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Oscar- and Emmy-nominated producer Marc Merson died Sunday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. He was 82. Merson is best known for producing the features Doc Hollywood, The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter and Leadbelly. On the TV side he produced several series including Kaz and We’ll Get By and TV movies Riding High and Hickey. He received an Oscar nomination in 1970 for producing the short People Soup, starring Alan Arkin. In the 1960s, he produced a musical version of Shaw’s Androcles And The Lion with songs by Richard Rodgers for NBC and the Emmy-nominated The Love Song Of Barney Kempinski, scripted by Murray Shisgal and starring Arkin, for the ABC Stage 67 series.

DVD Playhouse—November 2010

By Allen Gardner

Paths Of Glory (Criterion) Stanley Kubrick’s 1957 antiwar classic put him on the map as a major filmmaker. Kirk Douglas stars in a true story about a French officer in Ww I who locks horns with the military’s top brass after his men are court-martialed for failing to carry out an obvious suicide mission. A perfect film, across the board, with fine support from George Macready as one of the most despicable martinet’s ever captured on film, Ralph Meeker, and Adolphe Menjou, all oily charm as a conniving General. Also available on Blu-ray disc. Bonuses: Audio commentary by critic Gary Giddins; Excerpt from 1966 audio interview with Kubrick; 1979 interview with Douglas; New interviews with Jan Harlan, Christiane Kubrick, and producer James B. Harris; French television documentary on real-life case which inspired the film; Trailer. Widescreen. Dolby 1.0 mono.

Winter’S Bone (Lionsgate) After her deadbeat father disappears,...

The 1966 television musical Evening Primrose is not a lost masterpiece, but it certainly hasn't deserved its four and a half decades of obscurity, either. Presented as part of the short-lived ABC anthology series ABC Stage 67, this adaptation of a John Collier short story hasn't been available for viewing outside of bootlegs or museums since its initial broadcast. ABC never presented it again. It was never syndicated nor released on VHS, much less Blu-Ray or DVD. That hasn't stopped legions of curious fans from being eager to see what it was like. Much of the fascination is due to the fact that Evening Primrose features four vintage tunes from Broadway songwriter Stephen Sondheim (Sweeny Todd, Assassins) and was adapted by playwright and screenwriter James Goldman (They Might Be Giants, The Lion in Winter). The two later collaborated on Follies. It...