The Park Ridge Public Library Classic Film Series will return this spring with a series of films encompassing 20 years in the career of Director Ernst Lubitsch.
Series host Matthew Hoffman calls the selection, “The Lubitsch Touch.”
The film screenings, at the library, 20 S. Prospect, are free and will start with an introduction from Hoffman. Doors open at 6:30 p.m.
March 2: “Rosita” (1923) celebrates the 100th anniversary of this silent film, with musical accompaniment by Jay Warren. It stars Mary Pickford as a poor street singer, whose lyrics upset the local ruler, and gets her in trouble with the authorities. Pickford, one of the major stars in silent films, was one of the founders of United Artists.
March 9: “The Love Parade” (1929) is based on the operetta, “The Merry Widow.” Jeanette MacDonald, in her first film, plays a wealthy widow who owns a major part of the property in her country. The king orders Count Danilo (Maurice Chevalier) to marry her and prevent her from moving with her fortune to Paris. Ida Lupino and Eugene Pallette are in featured roles.
March 16: “The Smiling Lieutenant” (1931) was nominated for an Academy Award for best picture and was based on a European operetta Maurice Chevalier, a lieutenant in Vienna, has fallen in love with Claudette Colbert, who leads an all-female orchestra. When they are standing across the street during a parade, the visiting royal princess misinterprets their glances at each other and demands the lieutenant marry her.
March 23: “One Hour With You” (1932) stars Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald, Genevieve Tobin, Charlie Ruggles and Roland Young. A couple finds their marriage threatened when one of his patients intrudes in their lives.
March 30: “Trouble in Paradise” (1932) Miriam Hopkins, Kay Francis and Herbert Marshall star. A gentleman thief and a lady pickpocket try to con a beautiful woman.
April 6: “Design for Living” (1933) evolved from a play by Noel Coward and screenplay by Ben Hecht. Miriam Hopkins is in love with two men, Gary Cooper and Fredric March, and the trio decide to live together. Edward Everett Horton and Jane Darwell are in the cast.
April 13: “The Merry Widow” (1934) A second treatment of Franz Lehar’s operetta about trying to keep a rich widow from moving away to Paris with her fortune. Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald star again, with Una Merkel, Jason Robards Sr., Edward Everett Horton, Akim Tamiroff and Sterling Holloway.
April 20: “Ninotcha” (1939), starring Greta Garbo and Melvyn Douglas, won Garbo an Oscar. Set after the 1917 Russian Revolution, three agents from the Russian Board of Trade head to Paris to sell jewelry confiscated from the aristocrats. Count Leon (Douglas) tries to stop the sale. Moscow sends Ninotchka (Garbo) to get the sale completed but romance intervenes.
April 27: “The Shop Around the Corner” (1940) stars James Stewart and Margaret Sullivan as shop staff members (working for Frank Morgan) who find themselves competing and bickering, without realizing they are also falling in love, corresponding anonymously through a lonely hearts program.
May 18: “To Be or Not To Be” (1942) A company of actors in Nazi-occupied Warsaw use their skills in acting and disguise to fool the occupying troops. Carole Lombard, Jack Benny and Robert Stack head the cast. It was released a month after Lombard (wife of Clark Gable) died in a plane crash.
May 25: “Heaven Can Wait” (1943) What happens when a man on his deathbed appeals to the Devil to send him to Hell? Don Ameche and Gene Tierney play star-crossed lovers from wealthy families. While they eventually get together and raise a son, the father’s efforts, to save their grown son from a gold-digger, wrecks the father’s own marriage.
Support local news by subscribing to the Journal & Topics in print or online.
Leave a Reply