Knickerbocker Holiday (1944)

<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036988/

[Converted from Analog]

Director: Harry Joe Brown

Cast: Nelson Eddy, Charles Coburn, Constance Dowling, Ernest Cossart,
Shelley Winter [sic], Johnnie Davis, Percy Kilbride, Otto Kruger, Fritz Feld,
Richard Hale, Carmen Amaya, Irving Bacon, Dick Baldwin, Sven Hugo Borg,
Harry C Bradley, George Bunny, Bruce Cameron, Chester Conklin, Connie Conrad,
Herbert Corthell, Harold DeGarro, Edward Earle, Fern Emmett, Irving Fulton,
Dorothy Granger, Bobby Hale, Fred Johnson, Harry Johnson Jr, Charles Judels,
Casey MacGregor, Louis Manley, Ferdinand Munier, Walter Pietila, John Sheehan,
Gerald Oliver Smith, Frieda Stoll, Glenn Strange, Ruth Tobey, Percival Vivian

Description: It's 1650 in New Amsterdam, and Brom Broeck, a young outspoken
newspaper publisher is arrested for printing advanced opinions on the
undemocratic rule of Govenor 'Peg-Leg' Stuyvesant. While Brom is in prison,
old 'Peg-Leg' goes on the make for Brom's sweetheart. But, when 'Peg-Leg' is
forced to release Brom... watch out!

Knickerbocker Holiday is both a romantic comedy and a thinly veiled allegory
equating the New Deal of Franklin D Roosevelt (whose ancestor is one of the
characters on the corrupt town council) with fascism. As is apparent from the
preface he wrote for the play, as well as the play and the songs themselves,
Maxwell Anderson was a pacifist and an individualist anarchist. He saw the
New Deal as another example of the corporatism and concentration of political
power which had given rise to Nazism and Stalinism.

His animus toward the state is more soberly revealed in one of his two tragedies
about the Sacco and Vanzetti execution, Winterset. That play, coincidentally,
starred Burgess Meredith, who was originally to star in Knickerbocker Holiday.
Meredith, a friend of Weill's, was to play the romantic young lead Brom Broek,
but he left when he saw the villainous Peter Stuyvesant character growing into
a more and more lovable and important role, upstaging his.

The time is shortly before the arrival of the new Governor of New Amsterdam,
Peter Stuyvesant. Brom Broek, an American individualist, cannot take orders.
If ever anyone gives him an order, he assaults them. This has made it difficult
to court his beloved, Tina Tienhoven, the daughter of the head of the town
council.

Stuyvesant arrives just in time to rescue Broek from a hanging engineered by
his beloved's father, in order to get the impoverished ne'er do well to make
way for the wealthy and powerful Stuyvesant himself as a suitor for the fair
Tina. Naturally Broek is grateful: until Stuyvesant quickly asserts what is
for all intents and purposes a fascist dictatorship.

This 1944 film version written by Thomas L Lennon not only replaced many of
the songs by Weill and Anderson, but watered down the political allegory
considerably, despite being released during World War II.

DVD Format: NTSC

DVD9: 5.46 GiB - Exact Copy [A => D Conversion]

Chapters: 28 - Blind @ 3 Minute Intervals

Color: Black & White

Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1

Language: English

Subtitle: None

Closed Captioned: No

Commentary: None

Detached Extras:

1) - An audio recording (mp3) of the Anderson/Weill play captured on tape by
     an audience member in an off-Broadway performance at a Manhattan theater.

2) - The Program & Posters (pdf) for the Play.

3) - A Collection of Popular Recordings (mp3) of 'The Song'.

Audio: AC-3

Time: 01:25:25

DVD Studio: Isis Presents...

Release Date: 2011-12-26

ASIN: n/a

UPC: n/a

Posting Date: 26 December 2011

Posting Group: alt.binaries.dvd.classics

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