Sass Mouth Dames Film Club series 25

Megan McGurk introduces four pre-Code woman’s pictures starring the MGM queens.

Grab a drink at the bar in Brooks Hotel. Popcorn is free!

Tickets available at Eventbrite

Possessed (1931)

Screens 7 September

If Joan Crawford and Clark Gable had lacked discipline, the heat from their illicit affair might have burned Metro to the ground. Luckily, they kept their clothes on long enough to face the camera for the third of eight pictures they made together. Director Clarence Brown builds a kept woman story into a captivating romance during one of the bleakest years of the Depression. Joan plays an earnest factory gal on the hunt for a rich man as if she was a one-woman Lewis and Clark expedition.

Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise (1931)

Screens 14 September

The picture’s subtitle tells you everything you need to know about the trajectory of woman’s pictures during the 1930s. After Greta Garbo escapes an arranged marriage, she finds refuge with Clark Gable and his German Shepherd. Before long, she’s left high and dry and joins the circus. Then she moves into a Penthouse financed by a sugar daddy politician. Almost every writer in MGM had a crack at the baggy monster of a script which censors found objectionable, but the whole escapade is pure GARBO-going-places.

Riptide (1934)

Screens 21 September

Currently, Norma Shearer enjoys a reputation for being the great lady of MGM. But during the pre-Code era, Norma was targeted by religious groups for making pictures that they felt glorified premarital sex, adultery, and divorce. In Riptide, Norma follows her heart (or her libido) while wearing what is arguably the best wardrobe (by Adrian) of her entire career. Norma would be stuck in hoop skirts and period costume for the next five years. Will Norma choose Herbert Marshall or Robert Montgomery—and does it even matter when she looks so good?

Stamboul Quest (1934)

Screens 28 September

Based on the life of Annemarie Lesser, a famously dissolute spy who was dying in a sanitorium during the film’s production, Stamboul Quest stars Myrna Loy as agent Fräulein Doktor. Myrna is the whole show, playing a character who knows that romance is the Achilles heel for a counter-espionage expert. Myrna has an important job, yet she still falls for soft-spoken George Brent. Gowned to the nines by Dolly Tree, Myrna disproves the old canard about spies darting about incognito in trench coats and anonymous fashion.

Sass Mouth Dames Film Club series 23

Megan McGurk introduces five stellar woman’s pictures from the 1940s each Thursday in March.

Tickets are available from Eventbrite.

Third Finger, Left Hand (1940)

Screens 2 March, 7.00

Myrna Loy plays a successful magazine editor who pretends to be married. She wears a gold wedding band for protection against wolves and sexual harassment on the job. But then suddenly, Melvyn Douglas shows up and claims to be her husband. What’s a busy editor to do? Art director Cedric Gibbons understood the appeal of seeing a woman seated behind a very big desk. And costume designer Dolly Tree combines a glorious wardrobe for Loy’s career woman, including sobersides tweed and a whimsical cherry basket hat.

Moon over Miami (1941)

Screens 9 March, 7.00

Shot in gorgeous, sweet-shop Technicolor, director Walter Lang styles a durable feel-good premise: How will three ambitious dames snare a man with deep pockets? Betty Grable, Carole Landis, and Charlotte Greenwood pool their resources to hunt for a millionaire in a fashionable Miami resort. Costumes by Travis Banton and choreography by Hermes Pan embellish a breezy romantic comedy musical. Betty Grable leading a conga line has the cure for what ails you.

The Gay Sisters (1943)

Screens 16 March, 7.00

Wicklow-born Geraldine Fitzgerald belongs to an elite quartet of co-stars who managed to upstage Barbara Stanwyck, alongside Joan Blondell, Gary Cooper, and Walter Huston. Stanwyck, an emotional firebrand in front of a camera, usually dominated every scene. In Irving Rapper’s film about orphaned heiresses, Fitzgerald plays the horny adventuress sister and steals more than one scene from the star. Three poor little rich gals (Nancy Coleman plays the nice one) are beset by a greedy developer (George Brent) who tries to win their familial property in court. As Fiona, the eldest, Stanwyck figures she knows all the angles to fix the legal ties that bind the Gaylord sisters.

Nocturne (1946)

Screens 23 March, 7.00

When a skirt-chasing composer is murdered, the prime suspects are all brunettes named Dolores. George Raft would no more have stepped on a star’s line of dialogue than he would a dance partner’s feet, which makes him ideal in the role of a police detective who leads the investigation. Raft questions a glamorous rogue’s gallery of hardworking women trying to catch a break in Hollywood, including platinum sex bomb Myrna Dell (playing a maid!) and Lynn Bari, a film studio extra. Producer Joan Harrison, who also contributed to the script, began her career as screenwriter for Hitchcock before she became an executive in RKO.

Forever Amber (1948)

Screens 30 March, 7.00

Linda Darnell shines in the screen adaptation of Kathleen Winsor’s bestselling bonkbuster. Darnell’s character is a ruthless mercenary, a Restoration-era Baby Face who sleeps her way to the top. Amber juggles demands from many men in return for a life of luxury, much like Darnell did in real life. René Hubert’s lavish designs set the stage for Twentieth Century Fox’s epic bodice-ripper costume drama that was fiercely condemned by the Catholic Legion of Decency.

Sass Mouth Dames Film Club series 22

Megan McGurk introduces four classic woman’s pictures in January 2023.

Tickets are available through Eventbrite.

