Kate Hepburn and Cary Grant classic in comedies

By Terry Lawson
Knight Ridder News Service

The original "Bambi," the most graceful of all Disney animated features, returns as an outstanding restoration for the DVD age. Advertiser library photo

I now know I live in an age of miracles because "Baby," looking better than I have ever seen it, is only one of the six films packaged in a "Classic Comedies Collection" released by Warner with a suggested price of $68.98 but which can be had for less than $50 at retailers and Web stores.

The remastered "Baby," in which wacky heiress Katharine Hepburn and her pet leopard Baby undo the structured life of uptight paleontologist Cary Grant, is a two-disc special edition that includes an excellent new documentary on Grant, another on the brilliant director Hawks plus a cartoon and short from the era.

The set also has a two-disc edition of a newly remastered "The Philadelphia Story," which is on most lists of the all-time greatest comedies, with Grant as the ex-husband of high-society catch Hepburn, now being wooed by reporter Jimmy Stewart.

The remaining four movies in the set have been given significant visual upgrades. Director George Cukor's 1933 adaptation of the George S. Kaufman-Edna Ferber play "Dinner at Eight" has all the stars in MGM's fabled galaxy, including John Barrymore, Jean Harlow and Marie Dressler. From 1936, "Libeled Lady" features Harlow as the fiancÚ of overheated newspaper editor Spencer Tracy, drafted (with William Powell) to get the dirt on celebrity heiress Myrna Loy. And 1937's "Stage Door," another film version of a Kaufman-Ferber comedy, stars Hepburn in a boarding house for actresses, with Eve Arden, Ann Miller, Ginger Rogers and Lucille Ball as other residents.

Finally there is Ernst Lubitsch's 1942 comic masterpiece "To Be Or Not To Be," with Jack Benny perfectly cast as a hambone actor enlisted to impersonate a Nazi officer and save members of the Polish underground resistance. His wife and fellow thespian is played by Carole Lombard, who died in a plane crash before the film's release.

All the films are available individually, but, as with Warner Bros.' recent boxes devoted to gangster films and film noir, "Classic Comedies" is both a must-own for film buffs and a remarkable bargain.

Funny as Fanny

Columbia-TriStar has packaged 1968's "Funny Girl" — the musical that won Barbra Streisand her first Oscar, for her portrayal of Broadway star Fanny Brice — with its less-satisfying sequel, 1975's "Funny Lady," in a two-disc box set.

Also available for the first time on DVD is the 1970 film of the Broadway musical "On A Clear Day You Can See Forever" (Paramount) with Babs as a showgirl who visits, via hypnosis, her previous life in 19th-century England.

Director's gems

The scope of the Criterion Collection is displayed in its two latest labors of cinematic love. The first is a new edition of "My Own Private Idaho," director Gus Van Sant's 1991 look at the relationship between two street hustlers, a narcoleptic (the late River Phoenix) and his rich-kid best friend (Keanu Reeves).

The film's initial naturalism gives way to a Shakespearian-style tragedy inspired by "Henry IV" (both parts), and while the mood shift remains jarring, the film has aged well.

The second is a bona-fide visual masterpiece, "The River," French master Jean Renoir's poetic 1951 drama about three young women growing up along a river in India. It is based on a novel by Rumer Godden, who co-wrote the screenplay. Sensual and deeply emotional, the film is supplemented by an interview with Martin Scorsese, a BBC documentary about Godden and an introduction by Renoir.

To Fawn over

Beauty also abounds in 1942's "Bambi" (Disney) re-released in a limited Platinum Edition. Easily the most graceful of all Disney's animated features, the story of a young deer's struggle to survive after his mother is killed by a hunter — a scene often cited for its powerful effect on younger filmgoers — has undergone a remarkable restoration that is detailed in one of the many extras on the two-disc set. It also has a new sound mix.

SpongeBob and Beyond

Other recent theatrical releases now on DVD are "The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie" (Paramount), a spin-off of the popular Nickelodeon animated series; the faux documentary "Incident at Loch Ness" (Fox) and the very real documentary "Chisholm '72: Unbought & Unbossed" (Fox) about the presidential candidacy of late U.S. Rep. Shirley Chisholm.