Product Details

• Actors: John Wayne, Nancy Olson, Donna Reed, Claudette Colbert, Claire Trevor
• Directors: Edward Ludwig, Jules Dassin, Mervyn LeRoy, Michael Curtiz, Richard Wallace
• Writers: Andrew Solt, Borden Chase
• Format: Box set, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC
• Language: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 6
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: Warner Home Video
• DVD Release Date: May 22, 2007
• Run Time: 614 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000O599XA
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #28,917 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "The John Wayne Film Collection (Without Reservations / Allegheny Uprising / Tycoon / Reunion in France / Big Jim McLain / Trouble Along the Way)" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Pilgrim, let's talk. John Wayne starred in something like 150 feature films, and the most loyal Duke devotee cannot insist that all of them were U.S. Grade A, even if the man himself never stinted. So what we have in this boxed set--now that the classics have been corralled in previous collections--is a mixed bag. A couple of these movies should be happy discoveries. A couple are honorable misfires. A couple are downright (to borrow a disturbing word from McLintock!) unprepossessing. But all are new to DVD and all are welcome, because there's no such thing as a John Wayne movie that isn't worth checking out.

The likable Allegheny Uprising (1939) was made at RKO half a year after Wayne achieved stardom in Stagecoach. It's an odd little picture: a "Western" set in Pennsylvania, a "forgotten footnote of history" about a rebellion against King George III's forces a decade-and-a-half before the American Revolution, and a basically B-movie production (over and done with in 80 minutes) with some middling-large action scenes and lots of fresh air and sunlight. Wayne plays a thoughtful fellow named Jim Smith who leads his "men of the Conococheague" in a brief shooting war in which they scrupulously strive not to kill anybody; they're still loyal British subjects, for all their buckskinned orneriness. Just as buckskinned and just as ornery is love interest Claire Trevor, and George Sanders gives yeoman service as the obdurate Brit officer responsible for a lot of the civil unrest.

Reunion in France (1942) finds Wayne out of his element at chintzy MGM in a Parisian-set WWII melodrama conceived for and dominated by Joan Crawford--the only occasion these stars worked together. She's a cosseted but curiously principled fashionista shaken by the Nazis' inconsiderate invasion of France--and still more by the willingness of her millionaire industrial designer fiancé (Philip Dorn) to collaborate with Hitler's war machine. The Duke makes a delayed entrance as a Yank whose RAF plane has crashed in the French countryside. Crawford shelters him, against her better judgment, then begins to be drawn to someone with even more imposing shoulders than her own. In later years everybody involved in this film preferred to forget it had ever happened, but its wackiness can be endearing.

In Without Reservations (1946), the Duke again is essentially a featured player in a woman's picture, with Claudette Colbert as a novelist searching for "the Man of Tomorrow" to play the main character in the film version of her visionary bestseller. That turns out to be the Marine she bumps into on the transcontinental train taking her to Hollywood. The script, like their much-interrupted journey, is all over the map, and the comedy scenes are shockingly mishandled--though it looks as if director Mervyn LeRoy was trying to imitate Preston Sturges in some of them and Ernst Lubitsch in others. Cary Grant has a charming cameo, as himself.

Tycoon (1947) inspired a sublime one-sentence review from James Agee: "Several tons of dynamite are set off in this movie; none of it under the right people." Wayne's an engineer trying to drill and blast through the Andes, and his worst obstacle is the aristocratic railroad magnate (Sir Cedric Hardwicke) he's working for--chiefly because Wayne and the magnate's daughter (Laraine Day) have fallen for each other. The script spins its wheels (the film runs two hours plus), and neither the corporate politics nor the romance makes a lick of sense, but fans of vibrant Technicolor will O.D. on this movie's psychedelic palette. The supporting cast (able but wasted) includes James Gleason, Anthony Quinn, Judith Anderson, and Paul Fix, and the Andes are played by the Alabama Hills at Lone Pine, Calif.

