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New on Disc: 'Wild Bill: Hollywood Maverick' and more …

15 Jul, 2013 By: Mike Clark

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Wild Bill: Hollywood Maverick

Kino Lorber, Documentary, $19.95 DVD, NR.
1995. Though William A. Wellman directed his share of clunkers for a filmmaker occasionally and, well, erroneously mentioned in the same breath with titans John Ford or Howard Hawks, you have to credit him for surviving four active decades in the business. Directed by son William Jr., this documentary hasn’t been seen enough. Because Wellman worked for so many years and didn’t get tied down at any one studio (partly because he perpetually defied authority), it almost seems as if he worked with everybody. One doesn’t expect the director of Wings to have also worked with Clint Eastwood, Sidney Poitier, James Garner, Tab Hunter and Tom Laughlin, but he did — also Gregory Peck, Nancy Reagan, Richard Widmark and Robert Mitchum, and all nine are interviewed on camera along with many others Wellman directed over the long haul. Even Robert Redford is here (and extremely affecting) because he was a baseball buddy of Bill Jr. and thus a friend of the family. John Wayne and James Cagney also show up via kinescope.
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Jupiter’s Darling

Available through online retailers via Warner Archive
Warner, Musical, $18.95 DVD, NR.
Stars Esther Williams, Howard Keel, Marge Champion, George Sanders, Richard Haydn, William Demarest.
1955. Adapted from the play Road to Rome by Robert E. Sherwood, this has been described as the movie that ended the MGM musical — which isn’t precisely true but close enough. It is the last movie in which Esther Williams swam. It purports to tell what happens when invading Carthaginian Hannibal clashes geographically and romantically with Rome’s Fabius Maximus.
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