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TWOFER TUESDAY: 65th Anniversary Screenings of Two Marilyn Monroe Classics June 5th in Pasadena, North Hollywood, and West LA

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics series present a tribute to one of the greatest stars in film history, Marilyn Monroe, during her birthday month of June. The program, part of our Twofer Tuesday series, features two of Monroe’s most popular movies—GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES and HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE, both from 1953.

‘Blondes’ is an adaptation of the 1949 stage musical by Anita Loos and Joseph Fields, based on a 1925 novel by Loos, one of the first women writers to score a success in Hollywood as well as on Broadway. It tells the story of two showgirls and best friends, played by Monroe and fellow screen siren Jane Russell. Marilyn plays the endearing gold-digger, Lorelei Lee.

Master director Howard Hawks, who excelled in several genres, proved just as adept in his first and only screen musical. Charles Lederer, the writer of such films as Hawks’ ‘His Girl Friday’ and ‘I Was a Male War Bride,’ freely adapted the stage play. Hawks retained some of the songs by Jule Styne and Leo Robin, especially the show’s signature number, “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend,” choreographed by Jack Cole and sizzlingly performed by Monroe in a bright pink dress. But he added new songs by Hoagy Carmichael and Harold Adamson, including a classic campy number (also choreographed by Cole) with muscle-bound athletes around a swimming pool. Monroe and Russell are ably supported by Oscar winner Charles Coburn (as a lecherous diamond magnate), Tommy Noonan and Elliott Reid.

According to Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian, “Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell make a fantastic double act in Howard Hawks’ sparkling 1953 comedy.” The New Yorker’s Richard Brody wrote, “Jack Cole’s choreography offers some of the most incisively swinging musical numbers ever filmed.” Dave Kehr of The Chicago Reader added, “The opening shot—Russell and Monroe in sequins standing against a screaming red drape—is enough to knock you out of your seat, and the audacity barely lets up from there… a landmark encounter in the battle of the sexes.”

‘How to Marry a Millionaire’ opened later in 1953 and teamed Monroe with two other screen bombshells, Betty Grable (the top pin-up girl of the 1940s), and Lauren Bacall, who seared the screen when she co-starred with her husband-to-be, Humphrey Bogart.

In this picture three working girls set their sights on snaring a rich tycoon, but their plans go awry when true love enters the picture. Jean Negulesco directed the script by Nunnally Johnson, and the men in their lives are portrayed by Cameron Mitchell, Rory Calhoun, David Wayne, Fred Clark, and screen veteran William Powell. Leonard Maltin hailed the “terrific ensemble work in dandy comedy of three man-hunting females pooling resources to trap eligible bachelors.” ‘Millionaire’ was the second movie shot in 20th Century Fox’s new Cinemascope format, following the studio’s Biblical breakthrough, ‘The Robe.’ It incorporated Alfred Newman’s memorable score, presented in stereoscopic sound.

At the Royal Theatre only, Debra Levine, the editor of the popular online arts journal arts•meme and the author of several articles about choreographer Jack Cole, will introduce the 7 o’clock screening of ‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.’

Our Marilyn Monroe double feature screens Tuesday, June 5th at the Royal, NoHo 7, and Playhouse 7.

Click here to buy a ticket to the 7:00pm show of GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES with admission to the 9:00pm show of HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE included. Or, click here to buy a ticket to the 5:00pm show of HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE with admission to the 7:00pm show of GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES included.

I LOVE YOU, ALICE B. TOKLAS! 50th Anniversary Screening with Actress Leigh Taylor-Young In Person

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 50th anniversary screening of the hit Peter Sellers comedy from 1968, I LOVE YOU, ALICE B. TOKLAS! The Establishment meets the counterculture in this topical and often uproarious satire that poked fun at many of the conflicts dividing the country during the tumultuous 1960s.

Sellers plays an uptight Los Angeles lawyer whose life unravels when he meets a young hippie, played by Leigh Taylor-Young in her feature film debut.

