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Review 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment / Laurel And Hardy - The Bullfighters [1945]
Actors & Directors
  • Oliver Hardy
  • Mal St. Clair
  • Richard Lane
  • Margo Woode
  • Stan Laurel
  • Carol Andrews
Release date: 1989-02-09
Run time: 61 min.
RRP: £5.99
Price: £4.99

Review Laurel And Hardy - The Bullfighters [1945] / 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment:


Review Delta Visual Entertainment / Abbott And Costello - Africa Screams [1949]
Actors & Directors
  • Bud Abbott
  • Max Baer
  • Shemp Howard
  • Lou Costello
  • Hillary Brooke
  • Charles Barton
Release date: 2000-06-26
Run time: 85 min.
RRP: £4.99
Price: £2.14

Review Abbott And Costello - Africa Screams [1949] / Delta Visual Entertainment:


Review Warner Home Video / Laurel And Hardy - Air Raid Wardens [1943]
Actors & Directors
  • Stan Laurel
  • Jacqueline White
  • Horace McNally
  • Oliver Hardy
  • Edgar Kennedy
  • Edward Sedgwick
Release date: 2000-06-05
Run time: 68 min.
RRP: £9.99
Price: £26.95

Review Laurel And Hardy - Air Raid Wardens [1943] / Warner Home Video:


Review 4 Front Video / Every Girl Should Be Married [1948]
Actors & Directors
  • Don Hartman
  • Diana Lynn
  • Betsy Drake
  • Franchot Tone
  • Alan Mowbray
  • Cary Grant
Release date: 1998-01-12
Run time: 84 min.
Price: £5.99

Review Every Girl Should Be Married [1948] / 4 Front Video:


Actors & Directors
  • Loretta Young
  • Rose Hobart
  • Charles Bickford
  • Ethel Barrymore
  • H.C. Potter
  • Joseph Cotten
Release date: 1997-05-05
Run time: 96 min.
Creator: Laura Kerr
Price: £4.99

Review The Farmer's Daughter [1947] / 2 Entertain Video:


Review Connoisseur Video / Marx Brothers - A Night In Casablanca [1946]
Actors & Directors
  • Chico Marx
  • Charles Drake
  • Harpo Marx
  • Lois Collier
  • Groucho Marx
  • Archie Mayo
Release date: 1996-10-14
Run time: 85 min.
Creator: Roland Kibbee
Price: £12.99

Review Marx Brothers - A Night In Casablanca [1946] / Connoisseur Video:


Review 4 Front Video / Higher & Higher [1943]
Actors & Directors
  • Leon Errol
  • Frank Sinatra
  • Jack Haley
  • Michèle Morgan
  • Tim Whelan
  • Marcy McGuire
Release date: 1998-02-09
Run time: 86 min.
Creator: William Bowers
Price: £5.99

Review Higher & Higher [1943] / 4 Front Video:


Review Sanctuary Digital Entertainment / Second Chorus [1940]
Actors & Directors
  • Artie Shaw
  • H.C. Potter
  • Charles Butterworth
  • Paulette Goddard
  • Fred Astaire
  • Burgess Meredith
Release date: 2001-03-05
Run time: 84 min.
Creator: Johnny Mercer
RRP: £2.99
Price: £3.74

Review Second Chorus [1940] / Sanctuary Digital Entertainment:


Review 4 Front Video / Devil & Miss Jones [1941]
Actors & Directors
  • Charles Coburn
  • Jean Arthur
  • Edmund Gwenn
  • Robert Cummings
  • Sam Wood
  • Spring Byington
Release date: 1998-05-11
Run time: 92 min.
Price: £5.99

Review Devil & Miss Jones [1941] / 4 Front Video:


Review Delta Visual Entertainment / The Time Of Your Life [1948]
Actors & Directors
  • William Bendix
  • James Cagney
  • Broderick Crawford
  • H.C. Potter
  • Wayne Morris
  • Jeanne Cagney
Release date: 2001-08-06
Run time: 101 min.
Creator: William Saroyan
RRP: £4.99
Price: £4.32

Review The Time Of Your Life [1948] / Delta Visual Entertainment:

When James Cagney starred in the movie adaptation of The Time of Your Life in 1948, it was hotly been debated whether William Saroyan's stage play was really filmable at all. Because of its small cast, because all the action takes place on a single claustrophobic set, because the "plot" consists entirely of sub-plots, and because Saroyan's "dirty sentimentality" isn't to everyone's taste, such doubts are still understandable today. However, accept the movie for what it is-a play in a box-and you'll be captivated. The story revolves around a slightly down-at-heel bar-restaurant, where a group of disparate characters come and go as their stories gradually unfold. They include an ex-prostitute desperately seeking a new life, a dancer looking for a break into showbusiness, a down-and-out who discovers a vocation as a pianist, a beer-sodden cowboy and a villainous "stoolie" who, needless to say, gets his comeuppance. This gaggle of misfits is presided over by an enigmatic, champagne-drinking philanthropist (brilliantly played by Cagney) who gently nudges them towards their goals while indulging his own fascination with the minutiae of daily life. Throughout this quietly delightful picture the audience are not told why he's this way, but it is possible to make an educated guess. On the DVD: The Time of Your Life might be a classic, but it apparently warrants no extra features. The black and white picture is 4:3. -Roger Thomas.

