By Steven Suskin
25 Jan 2009

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Casino Royale [Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/Fox Home], based on the first of the James Bond novels by Ian Fleming, is not a James Bond film exactly. Due to a complicated rights situation, an outside producer owned the rights to this 1953 novel, and tried to cash in on the already ongoing goldmine of a series. (A long-forgotten U.S. television version of the novel was produced in 1954, with Barry Nelson playing 007.) When the owners of the Bond film franchise would not make a deal, producer Charles K. Feldman decided to do his own version as a spoof of the genre (in the manner of his 1965 film, "What's New Pussycat"). This was not Sean Connery as Bond; rather, David Niven. The whole 1967 affair is a wild and undisciplined satire of the big budget Bonds, as evidenced by a cast that ranged from Peter Sellers and Orson Welles to John Huston and Woody Allen. Want more? Deborah Kerr, Ursula Andress, Charles Boyer, Jacqueline Bisset, George Raft, Jean Paul Belmondo, William Holden. And other names, mixed into the mélange in cameo roles. Music came from Burt Bacharach — here's "The Look of Love" in its original incarnation — as played by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. Art it isn't, but you get a good look at quite a lot of interesting people. Peter O'Toole, too.

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I can't say that I'm much of a fan of Alice Faye. More than a few readers apparently are, though, so let me point out that Fox has followed "The Alice Faye Collection" with The Alice Faye Collection Volume 2. The five DVDs range from the interesting ("Rose of Washington Square," with Tyrone Power and Al Jolson; "Hello, Frisco, Hello," with John Paine and Jack Oakie) to the not-so ("Four Jills in a Jeep"?, in which Alice merely steps in for a cameo). Players of interest sprinkled through the films — besides Jolson — include Don Ameche, Phil Silvers, Bill Frawley, June Havoc, The Nicholas Brothers, and the great Buster Keaton returning to the screen after his exile, for a not especially gratifying appearance in "Hollywood Cavalcade." Special features abound.