One of Hollywood's earliest -- and most peculiar -- musicals, The Great Gabbo stars von Stroheim as an egotistical ventriloquist who casts a Svengali-like spell upon an ingenue (Betty Compson), against a backdrop of singularly strange numbers (including "Icky" and the spider-and-fly-themed "Caught in a Web"). Director James Cruze (The Covered Wagon) allowed von Stroheim to endow the character with his signature flourishes, resulting in a wicked cocktail...

Eleven films designed to influence, including a vintage promotional film of a French-dubbed Laurel & Hardy, theatrical advertisements featuring Michel Simon and Jacques Tati, a 1938 George Pal puppet animation, three WW-II era musical shorts, two political campaign films, and the National Film registry selection Master Hands, a paean to the 1936 Chevrolet automobile.

Legendary director Douglas Sirk's (Written on the wind, Imitation of life) La Habanera is a lushly poetic and boldly modern musical drama decades ahead of its time. Working at Germany's famed UFA Studios (Metropolis), under the very noses of the Nazi authorities that would later force him into Hollywood exile and eminence, Sirk transformed a glossy musical vehicle for UFA's "new Garbo" Zarah Leander into a dark and intimate anti-colonial melodrama....

Danny Kaye cuts loose with his trademark musical clowning. Louis Armstrong plays his horn and croons in that famed gargling-granite voice. Big Band icons Bob Crosby, Ray Anthony and Shelly Manne join the fun. And Barbara Bel Geddes (decades before *Dallas*) add to the excellent performances in THE FIVE PENNIES, the success-tempered-with-tears biopic of jazz great Red Nichols (portrayed by Kaye). Nominated for Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design,...