The DeWitt Community Library will be hosting a 3-picture film fest in May, featuring comedies from the 1930s. The shows will take place Wednesday nights, on May 7, 14, and 21, at 7:00 p.m.
Our first film, on May 7, will be the classic Marx Brothers film “Duck Soup”, which premiered in 1933 and is considered by some modern critics to be the best of all the Marx Brothers comedies. In this film, Groucho becomes president of Freedonia, and proceeds to run the country into the ground. “If you think this country’s bad off now,” he says while scampering through his inaugural song, “just wait ‘til I get through with it!” From then on, it’s non-stop laughs as Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Zeppo manage to involve Freedonia in a war that starts when Groucho and the ambassador of Sylvania both try to woo the same rich woman.
Next up, on May 14, is the Clark Gable film “It Happened One Night” (1934), costarring Claudette Colbert. When a woman marries a wealthy man of whom her father disapproves, she ends up diving off his yacht and running straight into the arms of Clark Gable! Gable plays a reporter hoping to get a good story by tutoring Colbert in his gritty street smarts.
Last, but certainly not least, we will end the film series by showing “My Little Chickadee” (1940), starring Mae West and W. C. Fields. Mae West does what she does best, sashaying out of the town of Little Bend when she is suspected of having an affair with a masked bandit. But then she encounters Cuthbert J. Twillie, a bumbling con man who agrees to enter into a pretend marriage with her so she can keep up appearances. Twillie, however, has motives of his own, and the two take an amusing journey together during which Fields relentlessly but hopelessly pursues a kiss from his new bride.
Each of the films will be preceded by cartoons and newsreels, to preserve the original feeling of going to the cinema in the 1930s, and refreshments will be served. For more information on this and other DeWitt Community Library programs, please visit our website at www.dewlib.org, or call us at 446-3578.