The kindest and most damning thing to say about the 1952 Big Jim McLain is that it's a Cold War artifact, a snapshot of that American moment when Sen. Joseph McCarthy could pass for a patriot and a hero. Wayne, companioned by equally big Jim Arness, actually plays an investigator for McCarthy's House Un-American Activities Committee, searching out Commies in Hawaii. The Red agents on view are a robotic bunch who look as if they couldn't menace a dog pound, but that was consistent with such contemporary portrayals of fifth-column lifestyle as the TV series I Led Three Lives. Latterday liberal sentimentality about the Party can be as absurd as '50s paranoia was, so the point here is not to condemn Wayne's politics, but to deplore how completely he lost his moviemaking savvy whenever he set out to crusade. This personal production of the actor's own company is an embarrassingly shoddy piece of work. Still, it is a window into its time.

Even John Wayne fans have tended to skip the dubious-sounding Trouble Along the Way. Well, don't. This comedy-drama about a former big-time football coach signing on at a venerable Catholic college turns out to be an intriguingly complicated entertainment. The title invokes the sentimental classic Going My Way, with the great Charles Coburn taking the doddering-but-sly priest (and school administrator) role. Besides the threatened shutdown of the college, there's the vicious campaign of Wayne's ex-wife Marie Windsor to regain custody of daughter Sherry Jackson, who pretty much lives out of the bar where her disreputable dad runs a bookie operation. Donna Reed plays a social worker who has to make the call in this contest. The script by future Bob Hope writers Melville Shavelson and Jack Rose and direction by Michael Curtiz combine to scuff up Wayne's heroic image, and instead of the sappy big-game climax we think we see coming a mile away, the movie veers toward a finale in which several "happy endings" are put on hold. For his part, Wayne gets to deliver more syncopated dialogue than usual, and seems both refreshed and startled by the experience.

The packaging of the six feature DVDs falls a mite short of the wraparound "Warner Night at the Movies" extras in other collections: one live-action short, one cartoon, and sometimes the movie's trailer. The cartoons are fine, and the live short packaged with Allegheny Uprising is one of those Technicolor history lessons featuring studio contract players that Warners used to win awards for--the 1939 "The Bill of Rights." There are no commentaries. --Richard T. Jameson

Product Description

No Description Available.
Genre: Westerns
Rating: NR
Release Date: 22-MAY-2007
Media Type: DVD

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Showcases John Wayne in a wide variety of roles, May 25, 2007

By 

calvinnme - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (TOP 50 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The John Wayne Film Collection (Without Reservations / Allegheny Uprising / Tycoon / Reunion in France / Big Jim McLain / Trouble Along the Way) (DVD)

This is a good collection of perhaps lesser known films starring John Wayne that show a wide range of roles for the actor. This is not one of Warner Bros. "Signature Collections", so don't expect extras other than a vintage short and cartoon for each movie.

"Allegheny Uprising"(1939) was made before Wayne's break-through role in "Stagecoach", but released afterwards, thus Claire Trevor is billed ahead of Wayne. Wayne actually didn't look back very fondly on this film or his role in it, but it has its good points. It's basically a western set east of the Mississippi concerning Pennsylvania settlers in pre-Revolutionary times who are angry that they are being attacked by Indians supplied by white traders. The settlers prevail upon the British to outlaw trading with the Indians, and the British oblige. The businessmen and the settlers go back and forth over this issue both inside and outside the law. The businessmen's sentiment - "What's the government for if not to protect business? Certainly not to interfere with it!" - is one that is still timely.

"Reunion in France" (1942) again has Wayne being second billed to the other lead, Joan Crawford. This is a film that was obviously targeting a wartime audience with the objective of building patriotism and morale, so you have to look at the miscasting in the context of the times. Joan Crawford plays a French woman who seems to be plumbing the depths of shallowness in her high-rolling lifestyle until the Germans invade. She returns to Paris to find her fancy home confiscated, her boyfriend helping the Germans, and her inner patriotism aroused. She runs across an RAF pilot (Wayne) who has been shot down, and she must play up to her boyfriend and his German friends in order to help Wayne evade capture. Forget the fact that the actors playing Frenchmen don't sound French, that Wayne doesn't sound British, and that the Germans are portrayed as not being smart enough to find Berlin on a map, and just have fun with it.

"Without Reservations" (1946) is a romantic comedy that is much like "It Happened One Night" with a twist - with Claudette Colbert even costarring. In this version, however, Colbert is playing an analog of Gable's old role - she's an author - and Wayne is first the object of her professional attention and then her romantic attention. This doesn't sound like it could work on paper, but in the end Colbert and Wayne have amazing chemistry.

