseph Cotten plays a police detective who comes to Bergman’s rescue.

“Gaslight” had previously been made in England in 1940 with Diana Wynyard as the wife and Anton Walbrook as the malevolent spouse. The DVD includes this version, which is quite different in tone and story line than the better-known Hollywood adaptation.

“The Diary of Anne Frank” (Fox, $20) is director George Stevens’ meticulously crafted, heartfelt 1959 version of the hit Broadway play based on the diary of the young Jewish girl who hid from the Nazis in Amsterdam with her family and others in an attic above her father’s spice business. Millie Perkins had never acted before, and her inexperience in front of the camera helps capture Anne’s innocence and joyful spirit, but her line readings and expressions are often one-note.

The supporting cast is generally wonderful with Shelley Winters, picking up her first Oscar as the obnoxious Mrs. Van Daan, veteran Joseph Schildkraut as the noble Mr. Frank and Ed Wynn in his Oscar-nominated dramatic turn as the prickly dentist who comes to live in the attic.

The DVD features thoughtful commentary from George Stevens Jr., an associate producer on the film, and Perkins.

It took Cukor nearly three decades to win his first best director Oscar. He picked up the Academy Award for the lavish 1964 musical “My Fair Lady” (Warner, $20), which was based on the Broadway hit by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, which, in turn, was based on the George Bernard Shaw play “Pygmalion.” The film, which won the lion’s share of the Oscars that year, including best picture and actor (Rex Harrison), is still a delight. But it seems a bit soundstage-bound.

The new DVD includes several extras that had previously been included on other VHS and DVD editions of the film, plus interesting commentary from set designer Gene Allen, film restorers Robert A. Harris and James C. Katz, and Marni Nixon, who supplied star Audrey Hepburn’s singing voice.

Though MGM is touting its new DVD of the 1988 best picture winner “Rain Man” as a special edition, it’s not all that special. There’s an original featurette and a tiny deleted scene.

The disc scores, though, in its three frank and open audio commentaries from Oscar winners Barry Levinson, director; Barry Morrow, who came up with the original idea and penned the first script; and Ronald Bass, who was brought on the project to rewrite the script.