IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE (35mm!) & THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER Xmas Classics!

Part of our HOLIDAY HULLABALOO 2025 series

Saturday, December 20, 2025, Million Dollar Theater

LOCATION: The Million Dollar Theater, 307 S Broadway, Los Angeles, CA 90013

10a IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946, co-wri & dir by Frank Capra, w/ Jimmy Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore, Thomas Mitchell, Henry Travers, Paramount 130mns, USA, 35mm)

1p THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER (1940, dir by Ernst Lubitsch, co-wri by Samuel Raphelson & Ben Hecht, w/ Jimmy Stewart, Margaret Sullavan, Frank Morgan, Warner Brothers, 99mns mns, USA, Digital)

For any screenings with 35mm prints, always be prepared that we may have to use a DCP.digital backup just in case.

You can get two for one (two tickets for the price of one) to any individual movie or get the CHRISTMAS CLASSICS DOUBLE FEATURE pass (best deal) while supplies last.

Also plan to visit the historic Grand Central Market just next door for breakfast, lunch, or early dinner before, between, or after the movies. You can bring in food and drink from the market into the theater!

10a It's A Wonderful Life (1946) 35mm Has any movie so overlooked upon its release received the kind of all-time classic status (entirely deserved) as Frank Capra's holiday masterpiece IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE? Released in 1946 as the first movie that Capra, Jimmy Stewart, and many others involved made after returning from World War II, Life didn't set fire to the box office the way everyone hoped it would. Yet, through the quirks of licensing and television, the movie gained a huge following over the decades as generation after generation watched it on TV during the holiday season. And now 80 years after its making, it is still one of the most beloved movies from Hollywood's classic period.

Maybe that's because it's about the importance of core decency and goodness as the real foundation of the holidays. Small town good hearted George Bailey considers ending it all on Christmas Eve night so his family can get the insurance money only to be visited by a guardian angel who shows him what life would have been like for his friends and family had George never existed. We see a life, we see America, we see history all through the prism of one person's life choices from child to adult.

Jimmy Stewart and Frank Capra both considered this their favorite movie they ever made. This is what the holiday feeling is really about. Bring your family, see this classic in a movie palace, on a beautiful 35mm print.

1p The Shop Around the Corner (1940) One of cinema's all-time masters is director Ernst Lubitsch who understood movies so well, his approach coined a term "The Lubitsch touch". The Lubitsch touch is a graceful, charming, clever way of communicating story without actually spelling it out. Instead the audience adds it up and chuckles. As disciple Billy Wilder said, Lubitsch says 2 + 2 but then he leaves it to the audience to realize it equals 4.

While Lubitsch made many masterpieces, none is as personal, warm, or deeply emotional as 1940's The Shop Around the Corner. A European immigrant, Lubitsch made this movie as a memorial to his parents who were shop keepers in the old country. Here we see the week in the life of the employees at Matushek & Company, a small department store, right around Christmas time. Head clerk Alfred Kralik (Jimmy Stewart in one of his first breakout roles) and new employee, fierce and independent Klara Novak (Margaret Sullavan who lobbied for Stewart to have the part) butt heads in the store. Little knowing they are actually pen-pals falling in love with each other outside of work. Meanwhile, office intrigue threatens to derail everyone's plans right as Christmas approaches. Stewart and Sullivan had one of Hollywood's great off-screen affections for each other. Though they eventually married other people, their chemistry and real romance can be felt throughout the picture. Add to that Lubitsch adding so many Lubitsch touches and even a dark undercurrent of reality and you get one of the greatest holiday movies ever made.

Join us for this incredible Hollywood holiday classic double feature just before your own holidays.

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