Lucille Ball Film Collection (Dance Girl Dance / The Big Street / Du Barry Was a Lady / Critic's Choice / Mame)

By the time Lucy played a middle-aged playwright in Critic's Choice (1963), she'd become one of TV's most beloved and successful comediennes, and her film career was clearly winding down. Critic's Choice was a fitting follow-up to 1960's The Facts of Life, reuniting Lucy with four-time costar Bob Hope in an upscale comedy/drama that was noteworthy for its progressive depiction of divorced and remarried sophisticates in New York City. A decade later, Lucy chose the ill-fated Mame (1974) for what would prove to be her final big-screen appearance. Despite brutal reviews that focused on Lucy being too old for the title role (originated on Broadway by Angela Lansbury), Mame has survived its bad reputation to become one of Hollywood's most popular high-camp misfires, with Lucy's eccentric and lavishly costumed character gaining a loyal following (especially in the gay community) as a colorful inspiration for female impersonators. In some ways it's a fitting end to Lucy's big-screen career; she always gave maximum effort against considerable odds, and The Lucille Ball Film Collection is a testament to Lucy's show-biz tenacity. --Jeff Shannon

On the DVDs
Each of the DVDs in The Lucille Ball Film Collection is accompanied by bonus features culled from the extensive Warner Bros. archives. As with many of WB's DVD boxed sets, these bonus features consist of featurettes and cartoons that are chronologically matched (in most cases) to the feature presentations, offering a home-video approximation of what it was like to attend these films in their original theatrical context. (See reviews of each individual title for specific bonus-feature details.) For the long-awaited DVD release of Mame, Warner Bros. technicians attempted to create a new stereo soundtrack mix, but this ultimately proved technically impossible due to the variable quality of the original recording elements, so the film is presented with the mono soundtrack of its original theatrical release. As always with WB releases, picture and sound quality is uniformly superb, especially in preserving the brilliant Technicolor of Du Barry Was a Lady. Of particular value among the bonus features, the DVD of Critic's Choice breaks from strict chronology with "Calling All Tars," a 1936 Vitaphone short featuring one of Bob Hope's earliest screen appearances, and the Oscar-nominated cartoon "Now Hear This" (1962), directed in abstract-art style by legendary Warner Bros. animator Chuck Jones. --Jeff Shannon

Product Description
Big Street: Haughty nightclub singer Gloria Lyons (Lucille Ball) doesn't have time for the little people including Little Pinks (Henry Fonda) the busboy who adores her. Then Gloria is paralyzed when a mobster knocks her down the stairs and those little people are the only ones who help her. Critic's Choice: Tossing inspired throwaway lines right and left Hope is a New York critic who loves writing pointed reviews that close insufferably lousy plays. But there's a new play in town ? by his redheaded wife (Ball). Dance Girl Dance: Bubbles (Lucille Ball) loves to dance. But she also likes to eat. Her friend Judy (Maureen O'Hara) may choose to suffer for her art but not Bubbles. She swap hers balletshoes for a G-string...and turns patrons' fantasies into dollars as burlesque sensation Tiger Lily White. Dubarry Was a Lady: Hapless nightclub hat check boy Red Skelton loves glamorous chanteuse Lucille Ball. Handsome hoofer Gene Kelly loves her too. But Lucy only loves money. Then Red mistakenly gulps down a Mickey Finn dreams he's in 18th-century France and before you can powder your wig a throng of suitors fall in love with Lucy! Mame: Lucille Ball brings star sparkle to the title role a high-living grande dame who's outlandishly eccentric and when suddenly faced with raising an orphaned nephew fiercely loving. Veterans of the New York stage original join her: Beatrice Arthur as best friend Vera Jane Connell as prim governess Agnes choreographer Onna White and director Gene Saks.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: TELEVISION/CLASSIC Rating: NR UPC: 085391134220 Manufacturer No: 113422