Search - Oklahoma [50th Anniversary Edition] on DVD

MPAA Rating: G Content Advisory: Violence, Adult Situations Movie Release: 1955 DVD Release: 11/15/2005 Format: DVD - Color,Enhanced Wide Screen Letterbox for 16x9 TV - Closed Captioned Audio Tracks: English Subtitles: English, Spanish SwapaDVD Credits: 2 Number of Discs: 2 Run Time: 2 hrs 25 mins Studio: 20th Century Fox Members Wishing: 14 Genres: Musical, Western, Americana, Musical Romance, Musical Western See Also: Oklahoma!

Rodgers and Hammerstein's 1943 Broadway musical was considered revolutionary for a multitude of reasons, not least of which were the play's intricate integration of song and storyline, and the simplicity and austerity of its production design. The 1955 film version of Oklahoma! retains the songs (except for Lonely Room and It's a Scandal!, which are usually cut from most stage presentations anyway) and the story, but the simplicity is sacrificed to the spectacle of Technicolor, Todd-AO, and Stereophonic Sound. The story can be boiled down to a single sentence: a girl must decide between the two suitors who want to take her to a social. In her movie debut, 19-year-old Shirley Jones plays Laurie, an Oklahoma farm gal who is courted by boisterous cowboy Curley (Gordon MacRae) and by menacing, obsessive farm hand Jud Frye (Rod Steiger). Fearing that Jud will do something terrible to Curley, Laurie accepts Jud's invitation to the box social. But it's Curley who rescues Laurie from Jud's unwanted advances, and in so doing wins her hand. On the eve of their wedding, Laurie and Curley are menaced by the drunken Jud. During a fight with Curley, Jud falls on his own knife and is killed (this sudden-death motif was curiously commonplace in the Rodgers and Hammerstein ouevre). The local deputy insists that Curley be arrested and stand trial, but he is outvoted by Curley's friends, and the newlyweds are permitted to ride off on their honeymoon. Counterpointing the serious elements of the story is a comic subplot involving innocently promiscuous Ado Annie (Gloria Grahame), her erstwhile sweetheart Will Parker (Gene Nelson) and lascivious travelling salesman Ali Hakim (Eddie Albert). None of the Broadway cast of Oklahoma! was engaged for the film version, though Charlotte Greenwood is finally able to essay the role of Auntie Eller that had been written for her but she'd been unable to play back in 1943. The evergreen songs include Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin', Surrey with the Fringe on Top, People Will Say We're In Love, I Cain't Say No, and the rousing title song. Two versions of Oklahoma! currently exist: the Todd-AO version, filmed on 65-millimeter stock, and the simultaneously shot CinemaScope version, shipped out to the theaters not equipped for the wider-screen Todd-AO process. Both versions have been issued in "letterbox" form on laser disc, and the subtle differences in performance style and camera angles in each and every scene are quite fascinating. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Gordon MacRae - Curly
Shirley Jones - Laurey
Gene Nelson - Will Parker
Charlotte Greenwood - Aunt Eller
Gloria Grahame - Ado Annie Carnes
Rod Steiger - Jud Fry

This double-DVD set, issued to mark the 50th anniversary of the release of the film Oklahoma!, is as thorough a treatment as the film has ever received. The presence of both the CinemaScope and Todd-AO versions of the movie -- and the latter was last seen on a special laserdisc edition released more than a decade before -- has allowed the producers to include two completely different commentary tracks, one by scholars Ted Chapin and Hugh Fordin on the CinemaScope film, and by Nick Redman and star Shirley Jones on the Todd-AO version of the movie; each balances the other perfectly, in terms of the focus of the two different commentaries, and on that basis alone it's worth watching both versions of the movie. One wishes that the same could be said for both tranfers -- in this presentation, however, the CinemaScope version of Oklahoma! is so superior to the Todd-AO version of the movie that the latter is almost a waste of viewing time, except for the most serious scholars of the film or the musical; and the irony is that it should be the other way around -- Todd-AO was so superior a format to CinemaScope, that it should be the latter version that is secondary. Todd-AO was the superior format in every respect (a fact of which we are told and reminded constantly on both commentary tracks and in two of the supplementary film shorts), and only failed because too few theaters were set-up to show movies in that format. But the detail and color of the CinemaScope version of the movie here is exceptionally good, whereas the transfer on the Todd-AO version of the movie mutes many of these qualities for long stretches of the movie -- the word around the high-end video grapevine, which no one at Fox Video has addressed one way or the other, is that Fox used a transfer of the Todd-AO film that was done in the mid-1990's for presentation on American Movie Classics, which would explain many of its deficiencies. The commentary track by Shirley Jones still makes it worth watching, more than once, in fact, but in terms of what you actually see on the screen, it is a serious disappointment. The first platter contains the CinemaScope movie with commentary, a singalong function, and a trailer. The second disc is loaded up with the Todd-AO film plus commentary, and a pair of featurettes, one new to this DVD and the other done at the time, showcasing Todd-AO as a viewing experience (especially ironic given the results here); musical excerpts from a 1954 television tribute to Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II; plus a trailer, stills gallery, and a singalong function. Each platter opens automatically to a multi-layer but easy-to-use menu, and both editions of the movie have the same generous chapter encoding. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide