Sass Mouth Dames Film Club series 28

Megan McGurk presents four outstanding classic pictures from the 1950s each Thursday in March at the Brooks Hotel cinema, Drury Street, Dublin.

Tickets are available from Eventbrite

The Damned Don’t Cry (1950)

Screens 7 March

Joan Crawford contributed to the script which was loosely based on the life of social-climber and Bugsy Siegel’s main squeeze, Virginia Hill. Joan spends the run-time in a quest for good taste and a life of her own. After leaving a bitter husband in the rear-view, she sells cigars, models clothes, and dallies with important men. Joan becomes the kind of quality dame who matches appropriate flowers for the time of day. In one scene, she scoffs at the flower box in Steve Cochran’s hands: ‘I don’t care for orchids in the afternoon.’

Mister 880 (1950)

Screens 14 March

On one level, the picture adapts a classic New Yorker essay about a counterfeiter who eluded capture for years. In the middle of the manhunt, a sparkling romance develops between Dorothy McGuire and Burt Lancaster. Screenwriter Robert Riskin had been a master of the ‘meet cute’ for nearly twenty years. Looking for any excuse to prolong contact with the broad-shouldered G-man, Dorothy makes herself a suspect in the investigation by learning antiquated forgerer’s slang, such as ‘boodle of queer.’

Tomorrow Is Another Day (1951)

Screens 21 March

Ruth Roman plays a platinum blonde taxi dancer kept under the thumb of a shady police detective. One night in the club, she picks up Steve Cochran, a chaste ex-con who seems like an easy touch for presents. Hardboiled and world-weary, Ruth realises that Steve is as innocent as a polished apple. After the cop is killed in her apartment, she lets Steve think he pulled the trigger. The star-crossed lovers on the run find refuge among farm workers. Can they make a fresh start? Or will the law catch up with them?

Peyton Place (1957)

Screens 28 March

Lana Turner’s star power summoned box office gold and the sole Best Actress nomination that she received during a long career. Lana kept the lights on at Twentieth Century Fox when the studio was almost bankrupt by the competition from television. The lush melodrama was based on the best-selling novel by Grace Metalious, an impoverished young housewife who lived without running water and fed a family of five on $20 a week. Peyton Place stirred controversy with a frank depiction of taboo topics such as rape, incest, and abortion.

Refunds are available until noon on the day of the screening.

Sass Mouth Dames Film Club series 27

Megan McGurk introduces four stellar woman’s pictures from the 1940s each Thursday in January 2024.

Tickets are available from Eventbrite.

The Feminine Touch (1941)

Screens 4 January at 7.00

Woody Van Dyke’s screwball comedy lampoons polite marital norms. College professor Don Ameche writes a dull book arguing that jealousy is nothing but a holdover from the cave man. Rosalind Russell, as his wife, believes it’s the spice of life. If her husband really loved her, he’d knock out any man who got fresh. Their theories are put to the test with the arrival of Kay Francis, a lusty publisher, and Van Heflin, a horny devil with a goatee and a satin make-out couch.

Phantom Lady (1944)

Screens 11 January at 7.00

Joan Harrison, former screenwriter for Hitchcock, steps into the role of executive producer in a stylish mystery directed by master of noir Robert Siodmak. Ella Raines tries to prove her boss is innocent of a murder charge. During her search for a woman in a standout hat, Ella bargains for answers by egging on a musician who uses a drum kit to perform a frantic masturbatory jazz solo. It’s all in a night’s work for a razor-sharp investigator.

Down to Earth (1947)

Screens 18 January at 7.00

Terpsichore, goddess of dance, played by Rita Hayworth, is outraged by a Broadway show using her likeness. The divine Rita descends on the ‘Big Street’ to mount a highbrow production replacing the formerly glitzy portrayal of the Muses. But Olympian art clashes with American taste and the show flops. Will the goddess ditch the boards for the heavens, or will she be a trouper?

