MOVIE DESCRIPTION:

Kirk Douglas plays the corrupt and amoral head of a major film studio in this Hollywood drama, often regarded as one of the film's industry's most interesting glimpses at itself. Actress Gloria Lorrison (Lana Turner), director Fred Amiel (Barry Sullivan), and screenwriter James Lee Bartlow (Dick Powell) are invited to a meeting at a Hollywood sound stage at the request of producer Harry Pebbel (Walter Pidgeon). Pebbel is working with studio chief Jonathan Shields (Kirk Douglas), whose studio is in financial trouble and needs a blockbuster hit. If these three names will sign to a new project, he's convinced that there's no way he can lose. But there's a rub -- all three of these Hollywood heavyweights hate Shields's guts. He dumped Gloria for another woman, he double-crossed Fred out of a plum directing assignment, and he was responsible for the death of James Lee's wife. All three are ready to tell Pebbel to forget it, until they hear the voice of Shields, calling from Europe to discuss the project by phone. The Bad and the Beautiful won five Academy Awards, including Best Screenplay and Best Supporting Actress for Gloria Grahame. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

DVD FEATURES:

• Region: 1
• Number of Discs: 1
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1 (Pre-1954 Standard)
• Audio: Dolby Digital Mono
• Screen: Black and White
• Subtitle: Spanish, English, French, Korean, Thai
• Features:
  • • cc Feature-length Turner Classic Movies documentary: "Lana Turner: A Daughter's Memoir"
    • Scoring session music cues
    • Theatrical trailers of this and its sequel, "Two Weeks in Another Town"
    • Interactive menus
    • Production notes
    • Scene access
    • Languages: English & Français
    • Subtitles: English, Français, Español, Português, Chinese, Thai & Korean

AWARDS

• Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

•     Won Best Black and White Art Direction - 1952 (Cedric Gibbons, Keogh Gleason, Edwin B. Willis, Edward C. Carfagno)
•     Won Best Black and White Cinematography - 1952 (Robert Surtees)
•     Won Best Black and White Costume Design - 1952 (Helen Rose)
•     Won Best Screenplay - 1952 (Charles Schnee)
•     Won Best Supporting Actress - 1952 (Gloria Grahame)
•     Nominated Best Actor - 1952 (Kirk Douglas)

• British Academy of Film and Television Arts

•     Nominated Best British Film - 1953 (Vincente Minnelli)

• Directors Guild of America

•     Nominated Best Director - 1952 (Vincente Minnelli)

• Hollywood Foreign Press Association

•     Nominated Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Pictu - 1952 (Gilbert Roland)
•     Nominated Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Pic - 1952 (Gloria Grahame)

• National Board of Review

•     Nominated Best Picture - 1952

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

• Director:

  Vincente Minnelli

• Producer:

  John Houseman

• Screenwriter:

  Charles Schnee

• Cinematographer:

  Robert Surtees

• Composer (Music Score):

  David Raksin

• Editor:

  Conrad A. Nervig

• Art Director:

  Edward C. Carfagno, Cedric Gibbons

• Set Designer:

  Keogh Gleason, Edwin B. Willis

• Costume Designer:

  Helen Rose

• Makeup:

  William J. Tuttle

• Special Effects:

  Arnold A. Gillespie, Warren Newcombe

• First Assistant Director:

  Jerry Thorpe

• Short Story Author:

  George Bradshaw

REVIEW:

• Vincente Minelli's self-reflexive, highly stylized profile of a charmingly manipulative producer (Kirk Douglas) seeking a comeback is one of the most cynical and enjoyably trashy films that Hollywood has ever made about itself. Appearing during the height of noir, when the movie business was taking a more jaundiced view of itself in films like Sunset Boulevard (1950) and The Big Knife (1955), the film employs many of the stylistic and narrative techniques of Citizen Kane (1941) in portraying a similarly ruthless figure, yet turns Welles' theme inside out, presenting its back-stabbing protagonist as a charming rogue. Originally based on George Shaw's story, Tribute to a Bad Man, a thinly veiled take on Broadway producer Jed Harris, a tyrant whose evil nature was so familiar to theater folk that Laurence Olivier based his characterization of Richard III on him, it eventually mutated into a film a clef on well-known Hollywood players, with David O. Selznick the likely model for Douglas' Jonathan Shields. Its three acts are structured as a triptych of flashbacks in which Douglas attempts to seduce each of the three talents he discovered -- director Barry Sullivan, actress Lana Turner, and writer Dick Powell-- into returning to help him jump-start his moribund career, despite the way he's damaged their lives. As their stories unfold they reveal the energy, charm, panache, and high spirits of their former boss along with his shameless conniving, outright theft, and part-time pimping. But the perspective of the film, which he dominates completely, is that of an ex-Nazi who says, "Sure the Fuhrer was a bastard, but damn, he made things happen." Douglas has rarely been better, seizing every moment onscreen as if it were his last, and Gloria Grahame is excellent as the highly distracted writer's wife. Composer David Raksin's lush, harmonically inventive score is also among his most evocative, but the star of the film is Vincente Minelli. ~ Michael Costello, Rovi