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27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"The King of Hollywood actors...William Clark Gable ~ 1901 to 1960", August 20, 2006
20th Century Fox Home Entertainment present "Clark Gable Collection 1" (The Call of the Wild/Soldier of Fortune/The Tall Man) --- (Dolby digitally remastered)...featuring top performances by actors to die for from the '30s, '40s and '50s with outstanding plot lines and screenplays...from memorable films that will leave you sitting on the edge of your seat completely engulfed in the story and every scene...so pop some popcorn, sit back and enjoy the movie.
First up we have "THE CALL OF THE WILD" (1935) (95 min. B/W)...under director William Wellman, producer Darryl F. Zanuck, novel by Jack London, screenplay by Gene Fowler and Leonard Praskins, original music by Alfred Newman...the cast include Clark Gable ( Jack Thornton), Loretta Young (Claire Blake), Jack Oakie (Shorty Hollihan), Frank Conroy (John Blake), Reginald Owen (Smith), Sidney Toler (Joe Groggins), Katherine de Mille (Marie), Lalo Encinas (Kali), Charles Stevens (Francois), James Burke (Olle), Duke Green (Frank). . . . .our story has Clark Gable and Jack Oakie headed for gold in them thar hills...Gable purchases a sled dog Buck who is part wolf and saves his life once or twice during the film...Loretta Young is searching for her husband Frank Conroy who leaves her to search for another clear vein of gold...a closeness develops between Gable and Young during the journey, when Gable realizes he must help find her husband and makes things right.....the interaction between Gable, Young and Oakie has a moral and lifting ingredient not found in todays films...once again Gable steals the scenes as part hero, devil may care and honorable character that he is.
Special footnote, actor Clark Gable was signed in 1930 by MGM's Irving Thalberg. Joan Crawford asked for him as co-star in "Dance, Fools, Dance" (1931) and the public loved him manhandling Norma Shearer in "A Free Soul" (1931) the same year. "The Painted Desert" (1931)His unshaven lovemaking with bra-less Jean Harlow in "Red Dust" (1932) made him MGM's most important star..."Dancing Lady" (1933)Gable refused an assignment and the studio punished him by loaning him out to (at the time) low-rent Columbia Pictures, which put him in Frank Capra's "It Happened One Night" (1934), which won him an Oscar, "China Seas" (1935)"The Call of the Wild" (1935) to a far more substantial roles at MGM, such as Fletcher Christian in "Mutiny on the Bounty" (1935) and Rhett Butler in "Gone with the Wind" (1939), "Wife vs. Secretary" (1936,It was at Gable's 36th birthday that Judy Garland sang "Dear Mr. Gable: You Made Me Love You.", he was only beginning with films like "San Francisco" (1936), Strange Cargo" (1940), "Boom Town" (1940), "Honky Tonk" (1941), "Across the Wide Missouri" (1951), "Lone Star" (1952), "Mogambo" (1953), "The King and Four Queens" (1956), "Band of Angels" (1957), "Teacher's Pet" (1958), "Run Silent Run Deep" (1958), "But Not for Me" (1959), It Started in Naples (1960)...playing a cowboy in his last film, "The Misfits" (1961), which was also the final film for co-star Marilyn Monroe, the aging Gable diligently performed his own stunts, taking its toll on his already guarded health. He died from a heart attack before the film was released, Named the #7 greatest actor on The 50 Greatest Screen Legends List by the American Film Institute...Gable was quoted "The only reason they come to see me is that I know life is great - and they know I know it, I'm no actor and I never have been, what people see on the screen is me."...it was fellow friend and actor Spencer Tracy who dubbed Gable as "The King".
