Directed and Produced by Howard Hawks
The Big Sleep

• Time: 7:00 PM
• Date: Friday, January 29, 2010
• Place: HBLL Auditorium, 1st Floor; Admission is free; arrive early for seats.

About the Event:
Starring Humphrew Bogart, Lauren Bacall, John Ridgley, Martha Vickers, Elisha Cook, Jr.“If Little Caesar (1931) was the studio’s quintessential crime melodrama,” writes Clive Hirschhorn, “The Big Sleep was its most characteristic thriller with the look, the feel, and the sound of it unmistakably belonging to Warner Bros.” Humphrey Bogart is Raymond Chandler’s world-weary gumshoe detective Philip Marlowe in this perennially popular and somewhat baffling murder mystery that costars Bogart’s real-life wife, Lauren Bacall, as the fetching divorcee with whom he becomes romantically involved. The literate script, by noted author (and Hawks’s friend) William Faulkner, with Leigh Brackett and Jules Furthman, bristles with underworld vernacular and is infectiously entertaining, even though Hawks and his screenwriters admitted that they could not figure out the film’s plot.

Warner Bros. 1946. 114 mins. Director: Howard Hawks.

A Haunting Valentine
The Ghost and Mrs.Muir

• Time: 7:00 PM
• Date: Friday, February 26, 2010
• Place: HBLL Auditorium, 1st Floor; Admission is free; arrive early for seats.

About the Event:
Starring Gene Tierny, Rex Harrison, George Sanders, Edna Best, Natalie Wood.
“Is Lucy Muir’s love really a ghost, or is it a man of flesh she yearns for?,” reads the teasing advertising copy for this beguiling tale of a young widow who inhabits a seaside cottage only to find it haunted by a crusty but engagingly salty sea captain with a romantic streak, played by a then largely unknown Rex Harrison (Cleopatra, My Fair Lady). Natalie Wood appears as  Mrs. Muir’s young daughter. Bernard Herrmann’s moody score adds substantially to the wistful eeriness of this carefully crafted fantasy.

20th Century-Fox. 1947. 104 mins. Director: Joseph Mankiewicz
Special thanks to Schawn Belston, 20th Century Fox

Directed by Henry Koster
Good Morning, Miss Dove

• Time: 7:00 PM
• Date: Friday, March 26, 2010
• Place: HBLL Auditorium, 1st Floor; Admission is free; arrive early for seats.

About the Event:
Starring Jennifer Jones, Robert Stack, Kipp Hamilton, Robert Douglas, Peggy Knudsen.
“Jennifer Jones gives a moving, throat-catching portrait of a dedicated, no-nonsense, schoolteacher whose influence for good on a small New England community and its citizens has spanned two generations and looks likely to carry into a third,” summed up one reviewer.  Director Henry Koster turns what would otherwise be a simple, even soap opera-ish, story into a believable drama that credibly pits hardship against integrity, and nobility against tragedy. The “terrible Miss Dove,”as her young students referred to her in her early days of teaching, is a warm though fiercely principled woman whose effects on her students through the years are as touching as they are profound.  After seeing it, you’ll swear you know someone like this.  More importantly, you will go away wanting some of the traits that define Miss Dove.

20^TH Century-Fox. 1955. CinemaScope. Technicolor. 107 mins. Director: Henry Koster.

An Evening with Mr.Laurel & Mr.Hardy
Babes in Toyland

• Time: 7:00 PM
• Date: Friday, April 9, 2010
• Place: HBLL Auditorium, 1st Floor; Admission is free; arrive early for seats.

About the Event:
Starring Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Charlotte Henry, Felix Knight, Henry Kleinbach.
In  this delightful adaptation of the Victor Herbert musical, Stannie Dee and Ollie Dum inhabit a storybook world that includes Mother Goose, The Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe, Little Bo Peep, Santa Claus, the dreaded Bogeymen, and Silas Barnaby, the “meanest man in the world.” What keeps the film from being strictly children’s fare are the inspired routines of Laurel and Hardy.  To Stan Laurel, this became a very personal project, conceiving and planning the comedy scenes from beginning to end. “Stan Laurel thought it had the fewest imperfections and the greatest entertainment value of all his films,” wrote one film historian. Variety wrote, “It is a gorgeous fairytale which gives everything to Laurel and Hardy and to which, in return, they give their happiest best.” Generations have enjoyed this lilting retelling of the classic story. Since its initial release, it has been heavily edited and released under other titles. We are pleased to show a rare, original-length print of this memorable film.

Hal Roach/Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. 1934. 79 mins. Director: Charles Rogers and Gus Miens.

• Time: 7:00 PM
• Date: Friday, May 28, 2010
• Place: HBLL Auditorium, 1st Floor; Admission is free; arrive early for seats.

About the Event:

Starring Myrna Loy, Frederic March, Dana Andrews, Teresa Wright, Virginia Mayo, Harold Russell.
“The picture came out of its period, and was the result of the social forces at work when the war ended,” wrote director William Wyler on the film’s release. “In a sense the picture was written by events and imposed a responsibility upon us to be true to these events and refrain from distorting to our own ends.”  How the lives of three returning World War II veterans (a banker, a soda jerk, and an amputee) change form the basis of this timeless story that won a total of seven Academy Awards, including those for Best Picture, actor, screenplay, and for Hugo Friedhofer’s score. A record two Oscars went to Harold Russell, a real life double amputee whose first film this was. This is a monumental film with a rare power to transcend its post-WWII era and one that lingers in the mind long after seeing it.

