Rhubarb – The Millionaire Cat (1951/Legend Films DVD)

 

Picture: C     Sound: C     Extras: D     Film: C-

 

 

When Leona Helmsley recently left $8 Billion (yes, with a “B”) to her dogs and “all the pets in the world” as it were, it seemed like a sick joke from a woman hardly anyone liked.  It is not the first time the rich too care of any pets after their passing, but it always seems outrageous on some level when people are treated better than animals and especially when there arte so many people in hard times.  However, his has also been the basis for comedy and Arthur Lubin’s Rhubarb – The Millionaire Cat (1951) originally issued by Paramount Pictures is one of them.

 

With Ray Milland in the lead, the story of a baseball team owner who leaves his baseball team and fortune to the title cat, that cat (so ferocious that other cats and dogs cannot handle him and we get the first hint of aggression from the opening credits when the cat is made to mock the MGM lion logo) becomes the good luck mascot for the team on top of the other predictable idiocy in the Dorothy Reid/Francis Cockrell screenplay.  Jan Sterling, Gene Lockhart and William Frawley cannot save this dud and was a very bad attempt by the studio to compete with Disney.

 

The 1.33 X 1 black and white image is soft, throwing off the gray scale and though the print source looks good, this could be an old analog transfer master.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo is a few generations down and flat, so be careful of your volume levels.  There are no extras.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo