Cary Grant: Screen Legend Collection (Big Brown Eyes / Kiss and Make Up / Thirty Day Princess / Wedding Present / Wings in the Dark)

Cary Grant remains one of the most popular and admired leading men of Hollywood’s silver screen. Five rare classic films from his early career are captured forever in the Cary Grant: Screen Legend Collection. Featuring co-stars Myrna Loy, Sylvia Sidney, Joan Bennett and Walter Pidgeon, these films showcase the career of a talented, witty and debonair actor who will be remembered forever as a true screen legend. Thirty Day Princess In this rags-to-riches tale, a newspaper publisher (Cary Grant) finds himself falling for a foreign princess (Sylvia Sidney), only to suspect that there is some other power behind the throne. Kiss and Make Up Beauty really is only skin deep when a famed beautician (Cary Grant) marries a former client and discovers that her shallow behavior makes his faithful secretary much more attractive. Wings in the Dark When an inventor (Cary Grant) is tragically blinded, his courage inspires his aviatrix wife (Myrna Loy) to take on an increasingly dangerous mission in this tale of undying love and devotion. Big Brown Eyes A precocious newspaper reporter (Joan Bennett) and an unusually motivated detective (Cary Grant) take on a case of insurance fraud, hidden identities and murder! Wedding Present Two star reporters (Cary Grant and Joan Bennett) find their playful newsroom relationship running out of ink when she becomes engaged to a writer and he is promoted to editor.Cary Grant was on the cusp of stardom when he made the five Paramount films included in this nicely priced Screen Legend Collection. You won’t find any classics here, but this entertaining collection makes it clear that Grant’s beloved screen persona was developing quickly. Paramount executive B.P. Schulberg had signed 28-year-old Grant to a five-year contract in 1932, and the British-born actor had already appeared in 15 films by the time he appeared in 1934’s Thirty Day Princess, the first and arguably best feature in this three-disc set. Cowritten by Preston Sturges and bearing familiar trademarks of Sturges’s later screwball classics, the plot finds newspaper publisher Grant falling for a visiting princess (Sylvia Sidney), only to discover that his affections are wrapped up in a breezy case of mistaken identity. Sidney plays two roles with seamless elegance (including impressive split-screen scenes in which she appears with herself), and Grant’s suave demeanor is employed to good effect. The little-known gem Kiss and Make-Up was released barely two months later in 1934, with Grant in Paris as a Max Factor-like cosmetics mogul who marries a glamorous former client (Genevieve Tobin) but finds true love with his faithful secretary (Helen Mack) when he comes to his senses. The great character actor Edward Everett Horton costars as Mack’s would-be suitor, giving this overlooked comedy an additional boost of amusement.

1935’s Wings in the Dark will interest film historians because it was cowritten by pioneering female writer-director Nell Shipman, whose Howard Hawks-ian sense of adventure is on full display in an otherwise creaky melodrama in which inventor and aviator Grant is blinded by a gas explosion, and emerges from self-pity to stage a daring air rescue of his aviatrix wife (Myrna Loy). After being loaned out to RKO for his breakthrough role in 1935’s Sylvia Scarlett opposite Katharine Hepburn, Grant returned to Paramount for Big Brown Eyes (released in April 1936), playing a crime-beat reporter paired with Joan Bennett in a lightweight mystery that benefits greatly from director Raoul Walsh’s facility with streetwise plots and gritty handling of a baby-killer subplot involving jewel thieves Walter Pigeon and Lloyd Nolan. Wedding Present followed six months later (October ’36), reuniting Grant and Bennett as competitive reporters whose relationship is strained when Grant is promoted to editor. Like all five films in this Screen Legend Collection, it’s a light and thoroughly enjoyable vehicle for Paramount players including William Demarest, who went on to character-role stardom in the comedies of Preston Sturges. Cary Grant is in fine form here, and his music-hall experience is put to good use in several lightweight musical numbers. All in all, you can’t go wrong with a five-film set for this price, especially since Grant was already showing a canny awareness of his own soon-to-be-iconic image. –Jeff Shannon

• Factory sealed DVD