Sass Mouth Dames Film Club series 39

Megan McGurk introduces two gems from Hollywood’s classical studio era in The Dot Theatre, Dublin.

Wine and crisps are complimentary.

Get your tickets at Eventbrite.

Devil and the Deep (1932)

Screens 27 August at 19.00 in The Dot Theatre.

Tallulah Bankhead received top billing over Gary Cooper and Cary Grant in the only picture the two men made together. Cast as a battered wife trapped in a miserable marriage to paranoid and jealous Charles Laughton, Tallulah flees his accusations that she’s carrying on with Cary Grant and runs straight into the arms of Gary Cooper. Devil and the Deep blends melodrama, romance, and action in a sultry pre-Code with double swoon merchants. Dressed by Travis Banton, Tallulah radiates the sharp, intense, controlled energy of a woman pushed to her limits.

There’s Always a Woman (1938)

Screens 3 September at 19.00 in The Dot Theatre

How do you like your detective duos? If you prefer a married couple who bicker and compete to solve the case first, look no further than Joan Blondell and Melvyn Douglas. When Mel’s private eye office is out of funds and ready to shutter, instead of closing shop, Joan scores new a new client (Mary Astor) to keep the lights on. Joan gives a freewheeling performance built on clever gags and set pieces that made the bubbly screwball comedy a big hit for Columbia. The studio re-teamed the director, Alexander Hall, and the stars for two other pictures.

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

Sass Mouth Dames Christmas

Megan McGurk introduces a gem on 11 December in the historic Dot Theatre.

Tickets are available at Eventbrite.

Join Sass Mouth Dames Film Club as we celebrate Christmas with a screwball murder mystery that’s pure gold. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer adapted Dashiell Hammett’s best selling novel The Thin Man starring William Powell and Myrna Loy, who play the screen’s ideal married couple, Nick and Nora Charles. Directed by ‘One-Take Woody’ Van Dyke in only sixteen days, the picture’s brisk pace, sophisticated style, and urbane banter spawned five sequels and a whole raft of imitations. Nominated for four Academy Awards, the picture was one of the biggest hits at the box office in 1934. We musn’t forget mention their dog Asta, played by Skippy, who steals every scene he’s given.

Sass Mouth Dames Film Club series 36

Dublin’s most glamorous film club returns in November!

Megan McGurk introduces three classic Hollywood pictures in The Dot Theatre.

Get your tickets at Eventbrite

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).