"Actor: Jane Darwell"

• The Grapes Of Wrath - Book & DVD | DVD | (08/08/2005) from £27.99   |  Saving you £-12.00 (N/A%)   |  RRP £15.99

  John Ford's memorable screen version of John Steinbeck's epic novel of the Great Depression--often regarded as the director's best film--stars Henry Fonda as Tom Joad. After having served a brief prison sentence for manslaughter Joad arrives at his family's Oklahoma farm only to find it abandoned. Muley (John Qualen) a neighbor now nearly mad with grief tells Tom of the drought that has transformed the farmland of Oklahoma into a desert and of the preying land agents who have plowed under the shacks of the sharecroppers. Joined by former hellfire preacher Casy (John Carradine) Tom finds his extended family including Pa (Charles Grapewin) and his indomitable Ma (Jane Darwell) packing their ramshackle truck to seek work in the fields of California. As the family treks across the country their dissolution begins with the deaths of Tom's grandparents at close intervals. When they arrive in California the Joads find only an abundance of poverty-stricken migrants like themselves and little in the way of potential work. Yet ever resilient they maintain their dignity hoping for the best. Among the talented cast Fonda does perhaps the best work of his career as does Qualen in the film's most haunting sequence. Director of photography Gregg Toland captures the suffering and the weathered luminous nobility of the Joads and the other uprooted drifting families creating striking images equal to the best work of Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans. In a stirring film that stands as a microcosm of the depression experience of millions Ford gives poverty a human face in a way that was rare then and even rarer in the decades to follow as Hollywood films with a sense of class consciousness dwindled like a species nearing extinction.

• The Lemon Drop Kid | DVD | (18/09/2006) from £6.07   |  Saving you £6.92 (114.00%)   |  RRP £12.99

  Bob Hope stars as Sidney Melbourne (A.K.A. The Lemon Drop Kid named so after his love of the simple candy) a con man who offers a friendly ""sure thing"" horse tip to the girlfriend of mobster Moose Moran at the race track. When the horse loses and Moose's original pick wins Moose gives Sidney until Christmas to pay back the money he lost or his thug Sam-the-Surgeon will ""open"" Sidney after Christmas. To pay back the money he owes Moose Sidney enlists some pals to hit the street corners of New York dressed as Santa Claus accepting donations for a bogus elderly ladies' home. The calamity starts when gangster Oxford Charlie (Lloyd Nolan) tries to move in on Sidney's scam. What follows is vintage Hope shenanigans highlighted by a heart-warming rendition of the Christmas classic ""Silver Bells"" sung by Hope and Marilyn Maxwell (who appeared with Hope in the 1953 film Off Limits). Also starring William Frawley (I Love Lucy) and Tor Johnson (Plan 9 From Outer Space).