Take a Letter, Darling (1942)

Screens 5 January at 7.00

Office politics are turned upside down in this whip-smart comedy from Mitchell Leisen. Rosalind Russell plays an advertising executive who lands multi-million accounts, but she needs a man on her arm to appear non-threatening to the wives and sweethearts of men in business. Fred MacMurray becomes her personal secretary and soon feels de-sexed by the subordinate role. Roz cornered the market on career gal roles during the 1940s.

Lady of Burlesque (1943)

Screens 12 January at 7.00

Barbara Stanwyck could do anything, and that includes break-dancing and singing about her G-string. William Wellman directs the ultimate crossover in woman’s pictures: Barbara Stanwyck plays Gypsy Rose Lee, America’s most celebrated burlesque queen, with a name so red-hot, the censors wouldn’t even allow it to appear on the big screen.

No Time for Love (1943)

Screens 19 January at 7.00

Due to the war effort, the man shortage was at an all-time high by 1943. You know the song about how they’re either too young or too old? Director Mitch Leisen knew what women wanted was to see burly bare-chested men roll around in the mud. The women were horny, and Claudette Colbert showed them what to do about it when she snapped photos of Fred MacMurray looking like a caveman.

Lady on a Train (1945)

Screens 26 January at 7.0

Deanna Durbin’s pictures in the 1930s were such box office hits that she singlehandedly kept the lights on at Universal studio when she was only a child. It’s a cinch she could solve a murder mystery. She gives a glorious performance as a singing detective. I feel compelled to mention Deanna’s wardrobe by Howard Greer. She wears so many mad hats you simply don’t want to miss.

Sass Mouth Dames Film Club series 19

Each Thursday in May, Megan McGurk presents four classic melodramas from the 1940s.

Tickets are available through Eventbrite.

IN THIS OUR LIFE (1942)

Benjamin Franklin kept a checklist of 13 virtues that he monitored each day to reflect on his growth as an upstanding citizen. By contrast, Stanley Timberlake, played by Bette Davis, keeps a scorecard of vice. She runs off with her sister’s fiancé then drives him to commit suicide. She’s manipulative, greedy, reckless. For the coup de grâce, she pins a homicide on an innocent Black man. Olivia de Havilland, as Stanley’s unfortunate sister Roy, holds her own with a steady underplay. In one scene, Olivia takes her time putting on a hat, which is enough to tell the audience she’s no doormat. John Huston’s Southern Gothic melodrama reaches a steady boil.

MY REPUTATION (1946)

Before Douglas Sirk exposed narrow-minded views about widowhood in vivid Technicolor with All That Heaven Allows, Curtis Bernhardt painted a stark monochrome portrait of a community who expects a woman to put herself in mothballs once she loses her husband. Barbara Stanwyck’s character shares the same fate as many other women after the war. Should Jessica wear black, stay single, and avoid gossip? Or should she follow the advice of wing woman Eve Arden and see what happens with George Brent?

THE GHOST AND MRS MUIR (1947)

Gene Tierney takes her adorable daughter (Natalie Wood) and trusty housekeeper (Edna Best) to live in a cottage by the sea. Unlike past occupants, she refuses to leave when she learns it has a resident ghost, a former ship’s captain played by Rex Harrison. Instead of rattling chains or disturbing her sleep with a repertoire of sea shanties, the mariner allows the women to stay and even strikes a bargain: Gene can write his salty memoirs and make herself financially independent.

DAISY KENYON (1947)

Joan Crawford stars in a three-cornered romance, caught between a cynical married man (Dana Andrews), who has strung her along for years and a battle-scarred veteran (Henry Fonda), who rushes to commitment one minute and disappears the next. Otto Preminger fashions a postwar melodrama about hot-and-bothered men who upset the placid life of a successful career gal.

Sass Mouth Dames Film Club series 18

Megan McGurk introduces a classic woman’s picture each Thursday in March.

Tickets available through Eventbrite

Cleopatra (1934)

Screens 3 March

Cecil B. DeMille’s ‘epic with sex’ was subjected to changes by the newly installed Production Code Administration, led by po-faced Joseph Breen. Even with the bluenose interference, DeMille’s production is full of lusty charm, glamorous design, and erotic choreography. Travis Banton’s costumes for Claudette Colbert will knock your eye out. And it clocks in at an economical one hour and forty minutes.

Desire (1936)

Screens 10 March

Marlene Dietrich marches into a jewellery shop with the same royal command she used for playing Catherine the Great, mounted on horseback, clearing the palace of enemies. The most glamorous jewel thief on the planet is prepared for every contingency, except falling for a big galoot from Detroit (Gary Cooper). Directed by Frank Borzage and produced by Ernst Lubitsch, it’s a prized gem of sexy romance.

Libeled Lady (1936)

Screens 17 March

Once you set aside disbelief that Jean Harlow wants to marry a ham-fisted thug like Spencer Tracy, the farcical hijinks and snappy dialogue of this stylish ensemble piece, also starring Myrna Loy and William Powell, create one of the bubbliest screwball comedies of classical Hollywood.

History Is Made at Night (1937)

Screens 24 March

Jean Arthur is almost raped during a scheme engineered by the wealthy husband she’s trying to divorce (Colin Clive wearing a permanent sneer). At the last minute, she’s rescued by Charles Boyer. Before dawn, she has fallen in love with the dashing head waiter. But the psycho ex refuses to let her go. Director Frank Borzage’s romantic melodrama argues that nothing can keep two lovers apart.

The Awful Truth (1937)

Screens 31 March

A fake tan and close quarters with a singing instructor are two random details misconstrued by a husband and wife. Irene Dunne and Cary Grant discover that love is doomed when faith goes out the window. Leo McCarey sets the gold standard for the screwball ‘comedy of remarriage,’ proving that inside every dedicated gag man beats the heart of an incurable romantic.