When did you first fall in love with the movies? If your answer was during the Golden Age of Hollywood, you will be more than interested in the releases of Classicflix. Focusing on “only the classics,” the company is bringing fan favorites from Hollywood’s heyday to home video. Here’s a random sampling of the selections that are currently available, all of which can be ordered here.
Out of the Blue (1947)
Zany comedy stars George Brent as Arthur Earthleigh, a milquetoast husband whose life is turned upside-down when boozy, free-spirited neighbor Olive Jensen (Ann Dvorak) passes out in his apartment while his domineering wife is away. Thinking she’s dead, Arthur deposits the unconscious Olive on the terrace of another neighbor, playboy artist David Galleo (Turhan Bey), who uses the opportunity to blackmail “murderer” Earthleigh. Carole Landis, Virginia Mayo also star.
Merrily We Live (1938)
Hilarious farce concerns a dizzy socialite (Billie Burke) with a penchant for hiring bums to help tend to her family’s needs. After an unshaven writer (Brian Aherne) shows up at her door asking to use the phone, she mistakenly believes him to be a tramp and gives him a job working as a servant. Quickly, her new employee uses his life skills to get the household in order as he falls for her eldest daughter (Constance Bennett). With Alan Mowbray, Ann Dvorak; based on the 1924 novel “The Dark Chapter” by E.J. Rath.
Stand-In (1937)
Sent by his Manhattan bank to uncover why its Hollywood studio is bleeding money, stuffy number cruncher Atterbury Dodd (Leslie Howard) learns the industry ropes from Lester Plum (Joan Blondell), the savvy stand-in actress he takes on as an assistant. They maneuver around egotistical stars, a hard-drinking producer (Humphrey Bogart), and conniving moguls in this unsung inside satire gem helmed by Tay Garnett; Alan Mowbray, Jack Carson, Tully Marshall, Marla Shelton also star.
Tomorrow Is Forever (1946)
Scarred and disabled in battle in World War I, American soldier John Andrew MacDonald (Orson Welles) goes into hiding in Austria while his wife (Claudette Colbert), assuming her husband is dead, remarries factory owner Lawrence Hamilton (George Brent). Eventually, MacDonald is hired by Hamilton and returns to America to find his wife and the son he never knew. Moving melodrama also stars Richard Long and Natalie Wood (in her first credited screen role).
Along Came Jones (1945)
Upon entering a Western town, mild-mannered cowpoke Melody Jones (Gary Cooper) is mistaken for Monte Jarrad (Dan Duryea), an ornery outlaw with a price on his head. Jones quickly wins the respect of the townsfolk, and the attention of Cherry de Longpre (Loretta Young), the real crook’s gal who just wants to use the unsuspecting Jones to help Jarrad evade capture. But who is the comely cowgirl meant to ride off into the sunset with? William Demarest also stars in this funny sagebrusher, based on the book “Useless Cowboy” by Alan Le May.
For these and other long-demanded cinema treasures from Classicflix,