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| TCM Archives - Forbidden Hollywood Collection, Vol. 2 (The Divorcee / A Free Soul / Night Nurse / Three on a Match / Female) | 
 enlarge | Directors: Clarence Brown, Michael Curtiz
Actors: Norma Shearer, Lionel Barrymore, Clark Gable, Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck
Studio: WARNER HOME VIDEO
Category: DVD
List Price: $49.98
Buy New: $23.49
You Save: $26.49 (53%)
New (45) Used (9) Collectible (1) from $23.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  23 reviews
Sales Rank: 2885
Format: Box Set, Black & White, Color, Widescreen
Languages: English (Subtitled), French (Subtitled), English (Original Language)
Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Number Of Items: 3
Running Time: 449
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.5 x 0.8
MPN: WARD79576D
UPC: 012569795761
EAN: 0012569795761
ASIN: B000YRY7VC
Release Date: March 4, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Product Description
Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 03/04/2008
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| Customer Reviews: Read 18 more reviews...
 Forbidden Hollywood 2: More Films, More Quality November 20, 2007
83 out of 89 found this review helpful
March will mark the release of some PreCode gems on this Forbidden Hollywood set, in particular for Norma Shearer fans.
"The Divorcee" (1930). Ms. Shearer's Academy award winning performance as Jerry in the role her husband, Irving Thalberg, initially thought she wasn't sexy enough to play (a few wonderfully seductive portraits, courtesy of Mr. Hurrell were enough to prove his doubts had no basis) is excellent. Great minor role by her future leading man, Robert Montgomery, as well.
"A Free Soul" (1931). Ms. Shearer is Jan Ashe; Mr. Lionel Barrymore (in his Academy Award winning role) is her alcoholic, lawyer father, Stephen Ashe. Young Clark Gable made his cinematic bones with his role as mob heavy Ace Wilfong. For those who've only known Norma for "Marie Antoinette" and "The Women", be prepared for an entirely different actress. Ms. Shearer, resplendent in her erotic white gown, is pure bombshell.
"Night Nurse" (1931). Barbara Stanwyck was at her best in PreCodes (though I think "Illicit" is a better film) and Joan Blondell packs a punch as her nurse friend. This film has a plot to kill children, a nymphomanical mother, drug references and Clark Gable mobbing up again as Nick, the chauffeur.
"Three on a Match"(1932). Anne Dvorak, Joan Blondell and Bette Davis play the three ladies who share the karmic match. One's a bad girl who turns her life around (Blondell); another one is a good girl who remains true to her goodness (Bette Davis); the third has all the luck, money and the love of a faithful husband (Dvorak), but throws it all away for booze, drugs and shady men. Humphrey Bogart, also making his start as a mob heavy, plays her connection/kidnapper, Harve while the charming Warren Williams plays her abandoned husband, Robert.
"Female" (1933). The exceptionally talented Ruth Chatterton plays Alison Drake, president of a successful automobile factory, with a penchant for having trysts with her male secretaries and promptly transferring them to the company's Canadian office. Enter George Brent (Ms. Chatterton's husband off-screen at the time) as designer Jim Thorn and the sparks begin.
Commentary, trailers and a new documentary make this a must-own for fans of Pre-Code cinema. Let's get working on set 3, why don't we? Classic film fans (myself included) are only glad to spend those preorder dollars for Pre-Code releases.
Another good set of pre-code gems December 7, 2007
39 out of 44 found this review helpful
The announcement of the second set of the Forbidden Hollywood series is welcome. The set falls neatly into 2 groups - the MGM pair and the Warners trio.
The former are well mounted up-market A pictures with the prestigious Norma Shearer. Shearer was the wife of MGM wonderboy producer Irving Thalberg and his management of her limited talent was masterful. Both films carefully showcase her in "modern" stories of liberated women with attitudes to sex which were scandalous in 1930.
- In "The Divorcee", Shearer won the best actress Oscar playing a woman who divorces her husband because he is unfaithful then proceeds to "liberate" herself with other men. The film is a very early talkie with all the associated limitations - stagy, endless talk and some corny acting, including a very mannered Shearer. The disk contains a commentary which notes these limitations, particularly Shearer's.
- "A Free Soul" enhanced Shearer's reputation as THE prototype of the sexually liberated woman in this tale of a woman whose fiance, Leslie Howard, murders her lover, a very raunchy Clark Gable. Lionel Barrymore won an Oscar for his performance as Shearer's lawyer father and deservedly so. This is a much better film than "The Divorcee", demonstrating how quickly Hollywood progressed with talkies - better direction, photography, recording and acting. The story is really interesting with some great twists and Shearer is generally less mannered and accordingly much more effective than the earlier film. She also wears some of the best clothes ever seen on the screen, transforming her dumpy figure into a svelte and sexy one.
