Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		4.0

The Wheeler Dealers Blu-ray Movie Review

Wall Street (Sixties Edition)

Reviewed by Michael Reuben May 7, 2017

As a career actor, James Garner was a trailblazer. In an era when the path between film and television was almost always a one-way street, Garner successfully bucked the system, first achieving national fame as the roguish title character of TV's Maverick, then leaving the series after a contract dispute and reinventing himself as a movie star. His Sixties films included such highlights as The Great Escape and Grand Prix, and it wasn't until the Seventies that Garner returned to series TV, eventually landing the role for which he is best remembered, that of private investigator Jim Rockford on The Rockford Files. Rockford and Maverick may have existed in different worlds, but Garner imbued them both with the essential qualities that defined his screen appeal; both were fiercely independent, possessed of an innate sense of justice, devious when necessary and, above all, charming in the extreme.

Garner brought the same charisma to his role as a fast-talking oilman in 1963's The Wheeler Dealers, a contemporary screwball comedy adapted from the novel by economist George J.W. Goodman and directed by comic specialist Arthur Hiller (Silver Streak). Playing a Texas oilman who goes looking for investors and finds more than money, Garner was paired with Lee Remick as an ambitious stockbroker who turns out to be his match in both love and business. For the film's Blu-ray debut, the Warner Archive Collection has created a sparkling new transfer of Dealers, which joins 36 Hours and The Americanization of Emily in WAC's catalog of James Garner's early filmography.

Texas oilman Henry Tyroon (Garner) has hit a streak of bad luck, with all his latest wells coming up dry. In search of a capital infusion, Henry travels to New York, where he crosses paths with Molly Thatcher (Remick), the first and still only female stock analyst at the storied Wall Street firm of Bear, Osgood and Whitby. Molly has just been given the impossible task of unloading the firm's worthless investment in a company that no one has heard of and which doesn't seem to have done any business for years. The assignment is a setup by the firm's chief, Bullard Bear (Jim Backus), who views laying off the firm's only professional woman as a convenient economy. When Henry Tyroon appears in the offices of Bear, Osgood, Molly sees an opportunity—and Henry sees something he wants almost as much as money.

Dealers' broadly satirical style is evident even in tiny details like the name of the company that Molly and Henry are trying to promote. It's called Universal Widget, and everyone talks about "widgets" as an actual product, even though no one seems to know what they are. In fact, a "widget" is an imaginary commodity used in classroom hypotheticals for law and economics. Although the term has now been adopted by the software industry, in Dealers' era it was no more than a placeholder. Sure enough, when Henry and Molly eventually track down the owners of Universal Widget in Massachusetts, the company turns out to be defunct, except for one extremely valuable asset that has been supplying its shareholders with a steady income for years. Never mind why Bullard Bear is so eager to shed such a desirable investment; the business logic of Dealers doesn't bear close scrutiny, nor is it meant to. (Note the Yankee inn where Henry and Molly stay the night when they go looking for Universal Widget's headquarters; it's named after Cotton Mather, a notorious proponent of the Salem witch trials—another of the film's casually thrown away jokes.)

When Henry and Molly first lock eyes, both of them melt—but business comes first. Always the showman, Henry conceives a plan to transform Univeral Widget into a rising star of the oil industry, shipping a rig and a crew to Massachusetts, where they eventually make an unexpected find. In the meantime, he ventures into the restaurant business, mostly to impress Molly; discovers the investment potential of modern art; and gets a lesson in the economics of New York taxi service from the cabby (Robert Strauss) who picks him up at what was then known as "Idlewild Airport" (that's "JFK International" to you and me). Henry and his mouth are perpetual motion machines, always on the alert for some new angle to make money. "If there's anything you can't sell people", he tells Molly, "I've yet to find out what it is." If a deal flops, there's always a writeoff. "Taxman loses", says Henry. "He usually does on a Henry Tyroon deal."

