Box set comprising four classic Cary Grant films as well as a documentary about his life and work made in 2004, 'Cary Grant: A Class Apart'. 'Night and Day' (1946) is a fictionalized biography of Cole Porter, made while the composer was still alive, starring Grant in the title role. The film begins in the 1910s when Porter is at Yale University, then follows him through the First World War, in which he works as an ambulance driver in France and marries a nurse from an aristocratic family (Alexis Smith). Director Michael Curtiz then focuses on Porter's glittering career through the 1940s, and the film contains performances of many of his most famous songs. It is now generally conceded that many of the facts on which the film is based are wildly inaccurate: Porter was in fact gay and married a divorcee friend for convenience, and his much-feted military experiences were a hoax. 'Destination Tokyo' (1943) is a suspenseful wartime drama about a US submarine, USS Copperfin, sent into Tokyo harbour under secret orders in the early days of the Second World War. Cary Grant plays the submarine's commander, whose mission is to get the submarine and its crew into the harbour undetected and send a landing party ashore in order to obtain vital information for the planned Doolittle air raid on Tokyo. 'North By Northwest' (1959) is a masterful mix of comedy and suspense from Alfred Hitchcock. Advertising executive Roger Thornhill (Grant) is lunching in a restaurant with his mother when he mistakenly answers a page for one George Kaplan. He soon finds himself on the run across the country, being pursued by enemies of the government who are convinced that he is a secret agent. He finds a friend in Eve Kendall (Eve Marie Saint), who helps conceal him during a perilous train journey, but soon discovers that she is not all she seems. 'Arsenic and Old Lace' (1944) is a macabre comedy about the elderly Brewster sisters, who poison lonely old men to put them out of their misery and bury them in their basement. When their nephew Mortimer (Grant) calls to announce his engagement, he discovers the grisly family secret. To complicate matters, his evil sibling Jonathan (Raymond Massey) has just escaped from jail, and arrives at the family home with murderous intentions of his own.

Six classic movies starring Margaret Lockwood. 'The Wicked Lady' (1945) is set during the reign of King Charles II. Lockwood stars as Lady Skelton, an aristocrat who attempts to relieve the tedium of her day-to-day life by secretly acting as a highway robber. Lady Skelton soon finds herself caught up in a tangled web of romance, danger, and jealousy. In 'Love Story' (1944), Lissa (Lockwood) discovers she only has a short time to live, so travels to Cornwall for a final fling. While there, she falls in love with young mineral prospector, Kit (Stewart Granger). However, the course of true love does not run smoothly. In 'Bank Holiday' (1938), a group of people set off on an August bank holiday, including a raucous Cockney family, a would-be beauty queen, and two young lovers - whose relationship starts to come apart when one has to deal with a bereavement at the hospital where she works. In 'Give Us the Moon' (1944), a young man, Sascha (Vic Oliver), joins a group called 'The Elephants' whose principle is to abide by a complete disregard for work. However chaos ensues when the group decides to help run the hotel owned by Sascha's father. In 'Highly Dangerous' (1950), when British Intelligence discovers that an Iron Curtain country is developing insects as weapons, they dispatch entomologist Frances Gray (Lockwood) to get into the country and collect specimens. However her cover is almost immediately blown on her arrival and her contact is murdered. Finally, in 'The Lady Vanishes' (1938), when the elderly Miss Froy (Dame May Whitty) goes missing on a train bound for England, her friend Iris Henderson (Lockwood) sets out to find her. However, Iris' attempts are immediately frustrated by her fellow passengers, who question whether Miss Froy ever even existed. Only music scholar Gilbert Redman (Michael Redgrave) is prepared to believe Iris, and together they set about getting to the bottom of the mystery.

Actors' screen images have too often stolen the focus of attention from their behind-the-scenes working conditions. In "Negotiating Hollywood", Danae Clark begins to fill this gap in film history by providing a rich historical account of actors' labour struggles in 1930s Hollywood. For many years, one of the dominant approaches to film studies has been the "star studies" approach, like auteurism or biography wherein one actor or director becomes the object of study. Clark argues for a cultural studies approach, as she investigates both the individual and collective political conflicts that actors encountered within the Hollywood production system in the 1930s. She reveals the contradictory position of actors caught in the forces between production and consumption, representation and self-representation, their role as images and their occupation as labourers. Taking the formation of the Screen Actors Guild in 1933 as its investigative centrepiece, "Negotiating Hollywood" examines the ways in which actors' contracts, studio labour policies and public relations efforts, films, fan magazines, and other documents were all involved in actors' struggles to assert their labour power and define their own images. Clark supplies information not only on stars, but on screen extras, whose role in the Hollywood film industry has remained hitherto undocumented. "Negotiating Hollywood" should be of appeal to individuals interested in actor labour, film history and cultural studies.