Modern Matinees: Hollywood and the Great Depression, 1933
February 1 – March 31
The Roy and Niuta Titus Theaters
Screening Schedule
DELIVERANCE
By 1933, the Motion Picture Production Code existed only as a list of selectively enforced suggestions,
allowing the studios an unprecedented (albeit temporary) degree of freedom to explore sensationalistic
subjects. But boundaries remained: although the protagonists of the pre-Code era were often reckless
and hedonistic, plots still tended toward conventionally moralistic resolutions. The four films in this
group are linked by last-minute reversals that reassert traditional social standards. In Hoop-La, Clara
Bow’s cynical hoochie-coochie dancer falls in love with a naïve young man and helps him work his way
through law school. In The Story of Temple Drake, a rebellious Southern belle pays a dear price for her
transgressive behavior. The eternally feuding frontier families of To the Last Man are reconciled by an
unexpected romantic alliance, while the scientist hero of The Invisible Man discovers that the secret
formula that grants him power also drives him mad.
Hoop-La. 1933. USA. Directed by Frank Lloyd. Screenplay by Bradley King, Joseph Moncure March,
based on the play The Barker, by Kenyon Nicholson. With Clara Bow, Preston Foster, Richard Cromwell.
85 min.
Wednesday, February 1, 1:30 p.m. T3
Friday, March 10, 1:30 p.m. T3
The Story of Temple Drake. 1933. USA. Directed by Stephen Roberts. Screenplay by Oliver H. P.
Garrett, based on the novel Sanctuary, by William Faulkner. With Miriam Hopkins, Jack LaRue, William
Gargan. 70 min.
Thursday, February 2, 1:30 p.m. T3
Wednesday, March 15, 1:30 p.m. T3
To the Last Man. 1933. USA. Directed by Henry Hathaway. Screenplay by Jack Cunningham, based on
a story by Zane Grey. With Randolph Scott, Buster Crabbe, Esther Ralston. 75 min.
Friday, February 3, 1:30 p.m. T3
Thursday, March 16, 1:30 p.m. T3
The Invisible Man. 1933. USA. Directed by James Whale. Screenplay by R. C. Sheriff, based on the
novel by H.G. Wells. With Claude Rains, Gloria Stuart, Henry Travers. 71 min.
Wednesday, February 8, 1:30 p.m. T3
Friday, March 17, 1:30 p.m. T3
ASPIRATION
For obvious reasons, rags-to-riches stories abounded in 1933. Yet the reverse, prince-to-pauper
fantasy also stoked optimistic dreams of financial and social ascension. This chapter examines the
desire of the affluent to be ordinary folk, as in Adorable, wherein a princess claims to be a manicurist
when she falls in love with a delicatessen worker (or is he?). In The Emperor Jones, the majestic Paul
Robeson is a railroad porter content with his fate, until a distorted destiny makes him a “king.”
Contentment is also pervasive in Man’s Castle, in which a couple adapt to shantytown life but leave to
pursue a better life once a baby is on the way. And it seems as if Golddiggers of 1933 exists solely to
provide hope to a troupe of Broadway babies who are sick and tired of being sick and tired. When they
sing “We’re in the Money,” the lyric “Old Man Depression, you are through, you done us wrong” is the
battle cry for a prosperous future.
Adorable. 1933. USA. Directed by William Dieterle. Screenplay by George Marion, Jr., Jane Storm.
Story by Robert Liebmann, Paul Frank, Billy Wilder. With Janet Gaynor,
C. Aubrey Smith, Henry Garat. 88 min.
Thursday, February 9, 1:30 p.m. T3
Wednesday, March 22, 1:30 p.m. T3
The Emperor Jones. 1933. USA. Directed by Dudley Murphy. Screenplay by DuBose Heyward, based
on the play by Eugene O'Neill. With Paul Robeson, Dudley Digges, Frank H. Wilson. 72 min.
Friday, February 10, 1:30 p.m. T3
Wednesday, March 23, 1:30 p.m. T3
Man's Castle. 1933. USA. Directed by Frank Borzage. Screenplay by Jo Swerling, based on a play by
Lawrence Hazard. With Spencer Tracy, Loretta Young, Marjorie Rambeau.
75 min.
Wednesday, February 15, 1:30 p.m. T3
Friday, March 24, 1:30 p.m. T3
Golddiggers of 1933. 1933. USA. Directed by Mervyn LeRoy. Screenplay by Erwin Gelsey, James
Seymour, based on the play by Avery Hopwood. With Warren William, Joan Blondell, Ruby Keeler. 97
min.
