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EMBARGOED UNTIL 3/13/06 Hollywood's King Still Reigns CLARK GABLE: THE SIGNATURE COLLECTION Six New-to-DVD Titles Arrive June 13 Boom Town Spencer Tracy co-stars in 1940's Biggest Money Maker China Seas Gable and Harlow as Lovers in '30s Screen Scorcher Dancing Lady First of 8 Movies with Joan Crawford; Fred Astaire in Screen Debut Mogambo Romantic Triangle with Ava Gardner & Grace Kelly; John Ford directs San Francisco Gable and Tracy Again. Tracy in first of 9 Oscar-nominated performances. Wife vs. Secretary Harlow, Myrna Loy and James Stewart Join Gable in Romantic Romp Bonus Material includes Clark Gable: Tall, Dark & Handsome, hosted by Liam Neeson, as well as vintage featurettes and musical shorts Burbank, Calif. March 13, 2006 - On June 13, Warner Home Video rolls out the red carpet for one of the movie industry's biggest box-office stars with the release of Clark Gable: The Signature Collection. Clark Gable: The Signature Collection boasts the DVD debut of six of his films -- Boom Town, China Seas, Dancing Lady, Mogambo, San Francisco and Wife vs. Secretary. The Collection also features the documentary profile Clark Gable: Tall, Dark & Handsome, hosted by Liam Neeson as well as vintage featurettes and musical shorts. The six-film, six-disc collection will sell for $59.92. All titles will be available individually for $19.97 SRP with Mogambo available for $14.97 SRP. Orders are due May 9. Named as the seventh greatest actor on the American Film Institute's List of "50 Greatest Screen Legends," Clark Gable reigned supreme as a screen icon during the 1930's and 40's. Dashing, debonair and dangerous with his dark hair, muscular build and signature moustache, he appealed to both men and women. Gable's career spanned five decades, during which he appeared in 75 feature films. Born William Clark Gable in 1901, the young Gable came to Hollywood in 1924 and started his career as an extra and bit player in silent films. In 1930, he became a contract player for MGM and landed his first "talkie" role as the villain in a low-budget western called The Painted Desert. The studio received so much fan mail they were forced to take notice and Gable was put to work regularly as a supporting actor. His role in A Free Soul, in which he played a gangster who slaps Norma Shearer, elevated him to leading man status. Throughout most of the 1930s and '40s, he was one of the studio's biggest box-office stars, earning the nickname "King of Hollywood." However, it wasn't until MGM loaned him to Columbia (after deeming him "difficult"), that Gable won his first Academy Award for It Happened One Night. Gable would ultimately earn two more Oscar nominations (Gone with the Wind and Mutiny on the Bounty). Gable took a three-year break from making movies after his third wife, actress Carol Lombard, died in a plane crash. During that period, he joined the U.S Army Air Force during World War II he flew several raids over Nazi Germany, rose to the rank of Major and earned both the Air Medal and Distinguished Flying Cross during his service. Upon his return to Hollywood, he never managed to achieve his pre-military success, becoming increasingly unhappy with the mature roles he was offered. The Misfits, co-starring Marilyn Monroe, was the last film he completed before he died in 1960. Boom Town (1940) NEW TO DVD! In this pyrotechnics-filled film classic, the only things bigger than the adventure are the four stars: screen giants Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy (in their last film together) as the oilmen and Claudette Colbert and Hedy Lamarr as the women in their tumultuous lives. As the foursome struggle through the personal upheaval of love and loyalties, they hit a gusher, striking it rich - and a rig bursts into a screen-filling inferno that could turn dreams to dust. Boom Town boomed at the box office, too, and garnered two Oscar nominations for Cinematography and Special Effects. DVD Special Features:
