The Thrill of Youth (DVD)

The Thayer family has everything: Power, wealth, opulence. Whatever they desire is theirs for the taking... until brothers Jack and Chet both find themselves falling for free-spirited Jill Fenwick. Family patriarch Jeff Thayer is unable to impart any fatherly advice, as he is desperately pursuing Seena Sherwood who is already married. The passions, jealousies and secrets of the Thayer clan pit brother against brother and threaten to tear the family apart. Thrill of Youth could rightly be seen as an early precursor to the daytime and prime-time soap operas (Dallas, Dynasty) that thrived on the airwaves decades later.

Director Richard Thorpe (1896-1991) enjoyed a long Hollywood career beginning with a long string of low-budget Western silents. At MGM in the 1930s, he began directing more important films, including the classic thriller Night Must Fall (1937), and several of the studio's popular Tarzan series with Johnny Weissmuller. Big-budget success awaited Thorpe with Ivanhoe (1952) and The Prisoner of Zenda (1952), the Dean Martin comedy Ten Thousand Bedrooms (1957), and the Elvis Presley rock 'n' roll classics Jailhouse Rock (1957) and Fun in Acapulco (1963).

As a special bonus, this DVD also includes an episode of "The Loretta Young Show," the popular dramatic anthology series that ran on NBC from 1953-1961.

• drama