Long-time Host Bids Adieu to "Meet Me at the Movies"

Almost two years ago, Jackie Walker, Prairie District Neighborhood Alliance Vice President, asked me if I would volunteer and host a monthly movie event, in the South Loop that became known as “Meet Me at the Movies.” The concept: I would pick films to screen, introduce them, giving background and “color commentary” on each movie presented. Afterward we would go to a local restaurant to share a meal.

The first movie screened 17 months ago

My focus was on classic Hollywood films. The reasoning? Films made before the end of the production code—the mid-1960s—were for the most part, appropriate for all audiences and tended to fit within a two-hour time frame. In addition, it gave me great pleasure introducing these classic films to people who were unfamiliar with them.

Hollywood’s golden age was a period of great creativity and artistry. So much of our popular culture comes from the movies. “Here’s looking at you, kid,” uttered Humphrey Bogart to Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca. “How does a girl like you get to be a girl like you?” Cary Grant questioned Eva Marie Saint in North by Northwest, the very first MMATM event. But my all-time favorite line is, “For a charming, intelligent girl, you’ve certainly surrounded yourself with a remarkable collection of dopes,” spoken by Dana Andrews to Gene Tierney toward the end of Laura.

"Casablanca" really packed the house.

It was tough deciding on which classic films to screen, but I enjoyed the challenged. We screened some of the best movies Hollywood produced and showcased some of the silver screen’s most popular stars at the height of their careers, including Cary Grant, Grace Kelly, Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Dana Andrews, Jeanne Crain, Joseph Cotton, Teresa Wright, James Stewart, and Sophia Loren to name a few. And who could forget Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, and Jack Lemmon in Some Like it Hot?

Marilyn Monroe and her "bosom" companions in "Some Like it Hot"

One of the best things about MMATM was meeting and getting to know my neighbors in the South Loop. Over the months, we developed into a community of classic movie fans, who just happened to live in the same Chicago town. What was even more gratifying were the regular attendees who came from the north and south sides of the city. I was honored that they made the trip and worked hard not to disappoint them for making the journey.

James Steward and Grace Kelly solved a murder in the Hitchcock classic, "Rear Window."

Picking movies and preparing monthly presentations may not seem like much, but it was a big time investment. For this and other reasons I decided not to move forward with MMATM. I submitted my resignation to Tina Feldstein, PDNA president, and Walker before the screening of the season’s last film, The Bishop’s Wife. According to their Web site, they’re planning to continue with MMATM starting in January. Not sure what the “new” MMATM will look like, but you might want to give it a try.

Howard Keel and Betty Hutton in "Annie Get Your Gun," the first musical screened by MMATM

Thank you to all the people who came out month after month, the ones I knew by name, and the new folk that seemed to come almost every month. It was a wonderful 17 months. I will always remember my MMATM experience with great fondness. For a look back from a regular MMATM attendee, check out Bonnie McGrath's blog at the Chicago Journal by clicking here.

Sincerely,
Stephen Reginald
South Loop Connection
Classic Movie Man

P.S. Have a great MMATM moment/story? Please share it here. 

"Laura" Starring Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews

Laura (1944) is set among New York City’s upper crust, with Detective Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews) investigating the murder of beautiful advertising executive Laura Hunt (Gene Tierney). The suspects are some of her closest friends and associates including fiancé (Vincent Price), aunt (Judith Anderson), and mentor (Clifton Webb).

When production on Laura  started, no one believed that the end product would be worth seeing. From the beginning the project was problematic. Arguments between studio boss Darryl Zanuck and the original director, Rouben Mamoulian ended in Mamoulian being fired. Zanuck then assigned Otto Preminger, already the film’s producer, to be its director too. The only problem: Preminger had limited experience as a movie director. 

Under Preminger’s supervision, what began as a fairly ordinary murder mystery, turned out to be a critical and box office success. Tierney in the title role became a superstar and was forever identified with the beautiful, enigmatic Laura Hunt. Andrews, as Detective Mark McPherson, established himself as a major star and popular leading man. Webb, who hadn’t made a movie since the early days of talking pictures, earned an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actor for his role as Waldo Lydecker. Thomas M. Pryor, in his October 12, 1944 New York Times review called Laura “a top-drawer mystery.”

With some of the sharpest and wittiest dialogue ever recorded on film, Laura set the standard for 1940s film noir. Andrews’s portrayal of McPherson became a prototype for what would become known as the hard-boiled detective, influencing a generation of movie actors. Pryor from the Times put it this way: “Mr. Andrews is fast proving himself to be a solidly persuasive performer, a sort of younger-edition Spencer Tracy.”

The musical score by David Raksin is one of the most hauntingly beautiful movie themes ever recorded and will forever be associated with the enigmatic Tierney.

Bring Two Friends and Win a Prize

Bring two friends who have never been to a "Meet Me at the Movies" event and win a free MMATM coffee mug. Your friends will be glad you invited them and you'll love the mug!

