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55th Anniversary Screening of Akira Kurosawa’s YOJIMBO on 4/19 in Encino, Pasadena, and West LA

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Kurosawa’s YOJIMBO (1962) screens Wednesday, April 19, at 7PM in West LA, Encino, and Pasadena. Presented on Blu-ray. Click here for tickets.

Laemmle Theatres and Anniversary Classics Abroad present a 55th anniversary screening of Akira Kurosawa’s YOJIMBO, a vivid tongue-in-cheek samurai Western. Kurosawa’s favorite actor, Toshiro Mifune, plays an amoral samurai in 19th century Japan. In a setup reminiscent of many classic Westerns (Shane in particular), Mifune’s Sanjuro strides into town and tries to reconcile a battle between two warring factions. But in this case both of the gangs are equally corrupt, and our hero is no more upright. He eventually wreaks havoc on all the combatants. The swordfights have visceral force, and the violence is always leavened with humor. As Pauline Kael wrote, “Yojimbo is a glorious comedy-satire of force… explosively comic and exhilarating.”

The film also proved to be enormously influential to a later generation of filmmakers. It inspired another perfectly amoral Western, Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars, in which Clint Eastwood’s The Man With No Name became the spaghetti Western equivalent of the cheeky samurai killer. Later directors Walter Hill and Quentin Tarantino also cited Yojimbo as an influence.

YOJIMBO is the second installment in our Anniversary Classics Abroad series, presented on the third Wednesday of each month. The series continues with Pietro Germi’s DIVORCE ITALIAN STYLE on May 17 and Ingmar Bergman’s SMILES OF A SUMMER NIGHT on June 21.

For more about our Anniversary Classics Series, visit www.laemmle.com/ac and join our Facebook Group.

45th Anniversary Screening of THE RULING CLASS with Director Peter Medak in Person April 25th in West LA.

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 45th anniversary screening of THE RULING CLASS starring Peter O’Toole followed by a Q&A with director Peter Medak on Tuesday, April 25th at 7 PM at the Royal Theatre in West Los Angeles. Presented on DVD. Click here for tickets.

This biting black comedy, in the tradition of such British classics as Kind Hearts and Coronets, focuses on a fierce battle for succession within an aristocratic family. Peter O’Toole plays a paranoid schizophrenic nobleman who believes himself to be Jesus Christ. When he is elevated to a top position, his relatives scheme to have him declared insane. O’Toole called the film, adapted from Peter Barnes’ play, “a comedy with tragic relief.” In addition to O’Toole, who earned an Oscar nomination for his vibrant performance, the cast of superb British thespians includes Alastair Sim, Arthur Lowe, Harry Andrews, Coral Browne, and Caroline Seymour.


Leonard Maltin called the film a “hilarious, irreverent black comedy…overflowing with crazy ideas, people bursting into song, boisterously funny characterizations, and one-and-only Sim as befuddled bishop.” Time magazine’s Jay Cocks had high praise for the film’s star: “Funny, disturbing, finally devastating, O’Toole finds his way into the workings of madness.” Over the years since its release, the film has turned into a cult classic.

Peter Medak directed such films as Negatives with Glenda Jackson, A Day in the Death of Joe Egg with Alan Bates and Janet Suzman, The Changeling with George C. Scott, the popular spoof, Zorro: The Gay Blade, and two acclaimed British crime stories, The Krays and Let Him Have It.

For more about our Anniversary Classics Series, visit www.laemmle.com/ac and join our Facebook Group.

Our New Twofer Tuesday Series Begins April 4th with a Double Dose of Bette Davis

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present Twofer Tuesdays, a classic movie double bill that will screen on the first Tuesday of each month as a recurring event at three Laemmle locations.

Our first attraction celebrates Hollywood legend Bette Davis in one of her most beloved roles, NOW, VOYAGER (1942), on its 75 th anniversary. As a bonus feature, we are pairing it with MARKED WOMAN (1937; 80th anniversary) starring Davis and Humphrey Bogart. Both movies will show as a double feature (two movies, one admission price) at the Ahrya Fine Arts in Beverly Hills, NoHo 7 in North Hollywood, and Playhouse 7 in Pasadena.