Hiller surrounds this pair of operators with an adroitly assembled supporting cast of comic foils. Chill Wills, Phil Harris and Charles Watts drop in and out of the action as a trio of Texas investors appropriately named Jay Ray, Ray Jay and J.R., who follow Henry's every move from the lofty vantage of their airborne headquarters and so trust his judgment that they routinely commit to a percentage of his latest scheme without bothering to learn what it is. Louis Nye, who became a staple guest star of TV comedies after he distinguished himself on The Steve Allen Show, plays a cynical painter named Stanislas, who offers to serve as Henry's art advisor (and thereby manages to increase the value of his own work). Pat Crowley, who would later star in TV's Please Don't Eat the Daisies, is Molly's sensible roommate, Eloise, who keeps telling the aspiring analyst to ditch Wall Street and take a job "uptown" in a more traditional female occupation (presumably as a secretary in a Mad Men-style ad agency). Veteran character actor Vaughn Taylor appears as Thaddeus Whipple, whose family founded Universal Widget and whose clipped accent and laconic reserve are a ripe parody of the flinty New Englander. And John Astin, the future Gomez on The Addams Family, provides a late injection of goofy eccentricity as Hector Vanson, the zealous government lawyer from the Federal Securities Commission who drags Henry into court with an indictment that even the judge thinks is excessive. (Pay attention to the attorney representing Henry; he's an uncredited James Doohan, three years before donning his Starfleet uniform and beaming up Captain Kirk.)

For its era, Dealers' treatment of sex is refreshingly frank, especially in the banter between Molly and her roommate, and what might be called its gender politics are an intriguing mix of foreshadowing and political incorrectness. Both Henry and the film take Molly's professional aspirations seriously, and her boss, who doesn't, is treated as a buffoonish villain. A luncheon meeting of the National Society of Women Security Analysts is filled with winking acknowledgments of women's abilities, even as the attendees allow themselves to be called—and call each other—"girls". And note how the "girl" who wins Henry Tyroon's rakish heart just happens to be someone with smarts and ambition. Remick had already memorably played a manipulative coquette in Anatomy of Murder and an alcoholic wife in Days of Wine and Roses, but here she ventures into territory previously mapped by Katharine Hepburn and Rosalind Russell, and she acquits herself admirably.

The Wheeler Dealers Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Wheeler Dealers was shot in anamorphic widescreen by Charles Lang, who had previously photographed Some Like It Hot and Sabrina for Billy Wilder. The Warner Archive Collection's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray is the product of a new 2K scan performed by Warner's Motion Picture Imaging Facility using a recently manufactured interpositive, followed by appropriate color-correction and cleanup. The resulting image is superb: finely detailed, sharply rendered (with allowance for the softening imparted by the era's anamorphic lenses) and so fully resolved that it's easy to spot both the backlots that substitute for New York City and the frequent rear-screen projections. (A few grainy shots of flying aircraft are obviously stock footage of inferior quality.) Colors are vivid, bright and varied, with the restaurant that Heny purchases and renovates a festival of reds and the artwork that he collects by Stanislas and others a riot of clashing hues. The light pastels and plastic textures of the apartment shared by Molly and Eloise are a time capsule of vintage Sixties decor, and the scenes featuring oil rigs are appropriately grungy. Black levels are accurate, and the film's natural grain pattern is finely resolved. WAC has mastered Dealers at its usually high average bitrate, here 34.99 Mbps.

The Wheeler Dealers Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Wheeler Dealers' original mono soundtrack has been sourced from the magnetic master and encoded as DTS-HD MA 2.0. As mono sources go, it's a robust audio presentation, with a nice balance of realistic and comically exaggerated effects. The dialogue is clearly rendered and, for the most part, natural sounding (or as "natural" as the film's broad humor and caricatured performances will allow). Frank De Vol (Cat Ballou and McLintock!) provided the light-hearted score.

The Wheeler Dealers Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The only supplement is a trailer (1080p; 2.35:1; 2:57), which has been remastered in 1080p. WAC's 2011 DVD of The Wheeler Dealers was similarly bare.

The Wheeler Dealers Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

As Mill Creek prepares to release The Rockford Files on Blu-ray, it's an opportune moment to look back over the career of James Garner, a versatile actor who was both beloved by the public and respected by his peers, receiving the SAG Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005, nine years before his death at the age of 86. The Wheeler Dealers is Garner at his smoothest and most easygoing, and he's ably matched by Remick, a gifted comedienne who was too rarely given the opportunity to stretch her comic muscles. WAC has brought this delightful pair to Blu-ray with the élan they deserve. Highly recommended.