Teresa Wright and Joseph Cotten star in the Hitchcock classic, Shadow of a Doubt.

The Prairie District Neighborhood Alliance (PDNA) invites you to "Meet Me at the Movies," Friday October 29, 2010 at 6:30 p.m. at Sherwood Community Music School, Columbia College recital hall, 1312 S. Michigan Ave. Shadow of a Doubt starring Teresa Wright and Joseph Cotton is the classic movie to be screened. The cost for the movie is $5 per person. 

Coffee taste better in a "Meet Me at the Movies" mug.

Bring Two New Friends to this week's "Meet Me at the Movies" and Win a Prize

Bring two friends who have never been to a "Meet Me at the Movies" event and win a free MMATM coffee mug. Your friends will be glad you invited them and you'll love the mug!

The Prairie District Neighborhood Alliance (PDNA) invites you to "Meet Me at the Movies," Friday September 24, 2010 at 6:30 p.m. at Sherwood Community Music School, Columbia College recital hall, 1312 S. Michigan Ave. My Man Godfrey starring William Powell and Carole Lombard is the classic movie to be screened. The cost for the movie is $5 per person.

Coffee taste better in a "Meet Me at the Movies" mug.

My Man Godfrey this Friday

The Prairie District Neighborhood Alliance (PDNA) invites you to "Meet Me at the Movies," Friday September 24, 2010 at 6:30 p.m. at Sherwood Community Music School, Columbia College recital hall, 1312 S. Michigan Ave. The wrap party (dinner after movie) will be held at the Weather Mark Tavern 1503 S. Michigan Ave.

Classic performances and situations have made My Man Godfrey one of the best film comedies ever made. My Man Godfrey was the first film to receive Academy Award nominations in all four major categories, including Best Actor and Best Actress for William Powell and Carole Lombard respectively. Film critic Roger Ebert in a review of the movie simply said, “God, but this film is beautiful” and it truly is. My Man Godfrey is ranked 44 in the American Film Institute’s (AFI) “America’s 100 Funniest Movies” compiled in 2002. Not bad for a movie first released in 1936.

Lombard was so identified with the screwball comedy genre that Life magazine dubbed her “the screwball girl” in a 1938 cover story. When paired with Powell, no stranger to comedy himself, My Man Godfrey becomes a master class of screwball comedy technique.

Carole Lombard and William Powell in My Man Godfrey

Admission to the movie is $5. Dinner afterward (not required) is $15 per person. To RSVP to this event and/or the wrap party click here.

"Meet Me at the Movies" Wrap Part at Weather Mark Tavern

After the screening of A Letter to Three Wives, the wrap party (dinner) was held at Weather Mark Tavern, 1503 S. Michigan Ave. Of all the films screened so far, Letter was the most talked about afterward.

They won a travel mug for bringing two new friends with them to "Meet Me at the Movies."

How did it end?
"Did Porter lie to Deborah? Did Brad run off with Addie Ross?" Well, who can know for sure? What I do know is everyone enjoyed A Letter to Three Wives, many seeing if for the very first time.

Folks enjoying the great meal we had at the Weather Mark Tavern wrap party

Musical classic
Don't miss next month's movie: Annie Get Your Gun. The classic musical stars Betty Hutton and Howard Keel and was one of the biggest box office hits of the 1950s. The movie will be shown Friday August 27, 2010. The wrap party will be held at Kroll's South Loop.

Check out the movie trailer for next month's movie below.

"Houseboat" sets sail this Thursday night!

The Prairie District Neighborhood Alliance (PDNA) invites you to "Meet Me at the Movies," Thursday June 24, 2009 at 6:30 p.m. at Sherwood Community Music School, Columbia College recital hall, 1312 S. Michigan Ave.

This month’s movie is Houseboat starring Cary Grant and Sophia Loren. The Technicolor classic also stars Martha Hyer and Harry Guardino. This will be the only MMATM event held on a Thursday evening.

Admission to the movie is $5 and dinner at Opera afterward (optional) is $15.

Related "Meet Me at the Movies" News: Audrey Rules!

Breakfast at Tiffany's, starring Audrey Hepburn was voted favorite "Meet Me at the Movies" movie. Breakfast at Tiffany's walked away with 50% of the vote. Casablanca and Miracle on 34th Street tied for second with 33%. To Catch a Thief and Some Like it Hot tied for third with 16% of the vote.

Becoming Grace Kelly

Everyone knows the name Grace Kelly (1929-1982). But do they know the person behind that name? Is she the glamorous movie star who took the mid-1950s by storm and then gave it all up to marry a prince? Or is she the shy girl, who did not quite fit in with the athletic and outgoing Kelly clan?

