Bing Crosby and Jane Wyman (Ronald Regan's first wife) stared in two movies together in the early 1950's.  First in 1951's Here Comes the Groom, directed by Frank Capra, and then the pair teamed up the next year in Just For You, which earned an Oscar nomination for the song Zing a Little Zong.  Paramount has released both of these fun musicals together on a single attractive DVD.

Here Comes the Groom (1951):  Pete Garvey (Bing Crosby) is a newspaper reporter who is in France trying to find homes for children who have lost their parents in the war.  He sends pictures and descriptions of the orphans to his paper who then run the reports in hopes of finding a family to adopt the children.  Interest in rebuilding Europe has decreased at home, so Pete's editor recalls him.  Not being able to leave two of the orphans behind, Pete desides to adopt them himself.  He will take them back to the US where he plans to marry his old sweetheart, Emmadel Jones (Jane Wyman.)  He hasn't seen her in three years, but he's sure she'll still have him.  When he lands in Boston with the kids, the immigration officials inform him that he has five days to marry, or else the adoption can't be completed, and the children will be deported to France.

Pete is sure that the five-day window is more than enough until he arrives as Emmadel's house.  There he finds that she is already engaged to Wilbur Stanley (Franchot Tone,) a rich multimillionaire who comes from a very respectable family and owns "half the hoouses in Boston."  They are due to be married that Saturday, the same day that Pete has to be wed.  Luckily, Garvey doesn't give up easily.  Although Stanley is fabulously rich, younger, good looking, and very charming, Pete gives himself even odds to win Emmadel back by the end of the week.

Frank Capra directed this movie, and though he did a very competent job, it isn't one of his better efforts.  Capra had signed a three picture deal with Paramount.  His first movie for them was Riding High with Bing Crosby, which did well.  Parmount wanted more Crosby movies, but Capra wanted to make most of his populist films.  Since Paramount wouldn't allow him to do the type of films that he wanted to make, Capra wanted to get out of his contract.  They reached an agreement where Capra would make one more Crosby picture and then would be free of his further obligation.  The result was Here Comes the Groom.  This was the last theatrical film that Capra would direct for eight years.  It is if he realized that he had lost touch with the viewing audience to some extent.  This film isn't the type of movie you think about when you hear Frank Capra's name mentioned.  It is a typical musical romantic comedy.  There is a love triangle, an assorted lot of colorful supporting characters, and a couple of cute-as-a-button children, but it doesn't have that Capra touch.  This isn't the story of a little man fighting for what's right; it is typical Hollywood movie fare.

That's not to say it is a bad movie, it isn't.  The film is quite good, but not up to Capra's usual standard.  Bing Crosby and Jane Wyman have a great amount of screen chemistry.  They really shine when they are both together.  The movie is funny and entertaining, with some great songs and funny gags.

The only thing I didn't like about the film was the pat resolution at the end.  It wasn't natural or realistic, but it was expected.  Like so many Hollywood movies of the time, they gave it a happy ending, whether it was plausible or not.  Still a movie worth watching.

Just for You (1952):  Jordan Blake (Bing Crosby) is a successful writer/producer of Broadway shows.  He knows how to put on a great musical, but can't seem to figure out how to handle his two children, Jerry (Robert Arthur) and Barbara (Natalie Wood.)  No matter what he does, he seems to be drifting farther apart from them.  So on the advice of his girl friend Carolina (Jane Wyman,) Jordan takes his family off to the woods for some quality time together.  But teenager Jerry is starting to have a crush on Carolina, and when she confides to Jerry, in vague terms, that she wants to marry Jordan, poor Jerry thinks she's proposing to him.  This little mix-up won't do much to smooth things between father and son.

This was a fun musical.  Bing Crosby and Jane Wyman both did a great job in their roles, and it was very easy to overlook the differences in their ages.  Natalie Wood was precious as the energetic high school freshman, and Robert Arthur also played his role very well.  The person who really shone in this picture was Ethel Barrymore who played Alida De Bronkhart, the headmistress of an exclusive finishing school.  She was a delight to watch every time she was on the screen.

The musical numbers were generally very good.  I can see why Zing a Little Zong was nominated for an Academy Award; it's a zippy tune with a lot of pep.  On The 10:10 From Ten-Ten-Tennessee, billed as an old vaudeville song though it was written for the movie, was also a lot of fun.  I didn't particularly care for the song that the schoolgirls preformed during their picnic, The Live Oak Tree.  This song had the girls pretending they were Indians and was way too hokey for me.  Overall, there is some great numbers in this movie.

One thing that made me a fan of this movie was the ended.  It worked very well.  Jordan was still having some serious problems with his son up until the last minutes of the movie, and I was afraid that they were going to cop out and just say that everyone was happy.   They didn't.  The writers managed to come up with a happy ending that was realistic and didn't involve a teenager suddenly realizing that his father was right, something that basically never happen in real life.  I was pleasantly surprised at the way the film was wrapped up.
 

This disc has both movies one side of the DVD.  There is no insert.

Audio:

Both movies on this DVD have a two channel mono soundtrack with optional English subtitles.  Though there isn't a lot of dynamic range, the audio was clean.  The songs sounded fine though the higher tones were clipped off a little and they didn't sound as full as I was hoping.  There was only a faint amount of hiss in the background that wasn't disturbing at all.  There was slight distortion on the louder sections, which was a little more pronounced in Here Comes the Groom, but it wasn't too bad.

Video:

The 1.33:1 video preserved both movies' original aspect ratio.  Here Comes the Groom had a nice black and white picture, though it was a little grainy.  The print looked very good with a fine amount of detail, but only mediocre contrast.  Some details were lost in the shadows, and there weren't a wide variety of gray tones, but these defects were minor.  The movie looked good overall.

The Technicolor image for Just for You was slightly dark with some of the details were obscured in the night scenes and dark areas.  Colors were very nice though they were just a tad less vibrant than typical Technicolor movies.  The flesh tones were accurate and the outdoor scenes looked brilliant.  The detail was fine, but the image was just a little soft, with some of the fine lines looking a little blurred.  There is a little digital noise in the sky shots, but otherwise the encoding looked good.  These are minor complaints though.  The picture was very pleasing.

The Extras:

There were no extras on this DVD.

Final Thoughts:

These two films make a great combination.  Crosby and Wyman were a great team and it's too bad that they only made these two films together.  These musicals are fun and enjoyably, just the sort of thing Hollywood was famous for in the 50's.  While the image and sound isn't perfect, the disc looks very good, especially considering the age of the films.  Having these two films on one disc makes it easy to give this DVD a Recommended rating.