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This Thursday, (December 14) at the Mary Pickford Theater at the Library of Congress (Washington, DC)

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Posters for “Loose Ankles” (First National, 1930) and “Union Depot” (First National, 1932)

LOOSE ANKLES (First National, 1930). Directed by Ted Wilde. Continuity and dialogue by Gene Towne, from the play of the same name by Sam Janney. With Loretta Young, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Louise Fazenda, Otis Harlan, Daphne Pollard, Edward Nugent. (69 min, black & white, 35mm, preserved in 2015 from duplicate picture and track negatives in the United Artists Collection).

With

UNION DEPOT (First National, 1932). Directed by Alfred E. Green. Screenplay by Kenyon Nicholson and Walter De Leon, from the unpublished play of the same name by Joe Laurie, Jr., Gene Fowler and Douglas Durkin. With Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Joan Blondell, Guy Kibbee, Alan Hale, David Landau. (67 min, black & white, 35mm, preserved in 1995 from duplicate picture and track negatives in the United Artists Collection)

A pair of fast paced, witty and racy pre-Code gems. “Loose Ankles” stars seventeen year old Loretta Young as a wealthy heiress who decides to create a scandal in order to deprive her greedy relatives of her late grandfather’s fortune. To do so, she decides to compromise herself with a “young, handsome and unscrupulous” man. In “Union Depot,” a Depression Era ensemble piece set during a single night in a large metropolitan train station, the main protagonist is the massive station set constructed on the Warners lot that would be reused in a number of the studio’s subsequent productions. The creepy sexual predator pursuing Joan Blondell’s chorus girl would have undoubtedly ended up on the cutting room floor if the film had been made two years later, when the enforcement of the Production Code began in earnest.

Seating is on a first-come first-serve basis.  Doors open at 6:30 pm.

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