Films with: Kohler, Fred

Forbidden Hollywood collection.

Five classic films that offer a rare glimpse at a lost era of "pre-code" provocative filmmaking. Disc 1: First, Bill and Jack are railroad men. When Bill comes to stay with Jack and his wife, Bill and Lily fall in love. Jack confronts Bill about his suspicions and the two fight, leaving Jack seriously injured. Last, Joan Gordon is a singer tiring of her relationship with Eddie. She flees to North Dakota to become a mail-order bride. Happiness is threatened by her stubborn husband, a lecherous neighbor and the appearance of Eddie. Disc 2: First, Jenny was orphaned by the 1906 earthquake and fire and has gone on to become the madame of a prosperous bawdy house. After putting her son up for adoption, he becomes a district attorney dedicated to closing down such houses. She kills an underling who wants her son dead and is now facing execution. Last, A mistaken arrest, a prison term, and lack of employment leads to a young woman's involvement with gangsters. In a brothel she meets a wealthy lawyer who falls in love with her. He helps her turn her life around, but her past catches up with her. Now she is on trial for murder. Disc 3: First, A man stands up during a WWI battle and becomes a hero, but he doesn't get the credit. He becomes injuried and soon gets hooked on morphine, causing him to fall apart when he returns home. He eventually marries, but soon the Depression hits. Last, Tom and Ed are high school students whose parents, thanks to the Depression, have lost their jobs. Wanting to help make money, they set off on the rails looking for work. They finally end up in New York and Ed thinks he might have foud a job. Disc 4: Wild Bill: Explores the life and directorial times of William A. Wellman. The men who made the movies: Wellman shares many stories and speaks bluntly of the producers with who he has worked and describes his remarkable star-making and star-spotting abilities. He was responsible for helping actors win Oscars and discovered such notable actors as James Cagney and Gary Cooper.

DVD 8076

Mae West the glamour collection /

Mae West had an inexhaustibly playful interest in language, and a rare, sometimes perplexing, and even lofty wit, spiced by low-down slang. Well before the second wave of feminism, she wrote all her own material, insisted on total control of her work, and was wildly popular for a short time, right before the Production Code lowered the boom on adult attitudes being expressed in films. She made only 12 movies, but three are first-rate, and these were enough to seal her fame and launch a legend. In her first film appearance, "Night after night," a successful ex-boxer buys a high-class speakeasy and falls for a rich society girl. As the bold Tira in "I'm no angel," she works as a dancing beauty and lion tamer at a fair. For "Goin' to town," West goes Western. Cleo Borden is a former dance hall queen who has become newly rich. She falls for--and pursues--an upper crust Englishman. This is followed by "Go west young man," where she plays Mavis Arden, a movie star stranded in the country. To stifle her boredom, she trifles with a young man's affections. "My little chickadee" pairs West with a legend of similar stature, W.C. Fields. As Flower Belle Lee, she is rightly suspected of illicit relations with the Masked Bandit, and run out of Little Bend. Surprisingly, things change very little when she arrives in Greasewood City to start over.

DVD 10543