Harold Lloyd: A Legacy

By Devin Wachs, Public Relations Manager, BMFI

This is the second part of a two-part interview with Harold Lloyd's granddaughter, Suzanne Lloyd, in honor of Bryn Mawr Film Institute's screening of Safety Last! on June 25. Read the first part here.

Harold Lloyd keeps his granddaughter Suzanne quite busy. As the caretaker for his collection, she is responsible for preserving one of the largest private film libraries in the world and introducing the silent comedy legend to new audiences. Her grandfather’s film library gets around so much, in fact, that she laughingly calls the collection “Harold”, as if it is a person, “because ‘he’ is so busy.” (She lovingly refers to the man himself as “Dad”.)



Harold Lloyd dangles above the street below in this iconic scene from Safety Last!, a new restoration of which recently screened at the Cannes Film Festival and will be featured at Bryn Mawr Film Institute on June 25.

It has indeed been a busy few months. After taking “Harold” to the Cannes Film Festival for an oceanfront screening of the new restoration of Safety Last!—showing at Bryn Mawr Film Institute on June 25—they were off to England to oversee the recording of composer Carl Davis’s new scores for The Freshman and High and Dizzy with the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Recently, home viewers also enjoyed fifteen newly restored Harold Lloyd shorts on Turner Classic Movies, co-hosted by Suzanne.

A Grandfather’s Gifts

Suzanne was granted a very special view into classic Hollywood from a young age. She was raised at Greenacres, her grandparents’ estate in Beverly Hills, where she was neighbors with the likes of Cary Grant and schoolmates with the daughters of Jimmy Stewart, William Wellman, and Randolph Scott.

“One of [my grandfather’s] dearest friends was Doug Fairbanks—his best friend—and Mary Pickford was one of my grandmother’s best friends. I used to go to see ‘Aunt Mary’ all the time. She had great cookies, nice dogs. Colleen Moore was my godmother. I had no idea who they were. You just accept them as your grandparents’ friends. I got a clue who Walt Disney was when I was older. He had a train in his backyard, and when we went to Disneyland, I put it together that it was named for the same guy with the train.”


Suzanne Lloyd with her grandfather, Harold.

Suzanne knew her grandfather first and foremost as a photographer, philanthropist, and technology enthusiast. She remembers when, as a child, they visited Charlie Chaplin at his house in Switzerland. “They said that he worked in the same business that Dad did, but I thought that meant running hospitals, or taking pictures. I didn't realize who he was.”

When Harold passed away in 1971, Suzanne was only nineteen-and-a-half years old, but she was entrusted with the task of protecting his legacy and managing his film library, a responsibility for which Harold had been unofficially grooming her for years.


“It was a real privilege. But I worked on the films with him before he died and I really knew them. I used to go lectures with him. I went to the opening of the American Film Institute. When about fifteen, I started I started working on the films with him at the house with a couple of film students.

“My first job was to clean, rewrap, and air out nitrate film. Have you ever smelled nitrate film? It’s not fun. Dad said, ‘This is a good way to break you in. Film isn’t fun, it’s hard work. You need to know the elements of film before you can do more.’”

He arranged for Suzanne to take film classes at USC when she was just a senior in high school. Although Harold had retired in 1947, before Suzanne was born, if friends were shooting a movie, he’d take her to visit the sets.

“Robert Wise was shooting Star at Fox. I’d just broken my leg—it was a bad break. I couldn’t go to school. Dad called him up and said, ‘Listen, Bob, I’m trying to give Sue an overview of stuff, but I’m not on set anymore.’ So I went down to the set and they put me in one of the director’s chairs every day while they worked. I put my leg up; the grips just moved the chair around. For two or three weeks, I just sat there, every day. ‘Just sit there, take notes,’ they told me.” She did.

Passing the Torch

“He was very good about passing on torches and helping others. He started a lot of people’s careers,” Suzanne recalls. Jack Lemmon’s son, Chris, was born in Harold’s beach house, where Harold let Jack and his wife live while Jack was starting out as an actor. Robert Wagner was introduced to Harold through Suzanne’s mom, and he became close with the Lloyd family. “Dad said, ‘Well, maybe we’d better get you an agent.’ That led to his first job.”

And those young film students that worked with Suzanne to help Harold archive his films? “They were Rich Correll—the son of Charles Correll, who played Andy in Amos and Andy—and David Nowell, who’s now one of the top aerial cinematographers in the world. Richard is one of the creators of Hannah Montana. He did the restorations on the new shorts for Turner Classic Movies, and he still has me rewinding the film and marking the positions. I never seem to have gotten out of that!” Suzanne reflects with a hearty laugh.



In the decades since Suzanne has assumed responsibility for preserving Harold Lloyd’s film library, she has introduced his work to new audiences in numerous ways. In addition to presenting his newly restored films at festivals worldwide and on Turner Classic Movies, she also co-authored the 2002 book Harold Lloyd: Master Comedian, has compiled two books of his 3-D photographs, and was the executive producer for the Emmy-nominated British documentary, Harold Lloyd: The Third Genius.

