Customer Reviews

Alice Faye Collection 2 (Rose of Washington Square/Hollywood Cavalcade/The Great American Broadcast/Hello, Frisco, Hello/Four Jills in a Jeep) (Full Chk Gift)

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The availability of a second collection of films of the charming Alice Faye is welcome. It seems that a new generation are discovering this quality performer and actress and this DVD collection is a worthy valentine to her legacy. Faye's films tended to follow a proven box office formula. She was quoted in later life as drily stating that they merely rotated her leading men as she constantly remade the same story. These films certainly support that view as all the cliches are on view, each with their own twist.

- first off is the 1939 "Rose of Washington Square". This is a dramatic musical with a more gutsy part for Faye than usual and an excellent role for matinee idol Tyrone Power as a heel. The story was based on the life of "Funny Girl" Fanny Brice who sued the studio for plagiarism. Al Jolson, as Faye's vaudeville buddy, and Faye sing superbly. The film was severely edited before release and many of the cut scenes survive, some of which have been included here.
- next, also released in 1939, is the technicolour romantic comedy "Hollywood Cavalcade". This is a nostalgic look at the coming of talkies, a Reader's Digest potted history of Hollywood, with Faye's role based loosely on, among others, Mabel Normand, a silent screen comedian, and Don Ameche on Mack Sennett, a silent comedy director. The film is very well made with soft colouring and excellent performances by the leads but the director Irving Cummings, while meticulous, always directed at a plod. The best scenes are the Keystone Cop comedy recreations, not directed by Cummings, before the films descends into the usual cliches with Faye neglected by her leading man and wearing her heart on her sleeve.
- in 1941, "The Great American Broadcast" adhered rigidly to the girl meets boy, girl loses boy, girl reunites with boy formula, this time set around the advent of radio. The plot is a rehash of "Alexander's Ragtime Band" stirred in with "Tin Pan Alley" with John Payne and Jack Oakie re-appearing from the latter film. While it may be flawed history, it is a mighty entertaining film. Faye's rendition of the war time Harry Warren lament "Where you are", backed by the Ink Spots, is memorable and the Nicholas Brothers are in there too, performing a breathtaking dance as usual.
- in 1943, "Hello Frisco Hello", one of Faye's best remembered films, was released. A period musical rich in familiar and, in this case, particularly tiresome plot cliches, it benefits from spectacular colour, great production values, superb sound and Faye herself, slim, radiant, warm and sympathetic. This is the film in which she mesmerised the audience with her signature tune "You'll Never Know", but there are other goodies like "The Grizzly Bear" and "Pick on me". John Payne and Jack Oakie are with her for the third time, the former as a very stiff and humorless leading man and the latter for some hokey overacted comedy.
- the inclusion in the set of the lousy war time propaganda film "Four Jills in a Jeep" is hard to fathom, unless you view it as a sort of bonus. This boring musical traces the factual trip by 4 second rate stars to entertain the boys at the front. Most of the musical numbers are dull with wooden Dick Haymes, loud Martha Raye and voluptuous Carole Landis, among others. One highlight is the athletic dancing of Mitzi Mayfair. Faye makes a guest appearance reprising "You'll Never Know". She seems reserved.

With all the entertaining films available to include in the package, "Four Jills in Jeep" is a rotten choice. It also should be pointed out that "Hollywood Cavalcade" is not a musical, given that this set is another of Fox's "Marquee Musicals". The film certainly has the feel of one with a delightful soundtrack of old favourites supporting the melodrama but Faye does not sing.

The set has been beautifully packaged. All of the prints have been restored and are in great condition and the 2 technicolour prints are outstanding. Every film has its own documentary, not only focusing on Faye and her colleagues but on the historical aspects of the yarns - Fanny Brice for "Rose", the advent of radio for "Broadcast", the history of Hollywood for "Cavalcade" and USO tours for "Jills". Each of the films with Faye as the lead hit a bullseye at the box office. "Frisco" has a charming featurette on Faye herself and her daughter Alice appears, as well as Michael Feinstein and Hugh Hefner among others.

All the usual marketing material is included such as theatrical trailers, on set stills and advertising. In fact my only complaint is that Faye's exquisite rendition of "I'll see you in my dreams" is not among the deleted numbers from "Rose". A colourful booklet comes in the box, devoting 2 pages of anecdotes and background information to each film. This nicely complements the featurettes on each DVD. Lastly, "Rose", "Jills" and "Frisco" have audio only tracks. You can view the films with the original studio recordings matched carefully to what is on the screen without dialogue interruption etc - a very neat feature.

