Mervyn LeRoy’s Oscar-nominated yellow journalism expose “Five Star Final” (1931) tops offerings scheduled for June 1 at the custom-order DVD Warner Archive Collection. Stars Edward G. Robinson, the immmortal Aline McMahon and Boris Karloff. The very eclectic official list below also includes Red Skeleton’s breezy detective spoof “Whistling in the Dark” (1941) and its two sequels, offered as a set; four Joe E. Brown comedies; and for auterists, Sam Fuller’s “Verboten,” William Conrad’s “Two on a Guillotine” and my old creative writing instructor James Toback’s “Love and Money.”
Five Star Final (Crime Drama 1931) Best Picture Academy Award nominee
Early in this brisk dramedy, a jaded newsman laments that some reporters furnish the manure while some grow the flowers. Editor Joe Randall’s newspaper is suddenly in the manure biz. To increase readership and revenues, he’s pressured against his principles to come up with a sensationalist tale or two. So Randall revisits a love-nest murder of years past. Circulation soars. But living people – real people – involved in the story are suddenly victimized. Randall could never imagine the tragedy to follow. As Randall, Edward G. Robinson finds a role to match his authoritative talents in this hot-off-the-presses Best Picture Academy Award nominee* directed for hard-hitting effect by Mervyn LeRoy. Boris Karloff, just weeks away from the release of Frankenstein, plays Randall’s shady lead reporter.
Verboten! (Drama/Thriller 1958) – From Director Samuel Fuller
World War II is over. A new war begins. Inside occupied Germany, neo-Nazi insurgents wage a campaign of terror aimed at undermining the American Military Government. Among those experiencing the waves of violence is an ex-G.I. (James Best) married to a Fra¨ulein (Susan Cummings) he met when U.S. forces fought their way into the town of Rothbach. “I felt like a chef making a hardy soup – blending together postwar Germany, Beethoven, Wagner, unrepentant Nazis and the Nuremberg war trials,” filmmaker and combat vet Samuel Fuller (The Big Red One) recalled about Verboten! Fuller includes soul-searing documentary footage from his own war-era archives. It’s an assertive and thought-provoking film.
Red Skelton’s “Whistling” Trilogy — Three Disc Collection (Comedy 1941-1943)
Red Skelton has his starring debut in Whistling in the Dark [Disc 1} where he unleashes live-wire goofiness as ‘the Fox’, a radio sleuth kidnapped by crooks wanting him to devise a perfect murder. The result? Perfect chaos! Whistling in Dixie [Disc 2] plunges Red (and Whistling trilogy co-stars Ann Rutherford and Rags Ragland) into a magnolias-and-mayhem mystery about Confederate treasure. In Whistling in Brooklyn [Disc 3], the Fox is on the lam as Suspect #1 in a murder. His path leads him to baseball’s Ebbets Field, where he takes the mound.
A Quartet of Joe E. Brown Comedies:
Going Wild (Comedy 1930)
Everyone in a small resort town thinks Rollo Smith is famed aviator Robert Story. That’s fine with Rollo, who’s actually a penniless newspaperman bounced from his job. And all Rollo has to do is compete in the upcoming aviation contest. Wide-mouthed Joe E. Brown plays Rollo in a chipper comedy whose set pieces include Rollo’s self-devised aerial training (using a teetering Murphy bed, a vacuum cleaner, an electric fan!) William A. Seiter (Sons of the Desert) directs this wild tale of a fish out of water who takes to the skies.
Sit Tight (Comedy 1931)
A wrestling comedy filled with plenty of pre-Code friskiness. Funnyman Joe E. Brown plays Jojo Mullins, who has an eye for the ladies although his heart belongs to the manager (Winnie Lightner) of the health club where he works. Eager to show the ring prowess he learned by correspondence, he gets his chance in a big-time match. Paul Gregory and Claudia Dell (rumored to be the model for Columbia Pictures logo) play the subplot’s young lovebirds in this energetic comedy that’s one of nearly 50 films directed by Lloyd Bacon in the 1930s. Originally a movie musical, most of the tunes were jettisoned prior to release.
