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The official blog of Laemmle Theatres

65th Anniversary Screening of SUDDEN FEAR Starring Joan Crawford and Jack Palance, August 29th in Beverly Hills

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SUDDEN FEAR (1952) 65th Anniversary Screening
With Introduction by film historian Jeremy Arnold
Tuesday, August 29, at 7:30 PM at the Ahrya Fine Arts Theatre
Presented on DCP. Click here for tickets.

One of the dominant series in this year’s Emmy competition is Feud: Bette and Joan, which earned a near-record total of 18 nominations, and the top contender for Best Actress is Jessica Lange for her multi-dimensional portrayal of screen icon Joan Crawford.

During this Emmy season, Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a 65th anniversary screening of one of Crawford’s most memorable performances in the film noir favorite, SUDDEN FEAR.

The film earned four Oscar nominations in 1952, including one for Crawford as Best Actress, one for Jack Palance as Best Supporting Actor and another for Charles Lang’s moody black-and-white cinematography.

The ingenious screenplay by Lenore J. Coffee and Robert Smith, adapted from a novel by Edna Sherry, casts Crawford as a highly successful New York playwright who rejects an aspiring young actor when he auditions for the leading role in her latest play. Crawford insists that he lacks the charisma to be convincing as a romantic lead.

Ironically, when she later meets the actor on a train heading back to her home in San Francisco, she finds him more compelling and begins to fall in love with him. But this is only the beginning of a romantic melodrama with some startling and frightening twists ahead for both characters.

Film noir historian Spencer Selby called the film ”undoubtedly one of the most stylish and refined woman-in-distress noirs.” Leonard Maltin agreed that the film is a “solid suspense thriller with many neat twists.”

Gloria Grahame, who made four movies in 1952, including The Bad and the Beautiful (which won her the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress), has a juicy supporting role as Palance’s secret lover.

David Miller (Midnight Lace, Lonely Are the Brave, Captain Newman, M.D.) directed.

The screening will be introduced by film historian Jeremy Arnold, author of TCM’S The Essentials, who provided the audio commentary on the recent Blu-Ray edition of SUDDEN FEAR.

Click here for tickets

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9GHtPQ7DNA

UNLEASHED Cast and Crew Q&A August 24.

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The UNLEASHED cast and crew will participate in a Q&A after the 7:30 PM screening at the Monica Film Center on Thursday, August 24.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiKUnT8QQKI

LAEMMLE LIVE presents: Los Angeles Baroque on September 10

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RSVP USING EVENTBRITE
This is a Free Event!

Coffee, Cantatas, and Conversation! Please join us Sunday, September 10 when LAEMMLE LIVE welcomes Los Angeles Baroque for a FREE chamber music concert. The baroque ensemble’s Westside debut will feature Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto 6 and a mini comic opera, A Coffee Cantata, in a new (and very funny) translation by Hugh Macdonald.

Directed by Lindsey Strand-Polyak and Alexa Haynes-Pilon, Los Angeles Baroque (LAB) was founded in 2016.  LAB enables dedicated professional, student and community musicians from greater Los Angeles to explore repertoire, learn Baroque playing style and perform. The group encourages and supports the early music community in Los Angeles in an inclusive environment to give highly motivated players more performance opportunities. This diverse group rehearses and performs regularly at St James’ Episcopal Church in South Pasadena.

Praised for her “Rococo gracefulness,”  Lindsey Strand-Polyak is active throughout the West Coast as a baroque violinist and violist. She performs with the American Bach Soloists, Musica Angelica, Seattle Baroque Orchestra, Pacific MusicWorks and Bach Collegium San Diego. Dr. Strand-Polyak is co-artistic director of baroque chamber group Ensemble Bizarria and of Los Angeles Baroque.  Canadian Alexa Haynes-Pilon has  established herself in the Los Angeles early music scene. She has performed with Los Angeles Baroque Players, Con Gioia and Musica Angelica, and as co-founded two early music chamber groups, Concitato 415 and Ensemble Bizarria. Alexa recently finished her doctoral studies at the University of Southern California. She believes strongly that the future of classical music lies in youth education. Photo credit: Helen Berger

EVENT DETAILS
Sunday, September 10, 2017
11:00 AM
Monica Film Center

RSVP USING EVENTBRITE
This is a Free Event

ART IN THE ARTHOUSE presents: SHULA SINGER ARBEL at the Monica Film Center September 6

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Art in the Arthouse proudly presents LOVE, HOPE, MEMORY, featuring the works of SHULA SINGER ARBEL at the Monica Film Center. Please join us for our slide show on the big screen, artist talk, and of course, the wine, cheese and conversation Art in the Arthouse is known for. Drawing inspiration from her incredible family history,  ARBEL created paintings based on photographs found in an old photo album. Curated by Tish Laemmle, the exhibit runs through early January 2018 at the Monica Film Center in Santa Monica.  shulasingerarbel.com