The DVD set is excellent value and with the documentaries, the modern viewer will begin to understand just what an important star Alice Faye was and that her contribution to American pop music was huge in her heyday.

why in the world include a film in which Alice Faye is a guest star and is on screen less than five minutes with all the starring vehicles she did for Fox? It makes so little sense one suspects that the people putting these sets together are either idiots or just thumbing their nose at fans.

Sally, Irene, and Mary, Wake Up and Live, Sing Baby Sing ,You Can't Have Everything with Don Ameche and the Ritz Bros. - any of these would be much more valuable releases.Too much to hope that the Fox people read these posts and realize their "mistake".

Otherwise , this is is a great release with four terrific starring Faye vehicles long wanted by fans on dvd.

As a few others have mentioned, the inclusion of "Four Jills in a Jeep" is totally a misfire in this collection due to Alice Faye's 5 minute appearance. Why wasn't "Tin Pan Alley" included? That film was a huge hit in 1940 - and has Betty Grable! Or how about "In Little Old New York" with Fred MacMurray? I also want to mention that 3 out of the 5 films are available on VHS. The two that have never been available are: The Great American Broadcast and Hollywood Cavalcade. I have had bad "taped from TV" videos of these two films for years simply because they were never available commercially. One can only hope that by not including some of her never released to video films from the 1930s, that the big scheme (future volumes) will include some of those. I should also mention that "Hollywood Cavalcade" has no musical numbers.

It does seem like Fox is trying to milk this Alice Faye Collection franchise for at least another volume with several better entries being omitted. However, Fox is planning to release the films in this set separately, so you can bypass the films you think are of lesser quality or, in the case of "Four Jills and a Jeep", seem to have only a tangential relationship to Alice Faye.

Others have written the details of the films so I won't rehash. However, let me point out that "Hollywood Cavalcade" has Buster Keaton returning to a supporting role in a feature film for the first time after he was fired from MGM in 1933. He basically plays himself, however here he is in the role of a pie thrower - something he never did in his own films. There is a humorous story of how he surprised Alice Faye with the intensity of his pie attack, and how, after the scene was shot, she chased him for a good distance with her own pie in hand. Keaton did manage to outrun her. It's nice to know Alice's offscreen vitality matched what we saw in her films.

A Hollywood star of the 1930s and '40s, blonde, button-nosed Alice Faye had a sort of plain-jane, girl-next-door appeal. She was a demure singer with a cheerful onscreen presence, and starred in numerous mid-level musicals, often surrounded by a large ensemble cast and numerous guest performers. This is the second set of DVD reissues of her work at the 20th Century Fox studios, and includes a few frothy films from the early wartime years of WWII. It's pleasant, highly formulaic material from an earlier, innocent era. The films include:

"Rose of Washington Square" (1939) A rags-to-riches showbiz pic with Faye starring as a struggling vaudeville star, co-starring old-timer Al Jolson and matinee idol Tyrone Power.

"Hollywood Cavalcade" (1939) a showbiz comedy with co-star Don Ameche. Pretty, richly colored cinematography compensates somewhat for the by-the-numbers B-movie script.

"The Great American Broadcast" (1941) is a highlight of this set. This frothy, energetic comedy is a loose-with-the-facts fictionalization of how radio became the great American medium of the early 20th Century. Robust, good-natured John Payne (sort of the Brendan Fraser of his time) and comic sidekick Jack Oakie meet up around 1920 as two down-and-out World War One vets who share an interest in the then-new radio technology. Payne's character come up with the idea that maybe they could use this newfangled radio stuff to bring entertainment to people all across the country... and then they're off! Of course, there's gotta be a girl, too and enter the ever-blonde girl next door, Alice Faye, as the gal they both love. But it ain't a love triangle -- nope! -- it's a square, because rich-cad tycoon Cesar Romero wants her too. This is a pleasantly fast-paced, lighthearted film, packed with better-than-usual performances from Ms. Faye (she and Payne duet quite nicely together). There are also great cameos from the Ink Spots vocal group, a fabulous (but all-too-brief) dance number from the Nicolas Brothers, and a nice, dewy-eyed version of how radio came to America. It's a fun old film... they really don't make 'em like this anymore!

