Sass Mouth Dames Film Club series 36

Have a complimentary glass of wine while Megan McGurk introduces a classic Hollywood picture.

You Can’t Have Everything (1937)

(Screens 13 November at 7.00)

Alice Faye is a playwright, down on her luck, despite having an impeccable literary pedigree. Her grandfather was Edgar Allan Poe, which explains how she can keep her chin up while doing a gloomy job like wearing a sandwich board in the rain. Instead of being accosted by a raven, she must fend off a successful author of popular Broadway musicals, played by Don Ameche. He thinks that she should give up writing and sing on the stage. But Alice Faye plays a highbrow, aghast at his hackneyed productions. Gypsy Rose Lee, gowned to the teeth by Royer, makes her screen debut as the bitchy ‘other woman.’ Gypsy in her prime is not to be missed.

Too Many Husbands (1940)

(Screens 20 November at 7.00)

Jean Arthur, newly married to Melvyn Douglas, discovers that her first husband Fred MacMurray wasn’t lost at sea after all. With two husbands under one roof, until she makes up her mind, Jean has the men bunk together in a frilly satin boudoir that looks like the inside of a music box. Wesley Ruggles directs a sublime screwball comedy where the men behave like absolute idiots to win her hand. When the film was released, in March 1940, Life magazine ran a feature which declared, ‘Next to Garbo, Jean Arthur is Hollywood’s reigning mystery queen.’ Amidst the macho slapstick, she seems like an open book.

The Major and the Minor (1942)

(Screens 27 November)

Billy Wilder left nothing to chance for his Hollywood directorial debut. The script, co-written by Wilder and Charles Brackett, is a glorious screwball farce starring Ginger Rogers, who calls it quits on the big city then disguises herself as a child when she can’t afford the train fare home. In pigtail braids, Ginger fools the train conductor, but she also convinces a swoon merchant on board, played by Ray Milland, that she’s only twelve years old. She falls for him while stuck in a masquerade. Ginger wrote in her memoir that she had more fun working on the picture than any other, except Kitty Foyle (for which she won her Oscar).

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Host or Publisher Megan McGurk