Mgm/Ua Is The Undisputed King Of Vintage Videos

MGM/UA Home Video claims in its new promotional material that it's "king of the jungle." Where vintage films are concerned, this is no exaggeration.

The company owns the rights to almost all MGM and United Artists productions, as well as most of the pre-1950 Warner Bros. classics, and it releases more older films per month than any other distributor. The year-end holiday bonanza includes a collection of stage-to-screen adaptations, a Jean Harlow festival, three Tarzan movies, a restoration of the long-censored "Tarzan and His Mate," a package of musicals, and the fourth installment of MGM/UA's "Leading Man" series. All are priced at $20.

Already in the stores are 11 stage adaptations, including a Tennessee Williams comedy with a Christmas setting ("Period of Adjustment"), two Eugene O'Neill plays ("Strange Interlude," "Ah, Wilderness!"), a Lillian Hellman drama ("Toys in the Attic"), a Noel Coward comedy ("Private Lives"), a Ferenc Molnar play ("The Guardsman"), a Moss Hart/George S. Kaufman Broadway success ("George Washington Slept Here"), a William Gibson comedy-drama ("Two for the Seesaw"), a theatrical warhorse co-written by veteran George Abbott ("Three Men on a Horse"), a recently revived Paul Osborn play ("On Borrowed Time") and a once-shocking play about homosexuality in prison ("Fortune and Men's Eyes").

Most of these movies are distinguished by the fact that they weren't big box-office hits - which is one reason they've taken so long to reach video. But none of them is negligible, some are worth seeing for the performances alone (Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne were both nominated for Oscars for "The Guardsman"), several have considerable curiosity value, while "Period of Adjustment," "Private Lives" and "On Borrowed Time" are enjoyable on any terms.

Six musicals are also making their tape debuts, including two with Mario Lanza ("Because You're Mine," "The Student Prince"), three with Jeannette MacDonald ("Broadway Serenade," "The Firefly," "The Cat and the Fiddle") and a 1934 adaptation of an old Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein II Broadway show ("Sweet Adeline"). Based on the Sigmund Romberg operetta, "The Student Prince" actually features only Lanza's voice (Edmund Purdom played the title role because Lanza had gained too much weight), but that was enough to make the soundtrack recording one of the best-selling albums of the 1950s.

Jean Harlow's final film, "Saratoga," makes its cassette debut Dec. 9, along with five other movies she made for MGM in the 1930s: "Suzy," "Personal Property," "The Girl From Missouri," "Hold Your Man" and "Riffraff." Clark Gable co-stars with her in "Hold Your Man" and "Saratoga," Spencer Tracy plays a union leader in "Riffraff," and Cary Grant is the flyboy who loves her in "Suzy."

The company's Tarzan series continues the same day with the release of "Tarzan's New York Adventure," "Tarzan's Secret Treasure" and "Tarzan Finds a Son," all starring Johnny Weissmuller and Maureen O'Sullivan. The restoration of "Tarzan and His Mate," which is widely regarded as the best in the MGM series, includes an underwater nude scene that was censored after the original 1934 release.

MGM/UA's latest "leading man" series, also due Dec. 9, will include the 1959 adaptation of Bernard Shaw's "The Devil's Disciple," starring Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas and Laurence Olivier; James Michener's South Seas romance "Until They Sail," with Paul Newman, Jean Simmons, Joan Fontaine and Piper Laurie; two Gary Cooper vehicles, "The Naked Edge" and "The Wreck of the Mary Deare"; two more Lancaster pictures, "The Kentuckian" and "Trapeze"; the entertaining World War II thriller "Operation Crossbow"; the disaster epic "The Last Voyage"; the Richard Widmark Western "The Law and Jake Wade"; and a modern Tom McGuane cult western, "Rancho Deluxe," starring Jeff Bridges, Sam Waterston, Harry Dean Stanton and Elizabeth Ashley.

Three Stanley Kramer productions are also on this list: a miscast Spanish epic, "The Pride and the Passion," with Cary Grant, Frank Sinatra and Sophia Loren; a provocative race-relations drama, "Pressure Point," with Sidney Poitier as a prison psychiatrist treating a neo-Nazi (Bobby Darin); and a trashy but rather tasty medical-school melodrama, "Not as a Stranger," with Olivia de Havilland, Frank Sinatra, Robert Mitchum and Gloria Grahame.

Video notes: The laserdisc version of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" makes its debut next month, while the videotape is back in stores, repriced at $20. . . . Disney Home Video has announced that it will release letterboxed laserdiscs of "Mary Poppins" and "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea." The company has been slow to accept letterboxing of its wide-screen films, but it recently brought out "Newsies" in letterboxed form. . . . Oliver Stone's "director's cut" of "JFK," with 17 additional minutes, will be released on cassette Jan. 20. The new version runs 206 minutes. . . . The deadline for "Video Shorts," a national competition that is in its 12th year, is Feb. 1, 1993. For information and entry forms, write to Video Shorts, P.O. Box 20369, Seattle WA 98102.

Video Watch by John Hartl appears Sundays in Arts & Entertainment. You can get more video information by calling the Seattle Times' 24-hour free service Infoline. Call 464-2000 from any touch-tone telephone and when instructed, enter the category number 7369 to reach the Video Hotline. You may replay all information by pressing "R" (7); back up to previous information by pressing "B" (2); and jump over over current information by pressing "J" (5).

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Videowatch moves to Thursdays beginning this week. Look in the Seattle Times on Thanksgiving Day for John Hartl's column on "Lethal Weapon 3" and other videos coming out in December, as well as the lowdown on all the Christmas videos now available.

--------------------------------------------- NEW VIDEOS IN STORES THIS WEEK ---------------------------------------------

Tuesday - Hugo Weaving in "Proof," John Woo's "The Killer," Harrison Ford in "Patriot Games," Brooke Shields in "Brenda Starr," Justine Bateman in "Deadbolt," "The Black Crowes."

Wednesday - Bill Paxton in "The Vagrant."

New laserdiscs: Grace Kelly in "The Swan" (letterboxed), Doris Day in "Pillow Talk" (letterboxed), Tom Cruise in "Far and Away" (letterboxed), Steve Martin in "The Jerk" (remastered).