Review Sony Pictures Home Entertainment / Angels Over Broadway [1940]
Actors & Directors
  • Ben Hecht
  • George Watts
  • Rita Hayworth
  • Lee Garmes
  • Thomas Mitchell
  • Douglas Fairbanks Jr.
  • John Qualen
Release date: 1994-08-30
Run time: 75 min.
Creator: Gene Havlick
RRP: £10.99
Price: £1.69

Review Angels Over Broadway [1940] / Sony Pictures Home Entertainment:


Review 4 Front Video / Cover Girl [1944]
Actors & Directors
  • Lee Bowman
  • Rita Hayworth
  • Gene Kelly
  • Charles Vidor
  • Leslie Brooks
  • Phil Silvers
Release date: 2002-07-01
Run time: 102 min.
Creator: Virginia Van Upp
RRP: £5.99
Price: £14.64

Review Cover Girl [1944] / 4 Front Video:

The 1944 musical Cover Girl charts the story of a Brooklyn chorus girl (Rita Hayworth) who becomes a big star when she is put on a magazine cover. She is torn between a glittering Broadway career under the aegis of elderly sugar-daddy tycoon (Otto Kruger) and real life with the roughneck he-man choreographer (Gene Kelly) she really loves. Columbia were so intent on showing off their prime asset in this vehicle that Hayworth is sometimes in danger of being swamped by sheer production values and Charles Vidor's ever-so-slightly stuffy direction. However, gorgeous Technicolor and the even more gorgeous Rita make the creaking plot not only bearable but also sparkling. There are oddly unsentimental and unsettling flashbacks with Hayworth playing her character's turn-of-the-century grandmother offering a cut-down of the main story and energetic comedy support performances from Phil Silvers (who proves himself an unexpectedly adept dancer) and the fabulously hated cynic Eve Arden (not to mention the wonderfully-named Jinx Falkenberg). One stand-out performance is the Jerome Kern-Ira Gershwin duet ("Long Ago and Far Away") enlivening an otherwise so-so score (other tunes: "Make Way for Tomorrow", "Put Me to the Test", "Sure Thing", "That's the Best of All", "The Show Must Go On", "Who's Complaining?" and "Poor John"). Of course, the film becomes magical in its dance sequences, with the young Kelly staging and performing several wonderful routines-including the famous "Alter Ego" turn, in which he dances with his own reflection-and finding, in the trim Rita, one of his most perfect partners: although Martha Mears dubbed Rita's singing voice, she impressively delivers all her own dance moves. -Kim Newman.

Review 4 Front Video / Abbott And Costello - In The Navy [1941]
Actors & Directors
  • Patty Andrews
  • Lou Costello
  • Arthur Lubin
  • Claire Dodd
  • Bud Abbott
  • Dick Powell
Release date: 2003-01-27
Run time: 82 min.
Creator: John Grant
RRP: £5.99
Price: £9.97

Review Abbott And Costello - In The Navy [1941] / 4 Front Video:


Actors & Directors
  • Bud Flanagan
  • John Baxter
  • Dick Francis
  • Chesney Allen
Release date: 1992-05-18
Run time: 84 min.
RRP: £5.99
Price: £24.95

Review Here Comes The Sun [1945] / Warner Home Video:


Review ITV DVD / Dear Mr. Prohack [1949]
Actors & Directors
  • Sheila Sim
  • Hermione Baddeley
  • Glynis Johns
  • Cecil Parker
  • Dirk Bogarde
  • Thornton Freeland
Release date: 1995-09-18
Run time: 85 min.
Creator: Edward Knoblock
RRP: £12.99
Price: £14.99

Review Dear Mr. Prohack [1949] / ITV DVD:


Review 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment / Laurel And Hardy - Dancing Masters [1943]
Actors & Directors
  • Trudy Marshall
  • Oliver Hardy
  • Mal St. Clair
  • Stan Laurel
Release date: 1989-02-09
Run time: 64 min.
Price: £5.99

Review Laurel And Hardy - Dancing Masters [1943] / 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment:


