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The Film Programs of the Detroit Film Theatre, Michigan Theater and Redford Theatre

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Looking Back

October 1931/1956/1981

Step back in time to see what our movie palaces were presenting in October 1931, 1956, and 1981. Also included is some interesting history about other area movie theaters and the Detroit Institute of Arts. Film titles are linked to the Internet Movie Database.

* 1931 * 1956 * 1981 *

1931

"The 1931 Nut Crop is Ready!" shouted The Ann Arbor Daily News about the Oct. 18 Michigan opening of Monkey Business, with The 4 Marx Brothers (Groucho, Harpo, Chico and Zeppo). "The plot, to be sure, is warped and twisted around the fantastic capers of the riotous brothers until it looks as though it had been put through a wringing machine," wrote Allison Ind in the Oct. 17 News (video courtesy of TCM).

The Michigan also had stage shows with its movies, including a twin bill of New York musical comedy star Roy Cummings live in One Afternoon and Joe E. Brown in the movie Broadminded. Comedian Frank Libuse, "The Colonel of American Nuts in Command of a Regiment of Laughs!" shared the spotlight with the film Guilty Hands (Lionel Barrymore). And movie star Fifi D'Orsay used her time between films to include the Michigan on a personal tour.

"The composite heroine of the confession films of the early Thirties was a woman who gave up her chastity in cold blood," wrote Richard Griffith and Arthur Mayer in the 1957 book The Movies. The Redford twice presented the Queen of the Confession Film, Constance Bennett, in The Common Law and Bought. Other popular Redford movies were The Smiling Lieutenant (Maurice Chevalier and Claudette Colbert) and Bad Girl ("A Human Life Story!"), with Sally Eilers and James Dunn.

On Oct. 1, the Publix theater chain that included the Redford opened its newest neighborhood theater—the Eastown (Harper at Van Dyke). Sporting Blood, with Clark Gable, was the opening night attraction. "Three New Shows Every Week!" read the Detroit News ad for the theater. "Tremendous multi-featured shows that have made Publix entertainment famous the world over! At new low prices!" (15 cents afternoons, 25 cents weekday evenings, 35 cents weekend evenings, and always 10 cents for children).

In downtown Detroit, the Paramount hosted two of the most publicized movies of the month. Oct. 8 saw the world premiere of Susan Lenox (Her Fall and Rise), with Greta Garbo and Clark Gable ("The Stars of the Hour in the Year's Greatest Screen Event!"). Three weeks later, this film gave way to Frank Capra's Platinum Blonde, starring Loretta Young and Jean Harlow.

In spite of the financial challenges of the two-year old Great Depression, the Detroit Institute of Arts opened its 1931-32 season on Oct. 6 with a show by Swedish sculptor Carl Milles. In the Oct. 4 Detroit News, Florence Davies wrote, "The Milles show is the happiest possible choice for the first exhibition of the season for it strikes a vigorous, even a triumphant note." Also on Oct. 6, the institute presented an exhibition of fine prints that were loaned by Detroit collectors, including the noted architect Albert Kahn.

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1956

Visitors to Redford on Oct. 10-13 watched a double bill that saw one era beginning as another was ending. The Killing, an early triumph for director Stanley Kubrick, was paired with Pardners, one of the last movies to team Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. Pardners enjoyed a week-long run and also played with Johnny Concho, in which "Frank Sinatra, the Screen's Hottest Star, Turns on the Heat in His First Western."

Moby Dick (Gregory Peck) led seven days of Redford double bills with the drama The Catered Affair (Bette Davis, Ernest Borgnine and Debbie Reynolds) and the western Star in the Dust (John Agar and Mamie Van Doren). The King and I also played for a week, with Stranger at My Door (MacDonald Carey and Patricia Medina) and These Wilder Years (James Cagney and Barbra Stanwyck). And young Paul Newman felt that Somebody Up There Likes Me, on a double bill with Olivia de Havilland in The Ambassador's Daughter.

