Katharine Hepburn Collection (trailers collection)

 

Picture: C     Sound: C     Extras: D     Trailers: B-

 

 

No doubt about it, Katharine Hepburn had one of the greatest careers in film history, and many of those films turned out to be known classics.  With her career as the subject of Passport’s latest trailers collection, I was hoping for more surprises from the The Katharine Hepburn Collection, but many are great and little-seen previews early on.  With the practice of some companies to not even include trailers on their classic films in DVD reissues, these collections tend to have a new value.  The clips here are:

 

 

Bill Of Divorcement

Little Women (1933)

Mary Of Scotland

Stage Door

Bringing Up Baby

Philadelphia Story

Woman Of The Year

Keeper Of The Flame

Dragon Seed

Without Love

Undercurrent

Sea Of Grass

Song Of Love

State Of The Union

Adam’s Rib

The African Queen

Pat & Mike

Summertime

The Rainmaker

Desk Set

Suddenly Last Summer

A Long Day’s Journey Into Night

Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner

The Lion In Winter

The Madwoman Of Chaillot

A Delicate Balance

Rooster Cogburn

On Golden Pond

 

Of course, many of these are still not on DVD, oddly, but this is a far more complete list of her work than expected.  Some odder, less discussed or known (but not necessarily ignored) films are not represented, including early works like Christopher Strong, Spitfire, Break Of Hearts, Alice Adams, Sylvia Scarlet and later films like The Trojan Women and Olly, Olly Oxen Free.  Hope they show up on their DVDs.

 

The image quality is varied, as usual on such collections, with some of the early clips looking a bit crisper than expected.  Later color clips are not always as colorful as one wished for, but the DVDs not issued will hopefully look better.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 is monophonic all the way, with almost all of her films being theatrical monophonic releases.  There are no extras, but The Katharine Hepburn Collection offers a portrait of start power few of the collections in the series ever will, as Hepburn is a star who was tops both in the old studio system and remained so into respected bug pictures as the town changed rapidly.  It is the portrait of a survivor.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo