Golden Boy
(Sony/Columbia) + Ball Of Fire
(MGM/Goldwyn)
Picture:
C+/C Sound: C+/C Extras: C+/D Films: B-
A cycle
of Barbara Stanwyck films are arriving on DVD, including box sets and important
stand-alone films on her 100th Anniversary. Two of them are Rouben Mamoulian’s 1939
Boxing drama Golden Boy and the
other is Howard Hawks’ underrated romantic comedy Ball Of Fire matching the legendary actress with two of her best
leading men.
Golden Boy stars William Holden as a
violinist who also happens to be good with his hands at knocking people around
in a boxing ring, so in true Jazz Singer fashion, will he choose the ring or
the strings. Holden is so young here and
the chemistry he has with Stanwyck is amazing, as he struggles for the answer and
they struggle for each other. Though
this can get melodramatic, it has so many other things going for it that it is
yet another one of the key films that made 1939 the greatest year in Classical
Hollywood history. This is derived from
Clifford Odets’ play and with a supporting cast that includes Adolphe Menjou,
Lee J. Cobb and Sam Levene, the film never lets up from scene to scene; a real
gem from the early part of the Columbia catalog.
Ball Of Fire was made by the even smaller
Samuel Goldwyn Company, written no less by Billy Wilder, Thomas Moore &
Charles Brackett and co-stars Gary Cooper as an egghead who is up to the letter
“S” in creating a new encyclopedia, but his upscale grammar is about to get a
run for its alphabet when he meets a streetwise burlesque dancer/performer
(Stanwyck) who causes a culture clash he will barely survive if mobsters on her
tail don’t get hem both first.
The more
original and challenging of the two films, it is not the greatest of all
Screwball Comedies, yet it is charming, unexpected and has its own
understated-but-consistent energy that shows a side we rarely see of either
star. Oskar Homolka, Richard Haydn, Dana
Andrews, Dan Duryea, Elisha Cook Jr. and Gene Krupa also star.
The 1.33
X 1 black and white image on both releases look good, until you compare the two
and realize how good the HD upgrade on Golden
(shot by Karl Freund and Nicholas Musuraca) looks as compared to Fire, which looks a bit pale in gray
scale by comparison. Fire was shot by Gregg (Citizen Kane, Stagecoach) Toland and though it looks good and was made a few
years later, it looks a bit older by comparison. The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono on both sound
about the same, but Golden has the
edge thanks to some cleaning up to avoid distortion. Golden
is the only one to have any extras, including stills, trailer, Stanwyck’s first
TV appearance (the Sudden Silence
episode of the Ford Theater dramatic anthology series) and two shorts related
to the film.
Glove Slingers is a live-action boxing spoof
with a then-unknown Shemp Howard from The Three Stooges, while the beautiful
animated short The Kangaroo Kid directly spoofs the film in all of its
Glorious Technicolor.
- Nicholas Sheffo
