Monday at the Movies Cinema Chat: A Free Soul (Online Event)

The Art Deco Society of New York's series Mondays at the Movies Cinema Chat transports you back to the 1930s, when Americans found relief from the stress of everyday life by escaping into Hollywood’s glamorous dream worlds. In these unique events, experts in the golden age of cinema will screen and discuss wonderful 1930s and 40s escapist fantasies with ADSNY’s audience.

Register today to join us for this online event, in which the co-authors of Screen Deco: A Celebration of High Style in Hollywood, Howard Mandelbaum and Eric Myers, return to screen and discuss MGM's A Free Soul (1931).

In this pre-Code drama, sparks fly when Norma Shearer, the impulsive daughter of an attorney, begins an affair with dashing gangster Clark Gable, whose display of brutish magnetism elevated him to stardom in this film! Strikingly gowned in revealing pre-Code outfits; Shearer inspired Photoplay magazine to write: “Her clothes are breathtaking in their daring. But you couldn’t get away with them in your drawing room.” As if the clothing and actors weren't steamy enough, we will also see how suggestions of passion in the boudoir made this one of the year's big hits.

Following the screening, Mandelbaum and Myers will discuss how, in addition to this film being Clark Gable's first major on-screen role, Lionel Barrymore won an Oscar for the role of a wealthy alcoholic attorney unable to control his free-living daughter, and Norma Shearer was also Oscar-nominated.

$15