The Carmen Miranda Collection (The Gang's
All Here/If I'm Lucky/Something For The Boys/Greenwich Village/Doll Face; 20th Century Fox DVD)
Picture:
C+ Sound: C+ Extras: B- Films: B-
Carmen
Miranda was one of the biggest stars in 1940s Hollywood, but she is not always
remembered with the same regard other stars of the time are because of things
like time, controversy and political correctness. It may irritate those critics of her success
even more that she was reportedly the top paid female anywhere in the U.S. for
all of 1945 and continues to endure as an icon of world cinema. That is why Fox’s new DVD box set The Carmen Miranda Collection is so
timely.
It
includes five key films in her career that show her rise from supporting
character actor to full-fledged star as she slowly eclipsed Vivian Blane, who
still remained popular in her own right.
That Night In Rio is the only
key film missing here, but you can get it in what turns out to be the first
volume of The Alice Faye Collection
we previous covered here and also includes The
Gang's All Here (1943) in this set:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/5139/The+Alice+Faye+Collection+(On+The
Greenwich Village (1944) features Miranda in the
lead as a fortune teller with Don Ameche, William Bendix and Blane in this
1920s-set comedy about love, dance and illegal alcohol. Walter Lang makes this a Technicolor romp a
fun comedy that holds up rather well.
Something For The Boys (1944) has Miranda and Blane
joined by Michael O’Shea, Sheila Ryan, Phil Silvers and Perry Como in this
inheritance comedy with Cole Porter music that becomes a pro-Allies WWII film
with some fun moments of its own. Como
is often joked about as a singer, but when you hear him at this point of his
career, you see and hear why he became a star before the 1950s and fuddy-duddy
period is his best remembered for.
Doll Face (1946) has Miranda, Como and
Blane joined by Dennis O’Keefe is a hit film based on a book by no less than
Gypsy Rose Lee (Louise Hovick) and is also a musical with Blane as the
legendary dancer in black and white. The
adaptation is clever and makes for interesting comparisons to the later film Gypsy about the actual star.
If I'm Lucky (1946) has Miranda, Como and
Blane joined by Harry James and Edgar Buchanan in a remake of the 1935 Musical Thanks A Million about a singer (Como)
with a band in tough times hired to sing for a candidate, when he is being
framed to be that candidate! A fine
political satire, it seems oddly timely 62 years later.
The 1.33
X 1 image is good in most cases, though the later color films do not
demonstrate the full luster and vibrancy three-strip Technicolor prints would
and will need some work before Blu-ray versions are issued. The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo is a little
better than the Mono in all cases, though they cannot compete with the isolated
music tracks where applicable and makes one wish a more ambitious upgrade was
applied to those cases. Extras include a
very high-quality, full color, illustrated booklet in the case about Miranda
and the films, while the DVDs all have stills section, all but Village have trailers and Doll & Lucky have isolated music scores.
John Cork supplies an optional commentary track on a deleted scene with
for Doll, Lucky has extended clips of Miranda from Sing With The Stars, Boys
has the outstanding documentary The Girl
From Rio, and Here the same
extras it did on the Alice Faye set
linked above.
- Nicholas Sheffo
