Customer Reviews

Ford At Fox Collection: John Ford's American Comedies (Steamboat Around the Bend / Judge Priest / Doctor Bull / When Willie Comes Marching Home / Up the River / What Price Glory)

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4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This package takes six of the comedy films that are part of the giant "Ford at Fox" DVD package and breaks it into a smaller more affordable subset. The films included are:

Up The River (1930) - Contains the early sound problems common to most early talkies plus the obligatory singing and dancing (not done very well) inserted into a film that has the only mutual appearance of Spencer Tracy and Humphrey Bogart. No early talkie was complete without a musical number.
Feature film with English Mono and Spanish/French subtitles
Theatrical trailer
Still gallery

Doctor Bull (1933) - stars Will Rogers in the first of three collaborations between Ford and Rogers.
Feature film with English Mono and Spanish/French subtitles

Judge Priest (1934) - stars Will Rogers as a southern Judge who enjoys taffy pulls and croquet when not on the bench.
Feature film with English Mono and Spanish

Steamboat Round The Bend (1935) - stars Will Rogers (already on DVD). The final collaboration between Rogers and Ford is perhaps the best. Rogers plays a man going up and down the Mississippi on an old steamboat charging the local population admission to look at the wax figures he is carrying. He plans to use the money he raises to hire a lawyer to free his nephew from a serious charge.
Feature film with English Stereo and English Mono and Spanish subtitles
Commentary by Author Scott Eyman
Restoration comparison
Theatrical trailer
Will Rogers Theater: Doubting Thomas, In Old Kentucky, Life Begins at 40 /French subtitles

When Willie Comes Marching Home (1950) - stars Dan Dailey. Willie joins the army to become a war hero, but winds up doing training duty right back in his home town.
Feature film with English Mono and Spanish/French subtitles
Restoration comparison
Advertising gallery

What Price Glory (1952) - stars James Cagney (already on DVD). This was based on an anti-war play that Ford turned into a comedy with rather strange results. Probably the oddest and the weakest of the entries.
Feature film with English Stereo or English Mono, Spanish Mono and Spanish subtitles
Two theatrical trailers
Fox Flix: Crash Dive, The Hunters, Morituri

I skipped this when it came out, not realizing that it contained two of Lincoln Perry's performances, as Stepin Fetchit. Perry was one of the most brilliant comics of his time, and has been unfairly maligned because of a cultural misinterpretation of his great creation, Stepin Fetchit. Perry was thoughtful and articulate, but his Fetchit character, based on someone Perry judged to be the world's laziest man, was a comic exaggeration taken to surreal levels. Basically, Perry, billed as Stepin Fetchit, played the same character in every film. It's a knife-edge gag, however, because it can be taken as a demeaning stereotype of African-Americans or, as Perry intended, a lovable comic foil he could mine for surprising and clever comic bits. It made him an inveterate scene-stealer, acknowledged as such by some of Hollywood's leading actors, and it is remarkable to watch him interact with Will Rogers. Perry said he and Rogers would just get a sense of the script and then cut loose during the take. There are some cringe-inducing moments when that comedy teeters onto the wrong side of the knife (due mostly to the scripts), but Black audiences of the 30s understood the gag and rejected the idea of a stereotype. They could appreciate the comic genius of Perry's exaggerations; the more popular his movies, the more popular he became with live audiences on the Black theater circuit. It's nice to be able to see Perry's performances intact, especially in Judge Priest, one of his most extended roles.
Interestingly, Perry was under studio contract, not a rogue comic hired for specific roles, and had mid-level billing (in the cast card, the leads were in large letters, the studio regulars in medium letters, and, lastly, the minor characters in small letters). However, he and Hattie McDaniel, in medium letters, were listed at the end of the cast card - the back of the bus, you might say.
It helps a lot to read Mel Watkins biography of Perry, titled STEPIN FETCHIT, to put Perry's work into perspective.

I was amazed at the quality of these videos. They came packaged in individual DVD's. I would recommend this collection to anyone, well worth the money and many hours of old time fun. You will not be disappointed in these videos, makes a great gift.

Ford At Fox - The Collection
The Box is quite a bargain. Even though some of the films are a bit dated
they are still fun to watch. The picture quality of the older films is surpraisingly good. John Ford wasn't just a director of western. Recomanded not only to John Ford-Fans.

This early John Ford film starring Will Rogers in the title role is agreeable, satisfying, and entertaining. "Doc Bull" is the only physician in a small Connecticut town, on call at all times, beginning to feel his age, and trying hard to keep up with progress in medicine. He is a widower whose friendship with a local widow provides grist for town gossips. A typhoid outbreak tests him and the town.

The first reason to watch the film is to see the fine performance by Rogers, amusing at some times, poignant in others.

The second reason is to glimpse life in America in the 1930s. Doctors made house calls. Mail came by train. Telephone operators connected every call by hand, and from listening to the conversations knew everything that went on. (In one scene, Rogers has a fine rant against the telephone. It sounds just like our generation cursing the blackberry.)

There's a social issue in the film. In the 1930s many Americans still put a great emphasis on a family's "stock" (its origins), and the older generation wanted to match young adults only with proper and approved mates of the same religion and class. Dr. Bull has a more liberal view. Perhaps this was one of the movies that helped move America toward its socially more democratic future.

-30-

This video was colorized by Ted Turner, apparently as the colors are subdued and bland. The music was like that in "Guys and Dolls" with a prison band and at the ballgame. Clare Luce was a gangster's moll, with hair like mine. The entertainment in prison (Up the River) was black face, one played a bozoo like those two crazies. A long horn was used in vaudeville.

Tempers flare backstage. In the prison, the majority of inmates was white, and mean like those we know as internet bullies. "My Buddy" was on the old time victrola. M O T H E R was sung by a tenor. "Be Kind to your Feathered Friends" was funny. On the hayride with four horses, there was singing and meriment. Those men in white pants and dark tops are on old fashioned radio.