Whatever Happened to Universal's Screen Legends/Glamour Collection sets??? (1 Viewer)

[Jefty]

seems like it's been a while now--where are the Stanwyck, Colbert, Sullavan, Veronica Lake, Alan Ladd (or Lake/Ladd), Crosby II, Durbin II, Cooper II, Lombard II, etc sets??

didn't they do well? no extras, but very nice restorations of hard-to-find films that don't even play on TCM or FMC, at very affordable prices! I bought all of 'em except for John Wayne's (I hate John Wayne)

anyone know if poor sales (or some other policy change) have put on end to this line?

 

[DanMel]

I bought the sets for Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, James Stewart, Marlene Dietrich (for Gary Cooper movie Morroco), Lombard and Mae West. I would say that poor sales have led to no other volumes being released. If they were selling well, Universial would have continued on with them by now. I have never seen any of these sets very high in the Amazon sales ranks and nearly all brick and mortar stores do not carry them. I did see most of them show up at stores on their initial release but nothing after that.

 

[MarcoBiscotti]

"Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, James Stewart"

I've never heard of these sets... what are they??

I assume Cooper is the 'Franchise Collection' with Design For Living, etc?

Please link to these collections because save for the Dietrich/Lombard/West series of which I've collected all, I was unaware that any of the others existed...

 

[Jefty]

yeah, I lumped 'em all together 'cause they're all from Universal + have the same pricing and content-structure (circa $26 for 5 or 6 films)

here's a link to the Grant collection

 

[Robert Crawford]

I assume his talking about the following boxsets of Cooper, Grant and Stewart.




Amazon.com: The Gary Cooper Collection (Design for Living / The Lives of a Bengal Lancer / Peter Ibbetson / The General Died at Dawn / Beau Geste): Gary Cooper: Movies & TV

Amazon.com: Cary Grant: Screen Legend Collection (Big Brown Eyes / Kiss and Make Up / Thirty Day Princess / Wedding Present / Wings in the Dark): Joan Bennett, Cary Grant, George Bancroft, Conrad Nagel, Gene Lockhart, William Demarest, Inez Courtney,

Amazon.com: James Stewart: Screen Legend Collection (Shenandoah / The Glenn Miller Story / Thunder Bay / You Gotta Stay Happy / Next Time, We Love): James Stewart, Katharine Ross, June Allyson, Joan Fontaine, Roland Young, Margaret Sullavan, Ray Mill

 

[Jefty]

yes indeed--also Bing Crosby

 

[Richard--W]

CostCo is selling the Glamour sets for $14.95 and the Screen Legends sets for $19.95.

 

[Matt Hough]

From what I understood from a friend in the business, the Glamour Collections (Lombard, West, Dietrich) and the Durbin set all sold very poorly which is why there have been no follow-ups.

Very disappointing since one of Dietrich's real classics (SHANGHAI EXPRESS) remains unreleased in R1 (I have to make do with the laserdisc), and I'm having to "struggle" by with Durbin's other wonderful films on VHS.

 

[Jefty]

that's what I figured, although it's really hard to understand why! The packages are quite attractively designed, offer lots of great films for very little money, and they intelligently moved away from two-sided disks with the Screen Legends group...

I hope they try it again--I'm in the same boat as you sir: Durbin-wise, and other Paramount/Universal-star-wise!

 

[Sammy-G]

I was wondering about these sets the other day - I sure would love to see one for Paulette Goddard and Ray Milland. I can't gripe though if the problem is poor sales - I only bought the Lombard and Crosby sets.

 

[Jefty]

those'd make nice set too!

any package that gets nice transfers of Paramount and Universal films onto my DVD player gets my vote!

other possibilities for the marketing execs to consider:
Fred MacMurray, Betty Hutton; or maybe if they tried by director? James Whale and Mitchell Leisen would be awesome--Wesley Ruggles too, but I guess not many people know that guy!

 

[Eric Peterson]

I wanted to buy the glamour sets, but they were mostly on the infamous DVD-18s which I had many problems with, so I passed. I think there were a lot of other people in the same boat. Universal eventually decided to stop using this format, but they have yet to re-issue any of these releases. If they did, I would promptly pick them up.

 

[DanMel]

There were rumors of another Gary Cooper set that actually named the titles that would be included on the set about a year ago, but not sure what happened to that set. The rumors were from a person extremely close to Gary Cooper's daughter who still goes across the country giving lectures on her father's film career. In fact, I might hear something next week as another internet Gary Cooper friend of mine flew from Texas to NYC to see her give a lecture and preview 4 of his movies on the big screen just this weekend. She has a back stage pass to meet with her after the lecture, so hopefully she comes back with some good news of dvd releases for my all time favorite actor.

 

[Cees Alons]

And the fifth one was Rock Hudson. I bought that one because I wanted The Spiral Road.
This one is the only of the sets at Amazon with a price-tag of $24, the other four are $20).

(I payed $20.49 at DVD Planet, BTW.)


Cees

 

[ahollis]

Except for Warners and Fox I do not think that any other studios know how to market their classic releases. Living in the NY area I was surprised that Warners advertised That's Entertainment Collection and MGM musicals in Playbill and Fox recently did the same thing for Carmen Miranda. Both companies also make good use of advertising in Entertainment Weekly. If MarcoB did not know about the second set of releases I am truly convinced that Universal DVD Marketing needs to be overhauled as does Sony.

With the demise of the brick and mortar stores and the ones still here refuse to carry classic titles (Borders and Barnes & Noble exempted), classic DVD marketing needs to be looked at differently from the mass DVD's.

On another note was also surprised to see that Best Buy carried the Woody Woodpecker Volume II but did not carry The Three Stooges Volume II. At this date Stooges is a lot more famous and well known than Woody. This does not make sense.

Universal, please give us more classic films from the glamour collections to the horror and sci-fi collections. We want more, we need more.

 

[DanMel]

An interesting note is the Gary Cooper one is still selling at 6,490 eventhough it was one of the first released by universial on the double sided discs. It did have some very big movies on it. Well, 6,000 range might not sound all that great but it has and has always sold better than all the others. Cary Grant is in the 21,000 range right now. The James Stewart one is at 9,181 and the Carol Lombard collection is currently at an amazon 14,595 sales rank. I am sure if the rumored Vol 2 Cooper release from a year ago included as stated the original western "The Spoilers" 1930 starring Gary Cooper in its already been done restored state, a volume 2 would sell quite well for just that title alone.

 

[BernieV]

Heh. You just missed TCM's showing of Shanghai Express last week. I've been time-shifting the Asian Images in Film series [Tuesdays and Thursdays this month] just to get all the rare Anna May Wong releases. Very little of her work is available commercially and most of it is of lesser quality. Such an iconic and beautiful actress deserves her own Glamour Collection.

 

[Mike*HTF]

For the last few years I've heard that Shanghai Express was rumored to be in preparation from Criterion. I wonder if that is still in the works?

 

[Matt Hough]

It wouldn't surprise me at all if this were true. They did an excellent job with THE SCARLET EMPRESS, and I was really surprised when SHANGHAI EXPRESS wasn't part of the Glamour Edition since it was Dietrich's biggest hit of the 1930s.