“It’s Harold’s Job”

I asked Suzanne what has surprised her most about Harold over the years, and if there were things that she is still learning about him through his working with his films.

“I had to really learn to do public speaking when I was young. The first time I went out to introduce the films I was nervous. This archivist who had worked on them said, ‘Speak from your heart. Just remember, the moment that Harold gets up there, it’s Harold’s job. He knows what to do, he’s always known what to do.’ The laughter and reactions to his films are just amazing, year after year. I wish I could have been there in the beginning, but they are so consistent, I bet it’s the same as it is now. You need to see his films with an audience. People who have never seen them come out saying, ‘Why haven’t we seen him? Where has he been?’ That just thrills me and amazes me every time.”


Thanks to Suzanne’s work, the laughs will keep coming and new audiences will continue to be able to discover “Harold”, both the man and his film legacy, for a long time to come.

See the 90th anniversary digital restoration of Safety Last! at Bryn Mawr Film Institute on June 25.

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Devin Wachs is the Public Relations Manager for Bryn Mawr Film Institute. She joined BMFI in 2005, following her graduation from Bryn Mawr College. If you send BMFI a message on Facebook or Twitter or are interested in onscreen sponsorships, she's the one who will be in touch!

Harold Lloyd: The Grand Prince of Cinema

By Devin Wachs, Public Relations Manager, BMFI

This is the first part of a two-part interview with Harold Lloyd's granddaughter, Suzanne Lloyd, in honor of Bryn Mawr Film Institute's screening of Safety Last! on June 25.
Film comedian extraordinaire Harold Lloyd returned to the Cannes Film Festival this year, thanks to a brand-new digital restoration of his hit 1923 comedy, Safety Last!

“The 2k restoration is just gorgeous. I’ve seen it on the big screen, and once you’ve seen it on the huge screen, it’s amazing. It’s incredible,” his granddaughter, Suzanne Lloyd, enthuses.

Bryn Mawr Film Institute is among the theaters featuring the new restoration of Safety Last! The film, which just celebrated its 90th anniversary, will also be released on Blu-Ray through The Criterion Collection. Even as she was preparing to leave for Cannes later that day, Suzanne generously gave her time for a phone interview from her home in Los Angeles.

It’s not the first time she’s accompanied the silent film legend to Cannes. “He actually took me to Cannes when he won in 1962. I went with my grandmother, my mother, and his assistant, Roy Brooks.” Harold lit the festival on fire that year when he presented a compilation of some of his best work, Harold Lloyd’s World of Comedy, and was honored with a plaque that read “To the Grand Prince of Cinema.”

The King of Daredevil Comedy

Harold Lloyd started in Hollywood by sneaking onto the Universal lot, where he struck up a friendship with producer Hal Roach. For Roach’s production company, Harold created a variety of characters reminiscent of Chaplin’s Little Tramp. His one-reel comedies soon became two-reelers after he developed his own “glasses” character, an everyman romantic lead and boy-next-door that audiences loved.

Safety Last!, one of the “thrill comedies” Harold made, was a turning point in his career and contains one of the most iconic images in silent cinema: Harold dangling from the face of a giant clock high over the street below. In the 1923 feature, Harold plays a hard-working everyman who ends up climbing the side of a skyscraper as part of a marketing stunt in order to make his girlfriend think he’s a successful businessman.

The film was a big hit, and Harold Lloyd was named the “King of Daredevil Comedy.” Following on its heels were Lloyd's features The Freshman (1925), The Kid Brother (1927), and Speedy (1928), making him the number one box office star two years in a row in the late ‘20s.


In Safety Last!, Harold plays a department store salesclerk pretending to make it big in order to impress his girlfriend.
Being Funny is a Serious Business

Suzanne’s grandmother, Mildred, played Harold’s love interest in Safety Last! The onscreen couple was courting during production.

“Right before the movie was released, my grandparents got married,” Suzanne states. “Well, it was the last film that she ever made with him, because he wasn’t going to play with his married wife in movies. He didn’t think it was that funny—he was supposed to be the bachelor chasing the girl. That’s when Jobyna Ralston stepped in to be his leading lady. But my grandparents had really good chemistry together and [my grandmother] adored him. They were married for 49 years. She was nineteen when she started with him; she was with him when he had his bomb accident.”


Mildred Davis and Harold Lloyd in a promotional image for A Sailor Made Man (1921). They starred in several films together before they were married in 1923.
At a promotional photo shoot at Hal Roach’s studio in 1919, Harold was supposed to light a cigarette with a fake prop bomb. The bomb went off in Harold’s hand, blinding him and blowing off part of his right hand. His career was said to be over.

“Who put the bomb there?” Suzanne queries. “He was working on his third film with my grandmother, Mildred, and this happens. It was absolutely killing.”

Douglas Fairbanks, Harold’s best friend, came to visit Harold and offered him a place at his studio, United Artists. But Harold refused: “You have your comedian.” (Charlie Chaplin was one of the studio founders.) Douglas asked him what he was going to do, and Harold replied, “I’m going to wait and see and think positive. They think my eyes can come back.”

Lo and behold, in a few months, sight had returned in both eyes and his face had started to heal.

