DVD review

The indispensable Cary Grant arrives in a DVD box set

Four comedies and a drama show off the best of the actor in his Columbia Pictures years

By John DeFore
SPECIAL TO THE AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Sunday, February 12, 2006

Cary Grant's contract with Columbia Pictures represents one small slice of a career spanning more than 70 roles, but what a slice it is. Here is the perfect crystallization of Grant's comic persona — which would soon take on darker shades under Alfred Hitchcock — in films that both deserve such a star and provide him every chance to shine.

This five-film set contains only one drama, the Howard Hawks flyboy pic "Only Angels Have Wings." Not nearly as mawkish as its title might suggest, the film thrives on the can-do manliness of a crew of pilots, with Grant the most stoic of all; viewers who don't share Hawks' fascination with machismo have a luminous Rita Hayworth to distract them.

Of the four comedies, only one ("Talk of the Town," which mixes gags with legal drama) isn't a bona fide classic. The best known is "His Girl Friday," a film almost impossible to overpraise. The opening 15 minutes alone, in which Grant needles ex-wife Rosalind Russell in a newspaper office, are funny enough to float an entire feature — and they're the calmest part of the tale, which will soon involve a looming execution, an escaped killer and an ill-matched engagement that, if we know anything about screwball comedies, is bound to be broken.

"The Awful Truth" again represents the "comedy of remarriage" subgenre, in which divorce is the prelude to, not the end of, a beautiful romance. Grant and Irene Dunne split up over bruised egos and distrust, but neither can resist sabotaging the other's attempts to move on. Grant plants doubt about Dunne's virtue in the mind of her rich new suitor (Ralph Bellamy, the perfect aw-shucks foil for Grant's sophistication both here and in "Friday"); Dunne extracts hilarious revenge when Grant starts dating a society gal.

The only film in the set that hasn't been available on DVD is the boundlessly charming "Holiday," a title familiar to Austin patrons of the Paramount Theatre's classic movie series. Here Grant is engaged to a girl foolish enough to let him meet her sister — Katharine Hepburn, who of course is a much better match — before the wedding.

Columbia's DVDs aren't completely without extra features, but they're nowhere near as lavish as they would be if, say, Warner Bros. or Criterion were issuing titles of this stature. Brief retrospectives and the like offer insights from critics and Grant's buddy Peter Bogdanovich, but the extras should have gone much further.

Fans who already own the other films will rightly resent having to buy the set to get "Holiday," which isn't yet available separately on DVD. Those qualms aside, this modestly priced box contains some of Hollywood's truly indispensable comedies.