LADY AND THE TRAMP & BEAUTY AND THE BEAST @ The SMC Theater

SECRET MOVIE CLUB presents

Part of our THE HEART WANTS Series, Monday, February 13, 2023

LOCATION: The Secret Movie Club Theater, 1917 Bay Street, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, CA 90021

*Please note entrance/parking is actually in the back of the building. Make a right on Wilson Street, then a right behind the building. We’re the first set of black steps after the big gate.

7:30pm LADY AND THE TRAMP (1955, dir. Clyde Geronimi & Wilfred Jackson & Hamilton Luske, Disney, USA, 76mns, Format Unconfirmed)

9:10pm BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (1991, dir. Gary Trousdale & Kirk Wise, Disney, USA, 84mns, Format Unconfirmed)

Sometimes during Valentine’s Day month, you just want a date night that’s pure joy, romance, and wonder. We get it. We love all cinema. And that’s why we’ve programmed two of Walt Disney’s best ever romantic animated features.

Let’s be clear from the start, Secret Movie Club absolutely believes animated movies are art. And that some are every inch the cinematic masterpieces as those live action classics that often get talked about more in film school classrooms.

Further, though the legacy of Walt Disney is a complicated and thorny one (not least in how the Disney Studios of today has shaped the movie theater landscape), Walt Disney himself and those he inspired were movie artists whose contributions are incalculable to furthering the language of cinema.

Take for instance our first feature, Lady and the Tramp, released in 1955 as Disney’s 15th animated feature. Like all the animated movies made by his company until his death, Walt Disney was intimately involved in the story development, vision, and creation of the movie. Though Disney acted more like a very hands on creative producer (in the David O. Selznick, Daryl F. Zanuck model) and often relied on his wildly creative team of animators for much of the visionary breakthroughs, execution, Disney was supremely talented at story and emotion.

For instance, one of his key animators, Joe Grant, actually came to Disney with the character of LADY in the late 1930’s. But Disney sensed there was a missing component. The light bulb came in the form of a Cosmopolitan story published in 1945 “Happy Dan, the Cynical Dog”-the Tramp!

Now Disney knew he had a story. And so we screen the romance between the pampered house bound Lady, newly displaced by a baby, and Tramp, a stray, street wise Mutt, who can’t quite shake his street bound ways but loves Lady dearly.

Believe it or not, Disney originally wanted to cut the famous “spaghetti” sequence but got talked out of it by the creative team who animated the whole scene to show him it would work. Showing too that Disney knew when to listen and trust those around him.

We follow this with one of the Disney Company’s greatest achievements post-Walt Disney’s death in the 1960’s, the 1991 all-time animated musical classic Beauty and the Beast. The origins of this story of course go way back to classic French literature and even the Jean Cocteau live action version of the 1940’s (a must see for any movie lover).

Here we get the strong-willed but kind-hearted Belle who takes her father’s place at a mysterious, magical mansion whose owner – the mysterious terrifying “Beast” – demands that Belle stay his guest there forever. But Beast is more understanding and willing to change than at first appears while outwardly handsome men like the village’s Gaston turn out to be more monstrous and murderous on the inside than anyone could imagine.

Filled with beautiful animation and an amazing score by lyricist Howard Ashman and Alan Menken (The Little Mermaid), Beauty and the Beast was the crown jewel of the late 1980’s/early 1990’s Disney revival spearheaded by studio heads Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg. Though the real success of the movie comes down to its creative team, it was Eisner who suggested a screenwriter for the first time in an animated movie’s history. And it was Katzenberg who suggested the movie be fashioned as a Broadway-style musical given the recent success of The Little Mermaid.

Walt Disney himself had tried to crack the story in the 1930’s and again in the 1950’s but never felt he really found the hook that would make it work as a family film. It took forty more years and several other genius creative minds to finally produce the classic we all love today.

Beauty and the Beast was also one of the very first animated movies to combine the traditional 2D animated cell approach with computer animation. A harbinger of the computer animation revolution just around the corner with Pixar.

So join us for two guaranteed successful date night Disney classics. In a movie theater.

Best always,

Craig Hammill

Secret Movie Club Founder.Programmer

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

REFUNDS:

We can offer refunds up to 24 hours before showtime. Please request a refund through Eventbrite and we will process ASAP. After that, no refunds. Sorry.

However if something last minute comes up and you can’t make the screening, for whatever reason, just write to us before showtime: [email protected] and we’ll offer you complimentary tickets to a future screening, good for 90 days. (Disclaimer: Future screening must have available tickets, cannot be a fundraiser, and must be comparably priced)

HELPFUL SECRET MOVIE CLUB (1917 Bay Street, 2nd Floor, LA, CA 90021) THEATER PARKING TIPS:

We recommend that you park just outside our theater. Remember our theater is actually in a beautiful street art alleyway in the back of the 1917 Bay Street building. You get to our entrance by taking a right on Wilson, then a right behind the building. We are the first set of black steps on the right after the big gate.

There is also a parking lot at the corner of Mateo and Violet Street, just 2 blocks from our theater, which costs $7 per car.

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HOW CAN I CONTACT YOU IF I HAVE OTHER QUESTIONS/RECOMMENDATIONS:

You can always email us at [email protected] with any other questions, concerns, thoughts, recommendations.

Host or Publisher Secret Movie Club