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Category:    Home > Reviews > Music > Vocal > Country > Western > Pop > Compilation > TV > Drama > Biopic > Acting > Politics > Assassination > Opry Video Classics (aka Volume 2/Red Label/Time Life 8-DVD Box Set)/Prince Of Players (1955/Fox Cinema Archive DVD)/Silk Stockings (1957/MGM)/The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964/MGM/Warner Archive Blu-r

Opry Video Classics (aka Volume 2/Red Label/Time Life 8-DVD Box Set)/Prince Of Players (1955/Fox Cinema Archive DVD)/Silk Stockings (1957/MGM)/The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964/MGM/Warner Archive Blu-rays)



Picture: C+/C-/B-/B Sound: C+/C+/B/B- Extras: C-/D/C+/C Main Programs: B/C+/B-/C+



PLEASE NOTE: The Prince Of Players Fox DVD is now only available online and can be ordered from the sidebar, while the Silk Stockings and Unsinkable Molly Brown Blu-rays are now only available from Warner Bros. through their Warner Archive series and can be ordered from the link below.



Here are more music and stage entertainment releases coming your way....



Opry Video Classics with a red label, versus blue for the 2008 box set, is actually the second such set that Time Life has issued. You can tell by reading the labels of this 8-DVD box set's separate discs: Songs That Topped the Charts 2, Legends 2, Love Songs 2, Pioneers 2, Queens of Country 2, Hall of Fame 2, Kings of Country and Jukebox Memories. The press materials rightly claim that this set 'features rare Opry performances filmed at the Ryman Auditorium, the Grand Ole Opry House and at WSM-TV in Nashville' and that 'this is the first time the majority of these live vintage concerts has been available on any format, either VHS or DVD.' So how good is it?


Very. Even if you don't like Country/Western music, the history and periods alone captured and preserved here is a window into a part of music and America that is becoming more distant. Dolly Parton is the only major artist in the set active and successful in a big way still after all these years, but a few of the greats here are still with us and performing. This set offers greats like Johnny Cash, Tammy Wynette, Conway Twitty, Loretta Lynn, Waylon Jennings, The Statler Brothers, George Jones, Charley Pride, Lynn Anderson, Crystal Gayle, Porter Wagner, Chet Atkins, Earl Shruggs, Ernest Tubb, Kitty Wells, Tom T. Hall, Hank Snow, Tex Ritter, Faron Young and more.


I also like the joy, energy and community we experience, no matter where the clip comes from, showing a peak in the genre that has never been matched. Though I was not a fan of all the songs, some are just amazing classics and its great any video of the original artists performing them survived.


The same slip of paper with brief notes on the clips are the only extras in all DVD cases.



Philip Dunne's Prince Of Players (1955) is a backstage melodrama with historical twists telling how one family changed America and the world without realizing it. After early scenes establishing their fractured family and problematic father, a young man named Edwin Booth (played as an adult by no less than Richard Burton) eventually becomes a major actor when the occupation was considered disreputable. Not helping is that his brother John (ironically played by John Derek) lands up being the man who assassinated President Lincoln!


As if their family was not toxic, dysfunctional or troubled enough, this runs 99 minutes and feels much longer despite money on the screen and a supporting cast that includes Raymond Massey, Charles Bickford. Maggie McNamara, Elizabeth Sellars, Ian Keith and many uncredited players like Olan Soule. The Bernard Herrmann music score is a plus, of course.


Fox Cinema Archive has issued this on DVD and at least this is in print, if not a great copy. The ending stops way short of telling us that Edwin Booth established the first white collar union ever in Actor's Equity and his home remains a private club devoted to he, other actors and those arts today.


There are unfortunately no extras.



Robert Mamoulian's Silk Stockings (1957) started out as a stage musical that was a hit, but to make it a feature film it had to compete with one of the greatest romantic comedies of all time and the film it would be a remake of, Ernest Lubitsch's masterwork Ninotchka (1939). Fred Astaire (in his last major musical lead for a very long time) would play Steve (played by Melvin Douglas in the previous hit) and Great Garbo's role of the strict, emotionless Soviet official would be taken on by the great Cyd Charisse in her favorite role and one of the best of her career. Set in Paris, Ninotchka arrives to retrieve three male 'comrades' who are to go back to the USSR immediately, but Steve has been trying to help them out and when he sees her, he has a whole new reason for getting involved in international politics and government!


