When sporting a smart mouth was a good thing
The Classic Comedy Collection
Warner Home Video, $20 to $27 each; $69 for the set
Five legendary comedies from the Golden Age of Hollywood -- “Dinner at Eight,” “Libeled Lady,” “Stage Door,” “Bringing Up Baby” and “To Be or Not to Be” -- make their long-awaited DVD debuts. Warner is also unveiling a two-disc set of the remastered version of “The Philadelphia Story.”
Dinner at Eight
George Cukor directed this delicious 1933 comedy-drama, based on the play by George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber and served up with great relish by an all-star MGM cast, including Jean Harlow, Lionel and John Barrymore, Wallace Beery, Marie Dressler and Billie Burke. Delectably produced by David O. Selznick, “Dinner” revolves around the planning of a sumptuous Manhattan dinner party.
The film features a memorable exchange between two of the film’s most colorful characters: Dressler’s poor but worldly actress Carlotta Vance and Harlow’s brassy, dumb blond Kitty Packard:
Kitty: “I was reading a book the other day.”
Carlotta: “Reading a book?”
Kitty: “Yes. It’s all about civilization or something. A nutty kind of a book. Do you know that the guy says that machinery is going to take the place of every profession?”
Carlotta: “Oh, my dear. That’s something you need never worry about.”
Extras: A vintage TV documentary on Harlow, the trailer and the comedy short “Come to Dinner.”
Libeled Lady
Nominated for best film of 1936 -- it was the farce’s only Oscar nomination -- “Libeled Lady” is a fast-paced, wickedly funny screwball comedy populated by a quartet of stars at the top of their game: Spencer Tracy, William Powell, Harlow (Powell and Harlow were lovers in real life) and Myrna Loy.
Tracy plays a hard-nosed newspaper editor who keeps leaving his fiancee (Harlow) at the altar. When a rich society girl (Loy) sues the paper for libel, Tracy’s character concocts an outrageous revenge scheme involving an arranged marriage between his fiancee and Powell’s down-on-his-luck newspaperman.
Extras: A radio promo, “Leo Is on the Air,” and the trailer.
Stage Door
The first of three films in the collection starring Katharine Hepburn. Based on yet another Broadway hit by Kaufman and Ferber, 1937’s “Stage Door” is a highly entertaining comedy-drama featuring a sprightly cast including Hepburn, Ginger Rogers, a young Lucille Ball and Eve Arden and an even younger Ann Miller.
Directed by the underrated Gregory La Cava, “Stage Door” revolves around a group of struggling actresses who live and kvetch at a theatrical rooming house in New York. This is the movie in which Hepburn states: “The calla lilies are in bloom again.” Andrea Leeds received an Oscar nomination for her moving turn as an actress who can’t cope when she loses a plum part to Hepburn. The picture was nominated for three other Academy Awards, including best picture.
Extras: A musical short, “Ups and Downs,” starring a platinum blond June Allyson; and the 1939 Lux Radio Theatre broadcast of “Stage Door,” with Rogers and with Rosalind Russell in the Hepburn role.
Bringing Up Baby
One of the quintessential screwball comedies as well as one of the loopiest, 1938’s “Bringing Up Baby” wasn’t very successful when it was released. Cary Grant was a big name at the time, but Hepburn was in the middle of her “box office poison” period.
Grant plays an absent-minded stuffed shirt of a paleontologist who becomes involved with a scatterbrain heiress named Susan (Hepburn). Added into the mayhem are a dinosaur skeleton, a leopard named Baby that calms down whenever anyone sings “I Can’t Give You Anything but Love” and a dog named George. Howard Hawks directed this crazy farce with breakneck abandon.
Extras: Writer-director-actor Peter Bogdanovich, a longtime fan of the film, is the wonderfully entertaining guide through the comedy -- “Baby” inspired his classic 1972 farce, “What’s Up, Doc?” Besides the commentary, the first disc includes a Hawks movie trailer gallery. The second disc includes documentaries on Grant and Hawks; a Technicolor musical short, “Campus Cinderella,” with Penny Singleton; and the cartoon “A Star Is Hatched.”
The Philadelphia Story
Grant, Hepburn and Jimmy Stewart, who won the best actor Oscar, headline this near-perfect 1940 adaptation of Philip Barry’s stage hit, which revved up Hepburn’s career. She plays a socialite who is on the verge of marrying a nice, dull man (John Howard). But her ex-husband (Grant) is determined to win her back. Stewart plays a tabloid reporter sent to cover the wedding who falls for Hepburn’s Tracy Lord. Cukor directed.
Extras: The first disc includes spot-on commentary with film historian Jeanine Basinger, who offers great factoids and tidbits -- Barry actually tailor-made the role of Lord for Hepburn, observing her so he could incorporate her speech patterns and mannerisms.
The second disc includes the acclaimed documentary “Katharine Hepburn: All About Me -- A Self-Portrait”; a documentary on Cukor; a Robert Benchley comedy short, “That Inferior Feeling”; and the cartoon “The Homeless Flea.” Rounding out the disc are two radio adaptations of “Philadelphia Story,” with the three stars reprising their roles.
To Be or Not to Be
Ernst Lubitsch directed this daring, acerbic 1942 satire that was made before America’s entrance into World War II. A radiant Carole Lombard and Jack Benny, in his best screen performance, play a famous Polish acting couple who, with the help of their theatrical troupe, outwit the Nazis to save their lives.
Extras: An early Benny short, “The Rounder,” and an archival newsreel.