The passions of War and Peace played out on the Michigan screen for a held-over run of 10 days. This epic starring Audrey Hepburn and Henry Fonda was shown three times daily, with "Admission Prices For This Attraction Only" at 90 cents before and $1.25 after 4 p.m., $1.25 all day Sundays, and 50 cents always for children. Other popular movies at the Michigan were the drama The Unguarded Moment (Esther Williams), the musical The Best Things in Life are Free (Gordon MacRae and Dan Dailey), and Foreign Intrigue (Robert Mitchum).

Controversy hit the big screen at the Michigan's Ann Arbor partner in the Butterfield chain, the State Theater. On Oct. 13, The Bad Seed opened, with an Ann Arbor News ad that read "Recommended for Adults Only!" and "Note! There will be a brief 'catch-your-breath' intermission at each showing...No One Will Be Seated During The Last 15 Minutes!"

Area art film lovers visited the Orpheum in Ann Arbor to see Too Bad She's Bad (1954, Sophia Loren), Riviera (1954, Martine Carol) and the moving 1952 Italian neorealistic drama Umberto D. In Detroit, the World and Studio showed Rififi (1954), which played at the Detroit Film Theatre in December 2000. Big Detroit premieres included Tea and Sympathy at the Adams and The Solid Gold Cadillac at the Michigan. And the Fox celebrated Halloween with a midnight double bill of House of Dracula (1945) and House of Frankenstein (1944) on Friday, Oct. 26 and Saturday, Oct. 27.

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1981

The Detroit Film Theatre visited Australia on Oct. 16 with the 1978 film The Getting of Wisdom, directed by Bruce Beresford, also responsible for the recent 1980 hit Breaker Morant. Other prominent DFT films were the 1946 World War II documentary Let There Be Light (directed by John Huston); the latest from acclaimed Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, From the Life of the Marionettes (1980); and the 1976 documentary Edvard Munch, which returned to the DFT in November 2005.

Alfred Hitchcock continued his Sunday night series at the DFT with Blackmail (1929), Murder! (1930), Rich and Strange (1931) and The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934). The Afternoon Film Theatre of the Detroit Institute of Arts finished its film noir series with Kiss Me Deadly (1955), and began a tribute to French director René Clair with The Phantom of the Moulin Rouge (1925), The Imaginary Voyage (1926) and Under the Roofs of Paris (1930).

Long before the Screening Room added flexibility to the Michigan's film programming, the theater took a break from movies for the Oct. 21-24, 1981 presentation of the play Harvey, by the Ann Arbor Civic Theatre. In an Ann Arbor News article, play director Ted Heusel said he remembered seeing Ethel Barrymore at the Michigan in 1938 in The Corn is Green.

On the Michigan big screen, highlights included a double feature of the cult classics Harold and Maude and King of Hearts. Also showing was a Marx Brothers twin bill of A Day at the Races and A Night at the Opera, which appeared again at the Michigan in the Summer Classic Film Series of 2005 and 2006. On the serious side, organist Dennis James accompanied a screening of the controversial classic The Birth of a Nation.

The Classic Film Theatre, which screened many of the Michigan films, started another film program in September 1981 at the Punch & Judy Theater in Grosse Pointe Farms, showing "a veritable garden of delights for people who take their movies seriously," wrote Detroit News film columnist Susan Stark on Oct. 30, 1981. The CFT's November/December schedule included The Story of Adele H. (1975), The Grapes of Wrath (1940) and The Black Stallion (1979).

On Oct. 2 and 3, the Redford presented "The Genuine Original" Tarzan the Ape Man (1932), with Johnny Weismuller and Maureen O'Sullivan. A week later, on Oct. 10, theatre organist Lyn Larsen livened the air with his delightful melodies. Big Band music came to the Redford on Oct. 16 and 17 when James Stewart and June Allyson starred in The Glenn Miller Story (1953). The month ended in dashing style on Oct. 30 and 31 with Captain Blood (1935, Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland).

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