Click here to buy tickets to the 5PM show of MARKED WOMAN, admission to the 7:15pm NOW, VOYAGER is included. Click here to get tickets to the 7:15PM show of  NOW, VOYAGER, admission to the 9:45pm MARKED WOMAN is included.

NOW, VOYAGER is considered a consummate “woman’s film,” a genre that was Davis’ forte in her heyday in Hollywood’s Golden Age of the 1930s and 40s, an era that she ruled as a top box office star.

The plush melodrama, based on a novel by Olive Higgins Prouty (author of “Stella Dallas,” another classic tale of a self-sacrificing, independent woman), was adapted by Casey Robinson (Dark Victory) and directed by Irving Rapper (Deception).

The film was nominated for 3 Academy Awards, including Davis as Best Actress as a repressed spinster who emerges from her shell in one of the screen’s most dramatic makeovers.

Co-starring Paul Henreid as her suave romantic partner, Oscar nominee Gladys Cooper (Supporting Actress) as her domineering mother and Claude Rains (one of Davis’ favorite actors), as a paternal psychiatrist; the film was a huge commercial hit, the biggest box office success for Davis in that period.

In “The Essentials: 52 Must-See Movies and Why They Matter,” author Jeremy Arnold calls it “a movie that has stood the test of time for its high entertainment value, romanticism, and subversive theme of female empowerment.”

Featuring a lushly romantic Oscar-winning score by Max Steiner, and with one of the most memorable closing lines in movie history, Now, Voyager was added to the National Film Registry in 2007.

Our bonus feature, MARKED WOMAN stars Davis as a nightclub “hostess” who becomes the target of a vengeful mobster (Eduardo Ciannelli), who in turn is prosecuted by a crusading district attorney (Humphrey Bogart). Co-written by Robert Rossen (All the King’s Men, The Hustler) and Abem Finkel (Jezebel, Sergeant York), and directed by Lloyd Bacon (42 nd Street), the movie is notable for its “torn from the headlines” realism that characterized Warner Bros. style in the 1930s.

Because of the censorious Production Code, the brothel employing Davis’ character was disguised as a clip joint. Davis’ assured performance and the film’s success contributed to her rise as queen of the Warner’s lot, a position she held for the next decade.

The Twofer Tuesdays double feature of NOW, VOYAGER and MARKED WOMAN plays April 4 at three locations: Ahrya Fine Arts, NoHo 7, and Pasadena Playhouse 7. Special Introduction by film historian Jeremy Arnold at the Ahrya Fine Arts only.

NOW, VOYAGER plays at 7:15 pm; MARKED WOMAN at 5:00 pm and 9:45 pm.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyryB44kq64

45th Anniversary Screening of Billy Wilder’s AVANTI! March 29th at the Royal with Co-Stars Juliet Mills and Clive Revill In-person

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avanti-posterLaemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 45th anniversary screening of AVANTI! (1972) followed by a Q&A with co-stars Juliet Mills and Clive Revill on Wednesday, March 29, at 7 PM at the Royal Theatre in West Los Angeles. Click here for tickets.

Six-time Oscar winner Billy Wilder made one of his most underrated movies, Avanti!, in 1972. The film’s stature has risen dramatically in recent years. In his 1999 book, Conversations with Wilder, Oscar-winning writer-director Cameron Crowe declared, “The prize of Wilder’s later-period work, Avanti! is a melancholy classic.”

To make the film, Wilder reteamed with his favorite actor, Jack Lemmon (the star of Some Like It Hot and The Apartment), and Crowe declared, “The picture was a new peak in the collaboration of Wilder and the actor most tuned to his nuances.”

Lemmon plays a crass businessman who travels to Italy to claim the body of his father, who was killed in an automobile accident while on vacation. There he learns that his father was carrying on a long extra-marital affair with an Englishwoman, who died with him in the accident. He meets the woman’s daughter, played by Juliet Mills, and it seems that history may repeat itself as Lemmon and Mills fall in love. As Crowe wrote, Mills “is a wonderful foil for Lemmon.”

