Cary Grant's wit sparkles in comedy quartet

By Terry Lawson
Knight Ridder News Service

In a re-release of Cary Grant films, his roles include a soldier in drag, a fun-loving Navy commander and a foster dad. Gannett News Service

For this Grant fan, the first notable evidence that 2004 will trump 2003 is Fox Home Entertainment's release of a quartet of Grant comedies for the first time on DVD.

The best known — and best — of the four is Howard Hawks' 1949 screwball "I Was a Male War Bride," with Grant playing a French officer who falls in love with Army Lt. Ann Sheridan and then masquerades as a woman to fit the Army's war bride provision and return with her to the States.

Grant is back in uniform for Stanley Donen's 1957 comedy "Kiss Them for Me," which sees Grant, a fun-loving Navy commander planning a shore leave, surrounded with a cast that sounds as if it were recruited for one of those late-night movies Johnny Carson's smarmy used-car salesman used to host: Werner Klemperer, Leif Erickson, Larry Blyden, original supermodel Suzy Parker and Jayne Mansfield.

That Grant still sparkles in this suspect company says a lot about his star power, if not his taste.

In the 1934 film "Born to Be Bad," the young Grant plays foster dad to the illegitimate son of bitter Loretta Young, who repays him with a blackmail scheme that threatens Grant's happy marriage. It's every bit as sappy as it sounds but remains interesting as an all-but-forgotten artifact.

"People Will Talk," from 1951, is not exactly obscure, but considering Joseph Mankiewicz won best director Oscars for two previous films, "A Letter to Three Wives" and "All About Eve," this quirky comedy is rarely remembered, perhaps because it was perceived as a product of its time.

In one of his best performances, Grant plays a philosophical, forward-thinking gynecologist who falls in love with seduced and abandoned pregnant patient Jeanne Crain, giving even more fuel to a conservative rival (Hume Cronyn) who has been attempting to expose Grant's radicalism.

Glimpse into director's life

The Criterion imprint has become to DVD collectors what the Blue Note label was once to jazz lovers: an assurance of quality.

That reputation is upheld with Criterion's release of a remastered "Ikiru," Akira Kurosawa's elegiac portrait of a civil servant (masterfully played by Takashi Shimura, who was soon to lead "The Seven Samurai" into battle) who is forced to reconsider his life after being diagnosed with terminal cancer.

Disc 1 contains the 1952 film, which boasts greatly improved sound and subtitles, and a commentary by Kurosawa scholar Stephen Prince. The second disc has the exceedingly fine 2000 documentary "A Message From Akira Kurosawa," which, blending interviews and production footage of his final films, effectively served as the Japanese master's self-produced obituary. Also included is a 40-minute documentary on the film itself and the usual Criterion array of trailers and stills.

Bumbling Hulot unleashed

Criterion has also obtained rights to the catalog of French social satirist Jacques Tati and is releasing two of his best-known comedies: "Monsieur Hulot's Holiday," the 1953 film that unleashed the bumbling Hulot, descendant of Chaplin and Keaton, and godfather to Clouseau and Mr. Bean; and the even better "Mon Oncle," a 1958 sequel that was Tati's first color film.

The latter has him attempting to cope with the all-too modern household of his sister and brother-in-law, and contains some of the wittiest and most hilarious sight gags ever committed to celluloid.

Both films, which in their remastered state look better than I've ever seen them, contain an introduction by Monty Python's Terry Jones, and short films starring Tati.

Feast of classic sitcoms

Fans of classic sitcoms get a double session this week with second-season box sets of "Cheers" and "Frasier" (both Paramount), collecting 22 and 24 episodes, respectively, of two of the most popular half-hours in TV history. The "Cheers" shows were originally broadcast in 1983-84, when Coach was still manning the bar and before psychiatrist Frasier Crane (Kelsey Grammer) found the hangout and provided Sam Malone (Ted Danson) with a rival for Diane Chambers' affections.

Season 2 of "Frasier," from 1994-95, solidified that show's reputation as the best spin-off ever, and, via urbane Frasier and his fussy brother Niles (David Hyde Pierce), furthered the radical idea that it was possible for a man to like both hockey and Hockney, thus predicting the rise of the metrosexual.