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July 4th Twofer Tuesday Double Bill of THE MUSIC MAN and YANKEE DOODLE DANDY in Pasadena, NoHo, and Beverly Hills!

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a star-spangled double feature on the 4th of July in the popular monthly Twofer Tuesdays program – the 75th anniversary of Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), paired with the 55th anniversary of The Music Man (1962). Both films represent unabashed celluloid tributes to the American spirit.

And so you won’t miss fireworks, we screen the double feature (two films, one admission) as a special holiday matinee on July 4 at three locations: Ahrya Fine Arts, NoHo 7 and Pasadena Playhouse 7. Yankee Doodle Dandy at 1:00 pm; The Music Man at 3:30 pm. Presented on blu-ray.

Click here for tickets.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrAFAst0Bb4

YANKEE DOODLE DANDY is the musical biopic of Broadway showman George M. Cohan, showcasing the Oscar-winning performance of screen legend James Cagney (Best Actor). The rousing patriotic musical was released during the early months of WWII, and was designed to lift the American psyche, which it accomplished resoundingly.

The film was nominated for eight Oscars, including Best Picture, Director (Michael Curtiz), and Supporting Actor (Walter Huston, playing Cohan’s vaudevillian father). Roger Ebert noted, “the greatness of the film rests entirely in Cagney’s performance. While he’s in full sail, as in “Give My Regards to Broadway” or “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” it’s like regarding a force of nature.” And Cohan himself, still alive at the time, is reputed to have said of Cagney’s performance, “My God, what an act to follow.”

THE MUSIC MAN is the colorful screen adaptation of Meredith Willson’s Tony-winning Broadway musical, preserving the triumphant stage performance of Robert Preston in the greatest role of his career. Pauline Kael aptly observed, “the star, Robert Preston, has a few minutes of fast patter—conmanship set to music—that constitute one of the high points in the history of American musicals.”

Critics and public alike at the height of the Cold War embraced the ebullient celebration of early twentieth-century small town Americana, and the film was a box-office smash. Produced and directed by Morton Da Costa (Auntie Mame), with Shirley Jones, Buddy Hackett, Paul Ford, Hermione Gingold and a future Oscar-winning director, seven year old Ron Howard. Nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

Both films feature the craftsmanship of Warner Bros. staff composer and musical arranger Ray Heindorf, who won his first Academy Award for Yankee Doodle Dandy, and his third and final Oscar for The Music Man twenty years later. Additionally, the two musicals were inducted into the National Film Registry for “historical, cultural, and aesthetic significance.” Here is a rare opportunity to see them back on the big screen.

Harry Hamlin, Barry Sandler, A. Scott Berg In Person for a 35th Anniversary, 35mm Screening of MAKING LOVE on June 24th at the Ahrya Fine Arts

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During Gay Pride month, Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 35th anniversary screening of MAKING LOVE, the first major studio production to present gay characters and relationships in a positive light.

Join us on Saturday, June 24, at 7:30 PM at the Ahrya Fine Arts followed by Q&A with Screenwriter Barry Sandler, Author A. Scott Berg, and Co-star Harry Hamlin. Presented in 35mm. Click here for tickets.

Michael Ontkean plays a doctor married to a TV executive (Kate Jackson) but struggling with homosexual impulses. When he meets a liberated writer played by Harry Hamlin, he has his first gay romance, which transforms the lives of all three characters.

Oscar winner Wendy Hiller, Oscar nominee Nancy Olson, and Tony winner Arthur Hill co-star. The enormously influential film was written by Barry Sandler, from a story by A. Scott Berg, and directed by Arthur Hiller, the director of Love Story, Silver Streak, The In-Laws, and many other successful movies.

Barry Sandler wrote and produced the cult favorite, Crimes of Passion, starring Kathleen Turner and directed by Ken Russell. His other credits include Kansas City Bomber with Raquel Welch, The Duchess and the Dirtwater Fox with George Segal and Goldie Hawn, and The Mirror Crack’d with Angela Lansbury, Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, and Kim Novak.

A. Scott Berg is the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of Maxwell Perkins, Samuel Goldwyn, Charles Lindbergh, and Woodrow Wilson. He was also executive producer of the 2016 film Genius, which starred Colin Firth and Jude Law and was adapted from his biography of legendary literary editor Maxwell Perkins.

Harry Hamlin starred in the acclaimed TV series of the 1980s and 90s, L.A. Law, for which he earned three Golden Globe nominations. He also earned a Globe nomination for his feature film debut, Stanley Donen’s Movie Movie. He starred in Clash of the Titans with acting legends Laurence Olivier and Maggie Smith. He was the star of the TV miniseries, Studs Lonigan, and had recurring roles on popular series Veronica Mars, Shameless, Glee, and Mad Men (for which he earned an Emmy nomination).