Suzanne reflects, “He was just a driven person and he was so enthusiastic about life and such a positive thinker—Why Worry? is actually the name of one of his films. He believed that you have to be positive and things will work out.”

He didn’t let the accident slow him down, and he kept his scars from the public.


Harold Lloyd was known for performing his own stunts in "thrill comedies".
His films grossed more than Charlie Chaplin's or Buster Keaton's.
“They had several movies ready for release,” Suzanne explains. “He said, ‘I don’t want people to come in there and look for my handicap or disability. Just hold the movies back. Instead of putting the movies out every two weeks, hold them back so I’m not dropped from the screen.’” Roach had a thin flesh-colored glove made in New York to cover the injury. Harold went back to work nine months later, but wore the glove in every movie he made after the accident.

“People really didn’t know in the public,” Suzanne continues. “He learned to do autographs with his left hand. He’d keep his hand in his pocket at premieres and things. He’d shake with his left hand; if he really knew you and you were a good friend of his, he’d give you his right hand. He was always athletic and always played handball. He played handball even with his bad hand, to build up strength.”

So when Harold was dangling from the clock face in Safety Last!, only a few years later, he was performing the daredevil stunt with only one complete hand.

A Modern Visionary

By the time he retired from the screen in 1947, Harold Lloyd had made 200 films. But retirement didn’t mean “rest” for the go-getter. He devoted himself to the Shriner Hospitals for Children and, in the 1960s, he was named President and Chairman of the Board. Always fascinated by photography, he was an avid 3-D photographer and an early proponent of the idea of using 3-D in films. His photography library contains nearly 300,000 stereo slides he made from 1947 to 1971.

“He was just a real visionary and a pioneer,” Suzanne says. “He was controlling about his films to the point where he didn’t want them put on television where an editor would hack them up for commercials [and ruin the pacing]. A number of generations lost out because he didn’t want to do that. In some ways, Harold is behind in recognition compared to Chaplin or Keaton.

“But if you play a Harold Lloyd film, he‘s more modern,” she continues. “He’s not in a character. He’s your Tom Hanks, your Jimmy Stewart, your Jack Lemmon, maybe your Jason Bateman. He’s your guy on the street. He’s always smiling, he’s always moving. He’s always getting into trouble and getting out of trouble… He set the template for romantic comedy.”

The 90th anniversary digital restoration of Safety Last! will be showing at Bryn Mawr Film Institute on Tuesday, June 25.

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Devin Wachs is the Public Relations Manager for Bryn Mawr Film Institute. She joined BMFI in 2005, following her graduation from Bryn Mawr College. If you send BMFI a message on Facebook or Twitter or are interested in onscreen sponsorships, she's the one who will be in touch!

Summer Classics: BMFI Staff Picks

By Devin Wachs, Public Relations Manager, BMFI 

Our annual Summer Classics series of repertory favorites from Hollywood and beyond begins next week, Tuesday, June 4, with the original King Kong. All summer long, we’ll be featuring vintage and recent classics on the big screen, with film series celebrating iconic filmmakers Alfred Hitchcock and David Lean, three new sing-alongs, the new 90th anniversary DCP restoration of Harold Lloyd’s silent comedy Safety Last!, and one night Summer Classic Seminars on Back to the Future and Brief Encounter. In addition, for the first time we’re featuring family films on Saturday mornings all summer long, including a month of the Marx Brothers!

We asked some of our staff to tell us what they're most looking forward to seeing at BMFI this summer. Do you agree? What are you excited to see?

Little Shop of Horrors Sing-along – Wednesday, June 12, 7:00 pm
Chosen by Kerri Grogan, Staff Assistant

I don't know about you, but I make it a habit to sing along with every musical I know, every time I watch them. And what's more fun than a campy musical about carnivorous alien plants? Answer: watching campy musicals about carnivorous alien plants on a big screen...and singing along with everyone in the theater. It sounds like it's gonna be a blast.


Sing along with Rick Moranis, who plays Seymour, the caretaker to the floral menace known as Audrey II in Little Shop of Horrors.

Safety Last! – Tuesday, June 25, 7:00 pm
Chosen by Andrew J. Douglas, Ph.D., Director of Education

I’m very much looking forward to Safety Last! (1923) because though it’s Harold Lloyd’s most famous film, it really hasn’t been seen by a large segment of the contemporary audience, and this style of daring, physical comedy—similarly performed by Lloyd’s (even) more famous peers, Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, and Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle—is a lost art that needs to be preserved, and enjoyed, through theatrical screenings like this one. Also, I think, not unlike “Rosebud,” far more people know the image of a man dangling from a clock, (apparently) high above a city street, than have actually seen the film from which it originates, and I like that people who come to see the film will be reminded of that connection—or make it for the first time.


Harold Lloyd hangs precariously from the clock of a New York skyscraper in Safety Last!

