1952 - THE PRISONER OF ZENDA, the remake

 Well if it worked once it will work again.  MGM purchased the rights for a remake of The Prisoner of Zenda from producer David O Selznick for a cool $225,000. Previously the studio had a success with Stewart Granger and Deborah Kerr in their remake of King Soloman's Mines, so Granger and Kerr were teamed up again this time with Granger as Rudolf Rassendyl and the King of Ruritania and Deborah Kerr a performer who was born to be filmed in technicolor, as  Princess Flavia.

What's so interesting about this remake of the 1937 film is that the director Richard Thorpe literally duplicated every scene right down to using the same camera angles and dialog.  The sets and the costumes even look the same.  MGM also used Alfred Newman's score from the 1937 version.  Incredibly this film was shot in a month since there was no need to get very creative after all they were just rehashing the original.

About the only differences in the two films were that this version was shot in color and the action scenes were staged better.  Ronald Colman in the original film was a fine actor but looked a little stiff in the sword fight scenes.  Steward Granger seems to handle a saber with a little more panache. 

How's the film?  Well not that bad.  The story if rather on the far fetched side is entertaining and the damn thing apparently made a good profit for MGM.  In 1998 Universal Studios and director Gus Van Sandt tried the same stunt doing a scene for scene remake of Hitchcock's  Psycho but this time this gimmick didn't pay off, the film was a flop financially and critically.

The screenwriters are basically the same bunch from the first film since this was a slavish remake, the running time is 96 minutes.

1952 - IVANHOE, outstanding adventure film from MGM

Here is a film that completely hits it marks.  Ivanhoe is a large scale action adventure filmed in England with a big budget.  This story of knights, Richard The Lionheart, Robin Hood (here called Robin of Locksley) and chivalry is so well done it's easy to ignore the mix of American and British actors in the cast.

The driving force behind Ivanhoe was producer Pandro S Berman, one of Hollywood's best film makers.  He had a distinguished career working at RKO with Fred Astaire, Katherine Hepburn, George Stevens and George Cukor among others.  Later he moved to MGM where he continued to produce films of high quality.  The director Richard Thorpe was a working director who probably was never on anyone's "A" list, but was a reliable craftsman.  F.A. Young was the cinematographer.  Young went on to work with David Lean on Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago and Ryan's Daughter.

The cast included a couple of stunning women, Joan Fontaine and Elizabeth Taylor.  Taylor was probably 19 years old when she filmed Ivanhoe and she was an extremely attractive young woman although she never was much of an actor.  Robert Taylor played Ivanhoe and he brings a commanding presence to a part that could have come off as silly. 

Ivanhoe has some excellent action scenes with a castle siege by Robin Hood's men being a real standout.  A great film made by a group of professionals who really knew what they were doing.

Written by Aeneas MacKenzie, Noel Langley and Marguerite Roberts the running time is  107 minutes.

1946 - TILL THE CLOUDS ROLL BY, is yet another musical revue from MGM

 Producer Arthur Freed's musical on the life of composer Jerome Kern is just another excuse to feature MGM stars in musical sequences without bothering about a pesky plot.
 
 The actor Robert Walker is the chief victim of this mess.  He walks around knocking out songs like he was picking lint off of his well tailored suits.  The audience never sees Kern actually sit down and write a song it's just taken for granted that he has a portfolio full of them where ever he goes.  Jerome Kern may have been a great American songwriter but he was a very boring guy.

 For a composer who wrote a lot of great songs, this film presents them in a fairly mediocre middle class style.  The director was Richard Thorpe a studio contract guy who is barely remembered and gets no respect from film scholars although he made a lot of films.  Thorpe's chiefly remembered as the guy who got fired off of The Wizard of Oz.

Till the Clouds Roll By is also extremely long coming in at over 2 hours, a real killer of a film.

 132 minutes