Hy Averback directed the first screenplay written by Paul Mazursky and Larry Tucker, and the picture’s success allowed Mazursky to make his directorial debut one year later on another swinging sixties comedy, ‘Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice.’

The supporting cast includes Oscar winner Jo Van Fleet as Sellers’ intrusive mother, Joyce Van Patten as his befuddled fiancée, along with Herb Edelman, Grady Sutton, Salem Ludwig, and David Arkin.

One of the film’s memorable set pieces revolves around a supply of marijuana brownies that come from a recipe in cultural icon Alice B. Toklas’s famous cookbook. With marijuana now legal in California and in several other states, the film takes on renewed timeliness and may well give happy viewers a contact high.

Back in 1968, Variety declared, “Film blasts off into orbit via top-notch acting and direction.” Pauline Kael, who had recently begun her regular stint reviewing for The New Yorker, called the picture “A giddy, slapdash, entertainingly inconsequential comedy…the picture makes you laugh surprisingly often.” And Leonard Maltin praised this “excellent comedy about the freaking out of mild-mannered L.A. lawyer. Sellers has never been better.” Indeed the film represents one of the highlights of Sellers’ vibrant and diverse list of achievements during the 60s.

Actress Leigh Taylor-Young first came to prominence on the popular ‘Peyton Place’ TV series of the 1960s. Her other films include ‘The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight,’ which marked one of the first screen roles for Robert De Niro; John Frankenheimer’s ‘The Horsemen,’ co-starring Omar Sharif; the prophetic sci-fi movie, ‘Soylent Green;’ and the suspense thriller ‘Jagged Edge.’ She has worked in the theater and costarred in several popular TV series, including ‘Picket Fences,’ for which she won an Emmy, ‘Dallas,’ and ‘Passions.’ In recent years she has also been active in humanitarian and spiritual activities for the United Nations and other organizations.

I LOVE YOU, ALICE B. TOKLAS! followed by Q&A with Actress Leigh Taylor-Young screens Wednesday, April 25, at 7:30 PM at the Royal Theatre in West L.A. Click here for tickets.

Format: DVD

THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS 50th Anniversary Screening on Wednesday, April 18 in Encino, Pasadena, and West LA

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present the latest in our Anniversary Classics Abroad program, a 50th anniversary screening of Gillo Pontecorvo’s memorable and still timely political drama, THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS.

The film was an Oscar nominee for best foreign language film of 1966, but it was not released in the United States until 1968, when it received additional nominations for best director and for best original screenplay by Pontecorvo and Franco Solinas. The film was considered so inflammatory that it was not shown in France until 1971.

The picture, filmed in black-and-white to approximate the look of a newsreel, dramatizes Algeria’s war of independence against France. It focuses on the years from 1954 to 1957, when the National Liberation Front began to organize in the Casbah of Algiers to carry out terrorist attacks on civilians as well as the French army. This led to a fierce and brutal counter-insurgency by the French, which meant the battles dragged on for years.

To insure authenticity, Pontecorvo cast the film mainly with non-professional actors recruited in Algeria. The film’s one professional actor, Jean Martin, gave a vivid performance as the complex, intelligent French officer who understands the grievances of the Algerians even as he fights ruthlessly to defeat them. The film’s urgency was heightened by the score of Ennio Morricone.

The film’s influence extended well beyond the cinema. It became a sort of handbook of revolutionary techniques that was studied by many radical groups over the years. Yet in 2003, after the invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon also screened the movie in order to better understand the civil war unleashed in that country.

Many prominent filmmakers–including Spike Lee, Mira Nair, Steven Soderbergh, and Oliver Stone–all testified to influence of Pontecorvo’s movie on their own work. Critic David Elliott of the San Diego Union Tribune called The Battle of Algiers “perhaps the finest political film of the 1960s.” The LA Weekly’s Ella Taylor agreed that it was “a classic of politically engaged filmmaking.”

Our 50th anniversary screening of THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS (1968) screens Wednesday, April 18 at 7pm in Encino, Pasadena, and West LA. Click here for tickets.

