Sony Pictures Home Entertainment marks the 100th birthday of legendary four-time Academy Award nominee and honorary Oscar winner Barbara Stanwyck with the November 13th DVD debut of Golden Boy - a dynamic story of a promising violinist (William Holden) who jeopardizes his career by moonlighting as a prize-fighter.
Stanwyck, whose career spanned over six decades, gives another of her indelible performances (which include Baby Face, Stella Dallas, The Lady Eve, Double Indemnity, Sorry, Wrong Number, TV’s “The Big Valley”) as the woman who tries to convince Holden to give up his musical ambitions for the glory of the boxing ring.
The DVD will be available for a suggested retail price of $19.95. The bonus materials include three vintage short subjects: The Kangaroo Kid, a 1938 color cartoon spoof of Golden Boy; the 1940 two-reeler Pleased To Mitt You, one of the “Glove Slingers” series of comedy shorts with Shemp Howard (of The Three Stooges); and the August 1, 1930 edition of Screen Snapshots, which features a 23-year-old Stanwyck being taught to play golf by fellow actor Ricardo Cortez. The DVD also contains her very first dramatic TV appearance: the western drama Sudden Silence, a 1956 episode of “Ford Television Theatre” that has been unseen for 50 years.
Golden Boy was adapted from the critically-acclaimed play by Clifford Odets (The Big Knife, The Country Girl, Sweet Smell of Success), which debuted on Broadway November 4, 1937 (celebrating its 70th Anniversary this year) and ran for 250 performances.
When the show was adapted as a film two years later, Columbia Pictures, with Stanwyck’s urging, cast then-unknown William Holden in the title role, launching his four-decade-plus stardom (including Born Yesterday, Sunset Blvd., The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Wild Bunch, Network and his Academy Award-winning role in Stalag 17). The film was a critical and box-office success and held the title of Columbia’s most successful non-Frank Capra film for seven years. However, it received only a single Academy Award nomination (Best Original Score) in the golden year of 1939, the competition was brutal: Gone With The Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Stagecoach and Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, to name but a few.
In addition to Stanwyck and Holden, Golden Boy boasts an impressive lineup of talent on both sides of the camera. The cast includes two other Academy Award nominees: Adolphe Menjou (The Front Page, A Star is Born, Paths of Glory) and Lee J. Cobb (On the Waterfront, The Brothers Karamazov, TV’s “The Virginian”), recreating his role from the play, as well as veteran character actors Joseph Calleia (For Whom The Bell Tolls, Gilda, Touch of Evil), Sam Levene (Brute Force, Crossfire, Broadway’s Guys and Dolls), Edward Brophy (The Thin Man, Dumbo, Cover Girl), and the ubiquitous Charles Lane, who recently passed way at the age of 102.
Director Rouben Mamoulian was the innovative genius who first staged Porgy and Bess and Oklahoma! on Broadway, and went on to make such classic films as Applause, Love Me Tonight, Queen Christina and The Mark of Zorro. Four more Academy Award winners worked on Golden Boy: co-screenwriter Daniel Taradash (From Here To Eternity, Picnic, Bell, Book and Candle), cinematographer Karl Freund (Metropolis, Dracula, The Good Earth, TV’s “I Love Lucy”), composer Victor Young (Samson and Delilah, Shane, Around The World In Eighty Days), and musical director Morris Stoloff (The Jolson Story, From Here To Eternity, Lawrence of Arabia).
Golden Boy is now available for pre-order at Amazon . As of yet, there is not a release date for the UK. Visit the DVD database for more information.
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