The uproarious and poignant film represents a sly reworking of one of Wilder’s favorite themes, the encounter of an innocent American and more worldly Europeans. It was a subject that Wilder first explored in his Oscar-nominated screenplay for Hold Back the Dawn in 1941, and he revisited this terrain in such other films as A Foreign Affair, Sabrina, Love in the Afternoon, and One Two Three. Avanti! was filmed on glorious Italian locations that gave added richness to the director’s exploration of the innocent abroad.

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Clive Revill and Edward Andrews co-star in the film, which was written by Wilder and his long-time collaborator, I.A.L. Diamond. Luigi Kuveiller was the cinematographer, and the production designer was Ferdinando Scarfiotti, the Oscar-winning designer of The Last Emperor, The Conformist, and Death in Venice. Leonard Maltin called Avanti! a “sadly underrated comedy… lovely scenery, wonderful performances by all.” The film was nominated for six Golden Globes.

avanti-image-2Juliet Mills is a member of one of the most distinguished British acting families. Her father, John Mills, was an Oscar winner as well as a lion of the theater. Her younger sister, Hayley Mills, the star of Disney classics Pollyanna and The Parent Trap, has also enjoyed a long career. Juliet has distinguished herself on stage, on screen, and on television. She was nominated for a Golden Globe for her performance in Avanti! and for her role on the hit television series, Nanny and the Professor. She won an Emmy for her performance in the miniseries, QB VII, and she was nominated for a Tony for her performance in Peter Shaffer’s first Broadway play, Five Finger Exercise.

Clive Revill was nominated for a Golden Globe for his delightful performance as the beleaguered hotel manager in Avanti! He has also had a stellar career in film, theater, and television. He earned a Tony nomination for his performance as Fagin in the original Broadway production of Lionel Bart’s Oliver. He co-starred in another Billy Wilder movie, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, and also appeared in Modesty Blaise, The Assassination Bureau, and The Legend of Hell House. His television roles include the miniseries Centennial and such series as Columbo and Star Trek: The Next Generation.

For more about our Anniversary Classics Series, visit www.laemmle.com/ac and join our Facebook Group.

Q&A with Scott Wilson Following Our 50th Anniversary Screening of IN COLD BLOOD on March 22th in West LA.

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scott-wilson-enewsLaemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 50th anniversary screening of IN COLD BLOOD (1967), followed by a Q&A with actor Scott Wilson on March 22 at 7:00 PM at the Royal Theater in West Los Angeles. Click here for tickets.

In Cold Blood, the film version of Truman Capote’s immensely popular “nonfiction novel,” was nominated for four top Oscars in 1967. Richard Brooks received two nominations, for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay, and the film was also nominated for Conrad Hall’s striking cinematography and Quincy Jones’ memorable score.

In his best-selling book, Capote chronicled the events leading up to and following the senseless murders of a family of four in Holcomb, Kansas in 1959. He drew a pointed contrast between the prosperous, all-American Clutter family and the two social outsiders, Perry Smith and Richard Hickok, who committed the murders.

In adapting the book, Brooks (the Oscar-winning writer-director of such films as The Blackboard Jungle, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Elmer Gantry, and Sweet Bird of Youth) resolved to be as faithful as possible to Capote’s chronicle, even filming in many of the actual locations where the events took place. With Capote’s encouragement, Brooks cast unknown actors as the two killers, and the performances of Robert Blake as Smith and Scott Wilson as Hickok earned critical raves. More established actors John Forsythe, Paul Stewart, and Will Geer filled out the supporting cast. Brooks also bucked the industry practice and decided to shoot the film in black-and-white at a time when color cinematography had become virtually mandatory for big-studio films.

Reviews at the time were largely positive. The Saturday Review’s Arthur Knight declared the film to be “one of the finest pictures of the year, and possibly of the decade.” Its reputation has not diminished. In an article in The Wall Street Journal in January of 2017, critic Peter Cowie called the film “a classic of American cinema” and added, “In Cold Blood retains its relevance today, even as random shootings continue to appall.”

Scott Wilson made his film debut earlier in 1967, in the Oscar-winning In the Heat of the Night. In Cold Blood was only his second movie. He went on to co-star in John Frankenheimer’s The Gypsy Moths, the Robert Redford version of The Great Gatsby, Philip Kaufman’s The Right Stuff, The New Centurions, The Ninth Configuration, and more recent appearances in Dead Man Walking, The Last Samurai, Monster, and Junebug. He also is known for his roles in the popular TV series CSI and The Walking Dead.