Review MGM Entertainment / Hucksters, The / San Francisco [1947]
Actors & Directors
  • Jeanette MacDonald
  • Spencer Tracy
  • Deborah Kerr
  • Clark Gable
  • Jack Conway
  • W.S. Van Dyke
  • Jack Holt
Release date: 1994-07-04
Run time: 222 min.
Creator: Robert E. Hopkins
RRP: £12.99
Price: £39.95

Review Hucksters, The / San Francisco [1947] / MGM Entertainment:

As Victor Norman, Clark Gable plays a returning World War II veteran looking for a job with an advertising agency. He succeeds, landing a good position with a nice salary, but soon finds out that ethics and integrity are in short supply in the rarefied world of corporate advertising. With a big soap account on the brink of leaving the ad agency, things get a bit desperate as the agency struggles to hang onto the company's business. They round up a war widow for an endorsement, and their client is temporarily happy, but soon Gable finds the man to be a harsh and demanding taskmaster. This acerbic comedy may seem a little thin by today's standards but some of the commentary on the gullibility of the American-buying public is still pretty fresh half a century later. Sydney Greenstreet excels as the tyrannical, somewhat disgusting head of the soap firm and Deborah Kerr makes her American screen debut as Gable's war-widow love interest in The Hucksters. -Jerry Renshaw.

Review Delta Visual Entertainment / My Dear Secretary [1948]
Actors & Directors
  • Keenan Wynn
  • Rudy Vallee
  • Helen Walker
  • Charles Martin
  • Laraine Day
  • Kirk Douglas
Release date: 2001-05-14
Run time: 95 min.
Creator: Leo C. Popkin
RRP: £4.99
Price: £4.99

Review My Dear Secretary [1948] / Delta Visual Entertainment:

If Charles Martin's wisecracking 1948 period-piece My Dear Secretary hasn't quite endured as a classic of its kind, it still commands attention as an appealing and often very funny curiosity. Kirk Douglas rightly earned his status as one of the titans of big-screen epic drama, so it's a surprise to encounter him in this romantic comedy as a feckless writer who can always find something to do rather than get down to work, leaving a string of outraged, frustrated or compromised secretaries in his wake. Douglas has a reasonably light comic touch and spars well with Laraine Day, in determined form as the secretary whom finally tames him and, in a notable strike for women's liberation, becomes a successful author herself in the process. But this is a film in which the supporting cast steal the best lines and scenes. Keenan Wynn is delightful as Ronnie, Douglas' neighbour and partner in the pursuit of pleasure. Some splendid high campery offers ample evidence that in a more enlightened age, Ronnie would surely have been openly gay. How else to explain his hilarious last reel marriage of convenience to the wealthy dragon of a landlady, played by the irrepressible Florence Bates? It isn't vintage screwball by any means, but My Dear Secretary is witty and literate enough to make you long for a revival in sophisticated cinema comedy. Truly, they don't make 'em like they used to. On the DVD: As the rush to release long-forgotten gems on DVD turns into a deluge, we will probably have to get used to the sort of disappointment on offer here: unrestored prints with no digital remastering and lousy sound quality, simply slammed onto the disc. The film could hardly be served less adequately. [+]
There isn't even any static background information on the production or the actors, making the package rather poor. -Piers Ford.

Review Delta Visual Entertainment / Pot O' Gold [1941]
Actors & Directors
  • Charles Winninger
  • Paulette Goddard
  • Horace Heidt
  • Mary Gordon
  • George Marshall
  • James Stewart
Release date: 1999-07-19
Run time: 94 min.
Creator: Walter DeLeon
RRP: £4.99
Price: £12.75

Review Pot O' Gold [1941] / Delta Visual Entertainment:


Review 4 Front Video / Show Business [1944]
Actors & Directors
  • Joan Davis
  • Eddie Cantor
  • Edwin L. Marin
  • George Murphy
  • Constance Moore
  • Nancy Kelly
Release date: 1998-02-09
Run time: 92 min.
Creator: Paul Girard Smith
RRP: £5.99
Price: £13.98

Review Show Business [1944] / 4 Front Video:


Models & Brands:
Laurel And Hardy - The Bullfighters [1945], Abbott And Costello - Africa Screams [1949], Laurel And Hardy - Air Raid Wardens [1943], Every Girl Should Be Married [1948], The Farmer's Daughter [1947], Marx Brothers - A Night In Casablanca [1946], Higher & Higher [1943], Second Chorus [1940], Devil & Miss Jones [1941], The Time Of Your Life [1948], Angels Over Broadway [1940], Cover Girl [1944], Abbott And Costello - In The Navy [1941], Here Comes The Sun [1945], Dear Mr. Prohack [1949], Laurel And Hardy - Dancing Masters [1943], Hucksters, The / San Francisco [1947], My Dear Secretary [1948], Pot O' Gold [1941], Show Business [1944]

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