Back to the Future - Tuesday, July 2
Film at 7:00 pm
Summer Classics Seminar at 6:30 pm
Chosen by Valerie Temple, Programming Manager

I'm teaching a Summer Classics Seminar on Back to the Future, but that's only part of the reason I'm looking forward to seeing the time travelling adventure on the big screen. Even though I've seen this particular film approximately 192 times (at least), I've never had the pleasure of seeing it on the big screen. Finally, I'll get to see that souped up DeLorean zooming across a screen larger than my TV! I am worried that I'll disturb the other patrons as I know the dialogue by heart and can't help but quote along with the movie. So, if you come to the screening and I'm making too much of a ruckus, don't hesitate to tell me to "make like a tree and get out of there!"

Great Scott! Christopher Lloyd and Michael J. Fox are perfectly cast in Back to the Future.

Brief Encounter - Tuesday, August 13
Film at 7:00 pm
Summer Classics Seminar at 6:30 pm
Chosen by Pat Wesley, Director of Development and Communications

I am not sure which pairing is less likely: two thirty-something, properly married (to others) war-time Brits or David Lean and Noël Coward. I do know the result is a wistful, tender Brief Encounter and I can’t wait to get lost again in the foggy heartbreak of it all.

Celia Johnson, boarding a train, shares a poignant look with Trevor Howard in Brief Encounter. 

Heavyweights – Saturday, August 17, 11:00 am
Chosen by Andrew J. Douglas, Ph.D., Director of Education

I’ve never seen Heavyweights, but I’m very much looking forward to completing the trilogy of Ben Stiller-as-extremely-fit-but-dumb-as-a-bag-of-hammers-guy films that also includes Zoolander (2001) and Dodgeball (2004). Given the Disney branding and family-friendly elements of this film, I’m not expecting for the hilarity to be quite as ribald as it was in those films, but on the other hand, with co-writer/executive producer Judd Apatow (The 40-Year-Old Virgin) behind the scenes, and comic talents like Paul Feig (director of Bridesmaids), Kenan Thompson (Saturday Night Live), Jeffrey Tambor (Arrested Development), and comedy duo Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara on screen, I don’t think I’ll be disappointed.


Ben Stiller stars in Heavyweights as the insane (and insanely strict) fitness coach at Camp Hope.

For my part, although many of these films are personal favorites, I am particularly excited to bring a recent delight back to BMFI: Magic Camp, which we'll be showing on Monday, July 15 at 1:15 pm. If you missed our Pennsylvania Premiere of the film in December, this is your chance to see this charming documentary about Tannen's Magic Camp on the big screen again, with the added bonus of a Q&A with director Judd Ehrlich and performances by professional magicians who are instructors at the camp. Plus, it was filmed a few blocks away at Bryn Mawr College, where the camp meets!

Meet Magic Camp filmmaker Judd Ehrlich and campers and instructors from Tannen's Magic Camp at BMFI's encore of this fun documentary.

You can explore all of our films and upcoming events, watch trailers, and buy tickets at BrynMawrFilm.org, or look at the latest issue of Projections, our program guide.

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Devin Wachs is the Public Relations Manager for Bryn Mawr Film Institute. She joined BMFI in 2005, following her graduation from Bryn Mawr College. If you send BMFI a message on Facebook or Twitter or are interested in onscreen sponsorships, she's the one who'll be in touch!

Andrew J. Douglas: Three Reasons Why I Love DIE HARD

Yippee-ki-yay! Bryn Mawr Film Institute kicks off its Summer Classics series tonight with Die Hard at 7:00 pm! The film will be introduced by our Director of Education, Andrew J. Douglas, Ph.D., and our Programming Manager Valerie Temple, M.F.A.  Keep reading for three reasons why Andrew loves the '80s action classic.

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Three Reasons Why I Love Die Hard
By Andrew J. Douglas, Ph.D., Director of Education, BMFI

There are lots of reasons to appreciate Die Hard. Its witty repartee, modest twist, soundtrack that incorporates both Beethoven and Run D.M.C., and initiation of the slick, eurotrash phase of Hollywood villainy all deserve mention, as do a few other, more analytical reasons that we’ll be discussing in the class I’m co-teaching with BMFI programmer Valerie Temple, M.F.A., Action Films as Art, beginning tonight—the very night BMFI is screening Die Hard on 35 mm. But for now, I’d like to focus on three other reasons this movie holds a special place in my heart.

Without Die Hard, we wouldn’t have...

1) ... THE GLORIOUS CAREERS OF Bruce Willis, Alan Rickman, John McTiernan, and Reginald VelJohnson, who would not be where or who they are today without their work on Die Hard.

Bruce Willis, co-starring in Moonlighting (1985-89) with Cybill Shepherd, was a roguishly charming television actor (back when they didn’t jump to the movies all that often) who’d starred in two duds for waning comic genius Blake Edwards, Blind Date (1987) and Sunset (1988), in which he played a man on a very bad date with Kim Basinger (redundant?), and silent-era western star Tom Mix solving a mystery alongside James Garner’s Wyatt Earp, respectively.

The Lone Ranger: John McClane (Bruce Willis) on the look out for terrorists in Die Hard.