For more about our Anniversary Classics Series, including an upcoming screening of AVANTI, visit www.laemmle.com/ac and join our Facebook Group.

55th anniversary screening of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? on March 11th in Beverly Hills

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 55th anniversary screening of the cult classic What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962), starring Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, on March 11 at 7:30 PM at the Ahrya Fine Arts theater in Beverly Hills. Click here for tickets.

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The new FX miniseries “Feud,” about the rivalry between Davis and Crawford while shooting the movie, will begin airing on March 5. This special anniversary screening will coincide with all the attention that juicy miniseries will surely receive. And there are undeniable parallels between Hollywood in 1962 and 2017. Feud’s lead actresses, Susan Sarandon and Jessica Lange, probably face some of the same prejudice against aging actresses that plagued Davis and Crawford 55 years ago.

Baby Jane, a surprise box office smash, was nominated for 5 Academy Awards, including Bette Davis as Best Actress. It won the Oscar for black-and white costume design, and among its other nominations were newcomer Victor Buono (supporting actor) in his screen debut, and veteran cinematographer Ernest Haller (Oscar winner for Gone With the Wind).

Baby Jane is now regarded notoriously as a “camp classic,” and for teaming Hollywood legends Davis and Crawford who were at low points in their movie careers in 1962. There were very few good roles for aging actresses in that era, and studio disinterest forced the faded movie queens to seek unorthodox parts. The Henry Farrell novel about the psychological rivalry between two reclusive sisters, former actresses holed up in Hollywood obscurity seemed tailor-made.

Producer-Director Robert Aldrich hired Lukas Heller to write the screenplay, and the expert mix of black comedy and suspense, along with powerful acting by the cast, made the film a worldwide success. It revived the careers of both Davis and Crawford, restoring their places in the Hollywood pantheon, and spawned a genre of Grand Dame Guignol that gave other older actresses roles for the next decade.

Part of the appeal of the film was the alleged off-screen rivalry between Davis and Crawford, and that feud sparked great interest by both the stars’ fans and the press.

Show, the 60s magazine of the arts, salivated at the prospect: “For fans who are getting on, there is one certain treat in store. Bette Davis and Joan Crawford will be together in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, a melodrama about the murderous rivalry between two sisters, onetime film stars. Or is it perhaps Joan Crawford and Bette Davis?”

Among divided critical reception at the time, the Chicago Daily News saw “…the outlines of a modern Greek tragedy. Yet it is great fun, too, because this is pure cinema drama set in a real house of horrors.”

Whether seen as a “campy thriller” or a well-crafted domestic film noir, the movie’s appeal has lasted to this day. The FX series “Feud” testifies to its impact.

We will screen What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? with a trivia contest and special introduction on the movie’s backstory and enduring legacy. Shows Saturday March 11 (7:30 PM) at the Ahrya Fine Arts in Beverly Hills. Click here for tickets.

For more about our Anniversary Classics Series, including an upcoming screening of IN COLD BLOOD, visit www.laemmle.com/ac and join our Facebook Group.

Announcing Our New Monthly Repertory Series ANNIVERSARY CLASSICS ABROAD

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We are having so much fun with our American repertory film series Anniversary Classics, which we began with film critic Stephen Farber two years ago, that we are pleased to announce a companion series: Anniversary Classics Abroad. We will be screening great foreign films on the third Wednesday of every month at three venues simultaneously: the Royal in West L.A., the Town Center in Encino, and the Playhouse 7 in Pasadena. We are launching the Abroad program with 30th anniversary screenings of Bille August’s award-winning Danish film, Pelle the Conqueror (1987) at 7 PM on March 15. The film won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film of 1988 and also won the Palme d’Or in Cannes that same year. Master Swedish actor Max von Sydow received his first Oscar nomination for his performance in the film.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIoZ5OYc9RE

PELLEThe beautifully crafted film is adapted from a popular Danish novel by Martin Andersen Nexo, published in 1908. It tells the story of a widower and his young son who journey from Sweden to Denmark in the 1850s in search of work. There they encounter prejudice and harsh working conditions; the story clearly takes on renewed urgency in light of rising anti-immigrant bias in Europe as well as the United States. August cast newcomer Pelle Hvenegaard in the title role.

