TCM Spotlight: Katharine Hepburn Collection

[Gigi M.]

From DVDTIMES:

[quote]Warner Home Video and Turner Classic Movies have announced the Region 1 DVD release of TCM Spotlight: Katharine Hepburn Collection for 29th May 2007. Together the studios will honour one of Hollywood's legendary “grand damesâ€

[shearerchic]

I've never seen The Corn is Green and Dragon Seed, though I heeard the latter was awful. The other 3 are good, especially Undercurrent.

[Gregory]

Some people at Warner actually draw a salary to make choices like that. Maybe it was based partly on availability of presentable elements. Unfortunately, this probably will be one of those boxes that can't be split up and that make me a completist in spite of myself. Dragon Seed is an embarrassment, and I would have been happy to never own it. Cukor's TV remake of The Corn is Green is another strange choice but it isn't too terrible and indeed surpasses some of her other late work (faint praise, I know). Sylvia Scarlett is outstanding, and although I don't love it quite as much as Bringing Up Baby or Holiday (and the R2 is already in the mail to me), I'm glad it will be out in R1. This box set will certainly discourage impulse purchases, though. Morning Glory will be great to have on DVD. It's a modest, talky film, but Hepburn won her first, well-deserved Academy Award for her performance (including her tipsy Shakespeare soliloquy). The film helped establish her persona and it was a thematic precursor of some of her subsequent '30s films, especially Stage Door.
The most disappointing thing about this it doesn't bode well for releases of some of the the other Hepburn RKOs that I wanted, nor for a complete Tracy and Hepburn set, at least anytime soon.

[shearerchic]

Some people at Warner actually draw a salary to make choices like that. Maybe it was based partly on availability of presentable elements. Unfortunately, this probably will be one of those boxes that can't be split up and that make me a completist in spite of myself. Dragon Seed is an embarrassment, and I would have been happy to never own it. Cukor's TV remake of The Corn is Green is another strange choice but it isn't too terrible and indeed surpasses some of her other late work (faint praise, I know). Sylvia Scarlett is outstanding, and although I don't love it quite as much as Bringing Up Baby or Holiday (and the R2 is already in the mail to me), I'm glad it will be out in R1. This box set will certainly discourage impulse purchases, though. Morning Glory will be great to have on DVD. It's a modest, talky film, but Hepburn won her first, well-deserved Academy Award for her performance (including her tipsy Shakespeare soliloquy). The film helped establish her person and it was a thematic precursor of some of her subsequent '30s films, especially Stage Door.
The most disappointing thing about this it doesn't bode well for releases of some of the the other Hepburn RKOs that I wanted, nor for a complete Tracy and Hepburn set, at least anytime soon.

I too was hoping for a re-release of the Tracy/Hepburn set with the original titles in keepcases and the inclusion of Without Love, Sea of Grass, and Keeper of the Flame. It would've made more sense that way and instead of Without Love, we could've gotten Song of Love.

[htdm]

Unfortunately, this probably will be one of those boxes that can't be split up and that make me a completist in spite of myself.

Looks like the titles will be sold separately. From the announcement:

The films will be available all together in a collectible gift set for $59.92 SRP, or individually at $19.97 SRP.

[Gregory]

Good. I was in a rush and didn't read the full announcement but should have. I thought it might packaged somewhat like the TCM Archives releases but with more discs, and I'm pretty surprised that they're doing individual releases of ALL of these. A few of them are really minor films (despite the annoucement's claim that they're "classics" and have "earned an important place in film history.")

[alandau]

An underwhelming list.

The only one worthwhile is SYLVIA SCARLETT. DRAGON SEED is a joke, MORNING GLORY is v v v boring, talky and very dispoable. UNDERCURRENT and WITHOUT LOVE are typical 40's over-produced MGM staid romances, of absolutely no relevance today.

DRAGON SEED would have to be one of the worst films to come out of Hollywood in the 40's. If only it was watchable cos it's so bad, however, it is painstakingly BORING and trite. Katharine looks revolting in make-up.

I have never seen CORN IS GREEN and have no intention whatsoever to.

[Derek Estes]

I have to say Undercurrent is very underrated, and can remain quite interesting. Particularly to anyone interested in the work of Vincente Minnelli. The story itself is very much a common women's noir of the 1940's, where the female protagonist is hunted by her psycotic husband. Yet, Minnelli's use of wardrobe and set design to deepen the emotional drama of the film is very much in use in Undercurrent. Particularly in the scene when Katherine Hepburn confronts Robert Taylor for intentionally allowing her to embarrass herself in front of his friends with her common attire, so that he could later take the credit for her stylistic transformation. This scene is quietly brilliant, particularly because it has no real plot nessecity, but greatly deepens the audiences understanding of their relationship. This also makes me feel there might have been some personal truth in this scene for Minnelli, relating to his marriage to Judy Garland during the 40's.

[alandau]

Am still waiting to see a decent print of SYLVIA SCARLETT, but have to agree, from the murkiness I can see, it is a masterpiece.

