Cary Grant: Screen Legend Collection (Big Brown Eyes / Kiss and Make Up / Thirty Day Princess / Wedding Present / Wings in the Dark)

1935's Wings in the Dark will interest film historians because it was cowritten by pioneering female writer-director Nell Shipman, whose Howard Hawks-ian sense of adventure is on full display in an otherwise creaky melodrama in which inventor and aviator Grant is blinded by a gas explosion, and emerges from self-pity to stage a daring air rescue of his aviatrix wife (Myrna Loy). After being loaned out to RKO for his breakthrough role in 1935's Sylvia Scarlett opposite Katharine Hepburn, Grant returned to Paramount for Big Brown Eyes (released in April 1936), playing a crime-beat reporter paired with Joan Bennett in a lightweight mystery that benefits greatly from director Raoul Walsh's facility with streetwise plots and gritty handling of a baby-killer subplot involving jewel thieves Walter Pigeon and Lloyd Nolan. Wedding Present followed six months later (October '36), reuniting Grant and Bennett as competitive reporters whose relationship is strained when Grant is promoted to editor. Like all five films in this Screen Legend Collection, it's a light and thoroughly enjoyable vehicle for Paramount players including William Demarest, who went on to character-role stardom in the comedies of Preston Sturges. Cary Grant is in fine form here, and his music-hall experience is put to good use in several lightweight musical numbers. All in all, you can't go wrong with a five-film set for this price, especially since Grant was already showing a canny awareness of his own soon-to-be-iconic image. --Jeff Shannon