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DVD Platinum Blonde
This Frank Capra comedy from 1931 helped define the screwball-comedy genre that became so popular with films like It Happened One Night and The Awful Truth. In this witty romp, Jean Harlow plays an upper-crust socialite who bullies her reporter husband (Robert Williams) into conforming to her highfalutin ways. The husband chafes at the confinement of high society, though, and yearns for a creative outlet. He decides to write a play and collaborates with a fellow reporter (Loretta Young); the results are unexpectedly hilarious, especially when Young shows up at the mansion with a gaggle of boozehound reporters in tow. With snappy, ribald dialogue (allowable in those pre-Hays Code days), Capra keeps the gags flying fast and furious, taking special delight in having Williams's journalist pals rib him endlessly over his kept-man status. Platinum Blonde was a great success at the time of its release during the class-conscious Depression; for better or worse, its star Harlow was identified with the tag "platinum blonde" until her untimely death. --Jerry Renshaw
What are two foxy babes like Jean Harlow and Loretta Young doing looking twice at that lead male character, that loser? Jean Harlow is miscast, but looks good; Loretta comes off best, serenely beautiful. Men might like it more than I did.
TWO LOVELY LEADING LADIES....
I agree and disagree on points made by some other reviewers about "Platinum Blonde". The title is misleading, I agree. The studio obviously wanted to showcase Jean Harlow to sell the picture. She's a second lead as Ann Schuyler, a wealthy society girl who marries a coarse newspaper reporter, Stew (Robert Williams) and tries to refine him. But, in as obvious a plot line as you can throw to an audience, his heart belongs to Gallagher (Loretta Young) his co-worker at the paper. The studio wanted to please Depression era audiences so the rich are portrayed as stuffy bores and the "poor" (Williams) are portrayed as scrappers who punch people in the face when they get mad and feel it's justified. I disagree that Williams gave a good performance. "Stew" (an apt a name as any) came off as sarcastic and unlikeable. The Schuyler family was justifiably appalled at him. Ann liked him though and tried to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. But he ends up feeling stifled and going ballistic. He wants to write. Williams showed none of the humaness that made Cagney or Gable so good at these kind of parts. His character was way too arrogant and cocky. His performance is badly dated and chauvinistic (especially in his dealings with Gallagher). But what I enjoyed about the film was the luminous presences of two future stars---Jean Harlow and Loretta Young. Both were excellent. Harlow had a thankless role as Ann but she was fabulous in gowns and quite braless. She was more sympathetic than the film would have you think. She didn't deserve the treatment she got from Stew. Young was SO young and so pretty and very good as Gallagher. She certainly didn't deserve Stew either. But that was the studio's approach to pleasing the masses back then. I can't recommend this as a good film because of Williams. But, as a relic of times gone by---it's certainly worth a look or two for Harlow and Young and for that fabulous Schuyler house with those immense diamond shaped tile floors and gorgeous staircase that Harlow goes up and down in those gowns and chandelier earrings. Good DVD print too. And that early Columbia logo is really vintage.
Well I liked it...
This is the one movie I've come across that manages to bring tears to my eyes every single time I've watched it. All of the actors are absolutely amazing... except for Jean Harlow, who is terrible. The humor is subtle on occasion and might be missed by those used to the more ribald humor of today. Most of the fun of Platinum Blonde is watching Stew Smith's eyes for his reactions. One can only wonder sadly why Jean Harlow was allowed to act in this film.
This Academy Award winner for Best Picture is a sweeping soap opera about the guests at the Grand Hotel. Several plots intertwine, but mostly it's about Stars! Stars! Stars! Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Wallace Beery, and both Barrymore brothers head up the cast. Garbo is luminous as Grusinskaya, the neurotic and famous-but-slipping dancer and, yes, she "vonts to be alone." John Barrymore is a cat burglar with blue blood and a heart of gold, and Lionel Barrymore happily caroms off him as Mr. Kringelein, a dying man who wants to live out the time he has left with the rich. Joan Crawford is perhaps the biggest surprise of the movie: as Flaemmchen, a young career girl trying to decide between secretary and tart, she is uncharacteristically funny, vivacious, and downright bubbly. Along the way... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Greta Garbo - John Barrymore - Joan Crawford Director(s): Edmund Goulding DVD Release Date: Released the 03 February 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Yes, it's true: you can virtually see Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall falling for each other in this Howard Hawks variation on Casablanca but adapted from--as legend has it--Ernest Hemingway's self-declared "worst novel." (The story goes that Hawks told Hemingway he could make a movie of the author's least work, and Hemingway gave him the rights to this story.) The script by William Faulkner and Jules Furthman actually makes this one of Hawks's and Bogart's most interesting and often exciting films. Bogart plays a boat captain who reluctantly agrees to help the French Resistance while wooing chanteuse Bacall. Hoagy Carmichael, wry at the piano, adds a delicious accent to an already wonderful mood. --Tom KeoghMore Info about this DVD Actor(s): Humphrey Bogart - Lauren Bacall Director(s): Howard Hawks DVD Release Date: Released the 04 November 2003 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Even under the heavy censorship of 1946 Hollywood, Lana Turner and John Garfield's libidinous desires burn up the screen in Tay Garnett's adaptation of James M. Cain's torrid crime melodrama. Platinum blond Turner is Cora, a restless sexpot stuck in a roadside diner married to mundane middle-aged fry cook Nick Smith (Cecil Kellaway) when handsome drifter Frank (Garfield) blows her way. It's lust at first sight, a rapacious desire that neither can break off, and before long they're plotting his demise--but in the wicked world of Cain nothing is that easy. Garnett's visual approach is subdued compared to the more expressionistic film noir of the period, but he's at no loss when he films the luminous Turner in her milky-white wardrobe. She radiates repressed sexuality and uncontrollable... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Lana Turner - John Garfield Director(s): Tay Garnett DVD Release Date: Released the 06 January 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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By turns hard-nosed and ribald, They Drive by Night smashes through a vintage Warner Bros. yarn about truck drivers, the Depression, and one duplicitous dame. The opening reels are a forceful look at the dangerous lives of independent truckers (George Raft and Humphrey Bogart as brothers--Bogie in the supporting role, though he would soon eclipse Raft in Hollywood), battling the system and the economy. The final section veers into a less exciting murder frame-up, but Ida Lupino is so delicious as the Black Widow, it works. The robust humor of director Raoul Walsh dominates the film, with some truly hilarious double entendres aimed at outfoxing the censors. At the center of many such one-liners is Ann Sheridan, as a waitress who slings more than hash. It's close to being a classic,... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): George Raft - Humphrey Bogart Director(s): Raoul Walsh DVD Release Date: Released the 04 November 2003 Usually ships within 24 hours
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George Cukor helped transform a moody Victorian stage melodrama (previously filmed in Britain in 1939) into a gothic Hollywood romantic thriller. Ingrid Bergman stars as a meek, uncertain heiress courted and married in a whirlwind romance by the debonair Charles Boyer, but when they move back into her childhood home she begins losing her grip on reality and becomes convinced that her husband is trying to drive her insane. Joseph Cotten, rather stiff and colorless next to the anguished Bergman and charming and lively Boyer, is the heroic Scotland Yard detective who becomes enamored of the skittish woman who is slowly succumbing to madness. The grand, glorious sets and elegant photography recall Hitchcock's Rebecca, another lush Hollywood gothic melodrama of a retiring young wife... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Charles Boyer - Ingrid Bergman - Joseph Cotten Director(s): George Cukor DVD Release Date: Released the 03 February 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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