Archive Talks: Bombshell
- This is a past program
Presented by the UCLA Film & Television Archive. Learn more at cinema.ucla.edu.
In-person: Kenneth Turan, author of Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg: The Whole Equation; film critic Justin Chang. Book signing with Turan before the screening.
Beginning in the 1920s, studio head Louis B. Mayer and his wunderkind vice president of production Irving Thalberg built MGM into an image-making machine so potent that they could reveal its very workings in an evening’s entertainment and audiences would still be seduced by its illusions. Case in point, the outlandish screwball comedy Bombshell (1933). Jean Harlow glitters as the titular starlet who keeps her studio and a comic coterie of hangers-on in the green with the help of an unscrupulous publicity man (the inimitable Lee Tracy) who spins their foibles and charms, alike, into front page headlines and ticket sales. The Archive is honored to host long-time Los Angeles Times film critic Kenneth Turan at the Billy Wilder Theater for this special screening presented in conjunction with his latest book, Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg: The Whole Equation.
35mm, b&w, 96 min. Director: Victor Fleming. Screenwriter: John Lee Mahin, Jules Furthman. With: Jean Harlow, Lee Tracy, Frank Morgan.
The UCLA Film & Television Archive is a division of UCLA Library, and presents its public programs in the Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer, among other venues. For more information about the Archive, visit cinema.ucla.edu.
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