The remaining trio reflect Warner's assembly line approach to film making at the time and have shorter running times and faster pace.
- "Night Nurse" is a sordid tale starring the relentless Barbara Stanwyck as a nurse, with great support from Joan Blondell and a particularly nasty Clark Gable whose star quality is impossible to ignore. Stanwyck and Blondell seem to be constantly stripping for the camera and there are some great lines. Blondell says "I used to worry that the hospital would burn down. Now I have to watch myself with matches".
- "Three on a Match" is a very short film with some of the fastest editing ever. It stars the luminous Ann Dvorak as a bored wife, the reliable Blondell as the heart-of-gold showgirl and an attractive but subdued Bette Davis as a secretary/nanny of all things. The women, who were childhood friends, renew acquaintance at lunch and light their cigarettes with one match, a superstition with ominous consequences. The film's plot involves kidnapping, a subject taken straight from the headlines in 1932, and covers sex and drugs and rock 'n roll, well jazz anyway.
- "Female" is the oddest film in the bunch because it stars the sophisticated and dry Ruth Chatterton, a polished diva probably more suited to MGM gloss than gritty Warner's realism. Chatterton plays a business woman competing in a man's world until she meets her nemesis George Brent. The pre-code aspects of the film relate to Chatterton placing her sex life in a compartment with a string of lovers on call, but no time for true love. It is surprising. The film is very funny at times and Brent, who was married to Chatterton at the time, is excellent.
The prints of all the films are good enough, with "Three on a Match" particularly mint. The Warners group contain the original trailers. The set includes a first rate documentary on the pre-code era which neatly captures the intrigue of this short period as talkies evolved. The documentary, produced by TCM, largely confines itself to the products of MGM and Warners which of course are the TCM libraries. "Night Nurse" contains an entertaining commentary shared between 2 relaxed historians.
It is worth noting that the stars of all of these films are women, like the previous Forbidden Hollywood Series. The Hays Code curtailed the actions and attitudes of women, taking them out of the bedroom and boardroom and placing them back in the kitchen and lounge. For men, nothing really changed much. By the way, that's Bette Davis, who was very attractive in those days, on the cover.
More extra features in this second installment of Forbidden Hollywood November 18, 2007
37 out of 40 found this review helpful
A little over a year after the release of volume one, Warner Home Video is finally giving us volume 2 of its Forbidden Hollywood series. There are supposedly to be two releases of this series a year from this point forward. Included in this set are:
a. Five films instead of the three in volume one.
b. Commentaries for two of the films.
c. A new documentary on the precode genre.
The films included are:
"The Divorcee" (1930) and "A Free Soul" (1931). These two films feature great performances from Norma Shearer. In "The Divorcee" she plays a wife who discovers her husband has cheated on her. When confronted he admits what he did but insists it meant nothing. However, he has a different attitude when Norma does the same with hubby's best friend (Robert Montgomery). The two divorce and Norma enters into a long string of ill-fated affairs. Shearer won Best Actress for her performance.
In "A Free Soul" alcoholic attorney Stephen Ashe (Lionel Barrymore) and his daughter Jan (Norma Shearer) have always lived a lifestyle of which the rest of their socialite family disapproved. Stephen has always taught his daughter to go her own way and not pay attention to what other people think. Now this may be good advice when it has to do with priggish conventions rooted in tradition rather than right and wrong. However, what Stephen has failed to point out to Jan is that people also generally think it is a bad idea to walk into a busy intersection blind-folded, and just because this is a majority opinion does not make it a convention ripe for the testing. Thus, completely blindfolded, Jan walks into the busy intersection that is the world of gangster Ace Wilfong (Clark Gable), a murderer that her father has recently managed to get acquitted in one of his more sober moments. Stephen Ashe is faced with a parent's worst nightmare - he has given his daughter what turns out to be very bad advice, and she has not only listened but followed it. Barrymore won a Best Actor Oscar for his performance.
DVD Special Features:
The Divorcee commentary by Jeffrey Vance and Tony Maietta
"Three on a Match" (1932) and "Female" (1933) are on the second disk.