But when Die Hard was released in on July 15, 1988, his career changed forever. While he would remain with Moonlighting for one more season, the success of Die Hard meant that the rest of Willis’s career (other than the occasional cameo on a show like Friends) would be in the movies. So, you can thank Die Hard for Willis’s work in Death Becomes Her, Pulp Fiction, Nobody’s Fool, 12 Monkeys, Armageddon, The Siege, The Sixth Sense, and Unbreakable. Of course, you can also blame it for Look Who’s Talking, The Bonfire of the Vanities, Hudson Hawk, Striking Distance, Color of Night, and many, many more. Actually, I really like Hudson Hawk, but that’s another blog post for another day.

Alan Rickman spent the decade before Die Hard came along carving out a nice little career for himself on the British stage and small screen. But after Die Hard came his wonderfully dastardly turn as the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), his romantic role in Sense and Sensibility (1995), a hilarious performance in Galaxy Quest (1999), and some work in a few movies about a child wizard that I never saw and have no interest in seeing. Why? That’s another blog post for another day.

Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) wants to know where his detonators are in Die Hard.

After graduating from the American Film Institute, John McTiernan wrote and directed the utterly forgettable Nomads (1986), and directed the ludicrously fun—and quite profitable—Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle, Predator (1987), before taking on Die Hard. After its success, McTiernan’s next film was The Hunt for Red October, which is, for my money, one of the best cinematic adaptations of a (dense, jargon-laden, at times dry) novel ever made in Hollywood. He would also go on to make the second best film in the series he began, Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995), and the Pierce Brosnan-Rene Russo version of The Thomas Crown Affair (1999), which, while flawed, is highly entertaining. Of course, he also unnecessarily revisited Rollerball (2002), brought the sickly Medicine Man (1992, launcher of a thousand poor Sean Connery impressions, including my own) to the screen, and helmed Last Action Hero (1993). This last film, despite having a reputation as one of the biggest bombs ever, actually has some things to recommend it. But that’s another blog post for another day.

Director John McTiernan (right) preps actors Rickman (left) and Willis (center) for battle.

Reginald VelJohnson starred in the saccharine sitcom Family Matters (1989-98), which ran for eight seasons on ABC and one on CBS for a total of 215 episodes. It gave the world Urkel, and also is, at least according to Wikipedia, “the third-longest-running U.S. sitcom with a predominantly African American cast, behind The Jeffersons and Tyler Perry's House of Payne.” I find this piece of trivia troubling on a few levels, but that’s another blog post for another day (and probably another blog, as well).

2) ... DIE HARD II: DIE HARDER (1990), DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE, AND LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD (2007), none of which is as good as the original, are all entertaining and all have something to recommend them.

The sequel to the original lives up to its unofficial subtitle by raising the stakes and painting on a bigger canvas. While this eliminates some of the tension and intimacy of the original, it allows for bigger action, grander set pieces, and more colorful characters, like Dennis Franz, the blowhard police chief of Dulles International Airport (where the bulk of the film is set) and Fred Dalton Thompson, the Foghorn Leghorn-like Chief of Operations at Dulles. There are also snowmobiles, exploding jetliners, John Amos, and William Sadler (Heywood in The Shawshank Redemption) doing martial arts while naked. Why is this worthy of praise? That’s another blog post for another day.

By 1995, the careers of both Bruce Willis and John McTiernan had cooled. Sure, Willis was acclaimed for his smaller turns in movies like Pulp Fiction and Nobody’s Fool, but he’d been starring in dreck like Striking Distance and North, and very few people had the refined taste needed to appreciate his so-called vanity project, Hudson Hawk. McTiernan had scored with The Hunt for Red October, but then proceeded to damage his reputation by directing Medicine Man and Last Action Hero. The (relative) career desperation that led this pair to re-team for Die Hard with a Vengeance was a blessing for fun-loving movie fans everywhere. While this second sequel raises the stakes yet again and uses an even larger canvas (Manhattan), it recaptures some of the magic of the original by:

• pitting McClane against another euro-baddie, this time deliciously played by Jeremy Irons
• combining the narrative duties of Al Powell and Holly into the alternately combative and supportive Zeus (a refreshing Samuel L. Jackson)
• staging and shooting the action in a fresh and exciting way, which is one of the things McTiernan brought to the original and Renny Harlin couldn’t find (with a map and a flashlight) for the first sequel. If you don’t believe me, go back and look at the dynamic camera movement during the high-speed chase/shootout on the parkway, or the cab ride through Central Park, which also features one of the best-delivered mime jokes of all time. Why is disregard for mimes a touchstone that, in this case, is used to signal the working-class, everyman nature of John McClane? That’s another blog post for another day (and probably another blogger, as well).