Format: DCP

Friday the 13th Screening of ROSEMARY’S BABY at the Ahrya Fine Arts in Beverly Hills

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To provide shivers and thrills on Friday the 13th, Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 50th anniversary screening of one of the most terrifying movies of all time, ROSEMARY’S BABY.

Ira Levin’s ingenious best-selling novel imagined a witches’ coven hiding in plain sight in contemporary Manhattan and hatching a plot to bring the Devil’s son to earth. Producer William Castle, the mastermind behind many successful B-horror movies, graduated to the A ranks with this classy production. Paramount’s head of production, Robert Evans, hired acclaimed European director Roman Polanski to make his Hollywood debut with the film.

The casting of the film was inspired. As the innocent woman at the center of the diabolical conspiracy, the filmmakers chose a relatively new face to movies, Mia Farrow, and she played the role with endearing vulnerability. The film’s success catapulted her to full-fledged stardom.

John Cassavetes took a break from his own independent productions to play Farrow’s conniving husband. The brilliance of the casting extended to the supporting players, a veritable Who’s Who of vintage Hollywood and Broadway actors, including Ruth Gordon, Sidney Blackmer, Maurice Evans, Ralph Bellamy, Patsy Kelly, and Elisha Cook Jr. Gordon won the Oscar for best supporting actress for her spot-on portrayal of a nosy neighbor with a sinister agenda. Polanski earned an Oscar nomination for his adapted screenplay.

Behind-the-scenes credits were just as impressive. Six-time Oscar nominee William Fraker (Bullitt, Heaven Can Wait) was the cinematographer, while two-time Oscar winner Richard Sylbert (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Chinatown, Dick Tracy) was the production designer. The eerie score was composed by a gifted friend of Polanski, Christopher Komeda, who died tragically at the age of 37, soon after the release of the film.

Among the stellar reviews for the film, Leonard Maltin hailed a “Classic modern-day thriller by Ira Levin, perfectly realized by writer-director Polanski.” Stephen Witty of the Newark Star-Ledger called it “one of the finest horror films ever made.” In 2014 Rosemary’s Baby was added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress.

ROSEMARY’S BABY screens Friday, April 13 at 7:30 PM at the Ahrya Fine Arts in Beverly Hills. Click here for tickets.

Format: DCP

Lily Tomlin In Person for THE LATE SHOW (1977) on Saturday, March 24th in Beverly Hills

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics series present a screening of one of the forgotten gems of the 1970s, Robert Benton’s homage to the detective genre, THE LATE SHOW, produced by Robert Altman and starring Oscar winner Art Carney and Oscar nominee Lily Tomlin. Tomlin, a Tony, Emmy, and Grammy winner, will join us for a discussion of one of her most charming films.

Carney plays an aging private eye who swings into action after the murder of his friend and fellow detective, played by Howard Duff. This plot element recalls the opening of the archetypal private eye movie of Hollywood’s Golden Age, The Maltese Falcon. But Carney’s age and infirmities add a touch of vulnerability to the portrait that wasn’t evident in the classic films with Bogart and other stars of the 1940s.

Tomlin plays a Hollywood kook who initially hires Carney to find the kidnapper of her cat but ultimately joins him in his detective work. As Variety wrote, “Benton has fashioned a contemporary tribute to the private eye yarns of the 1940s and in the process has given Carney and Tomlin the freedom to create extremely sympathetic characters. Both performances are knockout.” Time’s Richard Schickel agreed that The Late Show was “by far the most intelligent, engaging attempt at reincarnation of the private eye genre.”

Benton, the co-writer of Bonnie and Clyde and What’s Up, Doc?, had made his directorial debut in 1972 with Bad Company, starring Jeff Bridges. The Late Show was only his second film as director, and his third, Kramer vs. Kramer, the best picture winner of 1979, earned Oscars for Benton as both writer and director. He earned another Oscar for writing Places in the Heart in 1984. The tasty supporting cast of The Late Show includes Joanna Cassidy, Bill Macy, Eugene Roche, and John Considine, in addition to Duff.

After her hilarious work playing multiple characters on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In and her Emmy-winning TV specials, Tomlin made her feature film debut in Altman’s Nashville and earned an Oscar nomination. The Late Show was only her second feature.