"Hello Frisco Hello" (1943) reunites the Faye, Payne and Jack Oakie as yet another trio of star-crossed entertainers who brave the odds and wind up on top -- only to lose everything when fate turns against them. This time they're song-and-dance vaudevillers working in San Francisco's rough-and-tumble Barbary Coast. Payne plays a talented showman who builds an entertainment empire, only to lose everything when he marries the wrong woman -- a hoity-toity high-society dame with expensive tastes who dumps him once times get hard. Waiting in the wings is loyal Alice Faye, who the big lug should have married in the first place. Their buddy Jack is there to make sure things work out right. The musical numbers tend to be raucous, Dixieland-tinged floorstompers, although there's some nice barbershop singing, and Faye croons one of her best-known ballads, "You'll Never Know."

"Four Jills in a Jeep" (1944) is a star-studded, flimsily plotted showbiz revue set around the wartime USO circuit. There are several stars of yesteryear in here, including Dick Haymes, Carmen Miranda, Betty Grable, Jimmy Dorsey and his band, as well as Alice Faye, singing "You'll Never Know," which had become her signature song. This isn't actually an Alice Faye film, but it's still a nice slice of good, old-fashioned, B-grade Hollywood hokum -- the she's-so-obnoxious schtick with Marth Raye may wear thin, but it's still a pleasantly formulaic film.

All in all, this is a nice set of old-fashioned Hollywood corn... If you like movies from a more innocent time when the only goal in films was simply to entertain, this collection has some swell stuff to offer. (Joe Sixpack, Slipcue film reviews)

I can't believe the complaints I am reading, these films were made at a time when people wanted to be distracted from the harsh realities of life, so of course they are not vehicles best suited to Bette Davis, and they succede very well, yes the 4 in a jeep is out of place, but not a bad film for the time, which is how you should be viewing them, not comparing them to todays fare, Hello, Frisco, Hello, is, contrary to what at least one person has said, an excellent film, well directed, colorful, fun, entertaining in the extreme, and Faye can melt a persons heart when she reprises "You'll never know" toward the middle of the film, if it was possible to wear out a DVD, this one wouldn't last long in my home, having viewed it 7 times in the 3 days I have had it, Carmen Miranda is her wounderful self in 4 jills and a jeep, Betty Grable sings "Cuddle up a little closer" one of her best songs, Faye reprises "You'll never know" all of which makes the film worth having, even if it's misplaced in this collection, the transfer to DVD is first class with all of the films, we all have our favorites, and wish for others that Fox has yet to release, would it not be better to request that Fox release your favorites, without criticizing the films that they have released?

i have never bought eny alice fay movies before and was i surprised. she is great. i love her. i want more. the quality of the movies are perfect and the sound is very good. i was dissapointed in four jills and jeep. it was not an alice fay movie.

I didn't know until this set arrived that "Rose of Washington Square" had Al Jolson singing his greatest songs. I was bowled over. Having been brought up, so to speak, with Larry Park's fine work in "The Al Jolson Story," I knew exactly how Jolson sounds (Park's singing was lip-synched with Jolson recordings)and had some idea of the way he presented his songs. Some idea? To see Jolson doing his great songs in this film is a revelation. It makes the price of the entire set of films seem ridiculously low.

Jolson was considered the greatest entertainer of his era. I can now see why. Usually he stood still and kept his gestures to a minimum. But when he sings "Toot Toot Tootsie" he does an absolutely amazing, twisting tap dance in a style that's all his own, and all this while singing. Jolson is mesmerizing. His songs are presented the way he sang them, solo on the stage with no one else present. No dancers; they would have been superfluous because your eyes are on Jolson.

He performed in blackface. This today is very politically incorrect. Indeed, even in the 50s, when Larry Park did his great Jolson imitations, he only used blackface once, in the minstrel number "Rosie." (You eremember, "Rosie, You are my posie.") So I had no idea that Jolson performed in blackface all the time! I was an organizer for civil liberties in 1959, four years before Martin Luther King made his historic speech in Washington. So I have nothing to apologize for if I say that, in the 1920s and 1930s, music performed by blacks was taken out of the small clubs and put on the silver screen by Hollywood in one of the greatest cultural initiatives for racial equality that this country has ever known. (Remember how Harpo Marx went into a black shanty town and played a love song to the kids on his harp?) To be sure, Jolson used blackface because it increased the production values of his act. But he wouldn't have dared do it if it chased away patrons. The fact was that theatre goers were in no position to complain; they were totally entranced by Jolson's performances.

And now we can see them. Those that were cut out of "Rose of Washington Square" FORTUNATELY were included in the Extras. Larry Park didn't do "April Showers" or "Avalon," two of Jolson's most famous, but Al himself did them on the cutting-room floor along with this movie.

