Cleopatra, pre-Code Hollywood movies resurrected

Universal launches Backlot Series, classics collection April 7

By Laurence Lerman -- Video Business, 2/13/2009

Cecil B. DeMille's Cleopatra will be remastered for the 75th anniversary DVD.

FEB. 13 | Universal Studios Home Entertainment is launching a new Universal Backlot Series on April 7 (prebook Feb. 17) with the release of a 75th Anniversary Edition DVD of Cecil B. DeMille’s Cleopatra.

Starring Claudette Colbert as the Queen of the Nile, DeMille’s 1934 film was one of the most popular of its day, picking up a slew of Oscar nominations, including one for Best Picture.

The digitally remastered three-disc 75th Anniversary Edition will carry a suggested retail price of $29.95 and will contain supplements that cover the careers of Colbert and DeMille, as well as a documentary on the “pre-Code Hollywood” era in which the film was produced.

On the same day, Universal will issue The Pre-Code Hollywood Collection, which spotlights a half-dozen other films that were produced prior to the 1934 introduction of Hollywood’s infamously restrictive “Production Code.”

In the “pre-Code” era, which lasted from 1929 to the middle of 1934, Hollywood operated virtually free from censorship and oversight, yielding a run of films that were filled with such later scrutinized subjects as adultery, prostitution, murder, drug use, homosexuality and nudity.

Universal's set contains six movies.

The films in the Pre-Code collection include Torch Singer with Colbert, The Cheat with Tallulah Bankhead, Merrily We Go to Hell with Fredric March, Hot Saturday with Cary Grant, Search for Beauty with Buster Crabbe and Ida Lupino and the musical revue Murder at the Vanities, which features the notorious number “Sweet Marijuana."

The collection will be priced at $49.98.

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