KISS ME KATE (1953):
110 minutes
The Greatest of All Great MGM Musicals... Bigger, Better, Blushin-er than the famed Broadway Smash Hit!, When two squabbling ex-married are cast as squabbling Renaissance romantics in a musical The Taming Of The Shrew, life imitates art, art imitates life - and it all proves no musical comedy imitates Kiss Me Kate, the backstage/onstage delight from the 1948 Broadway smash and featuring 14 peerless Cole Porter songs., Howard Keel and Kathryn Grayson are the tangled twosome So In Love despite her I Hate Men flashpoints. Ann Miller adds heat, razzle-tap-dazzling in Too Darn Hot and wowing, Tom, Dick and Harry. Fosse and Hermes Pan provide zesty choreography under George Sidney's nimble direction. So Brush Up Your Shakespeare and enjoy. Kate won't just kiss you. She'll floor you.

SHOWBOAT (1951):
107 minutes
Come one, come all to the Show Boat show!

From novel (by Edna Ferber) to Broadway smash (by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II) to three film versions (1929, 1936, 1951) to stage revivals. Like Ol' Man River, Show Boat just keeps rollin' along.

Produced by Arther Freed and directed by George Sidney, this 1951 version of the saga of riverboat lives and loves has glorious stars (Kathryn Grayson, Ava Gardner, Howard Keel, Marge and Gower Champion) in Technicolor radiance, a made-from-scratch 170-foot paddle wheeler, timeless songs and an equally timeless outcry against racial bigotry. "This was music that would outlast Kern's day and mine, Ferber said in recalling her first reaction to hearing Ol' Man River. She was right as rain.

Estimated despatch 5-10 days after ordering.