Unlike the previous film (set just before WWII arrived), this would be a Cold War-era spoof, satire and send-up of everything stiff, conformist, grey and boring about the USSR, leaving not stone unturned on mocking the Soviet Union's 'standards' and way of life. Much imitated since (The Correct Way To Kill (1967) episode of The Avengers U.K. spy TV series (reviewed elsewhere on this site) is one of the best at capturing what both films did in this respect), it goes almost overboard, but then some great songs keep kicking in like Josephine (Janis Ian, a real hoot throughout this film, spoofing stuffy history), Satin & Silk, Without You, Red Blues, Siberia, Stereophonic Sound (a classic send-up of big-screen 1950s filmmaking) and The Ritz Rock and Roll (Astaire's last big Hollywood number ending the film, mocking early Rock music and the assumedly vapid side of American pop culture) has the film going beyond its boundaries and like The Band Wagon, makes for another MGM musical saying farewell to the genre. A must-see film worth your time, finally arriving on Blu-ray.



Charles Walters' The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964) was a hit in its time and became a curio a few decades ago when Cameron's Titanic (1997) became a massive international blockbuster. This earlier film has Debbie Reynolds going all out in a musical biopic about the title character's early beginnings in the outback as a poor woman with a fighting spirit, one that lands up helping her when she strikes it rich, finds romance, deals with high society and then lands up almost getting killed when she plays big money to take the maiden voyage of that unsinkable ship called the Titanic!


The iceberg sunk the ship, but it could not sink her, thus she then enters a second era of wealth thanks to her popularity. Joined by Harve Presnell, Hermione Baddeley, Ed Begley and Jack Kruschen among others, it goes all the way in telling its story, but I was not as big a fan of many of the music numbers (Meredith Willson created the music and I have mixed feelings about his work) but Reynolds shows once again why she was one of the biggest movie stars of the time, post Fisher/Taylor sympathy or not. MGM put the money on the screen yet again and Warner Archive has finally issued this hit on Blu-ray as well. It was outdone by Warner's release of My Fair Lady the same year at the box office and the Oscars, but not for lack of trying. It is worth a good look, but have patience.



Both of these sold-separately Warner Archive musical Blu-rays offer Original Theatrical Trailers as extras, with Silk adding two musical film shorts (Paree, Paree and The Poet & Peasant Overture) and Charisse herself hosting Cole Porter In Hollywood: Satin & Silk, while Molly adds The Story Of A Dress Behind The Scenes documentary.



Despite some sources claiming a 16 X 9 presentation, all performances from the Opry set are in 1.33 X 1 black & white on the older clips (from 2-inch analog videotape) and color on the ones that followed (from 2-inch analog videotape, then analog videotape). We get analog videotape flaws including a little video noise, video banding, telecine flicker, tape scratching, cross color in later clips, faded color in spots and tape damage, but these look far better than you would expect otherwise because they have been remastered well. The old black and white looks more 'live' than you might expect too.


Unfortunately, Players has its opening and closing in letterboxed 2.55 X 1 and the rest in lame pan & scan, butchering the older CinemaScope aspect ration, looking awful often and needs a widescreen upgrade ASAP. I was disappointed.


The 1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Silk was hot in the older CinemaScope format, has more grain than I would have liked despite being remastered (the MetroColor is part of the reason), can show the age of the materials used and has a few other minor flaws, but this is far superior a transfer to all previous releases of the film I've seen over the years and some scenes stand out nicely. Musical numbers do not always seem as grainy.


The 1080p 2.35 X 1 digital High Definition image transfer on Molly might show the age of the materials used sometimes, but this is far superior a transfer to all previous releases of the film and the best presentation on the list, shot in anamorphic Panavision and with better color overall which was also MetroColor.


Both Silk and Molly offer DTS-HD MA (Master Audio) 5.1 lossless mixes off of their original 4-track magnetic sound with traveling dialogue and sound effects, sounding better than they ever have with warmth, depth and fidelity revealed from the original soundmaster never heard in public before, but Molly somehow manages to be even more amazing, almost defying its age at times. Guess Ted Turner taking care of the archive back in the day paid off yet again.


Both DVDs have lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo, but the separation on Opry is basic re-separation at best, though just fine. The original shows were monophonic until the 1980s. Players was also originally issued in 4-track magnetic sound with traveling dialogue and sound effects, which you can hear here at times in this mixdown. It'll do.



To order either of the Warner Archive Blu-rays, Silk Stockings and Unsinkable Molly Brown, go to this link for them and many more great web-exclusive releases at:


https://www.warnerarchive.com/



- Nicholas Sheffo


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