Twelve years later, Willis would return as John McClane in Live Free or Die Hard, directed by the whiz kid behind the Underworld movies, Len Wiseman, whose real claim to fame is that he got Kate Beckinsale to marry him. (I don’t think the magnitude of this achievement requires another blog post or another day to establish or explain, at least not to anyone who’d be reading a very lengthy blog post on Die Hard.) The stakes don’t seem quite as high in this one (it’s about a cyber-attack on the U.S. infrastructure, which is only slightly more engaging than a trade embargo), and the canvas—the whole Northeastern U.S.—is too arguably too big, but there some things worth recognizing in this third sequel:

• The family is brought back into the mix, in the form of McClane’s now college-aged daughter, after sitting out the 1995 installment. This is a key ingredient to the appeal of the series, and one that was almost entirely overlooked in the second sequel.
• Kevin Smith has a small role as a geek who lives in his mother’s basement. This shockingly bold casting choice here is worthy of praise in and of itself.
• Timothy Olyphant and Maggie Q, as the two main baddies, were surprising choices for these parts, and they add some class and grace to the proceedings.
• It has one of the best titles possible for an action movie. Not only is it patriotic, and not only is it an ultimatum, it is also a state motto—New Hampshire’s motto, in fact. I think there should be more movies with titles derived from state mottos and nicknames (that AREN’T directed by Zach Braff), and I have some ideas on this front, but that’s another blog post for another day.

3) ... (IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER) SPEED, UNDER SIEGE, PASSENGER 57, THE ROCK, AIR FORCE ONE, TOY SOLDIERS, EXECUTIVE DECISION, while certainly having their share of flaws (and in some cases, more than their share—I’m looking at you, Passenger 57), are among the (variably) entertaining movies that are undeniably derived from Die Hard. What makes each of these movies entertaining to one degree or another? Once more, with feeling: “That’s another blog post for another day.”

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Dr. Douglas received his Ph.D. from the Department of Radio/Television/Film at Northwestern University. He will introduce BMFI's 35 mm screening of Die Hard tonight at 7:00 pm and is also co-teaching the four-week class Action Films as Art (with Valerie Temple), which begins tonight.

BMFI's Summer Film Preview

The summer issue of BMFI's program guide, Projections, arrived today! Keep reading for an overview of our summer programming. For more information about the upcoming films and a full schedule, visit BrynMawrFilm.org or pick up a copy of Projections.

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BMFI's Summer Film Preview
By Dan Santelli, BMFI Programming Intern

As the temperatures rise, the sun shines bright, and schools let out, why risk sunburn when you can catch the beam of a projector bouncing off the silver screen? Summer movie season is on the horizon and BMFI is serving up a slew of classic films, special events, and the best new releases guaranteed to entertain movie lovers of all ages and sensibilities.

Our Summer Classics programming begins with a bang thanks to a 35 mm screening of Die Hard, shown as part of the June class Action Films as Art, taught by BMFI's Director of Education, Andrew J. Douglas, Ph.D., and Programming Manager, Valerie Temple, M.F.A. Dr. Douglas will also lead a course on the early works of Alfred Hitchcock in conjunction with a July series featuring two of Hitchcock’s British pictures—The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes—and two American features—Rebecca and Spellbound.

If suspense isn’t up your alley, warm up your vocal chords with sing-along showings of Bye Bye Birdie, My Fair Lady, and An American in Paris, shown as part of the Singin’ in the Summer series. Free popcorn if you wear a costume!

"The Children of Marx and Coca-Cola": Jean-Pierre Leaud and Chantal Goya in Godard's Masculin Feminin.

Inspired by AMC’s hit show Mad Men (it's a BMFI office favorite) and its suave, sophisticated characters, Ms. Temple has cooked up a series of five films with the Drapers in mind. Billy Wilder’s comedy triumph The Apartment, Godard’s New Wave classic Masculin Feminin, and Douglas Sirk’s 1955 melodrama All That Heaven Allows are highlights.

Be sure to figure out Who’s That Lady? at screenings of Orson Welles’ The Lady From Shanghai and Best Picture Oscar winner All About Eve, as well as rediscover two Bill Murray scene stealers—Caddyshack and Tootsie.

Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth in The Lady from Shanghai.

Director Philip Kaufman will be in our focus during the month of August with screenings of his acclaimed features The Right Stuff and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, with a special appearance by film critic and author Annette Insdorf, Ph.D.

The Perm (Donald Sutherland, above) and The Mullet ("Rowdy" Roddy Piper, below) face off in BMFI's alien-centric summer favorites.

BMFI’s The Late Show series will continue its run of hidden gems and offbeat cult movies on select Fridays at 11:30 pm throughout the summer, showcasing the weird side of the studio system with five ’80s Hollywood Oddities. Beginning with Jim Henson and Frank Oz’s 1982 Tolkien-inspired Muppet epic, The Dark Crystal, and ending with John Carpenter’s alien-laden critique of 1980s ideology They Live, the series also includes Terry Gilliam’s Orwellian Brazil, John Carpenter’s kung-fu actioner Big Trouble in Little China, and Robert Greenwald’s campy musical Xanadu. Whether you’re looking for social satire, Muppets, a darkly humorous vision of the future, or a good kick to the head by Kurt Russell, The Late Show is bound to please.

The summer ends with big screen showings of the evergreen Ben-Hur and Casablanca. If you haven't seen these classics on the big screen, you're missing out. Buy your tickets early--Casablanca is an end-of-summer tradition and tickets go fast.

In addition to our line up of classic films, we're also featuring three special events, including an encore viewing of Michael Smerconish's interview with Chris Matthews on June 3, and the ReelAbilities Film Festival's June 7 screening of the French film The Straight Line, about an ex-con who trains a blind racetrack runner.