Pauline Kael wrote, “If anyone else were playing Margo, she might be a mere kook; Tomlin makes her a genuine eccentric—she isn’t just the heroine, she’s the picture’s comic muse.”

Tomlin’s later films include the hit comedy, 9 to 5, The Incredible Shrinking Woman, All of Me with Steve Martin, Flirting with Disaster, and Altman’s final film, A Prairie Home Companion. She won a Tony award for her one-woman show, The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, and she has received three Emmy nominations for her performance in the current hit comedy series, Grace and Frankie, in which she appears with her 9 to 5 co-star, Jane Fonda. Tomlin has also been honored by the Kennedy Center and received the Life Achievement Award from the Screen Actors Guild.

THE LATE SHOW (1977) with Lily Tomlin in person screens Saturday, March 24, at 7:30 PM at the Ahrya Fine Arts Theatre in Beverly Hills. Format: DVD Click here for tickets.

Q&A with DIE HARD Co-Stars Bonnie Bedelia and Reginald VelJohnson and Screenwriter Steven E. de Souza

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 30th anniversary screening of one of the most popular modern action movies, DIE HARD, which made a movie star of Bruce Willis and set the template for many subsequent thrillers set in a confined space on a single day or night. The film was nominated for four Academy Awards, and in 2007, Entertainment Weekly named it the best action film of all time. In 2017 it was selected for inclusion in the National Film Registry.

Details:

Tuesday, March 6, at 7:30 PM at the Ahrya Fine Arts Theatre
Q&A with Co-Stars Bonnie Bedelia and Reginald VelJohnson
Plus, Screenwriter Steven E. de Souza
Format: DCP
Click here for tickets

Willis plays New York policeman John McClane, who travels to Los Angeles on Christmas Eve to try to reconcile with his estranged wife, who has taken a top job with the Nakatomi Corporation in a sleek new office building (actually the brand new Fox Plaza building in Century City). But he walks into a terrorist attack and has to use both brains and brawn to foil a gang of European thugs. John McTiernan directed the script by Steven E. de Souza and Jeb Stuart.

Acclaimed British theater actor Alan Rickman made his feature film debut as the leader of the terrorists, Hans Gruber, ranked as one of the greatest villains of all time by the American Film Institute. The excellent, eclectic supporting cast includes Bonnie Bedelia, Reginald VelJohnson, DeVoreaux White, James Shigeta, Alexander Godunov, Hart Bochner, and William Atherton. Leonard Maltin called the picture a “dynamite action yarn.” The movie was a box office smash and spawned four sequels.

Oscar-winning director Brad Bird recently paid tribute to the film: “Hands down, the original DIE HARD is one of the greatest action movies ever made—it’s relentlessly inventive, engaging and funny at the same time.”

Bonnie Bedelia, who plays Holly McClane, started her film career with memorable roles in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? and Lovers and Other Strangers. She also co-starred in The Big Fix, Violets Are Blue, Presumed Innocent, DIE HARD 2, Sordid Lives, and earned rave reviews for her starring role in Heart Like a Wheel. She has appeared in many acclaimed TV movies and in the popular series The Division and Parenthood.

Reginald VelJohnson, who plays Sgt. Al Powell, the policeman who comes to McClane’s aid, also reprised his role in DIE HARD 2. He appeared in many other films and TV series but is probably best remembered for his starring role in the long-running TV sitcom, Family Matters.

Screenwriter Steven E. de Souza also wrote 48 Hrs, The Running Man with Arnold Schwarzenegger, Ricochet with Denzel Washington, Beverly Hills Cop III, and Judge Dredd.

THE GREAT ESCAPE 55th Anniversary Screening Saturday, February 10 at the Ahrya Fine Arts in Beverly Hills

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 55th anniversary screening of one of the best loved adventure movies of all time, John Sturges’ all-star production of THE GREAT ESCAPE.

