Product Details

• Directors: Keith R. Clarke
• Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Warner Home Video
• VHS Release Date: March 31, 1998
• Run Time: 110 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 1.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• ASIN: 6304837941
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #455,579 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1.0 out of 5 stars no Bette?!, November 9, 2000

By 

Peter Shelley "petershelley" (Sydney, New South Wales Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Warner Bros. Story: No Guts, No Glory. 75 Years of Award Winners [VHS] (VHS Tape)

What can you say about a video that uses a quote from Bette Davis as the title then has no footage of her? How seriously can you take a documentary about the Warner Bros studio when an actress who made it great for over a decade is deleted from its history? This is one of the multiple disappointments of this "showcase", which was produced for the 75th anniversary of Warners though is more like an extended trailor for a handful of re-releases, which barely suggest 75 years. And I don't count "blink and you'll miss" montages of titles as legitimate coverage of the large Warners back catalogue. True, we get snippets from The Jazz Singer, but the only other black and white titles shown are Yankee Doodle Dandy, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and Casablanca. The mention of Dandy is contextualised by stating that it was made for James Cagney, who was being hounded by the press who thought him a Communist for his support of President Roosevelt, the thinking being that the life of George M Cohan couldn't get any more patriotic. Luckily for Cagney, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour on the first day of shooting and the film when finished was used to boost morale. This kind of detail also extends to the focus on more modern titles that were thought not to have any box office appeal. We are told of the reluctance of studios to back productions of Driving Miss Daisy, Chariots of Fire and All The President's Men. But did anyone truly believe that My Fair Lady was a risk after it's success on Broadway and the show having a perfect score? Perhaps it may have been if Julie Andrews was cast instead of Audrey Hepburn, though the fact that Andrews lost her Broadway role does hang a pall over the film version (not even the contributions of George Cukor and Cecil Beaton can compensate for the miscasting of Hepburn as a guttersnipe, and the disastrous Marni Nixon dubbing of her vocals). There is much to be annoyed by here, including the mentality that Ingrid Bergman was the star she would later become when she was cast in Casablanca. The reality is that she was still finding her niche in Hollywood at the time. Her first Oscar for Gaslight was to yet to come, and she wasn't the first choice to play the role. Most annoying of all is the addition of banal editorial comments from actors like Sandra Bullock, Kevin Spacey and George Clooney, to accompany the clips from the films we are shown. It's enough that Dustin Hoffman's narration features his usual tight-lipped pronunciation. Spacey's appearance is amongst extended scenes from LA Confidential, and for a while it seemed that this was going to be the only footage shown. In spite of the claim made on the box, this title does not feature any "exciting behind the scenes moments", and the attempt to re-enact Jack Warner's reactions to the box office takings of his films is plainly pathetic. Oh, and Bugs Bunny shouldn't feel too bad either since he is as absent as Davis.