"Three on a Match" stars Ann Dvorak, Joan Blondell, and Bette Davis as three girls who grow up together but go very different ways. However, as adults they reunite for lunch one day and from that moment their lives intertwine once again, this time resulting in tragedy. Dvorak plays a woman whose narcissism she has confused as a bent for the romantic, Blondell plays the woman with a jaded past but a good heart, and Davis is in the background as a reliable Girl Friday type.
"Female" stars Ruth Chatterton as the sexually liberated manager of an automobile factory. However, she meets her match in inventor Jim Thorne (George Brent). A kind of "Taming of the Shrew" meets Ernst Lubitsch, although Lubitsch himself had nothing to do with this film. If you can ignor the improbability that a woman would ever be able to reach this position in management in the 1930's while so flaunting convention, this is a very enjoyable little movie.
DVD Special Features:
Theatrical trailers for both films
"Night Nurse" (1931) and the precode documentary are on disk three.
"Night Nurse" stars Barbara Stanwyck, one of the queens of the precodes, in a film that is more of a depression era crime/mystery film than anything with some precode bits thrown in. Unlike "Baby Face", here Stanwyck is using her toughness more than her sexuality. She plays a nurse on the night shift who ends up caring for two wealthy children who are being systematically starved by an evil chauffeur (Clark Gable) so that he can marry the childrens' mother and grab their trust funds. Stanwyck faces indifference on all fronts, and is helped out by a bootlegger friend (Ben Lyon) in her effort to save the children.
DVD Special Features:
Night Nurse commentary by Jeffrey Vance and Tony Maietta
Night Nurse theatrical trailer
I am soooooooooooo excited!!!! November 21, 2007
15 out of 18 found this review helpful
I just read about the release of Volume 2 of this great series featuring Pre-Code film. This volume will be released just in time for several Pre-code Film Festivals in my city. I was especially excited to see my favorite, Clark Gable, in two pictures: as the wonderfully wicked mobster, Ace Wilfong, who manhandles his mistress, Norma Shearer, in A Free Soul; and the equally evil chauffer, Nick, who is poisoning his employer's children to take control of their trust funds and inheritance from their drunken mother and belting the kid's nurse, Barbara Stanwyck, for meddling in his plans in Night Nurse.
The Pre-Code era was rich with incredible films. It is amazing what was allowed in these movies of the early thirties. Before the Code came in on July 1, 1934, women enjoyed their sexuality, took lovers, kicked out cheating husbands, went to work, and slept their way to the top. Men were dangerous; crime paid, and cracking wise was a way of life. After the Code, the genie was stuffed back in the bottle....women were pushed back into their kitchens, crime never paid, sin was either repented before the last reel or punishment (even death) was the final reward. (Check out Jimmy Cagney's character's demise in Public Enemy.)
I can't wait to own these fascinating films of the Pre-Code era. Check them out for yourself........you'll be very surprised what your grandparents and great-grandparents were watching (or even up to) back in the early thirties.
 Five Vintage, Unpolished Gems and an Excellent New Documentary Bring Pre-Code Hollywood to Life March 5, 2008
15 out of 17 found this review helpful
Those who enjoyed Volume One of Turner Classic Movies' Forbidden Hollywood Collection will undoubtedly be thrilled by Volume Two. Before the Hays Code neutralized the sexually oriented behavior that could be shown in Hollywood movies for over three decades, there was a crop of movies that reflected a more laissez-faire attitude toward risque subjects like promiscuity, homosexuality and drug use. Three films were presented over two discs in Volume One, and five are presented here over three discs along with a new seventy-minute documentary produced specifically for this set and aired on the TCM network.
Disc One contains two early classics starring Norma Shearer, 1930's "The Divorcee" (***1/2) and 1931's "A Free Soul" (****). Along with Garbo, Shearer was fast becoming MGM's prestige star at the time thanks to some degree to her marriage to the mythic studio head Irving Thalberg. However, she was also uniquely talented as proven by the diversity of her films. Although she is remembered today more for her later roles in the title role of 1938's Marie Antoinette and as the virtuous center of 1939's The Women, Shearer plays Jerry Martin, the blazing center of "The Divorcee" in which she plays a carefree young wife who cheats on her husband after he carelessly cheats on her. Instead of treating her in Scarlet Letter fashion, the film takes a refreshing look at the double standards between men and women when it comes to adultery. Naturally, they eventually regret their behavior but not before a lot of alcohol-fueled hell-raising with their fair-weather friends.
