"Calling the Shots: Women Screenwriters of the 1930s" Schedule
Fri., April 2, 1999
Possessed
(1931, 76 min.)
D: Clarence Brown; screenplay by Lenore J. Coffee, based on a play by Edgar Selwyn; with Joan Crawford, Clark Gable, Wallace Ford.
Crawford portrays an ambitious factory worker who leaves the drudgery of the small town for the Big Apple. She finds glamour, money, and success as the "kept woman" of the state's leading politician (Gable).
April 13
The Wind
(1928, 88 min., silent/
musical accompaniment)
D: Victor Seastrom; screenplay by Frances Marion, based on a novel by Dorothy Scarborough; with Lillian Gish, Lars Hanson, Montagu Love.
An Eastern woman is driven to madness and violence by the winds of the West.
April 20
The Secret Six
(1931, 83 min.)
D: George Hill; screenplay by Frances Marion; with Wallace Beery, Lewis Stone, John Mack Brown, Jean Harlow.
Six businessmen form a vigilante group to break the back of a mobster bootlegger.
April 27
The Big House
(1930, 86 min.)
D: George Hill; screenplay by Frances Marion, Joseph Farnham, Martin Flavin, Lennox Robinson; with Chester Morris, Wallace Beery, Lewis Stone, Robert Montgomery, Leila Hyams.
One of the first prison movies, The Big House is a critique of the penitentiary system. Its unglamorous script was based on a spate of revolts in American prisons. Frances Marion won an Academy Award for her screenplay.
May 4
A Free Soul
(1931, 91 min.)
D: Clarence Brown; screenplay by Becky Gardiner, Willard Mack, John Meehan, based on the autobiographical novel by Adela Rogers St. Johns; with Norma Shearer, Leslie Howard, Lionel Barrymore, Clark Gable.
The film chronicles the life of sensation-seeking socialite, journalist, sports reporter, fiction writer, and Hollywood insider Adela Rogers St. Johns. Barrymore won an Oscar for his performance.
May 11
Camille
(1937, 108 min.)
D: George Cukor; screenplay by Frances Marion, Zoë Akins, James Hilton; with Greta Garbo, Robert Taylor, Lionel Barrymore.
"No movie has ever presented a more romantic view of a courtesan ... Garbo's artistry triumphs." -- Pauline Kael, 5001 Nights at the Movies
Screenings continue every Tuesday through May 11, 7pm, at the Alamo Drafthouse. Admission is 35¢. The series is co-sponsored by the Austin Museum of Art, Reel Women, and the Austin American-Statesman. The series is made possible in part by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Texas Commission on the Arts, and the city of Austin.