China Seas (1935) NEW TO DVD! With their wisecracking banter, gutsy glamour and dynamic physicality, Gable and Harlow prove once again that they were the '30s most scorching screen pair in this rough-and-tumble tale of the sea, their fourth film together. Gable plays rugged Captain Alan Gaskell who sails his steamer ship through the perilous waters between Hong Kong and Singapore carrying a secret cargo of British gold. That's not the only risky cargo he carries. Both his fiery mistress (Jean Harlow) and his refined fiancee (Rosalind Russell) are aboard. Highlights include a raging typhoon, a battle with bloodthirsty Malay pirates, and Harlow's drinking contest with bluff villain Wallace Beery, who wants the gold and the platinum blonde. DVD Special Features:
Dancing Lady (1933) NEW TO DVD Three film icons give this backstage musical a jolt of superstar electricity in a song-, dance-, and romance-filled extravaganza featuring support by Nelson Eddy and Robert Benchley with tunes by Rodgers and Hart, Burton Lane, Dorothy Fields and more musical greats. Gable and Crawford had such stellar chemistry that MGM teamed them for eight movies. Here, as always, they have street-smart glamour and charisma to burn, with Crawford in the role of a struggling young dancer being wooed by a rich playboy, and Gable as the Broadway director who gives her a role in his show. Making their film debuts are the debonair dancing Fred Astaire, as himself, and the delightfully ditzy Three Stooges. DVD Special Features:
Mogambo (1953) NEW TO DVD! A remake of the 1932 film Red Dust Gable made with Jean Harlow, twenty years later he now costars with the sizzling Ava Gardner. Directed by John Ford, and shot on location in Africa this time, the film garnered two Oscar nominations including Best Actress (Ava Gardner) and Best Supporting Actress (Grace Kelly). The romantic pot-boiler adventure finds Gable as a big game trapper and guide hired by an anthropologist to lead a safari in the jungles of Kenya, where he finds himself becoming the target of affections of the boss' wife (Grace Kelly) and a Broadway showgirl (Ava Gardner). DVD Special Features
San Francisco (1936) NEW TO DVD! Tremendous star power, a great story, and lavish special effects sequences resulted in this becoming one of the year's blockbusters, earning seven Academy Award nominations, and one win. Clark Gable plays rakish Barbary Coast kingpin Blackie Norton. Jeanette MacDonald portrays a singer torn by her love for Blackie and her need to succeed among the opera going elite. Earning the first of nine career Best Actor Oscar nominations, Spencer Tracy is a priest who supplements spiritual advice with a mean right hook. He urges Blackie to change. But if love and religion can't reform Blackie, the San Francisco earthquake might. This extravaganza's street-splitting, brick-cascading, fire-raging recreation of the cataclysmic earthquake remains "one of the greatest action sequences in the history of the cinema, rivaling the chariot race in both Ben-Hurs" (Adrian Turner, Time Out Film Guide). DVD Special Features:
Wife vs. Secretary (1936) New to DVD! A romantic comedy again pairs Gable with some of Hollywood's hottest leading ladies. Gable and Harlow star together for the fifth time, this time joined by Myrna Loy ( in her fourth film with the leading man). This entertaining romp is the story of successful magazine publisher Van Stanhope (Gable), happily married to wife Linda (Loy), until his interfering mother-in-law plants the seed of suspicion, suggesting that Stan may be having an affair with his loyal and indispensable secretary Whitey (Harlow). The film also features James Stewart in one of his first roles, as Whitey's boyfriend. DVD Special Features:
Turner Classic Movies Marketing Support Marketing support will come from a Turner Classic Movies cross promotion, generating major on-air, on-line, and direct marketing efforts to traditional classic film consumers. With operations in 90 international territories, Warner Home Video, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company, commands the largest distribution infrastructure in the global video marketplace. Warner Home Video's film library is the largest of any studio, offering top quality new and vintage titles from the repertoires of Warner Bros. Pictures, Turner Entertainment, Castle Rock Entertainment, HBO Home Video and New Line Home Entertainment. Note: All enhanced content listed above is subject to change. |