In Newsweek, David Ansen wrote, “We are engrossed by the serene confidence of the storytelling, by August’s painterly eye, by von Sydow’s and Hvenegaard’s touching performances.” TIME Magazine’s Richard Schickel wrote, “Bille August’s gifts for austere, striking imagery and for the short, perfectly shaped scene impart to this film an epic richness, range and energy.” The film helped to catapult August to the front ranks of international directors. He went on to make several films in the U.S. as well as Europe, and Ingmar Bergman chose August to direct his autobiographical screenplay, The Best Intentions.

Y“The von Sydow performance is in a category by itself. It is another highlight in an already extraordinary career, and quite unlike anything that American audiences have seen him do to date.” – Vincent Canby, New York Times

“In Bille August’s Pelle the Conqueror, Max von Sydow is so astoundingly evocative that he makes your bones ache.” – Hal Hinson, Washington Post

The subsequent films in our Anniversary Classics Abroad series are:

DISWednesday, April 19: Yojimbo (1962). Akira Kurosawa’s energetic, tongue-in-cheek samurai Western had an enormous influence on filmmakers all over the world. Toshiro Mifune stars as the amoral swordsman who strides into town and manipulates the opposing factions in a turf war.

Wednesday, May 17: Divorce Italian Style (1962). This Oscar-winning film from director Pietro Germi is a ferocious black comic dissection of Sicilian mores. The picture helped to cement Marcello Mastroianni’s position as a rising international superstar.

SOASN2Wednesday, June 21: Smiles of a Summer Night (1957). To coincide with the summer solstice, we present Ingmar Bergman’s elegant romantic comedy set on a Swedish estate on the longest night of the year. Eva Dahlbeck, Harriet Andersson, and Gunnar Bjornstrand star in the film that Pauline Kael called an “exquisite carnal comedy.” The film later inspired Stephen Sondheim’s musical, A Little Night Music.

Again, we will show all Anniversary Classics Abroad films on the third Wednesday of each month at three venues, the Royal, Playhouse, and Town Center, at 7 PM. Come experience these classics of world cinema as they were intended to be experienced, on a big screen in a dark auditorium full of fellow cinephiles.

50TH Anniversary of THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE Presented in 35mm on February 28th in Beverly Hills.

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a tribute to Mary Tyler Moore with a 50th anniversary screening of THOROUGLY MODERN MILLIE (1967) in 35mm at 7:30PM on February 28, 2017 at the Ahrya Fine Arts. Click here to purchase tickets.

The musical romantic comedy, a spoof of the 1920s flapper era, stars Julie Andrews (at the height of her popularity), Carol Channing (Oscar-nominated for her role), Beatrice Lillie, John Gavin, James Fox, Pat Morita, Jack Soo, and Mary Tyler Moore.

Moore had just completed her role on television’s “The Dick Van Dyke Show” the year before, and before embarking on her own groundbreaking series “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” in 1970, made several movies. THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE was the best of those 60s films, and a popular success in 1967. Moore would return to the screen in an Oscar-nominated performance in ORDINARY PEOPLE (1980).

Bosley Crowther in the New York Times called the film “A thoroughly modern burlesque of the manner and styles of flaming youth in the jazzy 1920s, of movie melodramas in the Silent days…it is a thoroughly delightful movie.”

The film was nominated for 7 Academy Awards, including the title song, and won for composer Elmer Bernstein his only career Oscar in the original score category.

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Directed by George Roy Hill from an original screenplay by Richard Morris and produced by studio era veteran Ross Hunter, the movie was one of the 60s’ brightest musicals. It was later adapted for Broadway in 2000. Hill used it as a tune-up for his homage to another bygone era with the Oscar-winning THE STING in 1973.

THOROUGHLY MODERN MILLIE will show as a special tribute to the late actress Mary Tyler Moore on Tuesday, February 28 at 7:30 PM at the Ahrya Fine Arts in Beverly Hills. We will screen in 35mm as a special presentation.

For more about our Anniversary Classics Series, including an upcoming screening of WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE, visit www.laemmle.com/ac and join our Facebook Group.