Jack Lemmon Film Collection (Phffft, Operation Mad Ball, The Notorious Landlady, Under The Yum Yum Tree, Good Neighbor Sam) (DVD)

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"Under the Yum Yum Tree" (1963, color) presents Lemmon as lecherous landlord Hogan, who intrudes on a young couple with morals wanting to save sex for marriage but not sure if they're compatible. The couple's solution? To rent an apartment and try to live together without consummating their relationship. A young Dean Jones and Carol Lynley play Dave and Robin, while comedians Paul Lynde and Imogene Coca play the maid and maintenance man of Hogan's building who watch and comment in the wings. Coca is disgusted by Hogan's predatory ways--he uses his position and his pass key to take advantage of young women living in the building--while Lynde admires the man and the bachelor's pad he's created. When Hogan finds out that Dave and Robin aren't having sex, at first he's incredulous they're not having "yum yum." Then the old lecher sniffs an opportunity, and while he spends time trying to coach Dave how to exercise and use cold showers to fend off those natural urges, he's also trying to bed Robin himself. Rounding out the cast are Edie Adams and Robert Lansing, who play Robin's aunt (and a former tenant/victim of Hogan's lechery) and her academic friend.

"Good Neighbor Sam" (1964, color) is a classic example of the bedroom farce that's also a sharp social commentary. Lemmon plays Sam Bissel, an ad man who dresses like all the other ad men and feels like just another hamster on the Habitrail, though there's one big difference: Sam is a nice guy, a devoted family man, and an average Joe. His colleagues are slimeballs who have affairs, drink too much, and put work ahead of family. When a big client is repulsed by a racy ad campaign and vows to quit the firm because they're all "degenerates," Mr. Burke (Edward Andrews) promotes Sam to account executive so the client (Edward G. Robinson) doesn't drop them. The complication? Sam's wife, Minerva (Dorothy Provine), has a very cosmopolitan friend named Janet who just returned from Paris (Romy Schneider), and Janet learns she's in line to get a big inheritance if she's married . . . not estranged, as she is, and in the process of divorce. To help out, Sam pretends to be married to Janet in order to fool the private detective (Louis Nye) that would-be heirs hired to prove she's immoral. Yes, morality is the theme here, and this little sex comedy is crisp and funny and full of period honesty and detail. The end gets a little drawn out, but otherwise it's one of the strongest entries.

Together, they make for a solid, if unspectacular collection.

Video:
In the past, some of Sony's compilations seemed to take production short-cuts, but the quality of these films is generally good. There are some specks of dirt and flickers on several of the films, along with the expected grain from movies this old, but the colors hold up pretty well and there's nothing in the visual presentation to distract. The films are presented in 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen.

Audio:
The sound is nothing spectacular-just a Dolby Digital Mono in English or French, with subtitles in English and French. Typical of mono, the sound is just a little flat, and on some of the films there's a little background hiss and sprocket noise. How this happened I'm not sure, but it's almost as if they used a Kinescopic technique and filmed a movie as it played with a digital camera.

Extras:
The bonus features aren't extensive, but fans will be glad for anything at all. Lemmon's son, actor Chris, narrates "Jack Lemmon: The Man Behind the Magic," which is a nice documentary, and we get an episode from the Ford All-Star Theater in which Lemmon stars with Ida Lupino in "Marriageable Male," where you can see the influence that TV roles such as this had on the shaping of his Everyman character. Rounding out the bonus features are a vintage photo gallery and original theatrical trailers, all of which are contained on a sixth disc. The collection comes in a slipcase with fold-out cardboard and fold-out "book" case, the single-sided discs housed on plastic pages.

Bottom Line:
"The Jack Lemmon Film Collection" has been topping pre-order charts, which shows the tremendous appeal that this versatile actor still has for audiences. Though this collection doesn't contain any of his truly great films, it's a nice "B" collection.

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