Let’s Make It Legal
Picture:
C+ Sound: C+ Extras: B- Film: B-
Another
small, clever comedy from the 20th Century-Fox vaults hits DVD, one
of four from the early 1950s. The
occasion involves early roles of Marilyn Monroe that helped launch her career
and Let’s Make It Legal (1951) offers us an early comedy
screenplay co-written by the legendary I.A.L. Diamond, who later delivered two
of Monroe’s greatest films with his most
famous collaborator, writer/director Billy Wilder.
An
older couple (Claudette Colbert and Macdonald Carrey) decide to get a divorce
late in life, but this does not make her daughter (Barbara Bates) very
happy. Any hopes of an early
reconciliation are complicated by a sexy bombshell for “dad” *Monroe) and an old
high school sweetheart who is now a millionaire (Zachary Scott), then her own
man (Robert Wagner) and her are not getting along too well. All this adds up to some lunacy, made funnier
by the norms of the time period, though even then, Diamond was being coy. Fans of The
Seven-Year Itch (1955)
and Some Like it Hot (1959) will want to see this, even
though Monroe’s time is limited.
When she is on camera, though, you notice.
The
full frame, monochrome image was shot by Lucien Ballad, A.S.C., who would be a
groundbreaker in widescreen filmmaking sooner than even he could have been
imagined. You can see here that he
handles narrow-vision filmmaking just as well.
The film elements show their grain, but that is just the state of the
film stock. Detail is mixed as a result,
but the transfer does its best. The
Dolby Digital 2.0 is in both redirectioned Stereo and Mono English. Cyril Mockridge’s score is good too. Extras include 14 trailers for other Monroe films on DVD, plus the promo for
the first Diamond Collection box set, the trailer to this film, and an
outstanding audio commentary by Robert Wagner that gives him a chance to share
tons of great ideas and moments that alone are worth getting this disc for.
But that
is not intended to minimize a fine picture that has enduring entertainment
value and shows how even the smaller films out of the Hollywood Studio system
still were top notch product. Let’s Make It Legal has its laughs.
- Nicholas Sheffo