"Tycoon" (1947) was actually RKO's biggest failure of the year. This movie has Wayne playing an engineer who is building a railroad bridge across a gorge. He and his financier partner in this effort dislike each other intensely with spats that range from the inadequate financing of the project to the shotgun wedding of Wayne's character to the tycoon's daughter. This is where The Duke completely breaks from the hero he normally plays and acts like a spoiled child who believes that he who dies with the most toys wins. He and the tycoon's spat escalate to the point that sabotage is occuring and lives are being lost. There's some beautiful cinematography in this one, and although the plot just didn't work for me, Wayne's acting did. Most people don't like this film at least in part because Wayne convincingly plays someone completely unlikeable - and that's the point. He's given a role completely out of step with what he usually plays and does a good job.

"Big Jim McLain" (1952) has Wayne back playing the heroic patriotic persona that most of his fans will recognize. However, this is clearly a propaganda film that will have most people rolling their eyes in light of what has been revealed to be the truth about this episode in history. Thus, this is another Wayne film you must look at in the context of the times in which it was made. John Wayne plays the title role of Jim McLain, a federal agent working for the U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee in search of a pesky ring of Communists believed to be operating in Hawaii. I resist the urge to call this movie good campy fun mainly because of all of the lives and careers that were ruined in the actual investigations. However, history aside, it is an entertaining film perhaps for all the wrong reasons. Notice that the people hunting the Communists are all good-looking, athletic, and well-liked while the Communists, on the other hand, look like they spent to much time indoors as children and are unlikeable introverted types. And Alan Napier, the beloved Alfred of the 60's Batman TV series, as the murderous Sturak? Holy (retrospective) strange casting decision Batman!

"Trouble Along the Way" (1953) shows the sentimental side of Wayne as he plays a former professional football coach recruited to put together a winning football team for a Catholic college that is short on funds. The head of the college, played by Charles Coburn, thinks that a winning football team is the thing to open the checkbooks of the alumni, and believes that Steve Williams (Wayne) is the man for the job. I was surprised to find that the old football quote "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing" actually was first said by Wayne's character in this movie. The other plot in this film is that of Wayne trying to keep custody of his little daughter. Williams has to be employed to keep his ex-wife from winning her case, and Wayne's scenes with Sherry Jackson in the role of Williams' daughter are quite touching. To me, this film was the best of the six. It had many opportunities to turn into an melodramatic potboiler, and yet it didn't.

This collection, purely on the merit of being six random films, would rate about four stars. On the merit of displaying the range of John Wayne's acting abilities in a wide variety of roles I would give it 4.5 stars. I round up to give it my five star rating.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Diverse collection, June 26, 2007

By 

ALLAN LADD - See all my reviews

This review is from: The John Wayne Film Collection (Without Reservations / Allegheny Uprising / Tycoon / Reunion in France / Big Jim McLain / Trouble Along the Way) (DVD)

This is a welcome release from WB, 6 very different films. The quality overall is good, although I do not think any of the films have been fully restored they are all reasonable prints. All discs have a period related extra and some have trailers. I would have liked to have seen the colorized version of Allegheny Uprising included as a bonus. The box set discs are identical to the individual releases at a good saving in price.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The John Wayne Film Collection, June 13, 2007

By 

Joel T. Graham "tommy's dad" (jacksonville, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The John Wayne Film Collection (Without Reservations / Allegheny Uprising / Tycoon / Reunion in France / Big Jim McLain / Trouble Along the Way) (DVD)

This collection of John Wayne movies comes out right in time for the 100 year anniversary of his birth. He stars with Claire Trevor in Allegheny Uprising, his costar in Stagecoach. This was made in 1939 as he was beginning his rise to super-stardom. Reunion in France was made in 1942 and costarred Joan Crawford. Without Reservations was made in 1946 with Claudette Colbert. Tycoon came out in 1947 with Laraine Day as his costar. Big Jim McLain released in 1952 saw Wayne fighting a Communist espionage ring in Hawaii with James Arness as his partner, who Wayne would later recommend for the part of Matt Dillon on TV's Gunsmoke. Trouble Along the Way teamed Wayne with Donna Reed and had Wayne as a win at any cost football coach who reforms in the end to keep from losing his daughter. Three decades of movies that demonstrate the range of an actor that still ranks as one of the top three actors of all time. And he did not play the cowboy in a single one. A must have collection for anyone who has ever seen the great man's movies.