Films with: Thalberg, Irving G.

Forbidden Hollywood collection.

Three classic films that offer a rare glimpse at a lost era of "pre-code" provocative filmmaking. In the early 1930's, before Hollywood began enforcing a self-imposed Production Code, many films allowed for extraordinary frankness including nudity, adultery and prostitution. In this restored and remastered three-movie collection, three daring young actresses are featured in racy, riveting star vehicles. Jean Harlow is a red-headed secretary who hooks the company's married boss, while carrying on with chauffeur Charles Boyer. A young soldier is forced to give up Mae Clarke when his well-to-do family learns she's a prostitute, in Waterloo Bridge. Finally baby-faced Barbara Stanwyck sleeps her way up the corporate ladder in a New York bank, not caring who gets hurt.

DVD 6361

Freaks

A group of freaks take revenge on a trapeze artist and her boyfriend after years of abuse. Filmed using real circus performers.

DVD 5347

Good earth

A young farmer named Wang Lung marries a selfless, loyal slave girl, O-Lan. Wang is initially devoted to the land and rises to prosperity. Later, however, Wang deserts the land and takes a second wife and tragedy threatens to overwhelm him. Eventually Wang realizes that the land and O-Lan mean more to him than his wealth.

DVD 8829

Hunchback of Notre Dame

The crippled bell-ringer of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris is befriended by a beautiful dancing girl, Esmeralda.

DVD 1664

Lon Chaney collection

Includes three of Chaney's major works, a documentary about Chaney and a photo reconstruction of the lost film London after midnight.

DVD 4143

Our daily bread and other films of the Great Depression /

Our daily bread: A depression-era drama in which a young couple leads a group of unemployed people in making a communal farm succeed. Includes a prologue to the movie by David Shepard. California election: Two fake newsreels used as conservative propaganda to paint the End Poverty in California's supporters as sluggardly, indecisive radicals as opposed to the respectable intelligent idealists of Republican incumbent Frank Merriam's camp. Secretly produced by MGM and Irving Thalberg. The plow that broke the plains. A visualization of the settlement and landscape changes to the Great Plains. The river: A record of the Mississippi River. Power and the land: Designed to convince American farmers of the necessity for rural electrification through farm cooperatives. Shows a dramatization of a family on an Ohio farm revealing the hardships of life on a non-electrical farm contrasted with the benefits brought by electricity. The new frontier: Shows how pioneers create a new community.

DVD 1707