Each month, Melanie Friesen invites a distinguished guest to Vancity Theatre’s Cinema Salon, in order to present his/her favourite film. After the screening, both audience and speaker have the opportunity to engage over drinks and snacks in the Vancity lounge. This month’s film is Howard Hanks’ Ball of Fire.
Hot tomato Sugarpuss O’Shea (Barbara Stanwyck, the ne plus ultra floozy broad) has to lay low for a while as her gangster beau is suspected of murder. Like any fast-thinking dame, she hides out with a group of professors who live together in a New York City mansion, assembling data for an encyclopedia. Their sheltered life is facilitated by Miss Bragg (Kathleen Howard), the puritanical housekeeper. The youngest, Professor Potts (Gary Cooper), is researching American slang and who has a bigger mouthful of the vernacular than Sugarpuss? Romance is the cherry on top of this banana split, one of the wittiest films of its era co-written by Billy Wilder.
“What a team: Stanwyck was rarely sexier, Cooper never more endearing. A jewel of a comedy. ” — James Sanford, Kalamazoo Gazette
This month’s Cinema Salon is hosted by Richard Goodwin. Goodwin started in films as a tea boy after doing military service in the SAS (Special Air Service) in Malaya in 1955. He went on to watch Joan Collins walk with a book on her head while still a student at the Rank Organisation (a British entertainment conglomerate) charm school.
The first film he produced was Tales of Beatrix Potter, and later Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile, The Mirror Crack’d, Little Dorrit, A Passage to India, and Seven Years in Tibet. Goodwin built a studio in Rotherhithe, London with his wife Christine Edzard; the studio currently creates period costumes for filmmakers worldwide.
Vancity Cinema Salon with Richard Goodwin Presents Ball of Fire
Date: Tuesday, November 5, 7:30 pm
Venue: Vancity Theatre, 1181 Seymour Street, Vancouver
Tickets: $13.00; may be purchased online
