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Kent State University Museum’s Movie Date With Kate regional film series comes to Cleveland on Saturday, August 7 at 2 pm 13 th Annual Cinema at the Square’s screening at the Palace Theatre of the classic Spencer Tracy-Katharine Hepburn comedy Adam’s Rib (1949, dir George Cukor).
Movie Date With Kate supports the museum’s exhibition “Katharine Hepburn: Dressed for Stage and Screen,” opening Oct 2, 2010 . The film series partners with major classic movie venues and cultural institutions throughout Northeast Ohio.
“Adam’s Rib was named among the top 10 romantic comedies of all time by the American Film Institute in 2007,” said Nathan Scott, Venue Booking Manager at PlayhouseSquare who selected the films for this season's Cinema at the Square series.
Adam’s Rib is the second film being shown in the Movie Date With Kate series, the first film having been Summertime (1955, dir. David Lean), shown July 10 at the Akron Civic Theatre and presented in conjunction with the Summit County Italian-American Festival. The Akron Civic was built in 1929 in the Moorish style, restored in 2001, features a ceiling of twinkling stars, and seats 1,600.
The Palace Theatre, as its name suggests, is another impressive historic venue. The Palace originally opened as a vaudeville house in 1922 and modified to show films in 1926. Designed in the French Imperial style with spectacular marble staircases and crystal chandeliers, it was fully restored in 1988, seats a little over 2,700, and boasts a 940 square-foot movie screen.
Adam’s Rib is the sixth movie to pair Katharine Hepburn with Spencer Tracy. Tracy and Hepburn –- he was always billed first -- did nine films together over a span of 25 years, the first being Woman of the Year (1942) and the last, Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner? The couples’ on-screen chemistry and off-screen relationship is Hollywood legend and the stuff of countless books, movies, plays, documentaries (including one by Hepburn on Tracy), magazine articles, blogs and internet postings.
Directed by George Cukor, who made ten movies with Hepburn, and written by famed writing team Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon especially for the pair, the comedy pits married attorneys Amanda and Adam on opposite sides of a trial in which Doris Attinger (Judy Holliday) is charged with shooting her two-timing husband (Tom Ewell). Adding to the courtroom battle between the sexes is David Wayne as the piano-playing “serpent” in the Bonner household’s Eden, constantly tempting Adam’s Amanda with Cole Porter’s tune “Farewell Amanda.”
“Walter Plunkett’s costumes reinforced Hepburn’s position as an icon for style-conscious professional women,” said Jean Druesedow, the director of the Kent State University Museum, adding that Miss Hepburn even kept the black evening dress she wears in Adam’s Rib for herself.
“That dress will be prominently displayed in our exhibition,” she noted.
Available in limited quantities is a special $25 package featuring a ticket to the movie, two passes to the museum’s Hepburn exhibit, and admission to the post-movie reception at the nearby Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative, 1309 Euclid Avenue. To purchase your reception package, call the museum directly at 330-672-3450. For more details, go to www.kent.edu/museum. |