His Girl Friday

[Murdoch]

I just saw His Girl Friday on TCM and greatly enjoyed it, I've been a Cary Grant fan for as long as I can remember. Anyway, I did an Amazon search for it and there are at least ten DVD versions, which one would be the best to get? It seems there is both a "remastered" and an "enhanced" version, but I don't trust such flashy slogans.

[domino harvey]

the expensive Columbia version is the best, and it's a better deal to just pick it up via the Cary Grant boxed set, as all the movies in the set are worth owning.

[Antoine Doinel]

Whatever you do, avoid the staggering number of "public domain" dupes that are floating around.

[Ivy Mike]

The Cary Grant Box Set is so kickass. Not sure if you own any of the other movies already, but the boxset is well worth it as opposed to just buying HGF standalone. The Awful Truth may be my personal favorite.

If you have to get just the individual version, this Columbia release is the one you want (as others have mentioned avoid any of the other public domain releases), but I highly recommend the box set.

[Murdoch]

Thanks for the advice, I will pick up this box set since the only film I own with him is CC's Notorious and I've seen all the films in the set and loved them, just avoided buying them because I wasn't sure if the transfers were any good.

[Haggai]

Yeah, the transfers in that set are very solid. The one problem with that Sony boxset was that all the movies in it (except for Holiday) had already been separately released before, although it wasn't much of a problem for me because the only one I owned was His Girl Friday. Of course, if you don't own any of them, it's a no-brainer purchase.

[Gregory]

The earlier standalone discs were all priced at about $14 at the cheapest online retailers. The box is a superb value and because of Holiday an essential purchase. I sold my copy of Only Angels Have Wings before the set arrived, so I never did a comparison, but I believe these transfers were at least slightly improved over the original releases.

[zedz]

Agree with all the above advice. Three of the films are desert-island-essential (His Girl Friday, The Awful Truth and Only Angels Have Wings) and many would add Holiday to that list. Only one comparative dud in a star-focussed box set is a rare thing indeed!

[domino harvey]

One pet peeve about this set and several others (Viva Pedro, Sturges, Capra) is that they don't list the running times of the features anywhere in the packaging or discs-- you wouldn't think it would be that hard but so many boxed sets forget to do it and I gotta go look it up. Who wants to do homework beforehand amirite

[fiddlesticks]

One pet peeve about this set and several others (Viva Pedro, Sturges, Capra) is that they don't list the running times of the features anywhere in the packaging or discs-- you wouldn't think it would be that hard but so many boxed sets forget to do it and I gotta go look it up. Who wants to do homework beforehand amirite

Mine came with a page rubber-glued to the back of the box (has the UPC barcode on it), and the running times were listed on that page. I removed it and keep it in the inside sleeve.

Another bonus of this set is that it comes with 10 5x7 postcards: 5 glamour shots of Grant with each leading lady (meh), and 5 miniaturized movie posters, which I love.

[domino harvey]

Well I'll be damned, I tucked mine away behind the postcards too and didn't even realize it was there. Oh well, the set that this really gave me the business on was the R2 Rohmer set where I had to look each title up on IMDB and then adjust for PAL in my head.

[sevenarts]

Yea, the Cary Grant box set is great. The transfers are all decent, and the transfer for at least Only Angels Have Wings is stunning. The box contains two of my favorite Hollywood films in Holiday and Only Angels, and those two would be more than enough reason to buy the box right there even if the others were junk (which they're obviously not). For me, His Girl Friday is just the slightest notch below the other two I mentioned, and still a masterpiece.