SPECIAL BIO:
1. Clark Gable (aka: William Clark Gable)
Date of birth: 1 February 1901 - Cadiz, Ohio,
Date of death: 16 November 1960 - Los Angeles, California
BIOS:
1. Loretta Young (aka: Gretchen Young)
Date of birth: 6 January 1913 - Salt Lake City, Utah
Date of death: 12 August 2000 - Los Angeles, California
2. Jack Oakie (aka: Lewis Delaney Offield)
Date of birth: 12 November 1903 - Sedalia, Missouri
Date of death: 23 January 1978 - Los Angeles, California
3. William Wellman (aka: William Augustus Wellman) (Director)
Date of birth: 29 February 1896 - Brookline, Massachusetts
Date of death: 9 December 1975 - Los Angeles, California
4. Jack London (aka: John Griffith Chaney) (Author)
Date of birth: 12 January 1876 - San Francisco, California,
Date of death: 22 November 1916 - Glen Ellen, California
Second film is "SOLDIER OF FORTUNE" (1955) (96 min Color)...under director Edward Dmytryk, producer Buddy Adler, book author and screenplay by Ernest K. Gann , Hugo W. Friedhofer (Composer (Music Score), Lionel Newman (Musical Direction/Supervision . . . . .cast includes Clark Gable (Hank Lee), Susan Hayward (Jane Hoyt), Michael Rennie (Inspector Merryweather), Gene Barry (Louis Hoyt),Alex D'Arcy (Rene), Tom Tully (Tweedie), Anna Sten (Mme. Dupree), Russell Collins (Icky), Leo Gordon (Big Matt), Richard Loo (Po-Lin), Soo Yong (Dak Lai), Frank Tang (Ying Fai), Jack Kruschen (Austin Stoker) . . . . .our story is based upon the Ernest Gann novel with colorful characters doing what they do best, Gable (American mercenary), Hayward the wife searching for her husband, Gene Barry the husband and Michael Rennie trying to catch Gable at his smuggling... Gable accepts the task of finding Barry who is captive by the Chinese Communist authorities on a trumped up charge of spying... how Gable pulls pff the rescue is the exciting venture of the story...will he get the girl Hayward, who he has fallen deeply in love with, that my friend is what you're about to discover...make note of some great shots of Hong Kong during that era, gives the film body as actually being there.
BIOS:
1. Susan Hayward (aka: Edythe Marrenner)
Date of birth: 30 June 1918 - Brooklyn, New York
Date of death: 14 March 1975 - Hollywood, California
2. Michael Rennie (aka: Eric Alexander Rennie)
Date of birth: 25 August 1909 - Bradford, Yorkshire, England, UK
Date of death: 10 June 1971 - Harrogate, Yorkshire, England, UK
3. Gene Barry (aka: Eugene Klass)
Date of birth: 14 June 1919 - New York, New York
Date of death: Still Living
4. Edward Dmytryk (Director)
Date of birth: 4 September 1908 - Grand Forks, British Columbia, Canada
Date of death: 1 July 1999 - Encino, California
Third film on the collection is "THE TALL MEN" (1955) (122 min Color)...under director Raoul Walsh, produced by William A. Bacher and William Hawks, book author Clay Fisher, screenplay by Sydney Boethm and Frank S. Nugent, music by Victor Young (Musical Direction/Supervision / Composer (Music Score), songs by Ken Darby. . . . . .cast includes Clark Gable (Ben Allison), Jane Russell (Nella Turner), Robert Ryan (Nathan Stark), Cameron Mitchell (Clint Allison), Emile G. Meyer (Chickasaw), Juan Garcia (Luis), Harry Shannon (Sam), Steven Darrell ( The Colonel) . . . . . our story is a familiar one, as in "Red River" (1948, this film is a good action western featuring Gable, Russell and Ryan all itching for the end of the rainbow and what money can bring them...great direction by Raoul Walsh and Leo Tover behind the camera with sweeping shots that we all love in a western....Ryan is a cattleman who talks Gable and his brother Cameron Mitchell into heading Texas cattle to Montana...on the way they meet up with Jane Russell and spark fly between her and Gable, but don't count out Ryan as he has big ideas for an empire and Russell just might fall into his plans...at the end of the drive who will come away with all the cards, and where does "Prairie Dog Creek" fit in...this is one of Gables best westerns and he is up to his classic style of acting, don't miss this one.
BIOS:
1. Janes Russell (aka: Ernestine Jane Geraldine Russell)
Date of birth: 21 June 1921 - Bemidji, Minnesota
2.. Robert Ryan (aka: Robert Bushnell Ryan)
Birth Date: 11/11/1909 - Chicago, Illinois
Died: 7/11/1973 - New York, New York
3. Raoul Walsh (aka: Albert Edward Walsh) (Director)
Date of birth: 11 March 1887 - New York, New York
Date of death: 31 December 1980 - Simi Valley, California,
BONUS SPECIAL FEATURES:
"Call of the Wild" (8/09/1935)...Commentary by author Darwin Porter; Restoration comparison; Photo gallery; Original theatrical trailer;
"Soldier of Fortune" (5/27/1955)...Commentary by author Danforth Prince; Restoration comparison; Photo gallery; Original theatrical trailer;
"The Tall Men" (10/06/1955)...:Behind-the-scenes and production stills galleries; Original theatrical trailer & more!