35th Anniversary Screening of DINER in 35mm with Producer Mark Johnson In Person on June 10th at the Ahrya Fine Arts in Beverly Hills

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35th Anniversary Screening of DINER (1982)
Followed by a Q&A with Producer Mark Johnson
Saturday, June 10, at 7:30 PM at the Ahrya Fine Arts Theatre
Presented in 35mm

Click here for tickets.

Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 35th anniversary screening of one of the best loved film of the 1980s, Barry Levinson’s DINER. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with producer Mark Johnson hosted by film critic Stephen Farber.

Levinson made his directorial debut with this feature set in his native Baltimore in 1959, and he earned an Oscar nomination for best original screenplay.

The frequently uproarious comedy-drama, set to a rousing soundtrack of hits from the period, follows a group of friends who hang out at their favorite diner as they try to navigate the perilous path from adolescence to adulthood. Long before Mad Men, this film skewered the blatant sexism that was rampant in the era.

The extraordinary cast, many of them new to movies, includes Steve Guttenberg, Daniel Stern, Paul Reiser, Mickey Rourke, Kevin Bacon, Tim Daly, and Ellen Barkin. Levinson encouraged his cast to improvise, and their rapport helped to electrify the film.

Time’s Richard Corliss wrote that Diner was “wonderfully cast and played.” People Magazine declared, “All the performances are remarkable… But the ultimate triumph is Levinson’s. He captures both the surface and the soul of an era with candor and precision.”

Mark Johnson won the Academy Award for producing the Best Picture of 1988, Rain Man, also directed by Levinson. His many other credits include The Natural, Good Morning Vietnam, Avalon, Bugsy, Donnie Brasco, A Perfect World, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Notebook, and the award-winning TV series Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, and Rectify. He has chaired the foreign language committee of the Motion Picture Academy for many years.

Twofer Tuesday: A Hitchcock Double Feature of SABOTEUR (1942) and FRENZY (1972) on June 6th!

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics series present two of the less frequently revived films from the Master of Suspense Alfred Hitchcock: a 75th anniversary screening of the World War II-era thriller, SABOTEUR, and a 45th anniversary screening of one of his final films, FRENZY. See two films for the price of one on June 6th at the Ahrya Fine Arts, NoHo 7, and Pasadena Playhouse 7. Presented on DCP.

Click here to buy tickets to the 5pm show of SABOTEUR, admission to the 7:20pm FRENZY is included. Click here to get tickets to the 7:20pm show of FRENZY, admission to the 9:45pm SABOTEUR is included.

Both films are variations on one of Hitchcock’s favorite themes, that of the wrong man in jeopardy—a story that he first explored in one of his early British classics, The 39 Steps, and that he reworked in such American films as Spellbound, Strangers on a Train, and North by Northwest.

In Saboteur Robert Cummings plays a munitions factory worker suspected of setting a destructive industrial fire and forced to go on the lam to prove his innocence. The tart and witty screenplay was penned by Peter Viertel, Joan Harrison, and Dorothy Parker and centers on a conspiracy by a group of softspoken but sinister American Fascists. The Statue of Liberty finale is one of Hitchcock’s memorable set pieces. Priscilla Lane, Otto Kruger, and Norman Lloyd costar. The New York Times called it “a swift, high-tension film.”

In Frenzy, Hitchcock filmed in his native England for the first time in more than two decades. Jon Finch plays the innocent man accused of a series of grisly murders by the notorious “Necktie Strangler.” British actors Barry Foster, Anna Massey, Billie Whitelaw, Alec McCowen, and Vivien Merchant costar. This thriller was written by acclaimed playwright Anthony Shaffer (Sleuth) and received the best reviews of Hitchcock’s late career. Roger Ebert noted that “Frenzy is a return to old forms for the master of suspense,” and Leonard Maltin declared, “All classic Hitchcock elements are here, including delicious black humor, several astounding camera shots.”

STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN 35th Anniversary Screening and Q&A with Director Nicholas Meyer on May 31 at the Ahrya Fine Arts

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35th Anniversary Screening of STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN
Followed by Q&A with Director Nicholas Meyer
Wednesday, May 31, at 7:30 PM at the Ahrya Fine Arts Theatre
Presented on DCP.

Click here for tickets.

Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 35th anniversary screening of STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN, regarded by many buffs as the best feature film in the long running series. After the box office disappointment of the first Star Trek feature in 1979, Paramount Pictures and producer Harve Bennett decided to take a fresh approach to the follow-up film, cutting the budget drastically and bringing in talented newcomers to revitalize the popular franchise.

Nicholas Meyer, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter and novelist of The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, had made his directorial debut with 1979’s Time After Time. He came to this new project, as he freely admitted, as a Star Trek novice, but he brought intelligence, ingenuity, and wit to the sequel.

