Diamonds Are an Art Institute’s Best Friend, Part Four

Posted by Mary Murray on May 22nd 2011 | 0 Comments

Tags: Institute

1936 at the movies

Last night the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute celebrated its 75th anniversary with a gala fundraiser. Heartfelt thanks to all who have contributed so much to this remarkable organization.

If the Institute opened to the public in 1936, what else was going on that year? 

Did you happen to see the movie The King’s Speech? It depicts the tumultuous year of 1936 within Britain’s royal family. After King George V died, his oldest child ascended to the throne as Edward VIII but that Mrs. Simpson – so inconveniently twice divorced (!) – captured his imagination as the story goes (but really because the charming couple were Nazi sympathizers), so he abdicated, leaving crown and country to his younger brother, King George VI.

 

Speaking of the movies, in Hollywood Mutiny on the Bounty, released in 1935,  starring Charles Laughton as Captain Bligh and Clark Gable as Fletcher Christian, won the 1936 Academy Award for Best Picture.

The 1930s could be my favorite decade for movies. These are just a handful of other great titles from 1936:

Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times

 

My Man Godfrey, starring the lovely Carole Lombard and the suave William Powell.

 

Camille, directed by George Cukor and starring Greta Garbo, Robert Taylor and Lionel Barrymore. If memory serves, Garbo utters the line “I . . . think . . . I’m . . . going . . . to . . . live,” just before she keels over dead from tuberculosis.

 

Petrified Forest, from the Robert Sherwood play, in which Bogie gets third billing after Leslie Howard and Bette Davis

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Shirley Temple’s Poor Little Rich Girl, wherein Shirley sings about the evils of spinach, avoids a kidnapping, warms cold hearts, and generally triumphs, as always. For me, it’s still a guilty pleasure because Jack Haley and Alice Faye are so great in their supporting roles as Jimmy “Puddin’ Head” Dolan and his long-suffering wife.

 

The charming Desire, Hollywood glamour at its best, with Gary Cooper as an auto worker on his first vacation abroad who is enchanted by Marlene Dietrich, a captivating jewel thief.

 

Swing Time, one of the great Astaire and Rogers pictures.

And the scoundrelly dreamboat Errol Flynn with his best leading lady Olivia de Havilland in Charge of the Light Brigade.