On June 11, BMFI will hold a special screening of the documentary Queen of the Sun: What Are the Bees Telling Us? at 7:30pm. Prior to the screening, enjoy a special honey-centric dinner provided by Whole Foods Market with expert beekeepers in attendance. Come on down and hear the buzz on the horrors of bee colony collapse disorder and what you can do to help fix it.

Hushpuppy (Quvenzhane Wallis) sets course in search of her mother in Beasts of the Southern Wild.

As always, a score of acclaimed new releases will accompany the old favorites. We do our programming on a week-by-week basis, but we're hoping to show the Cannes favorite Moonrise Kingdom (the new Wes Anderson picture) and the Grand Jury Prize winner at Sundance, Beasts of the Southern Wild, praised by Ms. Temple as “the best of the fest” and film critic Roger Ebert as “the best film I’ve seen this year."

Showcasing the best of high art and the most spectacular entertainments, there’s no putting a foot wrong with beating the heat and staying cool in a movie theater.

For more information about these and the rest of the films that BMFI is featuring this summer, check out the summer issue of Projections. From all of us at Bryn Mawr Film Institute, we wish everyone a happy, healthy, and safe summer. We look forward to seeing you at the movies.

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Dan Santelli, BMFI's Programming Intern, is a 2012 graduate of Temple University with a Bachelor's degree in Film and Media Arts. A lifelong cineaste, his favorite films (in no particular order) include Leon: The Professional, The Night of the Hunter, Touch of Evil, Blue Velvet, Brazil, Apocalypse Now, Dressed To Kill (1980), Halloween, and Les Yeux Sans Visage.

New Summer Programming and the Return of Summer Classics!

By Meredith Slifkin, BMFI Intern

Summer is almost here! Soon schools will be out, the beaches will be stormed, and the lines at Rita’s will stretch around the corner. Most importantly, the Summer Classics series begins at BMFI! The latest issue of Projections is at the printer as we speak, but you can check out the web version online now.

Summer Classics at BMFI will feature everything from thrills and chills to epic romances to campy 3-D extravaganzas. The series kicks off on Tuesday, June 14 with Arthur Penn’s The Chase. Here are some other highlights:

In a tribute to the last of the true Hollywood starlets, Elizabeth Taylor, BMFI will screen the two films for which she won Academy Awards, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and BUtterfield 8, and host a special dinner and presentation by film critic Carrie Rickey about Taylor’s life and work.

BMFI remembers Elizabeth Taylor

Other highlights include films by two iconic directors, Charlie Chaplin and Alfred Hitchcock, and fan-favorite sing-alongs to Guys and Dolls, Brigadoon, and The Music Man. There will also be summertime “thrills and chills,” including the film that defined the summer blockbuster, Jaws (which is all part of our evil plot to keep you out of the water and coming to BMFI instead, of course). Actually, there will be a one day Summer Classics Seminar held on Jaws, taught by BMFI Director of Education Andrew J. Douglas, Ph.D.

Stay out of the water...

Lovers of all things camp, cult, and kitsch will be pleased to partake in the original 3-D experience with 1950s camp classics It Came From Outer Space and Creature From the Black Lagoon. After a whirlwind summer of classic films, the series will conclude with epic romances that must be seen on the big screen, Casablanca and Gone with the Wind.

See Creature From the Black Lagoon in spectacular 3-D!

Whew! That’s just the summary. Check out Projections for the full list of films. There’s no better way to spend a summer night than seeing your favorite films and stars on the big screen.

As always, there is a terrific crop of new releases including the latest from Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris, and Terrence Malick, Tree of Life, and this year’s Oscar-winner for Best Foreign Picture, the Danish drama In a Better World.

If that’s not enough to convince you to come out BMFI, remember that the one place that’s always air-conditioned in the summer is a movie theater.

The Intern's Perspective: BMFI's August Programming

Richie Weker, a long-time BMFI intern and a rising senior at Lower Merion High School, reflects on BMFI's August programming. Enjoy!

If there are four things in life that I love they have to be, in no particular order, music, birthdays, girls, and food. It is often difficult to integrate these into my life, given my already busy schedule. Who would have thought that Bryn Mawr Film Institute’s August programming would help me conveniently include these delights in my life?


First, the music: on Wednesday, August 4 at 7:00pm, Bryn Mawr Film Institute will continue its tradition of sing-alongs with a screening of Mary Poppins, where patrons can sing along with Julie Andrews in her Oscar-winning film debut. If you wear a costume—you could dress up as a chimney sweep (or the chimney), the bird woman, or a penguin, for example—you get a free small popcorn! We can also finally learn how to spell the incredible “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” when the song’s lyrics appear on the big screen.

As if this wasn’t enough for BMFI, they are even throwing a birthday bash that lasts five weeks! Famed Japanese director Akira Kurosawa would have hit the century mark this year and BMFI is showing five films that best represent the director’s lifelong achievements, including Rashomon, The Hidden Fortress, and Stray Dog. A movie will be shown once every Tuesday night at 7:00pm, starting with Seven Samurai on Tuesday, August 3 and ending with Yojimbo on Tuesday, August 31.

