Customer Ratings & Reviews

This "Forbidden Hollywood" collection has two documentaries about William Wellman (Wild Bill), who directed such movies classics as "Wings" and "Public Enemy," the movie that made James Cagney a star and has a ending that still shocks 90 years after its first release. You won't find either of those films on this collection, but Cagney has a small role in "Other Men's Women," which also has Mary Astor and Joan Blondell. Bill Wellman directed this flick, as well as the other five Depression rarities shown uncut on three DVDs. These Warner Brothers movies were made in the early 30s, reflecting hard times during the Great Depression as well as the then-daring themes of adultery and prostitution. They are pre-code films, made before the Hayes code would ban or censor Hollywood movie that didn't meet so-called standards of decency. My favorites on this collection are on disc Three, which has "Heroes for Sale" and "Wild Boys of the Road." I saw the latter at the Museum of Modern Art, one of the few venues for a 1933 film about children who become hoboes in order to spare their parents the extra burden of more mouths to feed. Frankie Darro stars as one of the eponymous kids searching for a job and a better life. Darro was seen by some as being the next Mickey Rooney, but mostly did "B" pictures and was inside Robbie the Robot in "Forbidden Planet" more than 30 years later. One other trivia note is that the female lead married Bill Wellman. "Heroes for Sale" deals with the Forgotten Men, veterans of WWI. Warner Brothers had a forgotten man song that closed "Gold Diggers of 1933," but "Heroes" centered around survivors of the global conflict that sandwiched the Roaring Twenties, the Depression, and World War II. Some of the great actors of the Golden Age of Hollywood star or are featured in the remaining three titles, including "Barbara Stanwyck, Loretta Young, Franchot Tone, as well as Una Merkel, Andy Devine, and Lyle Talbot, who would have the dubious distinction of being in Ed Woods' notorious "Plan 9 From Outer Space" before settling into a comfortable niche on TV in "Ozzie and Harriet." As mentioned in the first paragraph, you get two documentaries about Bill Wellman, one made for the early 1970s series, "The Men Who Made the Movies. Wellman was still alive and feisty, so you see and hear him talking about his life and times while he made movies both memorable and forgettable. Worth the price of the collection alone.