Want to thank 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment for releasing "Clark Gable Collection 1" (The Call of the Wild/Soldier of Fortune/The Tall Men), the digital transfere with a clean, clear and crisp print...looking forward to more high quality releases from the vintage era of the '40s & '50s...order your copy now from Amazon or 20th Century Fox Entertainment where there are plenty of copies available, stay tuned once again for top notch wonderful character actors of the cinema brought back so many wonderful memories of the times when film makers cared about you who purchased a ticket and came back for more...just the way we like 'em.
Total Time: 3-DVD-Set ~ 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment #2236485 ~ (8/15/2006)
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
"He's what every boy thinks he's going to be when he grows up and wishes he had been when he's an old man.", November 8, 2006
This collection of Clark Gable's three films for 20th Century Fox is probably more for fans than casual viewers, but there's still much to enjoy here. The big disappointment is that William Wellman's 1935 version of The Call of the Wild is only the cut (by some 14 minutes) wartime reissue version rather than the original. Any resemblance to anything written by Jack London is purely coincidental: it's set in the Yukon, and there's a dog called Buck in it who has to pull a thousand pound weight in one scene for a bet, but that's about it. But this Buck is a huge St Bernard and he's only a bit player in a gold rush romp tailored for Clark Gable - but then at the height of his popularity, audiences would probably have burned the theatres to the ground if he'd played second fiddle to a hound. More famous for Gable and co-star Loretta Young emerging from the snowed-in on-location shoot with an illegitimate child, it's an enjoyable enough yarn even in the abridged reissue cut that now seems to be the only version surviving, although it shamefully throws away Reginald Owen's excellent villain, who deserves a much better exit than he gets here.
Best of the bunch is Soldier of Fortune, a crowd-pleasing potboiler from the days when Technicolor was glorious (okay, it was shot in De Luxe, but the same principle applies) and CinemaScope really was CINEMAScope. There's not much action (the final rescue is laughably easy), but Ernest K. Gann's script is snappy fun, Clark Gable and Susan Hayward play well off each other, Michael Rennie and the colourful supporting cast more than earn their pay, Hong Kong probably never looked better on screen and there's a pleasingly lush romantic score from Hugo Friedhofer. Curious to see director Edward Dmytryk, the one member of the Hollywood Ten to recant (after being appalled at the Party's treatment of his family while he was in prison), turning in such an anti-Communist oater, but he handles it with flair. A deathless classic? Hell, no - but grand entertainment.
The Tall Men has a great opening half hour, but once the snow clears it's pedestrian and overlong all the way despite the combined star power of Clark Gable, Robert Ryan and Jane Russell. The DeLuxe color is problematic throughout - the early scenes and studio footage look wonderful, but out in the wide-open country it tends to make everything on the trail look bleached out and lifeless, the early CinemaScope lenses probably exacerbating the limitations of the system. Still, there's some great dialog and Ryan gets to deliver the definitive description of his co-star - "There goes the only man I ever respected. He's what every boy thinks he's going to be when he grows up and wishes he had been when he's an old man."
Not an essential purchase by any means, but on the whole an entertaining one.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Clark Gable's Fox movies better than ever on dvd. , August 17, 2006
Clark Gable only made three movies for Fox studio. The three are complete in this fine Fox collection. Each movie is enclosed in a plastic snap case, displayed with movie poster art. The Clark Gable photo covered on the box slip-case is very attractive. The image resolutions are high standard for these movies which are available for the first time on dvd. Watching "Call of the Wild" added to my delight with the crystal clear beautiful black and white digital image of this 1935 golden age Hollywood classic. Who can beat Clark Gable, Loretta Young, and Jack Oakie for classic movie viewing from Hollywood's golden era! If you haven't seen "Call of the Wild", then do consider my assessment that it is a delightful production that will hold your attention from beginning to end. Fox has also included an optional commentary from an author who offers an informative backstory on the making of this film. A fair amount of the commentary is devoted to Clark Gable and Loretta Young's relationship during the filming of "Call of the Wild".As for the other two movies, I have only been able to skim through. From viewing those briefly, the image resolution appears to be very good. "Soldier of Fortune" was a box office win at the time of its premiere release. I do remember viewing it years ago on tv. From what I recall, the movie was entertaining and the tv image quality was not as pleasing as it is on this Fox dvd, so I'm sure my interest will be peaked while viewing an entertaining movie projected from a higher standard dvd. Highly recommend this product. Kudos to Fox for providing a superb collection for Clark Gable fans, movie classic enthusiasts, and/or those who simply appreciate good movies!
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