Girls are very confusing and yet fascinating to me. I have yet to fully understand them, but I am getting there through many hours of hard research and observation. This August, BMFI will offer me three great opportunities to study three big name female stars as part of the Leading Ladies of the Silver Screen film series. Running Wednesday nights from August 11 through August 25, the series features Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina, Elizabeth Taylor in A Place in the Sun, and Barbara Stanwyck in The Lady Eve.

As for food, the fourth delight, the answer is simple. The rich and buttery popcorn at BMFI is simply unbeatable! You would have to be crazy to pass up on this and the many treats that BMFI has to offer.

Thank you, Richie! Find out more information about our August programming online at http://www.brynmawrfilm.org/.

Hot off the Press: BMFI’s Summer Programming

If you’re looking for something to do during the dog days of summer, Bryn Mawr Film Institute has got it. We have just gone to press with our Projections program guide, which includes information about summer film courses, series, seminars, and new releases. Keep reading to learn about the highlights, or click here for the full schedule and detailed descriptions. There's truly something for every film fan.

We asked for your suggestions and you selected three fantastic classics to be shown in our inaugural Audience Choice film series: On the Waterfront (1954), The Third Man (1949), and Lawrence of Arabia (1962). Enjoy Brando, Welles, and O’Toole on the big screen in these masterful cinematic achievements chosen by you.

For those that want to take a film course at BMFI but can’t commit to multiple sessions, the answer lies in this year’s Summer Classic Seminars. Each night is a stand-alone class built around one of the classics shown in the theater, featuring a lecture and a guided discussion of each. We’ll examine On the Waterfront on Wednesday, July 14, The Third Man on Wednesday, July 21, The Hidden Fortress (1958) on Tuesday, August 17, and The Lady Eve (1941) on Wednesday, August 25. Sessions go from 6:30 PM to 9:30 PM with the film screenings at 7:00 PM.

BMFI celebrates song and dance on the big screen this summer. Fred Astaire straps on his dancing shoes in the Fred Astaire Frenzy film series, featuring two films. Daddy Long Legs (June 8, 7:00 PM) and You’ll Never Get Rich (June 9, 7:00 PM) showcase some of Astaire’s best musical romances, co-starring Leslie Caron and Rita Hayworth. For fans looking to belt out a few show tunes, the Singing in the Summer film series is here. Dress up and sing along with the unforgettable movie musicals Oklahoma! (June 2, 7:30 PM), The King and I (July 7, 7:00 PM), and Mary Poppins (August 4, 7:00 PM). You’ll be sure to leave these events “Chim Chim Cheree”-ing all the way home! If you care for a more academic approach, BMFI’s film course Singin’ on Screen: The Musical will certainly increase your appreciation for the movie musical genre.

Another film series all ages can look forward to is Teens on Screen. Enjoy the movies that define the teenage experience through the decades, with George Lucas’s American Graffiti (1973), teen film extraordinaire John Hughes’s Sixteen Candles (1984), and Richard Linklater’s insightful Dazed and Confused (1993) showing on 35mm on Tuesday nights in June.

Those with their eyes on the darlings of film lore can come see the charm and gravitas of Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, and Barbara Stanwyck on Wednesday nights in August. With the Leading Ladies of the Silver Screen film series, choose from the comedy of Sabrina (1954), the romance of A Place in the Sun (1951), and the hilarity of The Lady Eve (1941), or see all three!

Did the Master of Suspense have a political agenda? See for yourself when Hitchcock returns to BMFI. Enjoy two 35mm screenings of Sabotage (1936) and Lifeboat (1944), shown in conjunction with the four-week film course Alfred Hitchcock: The Political Films.

Another cinematic auteur, Akira Kurosawa put Japanese cinema on the map and influenced many great filmmakers. BMFI is celebrating the legend’s 100th birthday with a five-film series of screenings every Tuesday in August. The Akira Kurosawa Retrospective features his crowning achievement, Seven Samurai (1954), as well as Rashômon (1950), The Hidden Fortress (1958), Stray Dog (1949), and Yojimbo (1961).

Fans of these foreign treasures can also look forward to the wonderful Jacques Tati Festival film series, featuring M. Hulot’s Holiday (1953), Mon Oncle (1958), Playtime (1967), and Trafic (1971). The films, screening four consecutive Tuesdays in July, are shown in conjunction with the course Pantomimes and Proverbs: The Films of Tati and Rohmer, which contrasts the comedy of Jacques Tati (and his alter ego Monsieur Hulot) with the drama and romanticism of Eric Rohmer to reveal new aspects of French cinema.

And of course, you’ll be delighted in the summer’s repertoire of new releases, including the Sundance Film Festival hit The Kids Are All Right, starring Julianne Moore, Annette Bening, and Mark Ruffalo; the French romance Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky; and much, much more. Become a member and check out the newest issue of Projections or visit BrynMawrFilm.org to see what is currently showing on our screens.

The summer has a whole lot in store at BMFI, so relax, take a break from the heat, and enjoy the shows!