Customarily, each six-week Biograph Theatre calendar program displayed art and film notes for 12 double features. Generally, each twin bill ran for three or four days.
About the time of the Biograph's fifth anniversary, in February of 1977, the owners in D.C. decided to make a couple of changes that pleased Rea. He had been pressing them to experiment with a new programming policy. Rea wanted to have a particular theme be adhered to for the entire six weeks of the program and call it a "festival." After a few discussions, Alan and Lenny agreed to try the concept.
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The time was right because Alan and Lenny were starting to dabble with the regional distribution of films. Rather than own more theaters -- they owned a suburban twin in Alexandria and the two Biograph's -- instead, they wanted to branch out.
Which meant they wanted to pass on some of their time-consuming duties to me. Accordingly, they decided I should take on the task of programing one screen, the repertory side, with my festival concept.
Until then, we had usually decided what to run on both screens pretty much by committee on the telephone, which resulted with a hodgepodge -- a little of this and a little of that. Sometimes, I would go up to Georgetown for a meeting. From this point on, I also designed and pasted up the mechanical art and film notes for all of the festival programs.
The first of the new style programs that spring was called "American Classics." A still from "Casablanca" (1943), featuring the front of Rick's Cafe Americain, was on the cover. That was Program No. 37.
Program No. 38 was devoted to directors considered to be "Auteurs." It offered 12 double features, with each pair by a great director. The schedule ran from April 14 through May 25. The pictures on that program were:
Huston's "The Misfits" (1961) & "The Maltese Falcon" (1941); Ford's "The Grapes of Wrath" (1940) & "My Darling Clementine" (1946); Welles' "Citizen Kane" (1941) & "The Magnificent Ambersons" (1942); Buñuel's "The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" (1972) & "Un Chien Andalou" (1929); Truffaut's "Small Change" (1976) & "The 400 Blows" (1959); Fellini's "Juliet of the Spirits" (1965) & "8½" (1963); Bergman's "The Seventh Seal" (1957) & "Cries & Whispers" (1972); Altman's "Images" (1972) & "California Split" (1974); Hitchcock's "The Lady Vanishes" (1938) & "Jamaica Inn" (1939); Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai" (1954) & "Sanjuro" (1962); Wertmuller's "The Seven Beauties" (1975) & "Swept Away…" (1974); Polanski's "Repulsion" (1965) & "The Tenant" (1976).
The reader may wonder why not Welles' "Touch of Evil" (1958), instead of the Ambersons? Or maybe Truffaut's "Day for Night" (1973), instead of Small Change? The short answer is that the world of distributors is a crazy quilt and the exhibition rights to any particular film can be complicated. Which can make many good pairings impossible.
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James Cagney in "Yankee Doodle Dandy" (1942) & "Public Enemy" (1931); Clark Gable in "Call of the Wild" (1934) & "Mutiny on the Bounty" (1935); Errol Flynn in "The Adventures of Robin Hood" (1938) & "The Sea Hawk" (1940); Kirk Douglas in "Paths of Glory" (1957) & "Town Without Pity" (1961); Gary Cooper in "The Fountainhead" (1949) & "Sergeant York" (1941); Clint Eastwood in "A Fistful of Dollars" (1964) & "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" (1966); John Wayne in "Stagecoach" (1939) & "True Grit" (1969); Tyrone Power in "The Mark of Zorro" (1940) & "Prince of Foxes" (1949); James Stewart in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" (1939) & "Anatomy of a Murder" (1959); Marlon Brando in "The Chase" (1966) & "On the Waterfront" (1954); Humphrey Bogart in "To Have and Have Not" (1944) & "The Caine Mutiny" (1954); Burt Lancaster in "Elmer Gantry" (1960) & "From Here to Eternity" (1953).
