Cary Grant: The Signature Collection On DVD

Actor:           Cary Grant, Irene Dunne, Alexis Smith, John Garfield, Myrna Loy       
Director:      Delmer Daves, Garson Kanin
Genre:          Drama
Year:            N/A
Studio:         Warner Brothers
Length:        518
Released:    June 1, 2004
Rating:          Not Rated (MPAA Rating)
Format:         DVD
Misc:              NTSC, Color
Language:    English
Subtitles  :    English, Spanish, French

DESCRIPTION:

Greatest movie star ever? How can you argue against Cary Grant, the graceful clown, the ironic romantic? Equally at home in an Alfred Hitchcock suspense piece or a Howard Hawks screwball comedy, the superb Mr. Grant (born Archie Leach) could handle just about anything. And it's a testament to his appeal that this boxed set, which contains not a single great movie, is nevertheless an entertaining catalog of Grant's splendid run during the 1940s.

The earliest picture, and a sheer delight, is 1940's My Favorite Wife, one of Grant's blissful pairings with the wonderful Irene Dunne. He's about to remarry when his first wife washes up again after having been lost on a desert island (with he-man Randolph Scott) for seven years. Destination Tokyo is a WWII submarine picture, with Grant as the stalwart skipper--slightly odd casting, but he brings it off with admirable professionalism. (The film's propagandistic jabs at demonizing the Japanese enemy have not aged well.)

Night and Day is one of those composer biographies that veers rather radically from reality, with Grant playing Cole Porter. A ton of great songs and the canny casting of Cary as the champagne-sophisticate Porter make it passably de-lovely, despite the whitewash of the composer's real-life story. The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer puts Grant in deliciously antic mode, mooned over by teenager Shirley Temple but preferring the company of her older sister, Myrna Loy. He re-teams with Loy in Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, an artless but regularly hilarious tale of Manhattanites whose Connecticut fixer-upper becomes a money pit.

Special Features:

• Contains five films all in new digital-transfers and extras
• "Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House"
• "Destination Tokyo"
• "The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer"
• "My Favorite Wife"
• "Night and Day"
• See individual DVDs for full details