Tenderfoot (Comedy 1932)
With large confidence and an even larger hat, cattleman Calvin Jones (rubber-faced comic Joe E.Brown) rolls along the lighted cow path of Broadway. He has $20,000 to invest in a show, intending to skedaddle back to Texas with his profits. Faster than you can say flopperoo, the producers of the show Calvin bankrolls button it up and keep the dough. Now add mobsters eager to extort some cash and romance with a perky secretary (Ginger Rogers), and it’s clear Calvin’s got some wrangling to do before he’s back in those wide-open spaces. Tenderfoot is the film version of George S. Kaufman’s fish-out-of-water stage farce The Butter and Egg Man (Richard Carle shares an on-screen storycredit)
Alibi Ike (Comedy 1935)
Based on sports writer Lardner’s short story series that first appeared in the Saturday Evening Post magazine, Alibi Ike is about rookie pitcher Francis “Ike” Farrell who suddenly and miraculously shows up to help the Chicago Cubs win the National League pennant. His nickname refers to Ike’s fondness for making excuses for anything and everything, frustrating his manager and Ike’s girlfriend Dolly Stevens (de Havilland). Real life major league stars of that era who appear briefly in Alibi Ike include: Guy Cantrell, Wally Hood and Dick Cox (Brooklyn Dodgers); Cedric Durst, Mike Gazella and Bob Meusel ( NY Yankees); Don Hurst (Philadelphia Phillies); Smead Jolley (Chicago White Sox); Lou Koupal (Pirates); Wally Rehg (Boston Red Sox) and Jim Thorpe (New York Giants).*
Alibi Ike also features Ruth Donnelly, Roscoe Karns and William Frawley. The comedy was directed by Ray Enright with a screenplay adapted by William Wister Haines from Lardner’s stories.
The Fourth Protocol (Thriller 1987)
Based on the best-selling novel by Frederick Forsyth (“The Day of the Jackal,” “The Dogs of War”), this slick British espionage thriller concerns a desperate race to stop a Russian KGB plot to assemble and detonate a nuclear bomb at an American Air Force base in England. Academy Award and Golden Globe-winner and Emmy-nominee Michael Caine is the British agent who uncovers the scheme, while Golden Globe-nominee Pierce Brosnan is the Russian counterpart he pursues in this suspenseful effort from director John Mackenzie (“The Long Good Friday”).
Hide in Plain Sight (Drama 1980)
Factory worker Thomas Hacklin has moved on with life after divorce. He plays baseball on weekends, dates a little, and never misses a scheduled visit with his two young children. One day he shows up for a visit and finds his children are gone. They, Hacklin’s ex and the mob-informant she married have been whisked into the secrecy of the witness relocation program. James Caan directs and stars in a compelling true-life tale of a father determined to find and reclaim his children, defying federal agents and anyone else standing in his way. “An unusually satisfying, almost perfectly scaled little melodrama about so-called ordinary people trapped in extraordinary events” (Vincent Canby, The New York Times).
Love and Money (Drama 1980)
Byron Levin (Ray Sharkey) has two sides. One is Byron the workaday L.A. banker quick to defend a harassed co-worker. The other is a pent-up employee who’ll say something outrageous to a stranger for shock effect. Increasingly, Byron’s risk-taking nature takes hold. And it becomes a stranglehold when Byron is seduced by the deadly allure of Love and Money in this tantalizing thriller from James Toback (The Pick-up Artist, Bugsy). Byron accepts a million-dollar deal with a global silver magnate (Klaus Kinski). His reason says no but his passions say yes: he’s begun an illicit affair with the tycoon’s exotic wife (Ornella Muti). In return, he must persuade a former college roommate, now a Latin American strongman (Armand Assante), to stop nationalizing the silver mines. And if words fail him, bullets will do.
Love Child (Drama/Crime 1982)
It’s a story that made national headlines and was covered on 60 Minutes. Convicted and jailed for armed robbery in 1977, Terry Jean Moore fell in love with a prison guard and became pregnant. She then took on Florida courts in a historic legal battle to keep and raise her child behind bars. Amy Madigan made her movie debut as Moore. Beau Bridges as the guard, Mackenzie Phillips as a fellow inmate and Margaret Whitton as Moore’s attorney give strong support in a movie that rings with truth – and moves with its simple and direct power.
The Saint of Fort Washington (Drama 1992)
Danny Glover and Matt Dillon give finely etched portrayals of life on society’s fringe in this moving tale of friendship directed by Tim Hunter (Tex, River’s Edge). Glover, who prepared for his role by going incognito as a “street person,” is Jerry, a man who did everything right but was blindsided by fate. Dillon is Matthew, who slipped through a crack in the bureaucratic system and onto the streets. Equipped with buckets and squeegees, the two friends have a lot of work ahead. And a lot of heart to see themselves through.
Two on a Guillotine (Horror/Thriller 1964)
Twenty years ago, a little accident with a guillotine trick left magician Duke Duquesne’s wife and on-stage assistant without a head…and their baby daughter Cassie without a mother. Now The Great Duquesne may have another trick up his sleeve. He dies, leaving daughter Cassie a sizeable inheritance if she’ll spend seven nights in his spooky mansion. With a fearless young reporter at her side, Cassie braves terrors that could be the work of evil spirits. Or are they illusions dreamed up by Cassie’s dear, demented dad? Connie Stevens, Dean Jones and Cesar Romero star in a creepy horrorfest that offers fans scares, screams, a return of that guillotine and Max (Gone with the Wind) Steiner’s penultimate score.