Artist Reception:
Monica Film Center
Wednesday, September 6, 7-9pm
Refreshments will be provided
RSVP HERE

About the Exhibit:

LOVE, HOPE, MEMORY is the story of Shula Singer Arbel’s parents, Edith and Michael Singer. They met in 1946 in a Displaced Persons Camp in Heidenheim Germany, right after World War II. ARBEL’S mother was a survivor of Auschwitz, her father had been in the Russian and Polish Army. In spite of the tremendous loss and unimaginable suffering, this was a time of great hope and optimism for the future. It was a time of building new lives and looking forward. Based on black and white photographs found in an old photo album, the portraits are a fusion of representational, abstract, and dream-like images; a flattening of form mixed with painterly surfaces. The figures in the paintings are intentionally faceless to create a more universal narrative.

ARBEL was born in Israel and moved to Los Angeles at the age of three. She received an MFA degree from UCLA in Film Production, worked in the film industry and was the first recipient of the Barbra Streisand screenwriting award.

Now a full-time artist, she exhibits her work extensively in galleries throughout Los Angeles and in public venues including, Pershing Square Park, the Wilshire Vermont Metro Station, and a billboard in Culver City.

What drew me to ARBEL’s artwork were not only her magnificent bright colors and patterns, but also her ability to evoke the past. Mesmerized by the figures in her “memory” series, I imagine myself as one of those women, knowing my childhood is gone forever, but my future can be as brilliant as my imagination will allow.

– Tish Laemmle, CURATOR

45th Anniversary Screenings of Louis Malle’s MURMUR OF THE HEART on Wednesday, August 16th in Encino, Pasadena, and West LA

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present the latest installment in our Anniversary Classics Abroad series, Louis Malle’s irreverent and often uproarious comedy, MURMUR OF THE HEART, which earned an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay of 1972.

During the course of his career, Malle proved himself one of the most astonishingly versatile of all international directors. His movies ran the gamut from the influential French noir, Elevator to the Gallows to the sexually daring drama, The Lovers, which was charged with obscenity and eventually cleared by the United States Supreme Court; the dark screwball comedy, Zazie dans le Metro; two piercing World War II dramas, Lacombe Lucien and Au Revoir Les Enfants; and the documentary Calcutta.

In America, Malle made the controversial Pretty Baby, which introduced Brooke Shields; the scintillating two-character talkathon, My Dinner with Andre; and the bittersweet comedy classic, Atlantic City, which earned five Oscar nominations, including one for best picture and another for Malle as best director.

Murmur of the Heart was an autobiographical memoir from Malle, a coming-of-age story told with candor and exuberant wit. Set in 1954, the year that France lost control of its colonies in Indochina, the film focuses on a chaotic bourgeois family headed by a wild, taboo-breaking mother, played to perfection by Italian actress Lea Massari.

The cast also includes Benoit Ferreux as her 14-year-old son, Daniel Gelin as her gynecologist husband, and Michel Lonsdale as a somewhat hypocritical priest.

Pauline Kael called the film an “exhilarating high comedy about French bourgeois life,” and she added, “Massari is superb as Clara, the carelessly sensual mother.”

Leonard Maltin praised the picture as a “fresh, intelligent, affectionately comic tale” that builds to “a thoroughly delightful resolution.”

MURMUR OF THE HEART screens at 7pm on August 16th at the Royal in West L.A., the Town Center in Encino, and the Playhouse in Pasadena. Presented on DVD. Click here for tickets.

ART IN THE ARTHOUSE presents: THREE WOMEN: PERCHED UPON THE TREE OF LIFE at the Royal

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BLANDINE SAINT-OYANT, RANA WILSON and NADEGE BAER

Three Artists perched high above the fray, upon a tree bending towards the heavens. The dappling of leaves, the rounded crescent forms and the ether itself, all imagery ribboning towards the nascent sky. When forms dance, they dance with hope, they dance with joy and they dance for Life.

Art in the Arthouse presents the artworks of three extraordinary artists, distinct in craft and vision, yet connected by their visceral energy and joie de vivre.  Don’t miss this unique exhibit, now on display at the Royal through October 21, 2017.