Meyer and the screenwriters decided to bring back one of the memorable villains from the TV series, the intergalactic tyrant Khan, and hired Ricardo Montalban to reprise his role from that episode. Of course the regular cast members of the Starship Enterprise — William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, George Takei, DeForest Kelley, Nichelle Nichols, and Walter Koenig — were also on board, along with newcomer Kirstie Alley.

Another newcomer to the enterprise was young composer James Horner, a future Oscar winner who had one of his first major credits on Star Trek II.

Critics endorsed the new approach. Variety called the film “a very satisfying space adventure, closer in spirit and format to the popular TV series than to its big-budget predecessor.” The commercial success of Star Trek II insured a long voyage for the Enterprise on the big screen and on television for decades to come.

Director Nicholas Meyer also worked on Star Trek IV, Star Trek VI, and the upcoming TV series Star Trek: Discovery. In addition to The Seven-Per-Cent Solution and Time After Time, his many other credits as writer and/or director include Volunteers, Company Business, Sommersby, the TV movie The Day After, and two Philip Roth adaptations, The Human Stain and Elegy.

55th Anniversary Screenings of DIVORCE ITALIAN STYLE May 17th in Encino, Pasadena, and West LA

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Laemmle Theatres and Anniversary Classics Abroad present a 55th anniversary screening of Pietro Germi’s Divorce Italian Style on Wednesday, May 17 at 7:00PM at the Royal, Town Center, and Playhouse 7. Click here for tickets.

The acclaimed satiric comedy and Oscar winner (Best Original Screenplay) stars Marcello Mastroianni as an impoverished, bored Sicilian aristocrat who hatches an elaborate scheme to murder his wife after inveigling her into an adulterous affair.

According to Italian custom, he would be justified in killing her, by defending his “honor,” (divorce being forbidden in Italy). Conveniently he would be then free to marry his young, beautiful cousin, who seems to return his affections, right up to the film’s final, wicked shot.

Director Germi, who co-wrote the slyly clever script with Ennio De Concini and Alfredo Gianetti, had a background in neorealist Italian dramas, and that would serve him well in his sendup of the Catholic country’s cultural habits and social mores.

Mastroianni’s voiceover narration offers wry commentary on those traditions, effectively skewered by Germi. Bosley Crowther in the New York Times called it “a dandy, satiric farce” and Time lauded Germi for “something wildly, wickedly, wonderfully funny. He has applied a cunning hotfoot to the world’s biggest boot.”

And director Martin Scorsese, who is of Sicilian ancestry, said, “Every detail in Divorce Italian Style is so truthful and right that all Germi had to do was to heighten everything a bit to make it funny.”

The film was a box office smash, breaking out of the art houses into general release, and garnered three Academy Award nominations: Best Director (Germi), Best Actor (Mastroianni) and Best Original Screenplay. It was the first time in Academy history that a foreign-language film was recognized in those top three categories, and the first-ever Oscar awarded to a foreign-language feature for writing. The film also helped elevate Mastroianni to international stardom, cementing his reputation as one of the era’s finest actors.

This screening is the latest installment of our Anniversary Classics Abroad series, presented the third Wednesday of each month. Our subsequent attraction will be Ingmar Bergman’s Smiles of a Summer Night on June 21.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NLac9l0fc4

Kim Basinger and Guy Pearce in Person with L.A. CONFIDENTIAL May 9th at the Fine Arts.

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Oscar-winner Kim Basinger and Guy Pearce will participate in a Q&A at the 7:30pm, May 9th screening of L.A. CONFIDENTIAL at the Ahrya Fine Arts in Beverly Hills. Presented in 35mm.

Click here to purchase tickets.

Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a tribute to Oscar-winning writer-director Curtis Hanson with a 20th anniversary screening of his film noir masterpiece, L.A. Confidential.

Based on James Ellroy’s acclaimed novel, the film focuses on Los Angeles police officers in the 1950s, whose investigations of several murders intersect with the worlds of Hollywood celebrities, scandal sheets, and organized crime.

The startling critique of police brutality and corruption remains timely and hard-hitting. Ellroy himself praised the screenwriters, saying that Hanson and Helgeland “preserved the basic integrity of the book and its main theme.”

In addition to its potent social commentary, the film represented a remarkable evocation of time and place, with major contributions by cinematographer Dante Spinotti, art director Jeannine Oppewall, and composer Jerry Goldsmith, all Oscar-nominated for their work.

Hanson, a classic film enthusiast as well as filmmaker, screened several films made in the 1950s for the cast and crew in order to encourage their dedication to authenticity.

The award-winning cast includes Russell Crowe, Guy Pearce, Kevin Spacey, James Cromwell, Danny DeVito, and Simon Baker.

L.A. Confidential has a 99 per cent positive score on Rotten Tomatoes. Roger Ebert called it “seductive and beautiful, cynical and twisted, and one of the best films of the year.”

