In 1934, The Shining Hour appeared on Broadway. Although it only played for three months, four years later it moved to film screens as a movie under the same title.

Set in New York, nightclub dancer Olivia Riley (Joan Crawford) decides she needs to settle down and leave the bustle of the big city. She agrees to marry prosperous Midwest farmer Harry Linden (Melvyn Douglas) and move to Wisconsin with him.

This transition doesn’t go completely smoothly, however, as some of Henry’s relatives question Olive’s motives and integrity. Further complications evolve when Olive starts to fall for Henry’s David (Robert Young) even though she befriends his wife Judy (Margaret Sullavan).

If that all sounds more than a little soap opera, then you sense correctly. Hour exists as basic romantic melodrama.

Actually, that proclamation seems a bit unfair, as Hour comes with a sharper edge than I’d expect from the genre. While it revolves around the various relationships and love-related complications, it doesn’t degenerate into the gooey glop I expected.

Indeed, we even get occasional bouts of light comedy. Though Hour doesn’t pursue laughs on a persistent basis, it integrates them in a fairly smooth manner.

This occurs primarily because of the aforementioned bite the movie provides. I don’t want to overstate matters and make Hour sound like a dark, snappy flick, but it does manage to avoid too much dreary content.

As such, Hour fares quite a bit better than I assumed based on genre and story. I feared we would get sappy tearjerker content from start to finish.

Because this fails to occur, Hour keeps us with it better than anticipated. Even when it eventually leans harder into the anticipated melodrama, its generally cynical vibe means we stick with it.

A quality cast helps. Crawford shows spark and maintains an appealing presence, and the others support her well.

I do think Hour loses some steam as it goes, mainly because it gets bogged down in its romantic snarls and requisite clichés. Still, the movie delivers a generally engaging tale that fares better than I figured it would.

The Shining Hour appears in an aspect ratio of 1.37:1 on this Blu-ray Disc. Given the film’s advanced age, it came with anomalies, but it largely satisfied.

Sharpness usually fared well. A few shots came across as a little ill-defined, and I can’t claim the movie exhibits especially precise delineation on a consistent basis.

Nonetheless, the image stayed mostly distinctive and concise. I saw no problems with jagged edges or shimmering, and edge haloes remained absent.

Grain seemed fairly natural. The film lacked obvious print flaws.

Blacks seemed deep and dense, and low-light scenes demonstrated positive clarity. A few shots looked a bit too bright, but those occurred infrequently. Overall, the image held up well over the years.

As for the DTS-HD monaural soundtrack of Hour, it never stood out as great, but it seemed more than acceptable when I considered its age. <

Speech worked best. The lines were surprisingly natural and not as tinny or rough as I anticipated. No edginess marred the dialogue, though the material was moderately thin and reedy.

Effects sounded meek and feeble but remained well within the realm of acceptability for their age. Music lacked much dynamic range, but they seemed perfectly fine when I factored in their age. This turned into a more than adequate mix for a movie from 1938.

In addition to the film’s trailer, we get three vintage shorts. From the same era as Hour, we locate Love and Curses (8:27), Porky’s Five and Ten (7:05) and The Sneezing Weasel (6:43).

Curses shows an old couple as they reminisce about romance and conflicts in their 1890s youth. It offers a modest satire of films of that sort and brings mild amusement.

As the title implies, Ten stars Porky Pig in a tale of his boat voyage to take him to a place where he will open a store. Though we assume the story will take place in this five and dime, instead we see Porky's travails on the seas as a swordfish cuts a hole in his ship.

This leads to a bunch of gags as various forms of aquatic life utilize Porky's possessions. It comes with some laughs but feels too contrived to really work.

Finally, Sneezing features a weasel who tries to eat a baby chick who strayed from home. Like the other two shorts, it offers reasonable entertainment but it falls far short of Looney Tunes greatness.

The disc also gives us a radio piece called Good News of 1939. It spans 23 minutes and gives us an adaptation of Hour.

Going into "Good News", I figured it would just consist of audio snippets from the movie. However, it appears that the movie's leads came into the studio to recreate select scenes.

Actually, the take on Hour only occupies the piece's first 14 minutes, 50 seconds. After that, we get ads and a rerun of another "News" segment called If Men Played Cards As Women Do based on a 1929 short.

Other than Robert Young - who acts as host of "News" - it seems really odd to bring the movie's leads into a radio studio for such a short piece, especially since Young doesn't chat with the others after the end of the brief film recap.

Indeed, I remain uncertain if Joan Crawford and the others did schlep in just for this exceptionally brief segment, as I think it's possible they recorded the radio show bits during the movie shoot.

"News" definitely offers different performances than the movie, so whatever its genesis may be, at least it gives us something unusual. It's a weird little program but it's semi-interesting for historical reasons.

Despite a natural tendency toward melodrama, The Shining Hour works fairly well due to a surprisingly edgy vibe. Add a quality cast and the movie becomes a largely engaging romantic drama. He Blu-ray brings generally solid picture and audio along with a mix of bonus materials. Nothing here threatens to become a classic but Hour delivers a mostly compelling tale.