Quiet Grace

Grace Patricia Kelly is all of the above. The third of four children, Grace was quiet and solitary in contrast to her older sister, Peggy, older brother John, and younger sister Lizanne. How she became a movie icon is a Hollywood story if ever there was one, but it’s also about timing. If there weren’t a Grace Kelly in the mid-1950s, we would have had to invent her.

New girl in town

Kelly was part of a new crop of female movie stars, a crop that also included Audrey Hepburn and Sophia Loren, groomed during the waning days of the old studio system. She signed a seven-year contract with MGM, but they didn’t seem to know what to do with her. Her best movie roles came by way of other studios on loan outs.

Mogambo (1953), was her biggest role at this point in her career. She played opposite two undisputed superstars: Clark Gable and Ava Gardner. But she almost didn’t get that role. Gene Tierney (who starred with Gable in Never Let Me Go that same year) was director John Ford’s (and MGM’s) first choice. Due to her developing mental illness, Tierney had to drop out. It was then that Kelly was given the role of the unfaithful wife who falls for Gable’s character, but loses him in the end. For this role, Kelly received an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actress. But even with the nomination, Kelly’s stardom wasn’t a sure thing.

The New York Times’s movie critic, Bosley Crowther gave a rather lukewarm review of Mogambo, waiting until the very last paragraph (first sentence of a two-sentence paragraph at that) to even mention Kelly. That was all about to change; the public and Crowther would soon take notice.

Kelly gets noticed

In 1953, Alfred Hitchcock was searching for a female lead for a film he was directing at Warner Bros., Dial M for Murder. While looking for an actress to cast, he reviewed an old screen test Kelly had done at Twentieth Century Fox and watched Mogambo. While Hitchcock thought Kelly was stiff, if not a bit wooden, he saw that she had potential. Almost immediately, the master of suspense started to mold Kelly into the prototypical cool Hitchcock blond. When Dial M for Murder was released, the reviews were good, some even thinking it better than the stage play upon which it was based. This time, Crowther mentioned Kelly in the sixth paragraph (out of seven) of his review saying, “Grace Kelly does a nice job of acting the wife's bewilderment, terror and grief.” From the likes of Crowther, that was absolutely glowing praise.

Edie Doyle or Lisa Fremont?

Almost on the back of filming Dial M for Murder, Hitchcock requested Kelly’s services again for Rear Window. At the time the role of Lisa Carol Fremont was offered to her, Kelly was considering the role of Edie Doyle for On the Waterfront,the role that eventually went to Eva Marie Saint. Kelly loved the Rear Window script and decided she'd rather portray a model from Manhattan than a middle-class girl from New Jersey. She could not have imagined how fortuitous a choice that would be.

Careful collaborations
Once again, Hitchcock took complete control of Kelly’s image and introduced her to screenwriter, John Michael Hayes. As Hayes would state in an interview before his death in 2008, Hitchcock asked him to get to know Kelly and study her speech patterns. Hayes was instructed to write dialogue that would seem natural coming out of Kelly’s mouth. Hitchcock thought (and rightly so) that if Kelly collaborated with Hayes on some of her dialogue, her characterization would avoid the stiffness of some of her earlier roles. The fact that Hayes’s wife was a former model made him the perfect person to write for Kelly.

Another person Hitchcock introduced to Kelly was renowned costume designer Edith Head. Under Hitchcock’s direction, Head went to work on creating a wardrobe that would be true to Kelly’s character as well as showcase her incredible beauty. With Kelly, Head had a clean canvas upon which she could create a look that was stylish, chic, and deceptively simple in design.

When Rear Window opened at the Rivoli in August of 1954, 2,000 people attended the premier, a benefit for the American-Korean Foundation. It was an immediate commercial and critical success and people took notice of Grace Kelly in what would become an iconic role for the then 25-year-old actress.

Five movies in one year!

In 1954, moviegoers couldn’t avoid Grace Kelly. That year, she had no fewer than five films in release: Dial M for Murder (May), Rear Window (August), The Country Girl, The Bridges at Toko-ri, and Green Fire (December). For her performance in The Country Girl, she was awarded the Best Actress Academy Award for 1955. The competition was unusually stiff that year, with Kelly besting Dorothy Dandridge (Carmen Jones), Jane Wyman (Magnificent Obsession), Audrey Hepburn (Sabrina), and Judy Garland (A Star is Born). Garland was the sentimental and the odds-on favorite, so Kelly’s win was a bit of a shock to many. Supposedly, six votes separated the two stars.

A star is born and then she's gone

As quickly as Kelly’s star rose, so did her departure from Hollywood. She would have one film released in 1955, To Catch a Thief, again working with Hitchcock and Edith Head. In 1956, she would have two films in release, The Swan and High Society, which would be her last. On April 19, 1956, Kelly wed Prince Rainier of Monaco. Rumors of a comeback never materialized. Grace Kelly remained Princess Grace of Monaco until her traffic death in a car accident on September 14, 1982. She was 52 years old.