As for the rest of the set, it's all lagniappe. YOu can see a very young Don Ameche showing off his great talent in "Hollywood Calvacade." And then there is the star of the set, Alice Faye. I'm not one of her true fans; I go for the opposite type in female singers, say the peerless Arlene Dahl (knocking you out in "Three Little Words" (1950)). But Ms. Faye has a fabulous range; she can hit those contralto notes as good as, well, as good as Dorothy Lamour. She's a great actress, always in character. Tyrone Power, the mugger, wasn't so hot as Nick Arnstein (the story was based on Fanny Brice).

Al Jolson wasn't a very nice guy off-stage, though this movie makes him seem like a prince in real life. But look at the recent revelations about John Lennon. You have to take these performers for what they did on stage, no more, no less. (With the exception of Debbie Reynolds, a sweetheart on and off-stage.)

This second volume of ALICE FAYE films is a welcome addition to the first volume and together, with all of the varying roles she played, display the reason for her popularity.

ROSE OF WASHINGTON SQUARE is one of Alice Faye's most memorable and entertaining films. She sings effectively many great standards plus a beautiful new ballad written for the picture. Fannie Brice sued the studio and stars because it was obvious to her that some of the songs and the romantic interest presented in the film struck alarmingly close to home. The studio, after much publicity, settled out of court. Al Jolson fans will be pleased that he is prominently featured in this film and sings many of his big hits. Tyrone Power plays a cad, but a charming one, and he and Alice Faye once again display their intense on-screen chemistry. The film's transfer to DVD is clean and the sound is fine.

HOLLYWOOD CAVALCADE is a delightful depiction of early Hollywood from the silents to the talkies. After being discovered by Don Ameche in a stage production, Alice Faye is persuaded to accompany him to Hollywood to star under his direction in silent films. Among the silent film luminaries you will see are Buster Keaton, Mack Sennett, Ben Turpin, Chester Conklin, and the Keystone Kops. Alice seems right at home and proves that she would have been a delectable silent film star. The last half of the film shifts emphasis once talkies become all the rage. Don ignores Alice, so her attention is drawn to handsome leading man Alan Curtis, and they eventually marry. They become top stars as Don's fortunes are fading. Many problems ensue, but everything eventually works out. A thoroughly engrossing look at early Hollywood. Although Alice doesn't sing a note, she gives a sterling performance along with her co-star Don Ameche. The color is beautiful and clear, and we could find no problem with the sound.

THE GREAT AMERICAN BROADCAST is a fictional account of the invention of radio with some facts thrown in. This is a thoroughly entertaining film containing some of Alice Faye's best singing and fine performances from all of the principals. Many of the entertainment world's best specialty acts appear, including the Nicholas Brothers, the Four Ink Spots, and the Wiere Brothers. Alice's beautiful rendering of the haunting Where You Are with the Four Ink Spots is a gem. The insertion of the actual newsreel footage of the Willard-Dempsey fight in the regular footage of the film is expertly accomplished. The transfer to DVD is crisp an clear, and the sound is good.

HELLO, FRISCO, HELLO was the vehicle chosen to return Alice Faye to the screen after the birth of her first daughter. Her studio and fans were eager for her return. Dressed in beautiful period costumes, Alice is stunning, with a tiny waist never seen in her previous pictures. She sings ten songs, including a heartfelt You'll Never Know, a song which took the country by storm and won the Academy Award. John Payne plays an unsympathetic role but acquits himself well. Jack Oakie, June Havoc, Lynn Bari, and Laird Cregar are all first-rate. The story is an incidental one about love lost and regained, but it is a fast-paced, beautiful movie both to the eyes and ears, with opulent sets and outstanding musical numbers. The color in this transfer is vivid and the sound is crisp and clear. (Note: We must register our disappointment that the theatrical trailer used in this package is in black and white.)

FOUR JILLS IN A JEEP brings to film the adventures of four actresses who entertained the troops during World War 2. Kay Francis, Carole Landis, Martha Raye, and Mitzi Mayfair all appear as themselves and are all splendid, especially Martha Raye, who is always delightful to watch. Dick Haymes is introduced in this film, and he seems very relaxed in front of the camera and sings beautifully. Fox evidently decided to bolster the box-office appeal of the picture by including cameo appearances by three of its top female stars: Alice Faye, Betty Grable, and Carmen Miranda. Betty sings Cuddle Up A Little Closer, Carmen sings I, Yi, Yi, Yi, Yi, I Like You Very Much, while Alice sings her signature song You'll Never Know, which was so popular during the war years. The film has been transferred with pristine results both in picture and sound.

I love her and all her movies, the collection is perfect! All her best movies are on this collection. It was good to see Hello Frisco Hello i have been long awaithing for this movie to come out.