Not Available On DVD: At Long Last Love

Peter Bogdanovich's career exploded with a big, loud bang in the 70s, as the brilliant film critic turned director's director created the universally beloved Paper Moon and The Last Picture Show, two instant classics of Hollywood's second golden age.

And then it all collapsed, with an even louder flop. That flop was At Long Last Love, an old-fashioned musical set in the 1930s. Burt Reynolds sings and dances! Cybill Shepherd, Bogdanovich's gorgeous and talented (but let's face it, not that talented) girlfriend sings and dances too! Story goes that the film was so widely reviled, Bogdanovich ran an open letter of apology in the trades and withdrew the picture from theatrical release.

His reputation was ruined; people today might even be more likely to remember him for his role as Tony Soprano's shrink's shrink, or for his numerous DVD commentaries, than for his his own films. At Long Last Love never showed up on VHS, it never came out on DVD, and it's the only one of these "Not Available on DVD" movies that I haven't seen with my own two eyes.

But! Thanks to the twin miracles of Internet and intellectual-property infringement, Popsucker is able to embed the above YouTube snippet of the immortal Madeleine Kahn working her inimitable magic.

Is it time to reconsider At Long Last Love? Oh, who knows! But hey, Roger Ebert liked it—and no movie with a singing, dancing Madeleine Kahn can be all bad, right?

...right?