Thursday, August 15 at 2:00 PM
In this screwball comedy, we meet Tom (Joel McCrea) and Gerry Jeffers (Claudette Colbert) whose marriage has been strained by financial woes. Gerry decides to leave Tom, a struggling architect, and head to Palm Beach to find a rich man to marry who could fund Tom's work. Tom follows Gerry, and the couple crosses paths with the quirky millionaire John D. Hackensacker III (Rudy Vallee) and his husband-seeking sister, Princess Centimillia (Mary Astor). Preston Sturges wrote and directed this film.
In a burst of creativity unmatched in Hollywood history, Sturges directed a string of all-time classic comedies from 1939 through 1948, all from screenplays he alone had written. Cynical and sophisticated, romantic and sexually frank, crazily breakneck and endlessly witty, his movies continue to influence filmmakers and remain popular to this day.
Reprising his popular matinee series from last summer, local film collector and Athenaeum shareholder George Strimel will present a new selection of Sturges’ creations over four Thursdays this August.
