Customer Reviews

Murder Of Mary Phagan (Edited Version)

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I recently learned that MGM and 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment has corrected the problem of the missing 18 minutes of Part 1 with their DVD Limited Edition release of this Emmy award-winning 1987 miniseries, so I exchanged my earlier copy for the new version.

Happily, this DVD release of THE MURDER OF MARY PHAGAN is now complete, and I can now recommend its purchase.

My only complaint is that it did not include any extras; for example, NBC-TV's TODAY show interviewed Jack Lemmon a week prior to the miniseries' premiere telecast, and both CNN and NBC on March 11, 1986 ran news items covering Georgia's posthumous pardon of Leo Frank, in which Wayne Snow, Jr., Georgia parole board chairman and Atlanta Jewish Federation president Gerald Cohen were interviewed; these reports explained the significance of the pardon and would have been excellent additions to the DVD release. I would gladly have paid extra for these to have been included in the release of THE MURDEER OF MARY PHAGAN, and these would have been very interesting for the viewer.

Nevertheless, I wish to thank MGM and 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment for honoring Leo Frank's memory by updating this miniseries by finally including it in its entirety as we approach the 2013 centennial of the Frank case.

I bought this movie about a month ago. Disc 1 on the DVD is missing the last 30 minutes of the original video. I assumed the DVD was damaged and I exchanged it. However, the new DVD was missing the same 30 minutes. If you want the complete movie do not purchase this edited version.

While the movie in it's original form is classic Jack Lemmon in a dramatic role, this version is only half the story. The first half, with all the drama of the murder, investigation and trial, is missing. What good is only half a story?

There were some issues getting this DVD to work properly that I never experienced before with other DVDs. I have heard others say there were some possible defects with it missing portions of the miniseries and so forth. I was finally able to get it to work and what I saw was appalling. This miniseries makes a grotesque mockery of history and what really happened at the Leo Frank trial. Dozens of people did not stand up in the middle of the trial and start singing with the result of the trial coming to a screeching halt. This miniseries about the Leo Frank case is one of the most racist, prejudiced, dishonest, slanderous and defamatory treatments against Southerners ever produced.