Time’s Richard Schickel paid tribute to the film’s style: “It’s a movie of shadows and half lights, the best approximation of the old black-and-white noir look anyone has yet managed on color stock.”

The film was named best picture of 1997 by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, the New York Film Critics Circle, the National Society of Film Critics, and the National Board of Review—one of only three films in history to win the top award from all four major critics’ groups. The film was selected for the National Film Registry in 2015.

Curtis Hanson’s many other films as director include The Bedroom Window, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, The River Wild, Wonder Boys, 8 Mile, and In Her Shoes.

Kim Basinger co-starred in the James Bond movie, Never Say Never Again, and had one of her biggest successes as Vicki Vale in Tim Burton’s Batman in 1989. Her many other films include Barry Levinson’s The Natural starring Robert Redford, Robert Altman’s Fool for Love, the controversial 9 ½ Weeks with Mickey Rourke, Robert Benton’s Nadine with Jeff Bridges, the remake of The Getaway, The Door in the Floor, and I Dreamed of Africa. She reunited with Curtis Hanson when she played Eminem’s mother in 8 Mile, and she reunited with her L.A. Confidential co-star, Russell Crowe, in Shane Black’s The Nice Guys in 2016.

Guy Pearce first attracted attention in the Australian comedy, The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert.  He had the lead role in Christopher Nolan’s influential Memento.  Among his many other films are Rules of Engagement, The Proposition, Animal Kingdom, Lawless, Iron Man 3, and two Oscar-winning Best Pictures, The Hurt Locker and The King’s Speech.  He co-starred with Kate Winslet in the HBO miniseries, Mildred Pierce, and recently had a key role in Dustin Lance Black’s acclaimed miniseries, When We Rise.

Two Courtroom Classics For the Price of One on May 2nd in NoHo, Pasadena, and Beverly Hills

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present two acclaimed courtroom dramas celebrating their 60th anniversaries as the second attraction in the popular Twofer Tuesdays program. 12 ANGRY MEN and WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION, both 1957 Academy Award nominees for Best Picture, will be paired as a double bill (two movies, one admission price) on May 2nd at the Ahrya Fine Arts, NoHo 7, and Pasadena Playhouse 7. Presented on Blu-ray.

Click here to buy tickets to the 5:15PM show of 12 ANGRY MEN, admission to the 7:15pm WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION is included. Click here to get tickets to the 7:15PM show of  WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION, admission to the 9:35pm 12 ANGRY MEN is included.

12 ANGRY MEN, about the deliberations of 12 jurors in a murder trial, was adapted by Reginald Rose from his 1954 teleplay, and directed by Sidney Lumet (Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, Network) as his film debut. Henry Fonda, who also produced, heads a formidable cast of award-winning actors including Lee J. Cobb, Ed Begley, Jack Warden, E. G. Marshall, and Jack Klugman. Both Lumet and Rose were Oscar nominated for their work.

The film, as timely as ever, challenges an audience to confront ethnic and social prejudices in considering innocence or guilt based on reasonable doubt.

Roger Ebert called it “a masterpiece of stylized realism,” enhanced by the expert black-and-white photography of Boris Kaufman, making the most of its one set in the jury room. Ebert further opined, “In its ingenuity, in the way it balances one piece of evidence against another that seems contradictory, 12 Angry Men is as meticulous as an Agatha Christie thriller.” The movie was added to the National Film Registry in 2007.

WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION, based on an Agatha Christie play, is a spellbinding courtroom thriller about a murder suspect (Tyrone Power) defended by a wily barrister (Charles Laughton) against the testimony of the suspect’s wife (Marlene Dietrich).

Billy Wilder, collaborating with writers Harry Kurnitz and Larry Marcus, strengthened the characterizations and added a surprise twist at the end, heightening the suspense throughout.

Laughton received one of the film’s six Oscar nominations as Best Actor for his delightfully animated portrayal. Elsa Lanchester as the barrister’s no-nonsense nurse afforded comic relief and copped a supporting actress nod. Wilder nabbed the sixth of his eight career directing nominations.

The film was a critical and commercial hit, with Bosley Crowther of The New York Times applauding “Wilder’s splendid staging of some splintering courtroom scenes and a first-rate theatrical performance by Charles Laughton.”

Audiences at the time were aghast and delighted by the film’s wicked surprise ending, which they were urged to keep secret. Even the film’s cast did not know the ending until the last day of shooting. Both films were later cited in the all-time top ten of the AFI’s Courtroom Dramas category.

The Twofer Tuesdays double feature of 12 ANGRY MEN (shows at 5:15 pm and 9:35 pm) and WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION (shows at 7:15 pm) plays May 2 at three Laemmle locations: Ahrya Fine Arts, NoHo 7, and Pasadena Playhouse 7.