Adapted from a nonfiction book by Paul Brickhill, the film told the mainly true story of the successful escape from one of the Nazis’ top-security POW camps during World War II. The screenplay was written by James Clavell (King Rat, To Sir, With Love, Shogun) and W. R. Burnett (High Sierra, This Gun For Hire, The Asphalt Jungle).

In reality the prisoners were almost all British, but the producers decided to add some American characters to beef up the film’s box-office potential. This decision was shrewd since it allowed for the casting of up-and-coming American actors Steve McQueen (who became a superstar largely as a result of this film), James Garner, James Coburn, and Charles Bronson. They were joined by British actors Richard Attenborough, Donald Pleasence, James Donald, and David McCallum. Because of his love of motorcycles, McQueen asked that a spectacular motorcycle jump be added to the escape sequence, and it became one of the iconic scenes in the film, even though it never really happened.

Released in the summer of 1963, the film emerged as one of the year’s biggest box-office hits, and most reviews were ecstatic. Time magazine wrote, “Producer-director John Sturges has created classic cinema of action… The Great Escape is simply great escapism.” Leonard Maltin called it “Rip-roaring excitement with marvelous international cast.” Sturges was known for his direction of other action classics, including Bad Day at Black Rock and The Magnificent Seven, the latter of which also featured McQueen. Oscar winning cinematographer Daniel Fapp shot on location in Germany, and Elmer Bernstein provided the memorable score. Ferris Webster was nominated for an Academy Award for his taut editing.

The film’s reputation has not dimmed over the years. In 2001 Esquire magazine called The Great Escape “the greatest boys’ movie of all time.” Writing in the Los Angeles Times to celebrate the film’s 40th anniversary in 2003, Michael Sragow declared, “It is an escape, and it is great: It renders vividly and fully an experience that encompasses a panorama of emotions—fear, audacity, loyalty, panic, giddiness, intransigence, and fortitude.”

THE GREAT ESCAPE screens Saturday, February 10th at 7:30pm at the Ahrya Fine Arts in Beverly Hills. Click here for tickets.

Format: DCP

55th Anniversary Screening of Federico Fellini’s 8 ½ on January 17th in Pasadena, Encino, and West LA

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series launch our Anniversary Classics Abroad program for 2018 with one of the most influential and highly acclaimed of all foreign films: Federico Fellini’s autobiographical masterpiece, 8 ½.

8 ½ screens Wednesday, January 17 at 7pm in Encino, Pasadena, and West LA. Click here for tickets.

Fellini had already won two Oscars in the 1950s, and in 1963, 8 ½ scored the most Oscar nominations of any foreign film up to that time, with a total of five, including Best Director and Best Original Screenplay (by Fellini, Ennio Flaiano, Tullio Pinelli and Brunello Rondi). It won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and Piero Gherardi won for his stunning black-and-white costume design.

Marcello Mastroianni, who had starred in Fellini’s international smash, La Dolce Vita, three years earlier, plays Guido Anselmi, a film director struggling to complete his newest film while also juggling a wife, a mistress, and several other women as he meditates on sexuality, religion, and mortality.

The film is set primarily at a lavish spa, where Guido’s personal and professional turmoil is continually interrupted by poignant childhood memories and wickedly witty fantasies. Esteemed Italian novelist Alberto Moravia compared the film to James Joyce’s stream-of-consciousness novel, Ulysses, and the film’s visual flourishes changed the entire language of cinema.

The New Republic’s Stanley Kauffmann wrote, “In terms of execution I cannot remember a more brilliant film… We see a wizard at the height of his wizardry.”

Writing in Esquire, Dwight Macdonald called 8 ½ “the most brilliant, varied, and entertaining movie since Citizen Kane.”

In addition to Mastroianni, the cast includes Anouk Aimee, Sandra Milo, Claudia Cardinale, Rossella Falk, and Barbara Steele. Other important collaborators include cinematographer Gianni di Venanzo and composer Nino Rota, whose jaunty circus melodies help to propel the movie.

8 ½ had a major influence on directors all over the world, including Mike Nichols, Paul Mazursky, Woody Allen, Francois Truffaut, and recent Oscar winner Paolo Sorrentino.

Presented digitally.