NADEGE BAER and BLANDINE SAINT-OYANT are both of French origin, and RANA WILSON is a Los Angeles native. These three painters joins forces, their work intersecting forms creating a dance in space. BAER’S work plays with compositional balance, painting corpuscular forms that anchor themselves to the edge of the canvas. Deftly painted in acrylics, they resemble a translucent quality of watercolors. WILSON’S wispy play with forms and open spaces are cleverly rendered, sent into the ether, undulating like smoke. SAINT-OYANT has created an intriguing series with a micro view, subatomic and brilliant. Read more about these artists’ journeys through exhibition notes available at the theatre.

    – Joshua Elias, CURATOR

Jenny Slate in person for LANDLINE at Monica Film Center on 8/5

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LANDLINE star Jenny Slate will appear in person for a Q&A following the 7:20 pm screening on Saturday, August 5th at the Monica Film Center.

Click here to purchase tickets to any available Laemmle screening of LANDLINE.

Second Annual WESTERN WEEKEND August 18-20 at the Ahrya Fine Arts in Beverly Hills!

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Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present our second annual tribute to the cowboy genre, Western Weekend, a six-shooter collection of vintage sagebrush films.

This year’s round-up includes John Ford’s late masterpiece, THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE, Fred Zinnemann’s venerated HIGH NOON, Sam Peckinpah’s early landmark, RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY, John Sturges’ influential GUNFIGHT AT THE O.K. CORRAL, and rediscoveries of revisionist oaters from Martin Ritt, HOMBRE, and Philip Kaufman, THE GREAT NORTHFIELD MINNESOTA RAID.

The star-studded line-up of legendary cowboys, lawmen and outlaws features John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Paul Newman, James Stewart, Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster, Lee Marvin, Randolph Scott, Joel McCrea, Fredric March, Robert Duvall, and Grace Kelly, among others. So saddle-up for a retro Western weekend August 18-20. Hitching posts available at the Ahrya Fine Arts in Beverly Hills.

Special guests: THE GREAT NORTHFIELD MINNESOTA RAID Director Philip Kaufman, RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY Co-Star Mariette Hartley, and HOMBRE Actress Barbara Rush.

Admission is $13 per film. Laemmle Premiere Card holders pay only $10 per ticket. A six film series pass is available for $60 at the Fine Arts box office.

HIGH NOON (1952) – 65th Anniversary
Introduction by Karen Sharpe-Kramer, widow of producer-director Stanley Kramer and president of the Stanley Kramer Library
DCP presentation

This seminal film in the Western canon, deftly directed by Fred Zinnemann (From Here to Eternity, A Man For All Seasons) won 4 Oscars, including Best Actor for Gary Cooper in one of his best roles as a small town sheriff, abandoned by fearful townsfolk, who must face a desperado and his gang sworn to kill him.

The film had political undertones of the era, and screenwriter Carl Foreman (The Bridge on the River Kwai) was blacklisted after taking the Fifth amendment at the HUAC hearings.

The New York Times praised the film and its anti-McCarthy sentiments with a timely note still resonating 65 years later, “It bears a close relation to things that are happening in the world today, where people are being terrorized by bullies and surrendering freedoms out of senselessness and fear.”

The hit theme song won Dimitri Tiomkin two Oscars (Song and Score). The film was notable for having its running time match the story countdown to high noon, and that editing effort won Elmo Williams an Oscar. Also nominated for Best Picture, Director, and Screenplay. With Grace Kelly, Lloyd Bridges, Katy Jurado, and Lon Chaney. New York Film Critics’ Best Film of the Year; included in the National Film Registry at its inception (1989). Shows August 20 at 4:30 pm. Click here for tickets.

GUNFIGHT AT THE O.K. CORRAL (1957) – 60th Anniversary
35mm presentation

A popular and influential oater that recreated the legendary 1881 shootout in Tombstone, Arizona, notable for its inspired casting of Kirk Douglas as Doc Holliday and Burt Lancaster as Wyatt Earp, who give solid performances as the iconic figures of the Old West.

Well-directed by John Sturges (Bad Day at Black Rock, The Great Escape), and written by Leon Uris (Exodus), the film scored big at the box-office. Its success paved the way for the Western super-productions of the 60s, including Sturges’ The Magnificent Seven and Best Picture Oscar nominee How the West Was Won.

The sharp color cinematography is by Charles B. Lang; Music by Dimitri Tiomkin. Nominated for 2 Academy Awards (Sound and Film Editing).

The strong supporting cast includes Rhonda Fleming, Oscar winner Jo Van Fleet, John Ireland and rising actors Dennis Hopper, Earl Holliman and Deforest Kelley. Shows August 19 at 5:30 pm. Click here for tickets.

THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE (1962) – 55th Anniversary
DCP presentation

The penultimate Western of director John Ford, re-teamed with frequent collaborator John Wayne, and joined by James Stewart, who had found major success in the 50s in saddles and spurs for director Anthony Mann. By this time Wayne had become a cultural icon, symbolizing the cowboy-soldier hero both on and off the screen. Stewart gives perhaps his greatest Western performance as an idealistic lawyer who brings civilization to the primitive frontier, but rises to national recognition ironically through a gunfight showdown.

Shot in black and white, and using mostly studio interiors, Ford and company (producer Willis Goldbeck co-scripting with James Warner Bellah) spin a yarn of archetypes and myths, but with new self-awareness of the lies that perpetrated the Western mythology (“When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”).

Kenneth Turan applauded, “Told with a simplicity that feels almost like ritual…Liberty Valance unfolds seamlessly, without a frame wasted or out of place.”

Added to the National Film Registry in 2007. With Vera Miles, Edmond O’Brien, Woody Strode, Andy Devine and Lee Marvin as the snarling varmint, Liberty Valance. Shows August 19 at 8:00 pm. Click here for tickets.

RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY (1962) – 55th Anniversary
Actress Mariette Hartley in Person
35mm presentation

This autumnal Western dealt with many of the same themes of a changing West that John Ford explored in Liberty Valance. But young director Sam Peckinpah brought an edgier perspective to his examination of the closing of the frontier.

Western film veterans Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea play aging gunfighters confronting a new world at the start of the 20th century. Laced with irreverent humor and sometimes startling sexual candor, the film turns into a deeply moving elegy for its upright cowboy heroes. Despite a haphazard release by the studio, the film was named by Newsweek as the best film of 1962, and in his four-star review, Leonard Maltin called it a “literate, magnificent Western.” It was inducted into the National Film Registry in 1997.

This screening will be followed by a Q & A with actress Mariette Hartley, who made her film debut in the role of an innocent but spirited frontier woman. The cast also includes Warren Oates, Ron Starr, L.Q. Jones, R.G. Armstrong, and Edgar Buchanan. Cinematography by Lucien Ballard. Shows August 19 at 3:00 pm. Click here for tickets.

Mariette Hartley (right) made her film debut in this early Western by Sam Peckinpah which is still regarded as one of the director’s best

HOMBRE (1967) – 50th Anniversary
Actress Barbara Rush in Person
DCP presentation

This was one of the first of a new breed of Westerns of the 1960s and 70s that challenged the negative portrayals of Native Americans perpetrated in many earlier films. Paul Newman plays a white man raised by the Apache and embittered by the mistreatment of his adoptive tribe.

The film was created by the same team that made the Oscar-winning modern Western, Hud, four years earlier: director Martin Ritt, screenwriters Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank, Jr., and cinematographer James Wong Howe, in addition to Newman.

Adapted from a novel by Elmore Leonard, the plot owes a debt to John Ford’s classic Stagecoach, retooled with anti-Establishment bite. The extraordinary ensemble cast includes Oscar winners Fredric March and Martin Balsam, Oscar nominee Diane Cilento, Richard Boone, Barbara Rush, Cameron Mitchell, and newcomers Maggie Blye and Peter Lazer.

As Roger Ebert wrote, “The performances are uniformly excellent.” The New York Times’ Bosley Crowther said, “Savor it for its fine ingredients…this is a first-rate cooking of a western recipe.” Shows August 20 at 2:00 pm. Click here for tickets.

THE GREAT NORTHFIELD MINNESOTA RAID (1972) – 45th Anniversary
Writer-director Philip Kaufman in Person
35mm presentation

Of all the revisionist Westerns made during the late 1960s and early 1970s, this may be one of the least heralded and most inventive. The story of the last bank robbery perpetrated by the James and Younger gangs stars Oscar winners Cliff Robertson as Cole Younger and Robert Duvall as Jesse James.

Duvall’s witty portrayal of the iconic outlaw as a sly, loony psychopath is one of the most original additions to Western film lore. New writer-director Philip Kaufman mixes humor, lyricism, and breathtaking action set-pieces.

Jay Cocks of Time magazine called Northfield “the kind of first movie so rich in texture and invention that we can look forward to a lot more from Philip Kaufman.”

Indeed, Kaufman went on to direct the first remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Wanderers, The Right Stuff, and The Unbearable Lightness of Being. The supporting cast includes film veterans R.G. Armstrong, Elisha Cook Jr., Royal Dano, Dana Elcar, and Donald Moffat, along with newer faces Luke Askew, Matt Clark, and Mary-Robin Redd. Photographed by Bruce Surtees, with a musical score by Oscar winner Dave Grusin. Kaufman will make an in-person appearance on the opening night of our Western Weekend. Shows August 18 at 7:30 pm. Click here for tickets.