Street Date: November 9, 2021

Synopsis: Joe Wilson, a wrongly jailed man thought to have died in a blaze started by a bloodthirsty lynch mob, is somehow alive. And dead to all he ever stood for and perhaps ever will. Because Joe aims to ensure his would-be executioners meet the fate Joe miraculously escaped. Spencer Tracy is Joe, Sylvia Sidney is his bride-to-be, and Fury lives up to its volatile name with its searing indictment of mob justice and lynching. In his first American film, director Fritz Lang (Metropolis, The Big Heat) combines a passion for justice and a sharp visual style into a landmark of social-conscience filmmaking. In the 49 years before this movie’s release, some 6,000 people in the U.S. were victims of lynch mobs. The Fury over those tragedies – and over other injustices to come – remains.

Street Date: November 9, 2021

Synopsis: Composer Stephen Sondheim (Sweeney Todd, Into the Woods) and actor Anthony Perkins (Psycho) wrote this witty, complex thriller directed by Herbert Ross (Steel Magnolias, The Goodbye Girl). A movie kingpin (James Coburn), whose wife, Sheila, was killed by a hit-and-run driver a year before, hosts a cruise aboard his sleek yacht. His guests (James Mason, Raquel Welch, Dyan Cannon, Richard Benjamin, Joan Hackett, and Ian McShane) are all friends (and some lovers) who may know more about Sheila’s death than they’re letting on. An elaborate murder game with Mediterranean ports of call is the itinerary. What unfolds is a mystery so intriguing, so cleverly plotted, even the title is a clue!

Street Date: November 16, 2021

Synopsis: As long as young hearts endure, so will National Velvet and movies like it. in her star-making role, Elizabeth Taylor plays Velvet Brown, a wide-eyed adolescent who, assisted by her jockey pal (Mickey Rooney), trains Pie, a horse she won in a raffle, for the Grand National Steeplechase. Of course, no girl can ride in the National, can she? Yet Velvet, posing as a boy, assuredly does. Superbly directed by Clarence Brown, this exciting winner of two Academy Awards®* (one to Anne Revere for her performance as Velvet’s mother) costars a young Angela Lansbury and veteran Donald Crisp. The film has an off-screen postscript as winning as the on-screen finale:

M-G-M was so impressed with their young new star’s work on the film, that the studio gave Pie to Miss Taylor after filming completed.

Street Date: November 23, 2021

Synopsis: Doris Day is at the top of her form in this 1951 Warner Bros. musical classic, which gave Doris a chance to not just vocalize with her usual excellence, but to also show of her impressive dancing talents. The prospect was daunting for the star, as a car accident during her youth left her with severe injuries, and she was told that she would have to put aside her dreams of becoming a dancer. Vocally talented as she was, she rose to fame as a big band singer, which eventually led to her screen stardom. When preparing for this big-budget musical’s finale to the famous title tune, the steps of the studio set towered before her like a pyramid. All Doris Day had to do was dance up and down those steps wearing a flowing gold lamé dress. “You’ve got to be out of your minds,” Day exclaimed in a voice head across the soundstage. “I can’t even walk up and down those stairs.” She danced divinely – and sang in this musical delight about a singer newly arrived in New York… and destined for Great White Way fame in the capable company of costars Gene Nelson, S.Z. Sakall, Billy De Wolfe, Gladys George, and Florence Bates. Savor the Oscar®-winning* title tune, Cole Porter’s “Just One of Those Things,” “Somebody Loves Me” and five more swell songs. C’mon along and listen to (and watch) this Lullaby of Broadway.

Street Date: November 30, 2021

Synopsis: When maverick director Nicholas Ray (Johnny Guitar, Rebel Without a Cause) turns his talents to a gangster movie, a familiar genre becomes startling and new. Under the auspices of long-time M-G-M musical producer Joe Pasternak, and with the added gloss of the CinemaScope widescreen and Metrocolor, the auteur created a cult classic. Set in 1930s Chicago, Party Girl follows a bum-legged mouthpiece for the mob (Robert Taylor) and a gorgeous, wised-up vamp (Cyd Charisse) who fall in love, try to go straight… and head straight for trouble. Ray deepens the drama and heightens the violence with filmmaking artistry that has given Party Girl cult status: a screen painted in sinister ebony and blood red, an urban landscape of shattered glass and shattered bodies, and a scene where a Jean Harlow-besotted mobster learns his idol has married – and shreds her photo with a rat-a-tat of lead. If the title tune under the credits sounds like it’s coming from a familiar voice, the studio kept thing ‘in the family’ with the vocal warbled by Charisse’s husband and frequent Metro musical leading man Tony Martin.