In comparing the two Shearer vehicles, I find "A Free Soul" the more interesting film because it has some sizzling dialogue from screenwriter Adela Rogers St. John and an uncommonly powerful cast that includes Clark Gable, Leslie Howard and Lionel Barrymore. She plays Rogers St. Johns' alter ego, Jan Ashe, the free-spirited daughter of an alcoholic attorney (Barrymore) who successfully defends mob leader Ace Wilfong (Gable) in a murder case that is eerily prescient of the O.J. Simpson criminal trial. Jan gets hot and steamy over Ace, even though she is engaged to the socially acceptable Dwight (Howard). The inevitable complications occur with alcohol abuse, gambling and murder. Although not a natural temptress like Garbo, Shearer manages to imbue her role with an effective carnality mixed with her innate nobility. Gable was in his sinister period, while Barrymore pulls out the stops as her father, especially in the climactic murder trial scene. As an indication of public acceptance of these racy films, Barrymore won an Oscar for his role here, as did Shearer for "The Divorcee".
Disc Two is a Warner Brothers double-header with the studio feeling like the working class cousin to the glossier MGM. Both films barely run an hour, and not a scene is wasted in these fast-moving vehicles. The first is 1932's "Three on a Match" (****), which follows three schoolmates over the course of a dozen years. Joan Blondell plays Mary Keaton, the dropout who goes to reform school for her wild ways; a bottle-blonde Bette Davis plays class valedictorian Ruth Wescott who becomes a stenographer; and the forgotten Ann Dvorak plays popular Vivian Revere who marries a wealthy lawyer and has a son. Directed by Mervyn LeRoy, the film is most intriguing for the way the plot twists the characters' fates. In a very early role, Davis barely registers as Ruth, but Blondell is terrifically likable showing how Mary turns her life around. Bearing a striking resemblance to Luise Rainer, Dvorak gets the meatiest role as Vivian as she descends from bored socialite to unrepentant cocaine addict. It's a mesmerizing turn capped by a shocking finale. A very young Humphrey Bogart shows up in a minor role as what else, a gangster.
The second half of Disc Two is 1933's "Female" (****), the most intriguing of the five films as it manages to be a sociological statement as well as a romantic comedy. Directed by Michael Curtiz, it centers on Alison Drake, the powerful CEO of an automobile company. There is great fun watching her order her subservient male staff around like a drill sergeant and using them for inappropriate conjugal visits at her palatial estate to satisfy her desires. Naturally, she meets her match in auto designer Jim Thorne first in a meet-cute situation and then in a battle of wills at the company. Ruth Chatterton (the selfish wife in Dodsworth) is wonderfully game as Alison, while the usually bland George Brent (her real-life husband at the time) complements her well as Jim. The ending is trite but inevitable. Pay attention to the fascinating Art Deco set decorations, including the use of Frank Lloyd Wright's Ennis House as Alison's mansion.
Disc Three contains 1931's "Night Nurse" (***1/2), a tense melodrama starring Barbara Stanwyck in the title role as Lora Hart assigned to take care of the two young daughters in a wealthy family. However, she uncovers a plot hatched by their alcoholic mother to kill the girls in order to steal their trust funds with the assistance of a nasty chauffeur and a corrupt doctor. Directed by William Wellman, the movie features several risque moments with Stanwyck and pal Joan Blondell dressing and undressing in their uniforms, as well as moments of unexpected violence. Again, Clark Gable shows up in a sinister role as the chauffeur and slaps Stanwyck around with convincing malevolence. While I prefer her work in 1933's "Baby Face" on Volume One, no one shined more than Stanwyck in these pre-code films since her non-nonsense manner was a perfect fit for the era's candor and directness.
The 2008 documentary on Disc Three, "Thou Shalt Not: Sex, Sin and Censorship in Pre-Code Hollywood" (****1/2), offers a fascinating overview of the pre-code period before 1934 when the Legion of Decency helped bring about strict adherence to the Hays Code. It offers plenty of clips from both famous and obscure films of the period including those on the Forbidden Hollywood Collection. Some are surprising such as scenes cut from 1933's King Kong, one where the giant ape strips the gown off Fay Wray and another where people are literally eaten and crushed. My favorite is the nude sequence with a body double for Maureen O'Sullivan swimming provocatively with Johnny Weissmuller in 1934's Tarzan and His Mate. Several people provide comments including the late Jack Valenti (who developed the film rating system still in use today), social critic Camille Paglia and director John Landis. As for extras, film historians Jeffrey Vance and Tony Maietta provide informative and often enthusiastic commentary tracks for "The Divorcee" and "Night Nurse". The original theatrical trailers are included for "Three on a Match", "Female" and "Night Nurse".
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