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Program No. 43: Literature on Film (September 29 - November 9, 1977):
"Lost Horizons" (1937) & "Gunga Din" (1939); "The Picture of Dorian Gray" (1945) & Dr. Jekyll and Mr, Hyde" (1932); "Wuthering Heights" (1939) & "Jane Eyre" (1944); "The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939) & "The Thin Man" (1934); "Richard III" (1955) & "MacBeth" (1972); "Of Human Bondage" (1934) & "Lolita" (1962); "Slaughterhouse 5" (1972) & "Ulysses" (1967); "Anna Karenina" (1935) & "Dr. Zchivago" (1965); "Little Women" (1933) & "David Copperfield" (1946) "The Stranger" (1967) & "Steppenwolf" (1974); "Stage Door" (1937) & "Alice Adams" (1935); "Grapes of Wrath" (1940) & "Les Miserables" (1935).
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"How I Won the War" (1967) & "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex" (1972); "Taking Off" (1971) & "Diary of a Mad Housewife" (1970); "Rebel Without a Cause" (1955) & "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf" (1966); "The Battle of Algiers" (1966) & "Dr. Strangelove..." (1964); "Easy Rider" (1969) & "The Loneliness of A Long Distance Runner" (1962); "I Am Curious, Yellow" (1967) & "Chafed Elbows" (1966): "The Graduate" (1967) & "8½" (1963); "Fahrenheit 451" (1966) & "The Incredible Shrinking Man" (1957); "Woodstock" (1970) & "Scorpio Rising" (1965); "Alfie" (1966) & "Brewster McCloud" (1970); "Rosemary's Baby" (1968) & "Midnight Cowboy" (1969); "American Graffiti" (1973) & "Cool World" (1963); "Performance" (1970) & "High School Confidential" (1958); "Blow Up" (1966) & "Masculine Feminine" (1966).
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Program No. 57. Great Ladies of the Silver Screen (July 16 - September 9, 1981).
Bette Davis in "Dark Victory" (1939) & "Jezebel" (1938); Lauren Becall in "The Big Sleep" (1946) & "To Have and Have Not" (1944); Ingrid Bergman in "Spellbound" (1945) & "Casablanca" (1942); Anne Bancroft in "The Miracle Worker" (1062) & "The Pumpkin Eater" (1964); Faye Dunaway in "Chinatown" (1974) & "Network" (1976); Audrey Hepburn in "Sabrina" (1954) & "Robin and Marian" (1976); Elizabeth Taylor in "Suddenly Last Summer" (1959) & "A Place in the Sun" (1951); Joan Crawford in "Grand Hotel" (1932) & "Mildred Pearce" (1945); Marilyn Monroe in "The Misfits" (1961) & "Some Like It Hot" (1959); Sissy Spacek in "3 Women" (1977) & "Carrie" (1976); Irene Dunn in "My Favorite Wife" (1940) & "The Awful Truth" (1937); Gene Tierney in "The Razor's Edge" (1946) & "Leave Her to Heaven" (1945); Rosalind Russell in "His Girl Friday" (1940) & "The Women" (1939; Julie Christie in "Darling" (1965) & "Far From the Madding Crowd" (1967); Catherine Deneuve in "Tristana" (1970) & "Repulsion" (1965); Barbara Stanwick in "Double Indemnity" (1944) & "Sorry, Wrong Number" (1948).
Program No. 60. RKO (July 11 - August 18, 1982).
"Top Hat" (1935) & "Damsel in Distress" (1936); "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" (1939) & "The Informer" (1935); "King Kong" (1933) & "Mighty Joe Young" (1949); "Suspicion" (1941) & "The Live By Night" (1948); "Sylvia Scarlett" (1936) & "Mister Blandings Builds His Dream House" (1948); "Murder My Sweet" (1945) & "Macao" (1952); "The Mexican Spitfire" (1939) & "Room Service" (1938); "Journey Into Fear" (1942) & "This Land Is Mine" (1943); "The Thing" (1951) & "Cat People" (1942); "The Boy With Green Hair" (1948) & "Woman on the Beach" (1947); "Citizen Kane" (1941) & "Fort Apache" (1948); "The Curse of the Cat People" (1944) & "The Body Snatcher" (1945).
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Among the other popular festival themes were: Comedies, Spectacle, Horror/Science Fiction and Academy Award Winners.
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