Samuel Goldwyn Productions. 1946. 172 mins. Director: William Wyler.

• Time: 7:00 PM
• Date: Friday, December 4, 2009
• Place: HBLL Auditorium, 1st Floor; Admission is free; arrive early for seats.

About the Event:
Starring Maureen O’Hara, John Payne, Edmund Gwenn, Natalie Wood, Gene Lockhart.
Nominated for Best Picture, this utterly charming contemporary tale of Santa Claus in Manhattan earned Academy Awards for the original story by Valentine Davies and for its screenplay by George Seaton, the film’s director. Maureen O’Hara is an advertising executive at Macy’s department store and the divorced mother of young Natalie Wood, who is skeptical of the existence of Santa Claus as well as “fairy tales and happy endings;” that is, until a young attorney, John Payne, comes along to make his “case” for the warm and generous Kris Kringle, played by Edmund Gwenn, who also won a well-deserved Oscar. This is a Christmas film that not only has no peer, but has also triumphed over subsequent theatrical and television remakes. The feature will be preceded by A Star in the Night (1945), a moving Christmas allegory and winner of the Best Short Subject Academy Award.
20th Century-Fox. 1947. 96 mins. Director: George Seaton.
Special thanks to Schawn Belston, 20th Century Fox

• Time: 7:00 PM
• Date: Friday, November 20, 2009
• Place: HBLL Auditorium, 1st Floor; Admission is free; arrive early for seats.

About the Event:
Starring Burt Lancaster, Virginia Mayo, Robert Douglas, Aline MacMahon, Frank Allenby.
Many moviegoers are well aware of Burt Lancaster’s tough guy persona that began with The Killers (1946). Few, however know of his life before acting as a trapeze artist. The Flame and the Arrow gave the actor an opportunity to display his considerable athletic skills in playing the lead role of Dardo, the 12th century Robin Hood type who rights the wrongs inflicted on a besieged Italian peasantry. Filmed in gorgeous Technicolor with a rousing musical score by Academy Award winner Max Steiner. New York Times critic Bosley Crowther wrote, “Not since Douglas Fairbanks was leaping from castle walls and vaulting over the rooftops of storybook towns has the screen had such a reckless and acrobatic young man as it has in Mr. Lancaster.”
Hecht-Norma/Warner Bros. 1950. Technicolor. 88 mins. Director: Jacques Tourneur.

• Time: 7:00 PM
• Date: Friday, October 23, 2009
• Place: HBLL Auditorium, 1st Floor; Admission is free; arrive early for seats.

About the Event:
Starring Margaret Sheridan, Kenneth Tobey, Robert Cornthwaite, Douglas Spencer.
News of UFO sightings in New Mexico in 1947, combined with the mounting Cold War with the Soviet Union, unwittingly created a new film genre in the 1950s: the science fiction film. Based on the chilling short story “Who Goes There?,” by John W. Campbell, the film was shadow directed by producer Howard Hawks and concerns an alien spacecraft that crashes in an ice field releasing a “thing” that terrorizes the inhabitants of a research station at the North Pole. This modestly budgeted thriller, lacking major star talent, quickly became a staple of this new genre and has since become one of the pillars of 1950s cinema. James Arness, later the star of the hit television series Gunsmoke, appears as the menacing alien. The unusual music score by Dimitri Tiomkin employs an effective use of the theramin, and is as frightening as the movie.
Winchester Pictures/RKO Radio Pictures. 1951. 81 mins. Director: Christian Nyby.

• Time: 7:00 PM
• Date: Friday, September 25, 2009
• Place: HBLL Auditorium, 1st Floor; Admission is free; arrive early for seats.

About the Event
Starring Ray Milland, John Wayne, Paulette Goddard, Raymond Massey, Robert Preston.. The films of producer–director Cecil B. DeMille were the most popular attractions for generations of moviegoers during his nearly 50 years in the business. This story of adventure and intrigue in the waters off Key West in the 1840s is just the sort of drama and excitement that audiences needed on the eve of America’s entry into World War II, but has also withstood the test of time. John Wayne stars, along with Ray Milland and Paulette Goddard, as a ship captain accused of collaborating with the unscrupulous salvage baron Raymond Massey. An attack by a giant squid became one of the most talked about special effects of its day, winning its creators an Academy Award. Future Oscar-winning star Susan Hayward makes an early career appearance in this historical drama. “It’s a fabulous historical show,” wrote one film critic, “combining romance, maritime melodrama, brawls and undersea shots in a whopping entertainment.” Paramount. 1942. 123 mins. Director: Cecil B. DeMille.

• Date: Aug 11, 2009 to Sept. 30, 2009
• Place: L. Tom Perry Special Collections

About the Event

Special Collections celebrates the bicentennial of the birth of Victorian Poet Laureate Alfred, Lord Tennyson this month with a small exhibit of works from our Victorian Literature collection.  On display are a number of items by Tennyson, including signed copies of his work, his first published book of poetry (co-authored with two of his older brothers), and illustrated editions of his poems.  The exhibit can be viewed during Special Collections’  operating hours in our lobby area on the first floor of the library.