Film buffs will want to get this just for what's offered on Disc 1, "Greatest Hollywood Legends." The guest list is pretty staggering: Orson Welles, Ingrid Bergman, Richard Burton, Sophia Loren, Sammy Davis, Jr., David Niven, Tom Cruise, Jane Fonda & Roger Vadim, Denzel Washington, Sir Laurence Olivier, Michael Caine, Joan Collins, Tom Hanks, Lee Marvin, Janet Leigh, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Grace Kelly, Christopher Reeve, and John Wayne.

What's great about these interviews, which average around 10-15 minutes apiece though some last but a few minutes while others run more than half an hour, are the segments featuring actors who weren't around to record audio commentaries for the laserdiscs and DVDs of their work. On this disc, for instance, you can watch Ingrid Bergman talk about the appeal her old movies, Casablanca in particular, in a 1973 interview filmed at the Cannes Film Festival, where she served as president of that year's judging committee. (And at age 57 she miraculously had aged hardly at all, as is also the case with Grace Kelly in her interview, taken a few years later in Monaco.)

Particularly interesting are the segments with stars that weren't interviewed all that much when they were alive, such Lee Marvin who, despite his notoriety (heavy drinking, seminal palimony case) comes off as an unassuming, ordinary guy who might just as easily have been a foreman at a construction site as an Academy Award-winner.

Several actors are interviewed near the end of their lives while Merv snagged others at the beginning of theirs. Orson Welles is his usual great raconteur self; no one would have guessed that within a few hours after taping the show the great director would be dead. Olivier looks frail but near the end of his segment launches into an enthusiastic discussion about casting Shakespearean roles. Sadly, David Niven has trouble speaking in his segment from the early-1980s, the first signs of his battle with Lou Gehrig's Disease. Conversely, it's fascinating to watch Toms Hanks and Cruise at the start of their careers, the latter apparently interviewed the weekend Risky Business opened in theaters.

One of the most entertainingly edgy interviews is with a petulant Richard Burton, apparently filmed while he was on location unhappily making The Klansman, and so pissed off (and perhaps pissed in general) that he makes no effort to hide his contempt for absolutely everything, despite Merv's unwaveringly upbeat soldiering through the disastrous segment. Burton puts down everyone from literary giant Samuel Johnson (he never bathed) to NASA's astronauts ("You'd have to be incredibly stupid [to become one]" he says), whose bravery he dismisses as rubbish. Merv, in his audio introduction to the segment, says the crowd of spectators was ready to lynch him before it was over.

Disc 2, "Greatest Comedians," is only slightly less entertaining, though the widely disparate talent will bemuse as much as it will entertain: Jack Benny, Don Rickles, Jerry Seinfield, Jackie Mason, Danny DeVito, Carl Reiner, George Carlin, Jay Leno, Richard Pryor, Phyllis Diller, Totie Fields, George Burns, Billy Crystal, Tony Danza, and Monti Rock III. Still, everyone's in top form, and you can enjoy an early Jerry Seinfeld appearance before Merv's set ended up in Cosmo Kramer's apartment. The Jack Benny segment comes off as a warm, 30-minute tribute to the great comedian shortly before he died, while the segment with '60s dance club icon Monti Rock III must be seen to be believed. One of the best segments is with largely forgotten comedienne Totie Fields, very funny; mixing more of these less-familiar names with the big stars in future releases would be most welcome.

The third and final disc, "Extraordinary Guests," exemplifies Merv's willingness to invite controversial guests at a time when Johnny Carson's show was vehemently apolitical. The line-up includes four presidents and two assassination victims interviewed a year before their untimely deaths: Walter Cronkite, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Robert F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon (shortly before announcing his 1968 bid for the White House), Gerald R. Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald & Nancy Reagan, Barbara Walters, Rose Kennedy. These interviews tend to run longer than the other segments and, the Cronkite and Walters aside, are invaluable bits of American history.

Note: Many other guests turn up on the sidelines, sometimes uncredited, including Merv's longtime sidekick, character actor Arthur Treacher, as well as lost-in-time faces like Allen & Rossi and B.S. Pulley.

Video & Audio

The Merv Griffin Show: 40 of the Most Interesting People of Our Time comes with an apologetic disclaimer about the quality of some of the source material, but in fact everything looks just fine for its age and frankly a heck of a lot better than 95% of Alpha's public domain releases. That the earliest interviews, dating back to the early/mid-1960s survive at all is a blessing considering that most of Johnny Carson's early Tonight Shows were thrown out or erased decades ago. The shows seems to have been compiled by Griffin's people with the sloppy menu screens, packaging and duplication handled by Alpha. Tellingly, they manage to misspell several names, from "Roy Rodgers" to "Chritopher Reeve."

Extra Features

The only supplements, besides Merv's gravelly-voiced intros, are Bonus Interviews, such as Clarence Nash (the voice of Donald Duck) and Roy Rogers on Disc 1. (The other interviewees are listed above.).

Parting Thoughts

A bargain at around $21 after standard discounts, The Merv Griffin Show: 40 of the Most Interesting People of Our Time is a great set to drop in the DVD player when you have 20 minutes to spare, are folding the laundry, or feel like watching a little TV before going to bed without committing to a long movie or hour show. Highly Recommended.

Stuart Galbraith IV is a Kyoto-based film historian whose work includes The Emperor and the Wolf - The Lives and Films of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune and Taschen's forthcoming Cinema Nippon. Visit Stuart's Cine Blogarama here.