[alandau]

Once again, let me re-iterate, how dreadful this boxset is.

[Derek Estes]

Alandau are you just trying to pad your post number? Or do you really need the last word? Just checking.

[alandau]

Alandau are you just trying to pad your post number? Or do you really need the last word? Just checking.

No, am just repulsed with this boxset, and the utter unadulterated comercialism that it exudes. And, cannot bear the thught of seeing Kate in that repulsive quasi-Oriental make-up.

[Gregory]

It's called "yellowface," and she only did it in one film, which is easily avoided. Aside from Dragon Seed, my only gripe with this set is the random approach they've taken and the disappointment that this means they're not planning to release other titles or they would have planned them in a way that made sense.

I'm very much looking forward to finally seeing Undercurrent, as I love the gothic romance tradition of Rebecca, Cukor's Gaslight, and lesser-known titles from Tourneur, Sirk, Lang, etc. Without Love, although it will never have the reputation of Woman of the Year or Adam's Rib, is no less interesting, to me at least.

[alandau]

Another insult in Dragon Seed is to see the amazing AGNES MOOREHEAD (imho the finest actress) in "make-up' (I will not use any insulting comments here). I remeber it made me thoroughly sick.

[devlinnn]

It looks like these titles will now only be available in the set. Can anyone confirm?

[shearerchic]

It looks like these titles will now only be available in the set. Can anyone confirm?

This is true.

[subliminac]

Could anyone comment upon the quality of the UK release of Sylvia Scarlett?

[Gregory]

Could anyone comment upon the quality of the UK release of Sylvia Scarlett?

I haven't seen it but I can't see how it could be anything but inferior to the disc in the Warner R1 collection, because the latter looks as good as it can without a restoration, and because Warner has access to the best elements whereas Universal in R2 undoubtedly had to settle for whatever they could access. Anyone who's seen it can feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

[Mark Metcalf]

Just watched Undercurrent (Netflix). Very enjoyable. Gorgeous photography. Robert Mitchum doesn't appear until 1 hour into the movie. I am fascinated with him, surely the most passive actor I've ever seen. He appears to doing, thinking nothing, and yet, what charisma......

[Beloved Aunt]

Katharine Hepburn didn't do anything in the last however many years of her life that was really any good, either. It's usually hard for older folks to find even semi-decent roles.

[The Curious Sofa]

Among Katherine Hepburn's later roles: Suddenly Last Summer, The Lion in Winter, The Glass Menagerie, The Corn is Green, Long Day's Journey into Night & A Delicate Balance. While these films may not have been perfect, many are adapatations of classic plays offering Hepburn stellar roles and they were certainly more ambitios choices than Nancy Meyers-style romcoms. And as her romcoms go, David Lean's Summetime whipes the floor with any romcom Keaton did from the 90s onwards.

[MichaelB]

Kristin Scott Thomas says that the French are much better at writing parts for middle-aged and older women. She's completely bilingual - in fact, French has effectively been her first language for decades - so she takes full advantage; the English-speaking parts tend to be higher-profile, but she says she usually finds the French ones more satisfying.

In fact, so determined was she not to be typecast after Four Weddings and a Funeral that her very next part was a Romanian-speaking one in Lucian Pintilie's An Unforgettable Summer. The original plan was for a Romanian actress to dub her, but in the event Pintilie was so impressed with her phonetically-learned performance that he added a throwaway line early on about how the character grew up in England. But he didn't tell her in advance, so she only found out that the film featured her own voice when she saw it for the first time.

[Beloved Aunt]

Among Katherine Hepburn's later roles: Suddenly Last Summer, The Lion in Winter, etc.

I guess she was "old" or "older" by the 1960s, but she died in 2003. I meant more in the sense of like, Rooster Cogburn onwards.

[The Curious Sofa]

Among Katherine Hepburn's later roles: Suddenly Last Summer, The Lion in Winter, etc.

I guess she was "old" or "older" by the 1960s, but she died in 2003. I meant more in the sense of like, Rooster Cogburn onwards.

Starting in the late 70s, Hepburn showed signs of a neurological condition (thought by many to be Parkinsons as it presents in a similar way) known as essential tremor that got progressively worse. This had an impact on her acting and she retired about a decade before her death.

[hearthesilence]

Re: Hepburn, worth pointing out that she lived to 96, so one probably needs to expand what they deem to be "late" in life as she outlived most of her peers by a couple, even several, decades.

I used to know a guy who wanted to break into the movie or TV business, but like a lot of people I've met with such alleged ambitions, it wasn't that serious or really so meaningful that they'd stick with it. I remember the big script he wanted to sell was a dumb comedy about the elderly that sounded monstrously stupid even in summary. (I had zero interest in reading it.) Granted, it was never sold, much less made, but I wonder if it's a bad reflection of how you rarely see any mainstream American films with good roles for senior citizens. I think Atlantic City had been praised on that count - especially how it portrayed the elderly within the context of the passage of time - and in hindsight I appreciate that a lot more about the film.