The Fountainhead (1949)

Screens 25 January at 7.00

Forget about the cartoonish polemic of Ayn Rand’s novel. The real draw of this sly adaptation from Warner Brothers studio is the relationship between its stars. Director King Vidor trades ham-fisted politics for the volcanic heat between Patricia Neal and Gary Cooper. Vidor skirts the Production Code censors with scenes staged with a drill, a whip, and a fireplace poker to underscore the explosive chemistry of stars embroiled in a real-life affair. Patricia risked it all for Coop, just like her character on the big screen.

Sass Mouth Dames Film Club Christmas

Megan McGurk introduces the holiday classic Christmas in Connecticut (1945).

Barbara Stanwyck plays a popular magazine columnist who shares recipes and extols the virtues of living the simple life on a farm with her family. In reality, she’s a single woman in the city who can’t so much as boil water. Stanwyck lives the dream (mink coat included) until her publisher invites a wounded veteran to spend Christmas at the fictitious farm. Will Stanwyck be able to carry off the housewife ruse? Or will she be exposed as a fake?

Tickets for a tenner at Eventbrite.

(We start an hour later than the usual time!)

Sass Mouth Dames Film Club series 26

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

Tickets are available from Eventbrite.

Get your sass booster with a programme full of gems!

Stage Door (1937)
Screens 2 November at 7.00
RKO’s biggest stars, Ginger Rogers and Katharine Hepburn, play rival roommates in a flawless picture directed by Gregory La Cava. Set in a theatrical boarding house among Broadway-hopefuls, the cast is full of ambitious scene stealers such as Eve Arden, Gail Patrick, Andrea Leeds, Lucille Ball, Ann Miller, Constance Collier, and Phyllis Kennedy. La Cava had his secretary record their delicious backstage sass by shorthand for use in the off-the-cuff script.

Back in Circulation (1937)
Screens 9 November at 7.00
Joan Blondell is the best newspaperman in skirts. When other reporters wonder how they lost the scoop, Joan brushes them off with a wisecrack: ‘I’m cute that way.’ If only the newspaper’s editor, Pat O’Brien, would give her a break from chasing front-page stories—at least long enough for a little between-the-sheets action. Horny and run off her feet, Joan sparkles in every scene. Ray Enright’s romantic comedy has flown under the radar, but it’s woman’s picture canon.

Love Is News, poster, Tyrone Power, Loretta Young, Don Ameche, 1937. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)

Love Is News (1937)
Screens 16 November at 7.00
Society heiress Loretta Young decides she’s had enough of nosey reporters, particularly the one played by Tyrone Power. She plans revenge by giving a juicy exclusive to a rival columnist, which not only makes Ty look like a chump, it puts him in Dutch with his editor, played by Don Ameche. Loretta noted that director Tay Garnett laughed all the time, creating a fun atmosphere on the set, and it shows.

Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife (1938)
Screens 23 November at 7.00
In the original French folk tale, a deranged husband murders his wives, one after another. Paramount’s cosmopolitan update benefits from the ‘Lubitsch Touch’ which borrows from Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. Once Claudette Colbert walks down the aisle with Gary Cooper, she learns he has a habit of changing his mind and filing for divorce. Before the groom gives her the gate, and she joins the ranks of seven ex-wives, Claudette concocts an inspired plan of reform.

When Tomorrow Comes (1939)
Screens 30 November at 7.00
Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer followed their box office hit Love Affair with this star-crossed romance between a waitress and a world-renowned musician. Boyer attends a union meeting just to hear Irene Dunne deliver a strike-calling speech to an assembly of harried and underpaid servers. Irene is swept away by the swoon merchant who listens so well. The only problem is, he’s already taken, as so often happens when an elegant stranger sits in your section for his lunch. Director John M. Stahl was a king of bittersweet melodrama.

Refunds are available up to noon on the day of the screening.

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.