The recent merger of Universal and NBC has sparked what looks to be the most extensive TV on DVD offerings to date. Several classic television series, among them The Munsters, Night Gallery and Alfred Hitchcock Presents, will be featured on DVD this year—Munsters and Gallery already have an announced street date of August 24th. Other shows to be released on disc include Miami Vice, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (featuring the vocal talents of Mel Blanc as Twiki the Robot), Amazing Stories and The Bionic Woman. (I’m sure these residuals will be a godsend to Lindsay Wagner, who’s been having to promote mattresses the last time I looked.)

On October 19th, 20th Century-Fox will premiere yet another of their Fox Studio Classics DVDs, this one being the 1957 Academy Award-winner The Three Faces of Eve. MGM Home Entertainment will also be unleashing a slew of classics, among them Alexander the Great (1956), Charly (1968), The Garden of Allah (1936), I’ll Be Seeing You (1945), Intermezzo (1939), Made For Each Other (1939), Ruby Gentry (1952), Since You Went Away (1944) and The Young in Heart (1938). They’ll also re-release Portrait of Jennie (1948), They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1969) and Straw Dogs (1971)—all three films were previously available on Anchor Bay. (I've noticed a lot of Anchor Bay titles slowly being transferred to MGM/UA, among them Duel in the Sun and Take the Money and Run.)

But the big news is that on November 9th, Universal will trot out two box sets—The W.C. Fields Comedy Collection, containing The Bank Dick (1940, previously released on Criterion), International House (1933, with Rudy Vallee, George Burns & Gracie Allen), It’s a Gift (1934), My Little Chickadee (1940, co-starring Mae West) and You Can’t Cheat a Honest Man (1939, with Edgar Bergen & Charlie McCarthy); and The Marx Brothers Silver Screen Collection, which includes their first five Paramount classics—The Cocoanuts (1929), Animal Crackers (1930), Monkey Business (1931), Horse Feathers (1932) and Duck Soup (1933). Neither of these box sets will have any extras, however—so if you’ve already purchased the Marx films from their original 1996 DVD release from Image Entertainment, an additional purchase will be sort of superfluous.

The topic of the Marx Brothers Paramount films was discussed recently on The Old-Time Radio Digest, with OTR historian Elizabeth McLeod asserting that no movie made after these first five vehicles can compare (*cough* A Night at the Opera *cough*). She also demonstrated that even a top-notch writer like herself has feet of clay; for some reason she revealed that Zeppo is her favorite of the famed comedy quartet—which is sort of akin to saying that Bennie Bartlett is your favorite Bowery Boy.
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