Thursday, February 16, 1:30 p.m. T3
Wednesday, March 29, 1:30 p.m. T3
COMMUNITY
People need a refuge or a common place, public or private, that provides a safe, convivial
atmosphere—such as the neighborhood pub. Raoul Walsh’s The Bowery is situated in a raucous “Gay
Nineties” bar, where rivals Chuck and Steve continually try to one-up each other. In another watering
hole, Mae West is a chanteuse who knows how to break men’s hearts, in the campy She Done Him
Wrong. Disregarding the world outside and forming their own commune, Tom, George, and Gilda
decide to live together without letting romance enter into their experiment in Design for Living. (Good
luck with that when you’re in an Ernst Lubitsch film!)
The Bowery. 1933. USA. Directed by Raoul Walsh. Screenplay by James Gleeson, Howard Esterbrook,
based on the novel by Bessie Roth Solomon, Michael L. Simmons. With Wallace Beery, George Raft,
Jackie Cooper. 92 min.
Friday, February 17, 1:30 p.m. T3
She Done Him Wrong. 1933. USA. Directed by Lowell Sherman. Screenplay by Mae West, Harvey F.
Thew, John Bright. With Mae West, Cary Grant, Owen Moore. 66 min.
Wednesday, February 22, 1:30 p.m. T3
Wednesday, March 30, 1:30 p.m. T3
Design for Living. 1933. USA. Directed by Ernst Lubitsch. Screenply by Ben Hecht, based on the play
by Noel Coward. With Fredric March, Gary Cooper, Miriam Hopkins. 91 min.
Thursday, February 23, 1:30 p.m. T3
ESCAPE
Even if the destination was the county fair, the journey from the familiar to the possibility of discovery,
to novel and mysterious experiences, characterizes the sextet of films in this group. In Henry King’s
State Fair, the Frake family breaks free of their claustrophobic small town during their week at the
titular celebration. On faraway Skull Island, a film crew discovers a gigantic gorilla named Kong and
brings him to New York, where he wreaks havoc on the Empire State Building with his new girlfriend in
tow. The classic King Kong is followed by The Son of Kong, in which the beast’s boy is less aggressive
than dad. In Trick for Trick the protagonists only go as far as New Jersey, but the emphasis is on the
strange and mysterious when magicians La Tour and Azrah duke it out to save a damsel in distress. Not
unlike Kong, Zani has been raised among the animals at the Zoo in Budapest, where he befriends an
orphaned runaway named Eve. This unlikely love story compares the regimentation of orphanages to
the life of a caged animal. Escape and exoticism propel Flying Down to Rio, as band leader/aviator
Roger Bond woos the Brazilian beauty Belinha de Rezende in a good-time, misery-busting musical.
State Fair. 1933. USA. Directed by Henry King. Screenplay by Sonya Levien, Paul Green, based on the
novel by Philip Strong. With Janet Gaynor, Will Roger, Lew Ayres. 97 min.
Friday, February 24, 1:30 p.m. T3
The Son of Kong. 1933. USA. Directed by Ernest B. Schoedsack. Screenplay by Ruth Rose. With
Robert Armstrong, Helen Mack, Frank Reicher.
70 min.
Thursday, March 2, 1:30 p.m. T3
Trick for Trick. 1933. USA. Directed by Hamilton MacFadden. Screenplay by Howard J. Green, based
on a story by Vivian Crosby, Harry Wagstaff Gribble, Shirley Warde. With Ralph Morgan, Sally Blane,
Victor Jory. 67 min.
Friday, March 3, 1:30 p.m. T3
Zoo in Budapest. 1933. USA. Directed by Rowland V. Lee. Screenplay by Lee, Louise Long, Dan
Totheroh, based on a story by Meville Baker, Jack Kirkland. With Loretta Young, Gene Raymond, O. P.
Heggie. 83 min.
Wednesday, March 8, 1:30 p.m. T3
Flying Down to Rio. 1933. USA. Directed by Thorton Freeland. Screenplay by Cyril Hume, H. W.
Hanemann, Erwin Gelsey, based on the play by Anne Caldwell and an original story by Lou Brock. With
Dolores del Rio, Ginger Rogers, Gene Raymond. 89 min.
Thursday, March 9, 1:30 p.m. T3
Friday, March 31, 1:30 p.m. T3