The Screening Room: Classics, Crowd-Pleasers, Cult Favorites and Neglected Gems launches its 2014 Season

FLORENCE-The free film series The Screening Room: Classics, Crowd-Pleasers, Cult Favorites and Neglected Gems launches its 2014 lineup at 7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 16, with a special showing of director Billy Wilder’s uproarious comedy Some Like It Hot (1959) at the Florence-Lauderdale Public Library, 350 N. Wood Ave., Florence, Alabama.

Set in the Prohibition era of the Roaring Twenties, Some Like It Hot stars Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon as a pair of struggling speakeasy musicians who join an all-girl traveling jazz band – headlined by sultry, lovelorn singer Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe) – after the two men witness a mob massacre in Chicago.

The colorful supporting cast includes George Raft (as ruthless gangster Spats Columbo), Pat O’Brien (as a wily police detective), Joe E. Brown (in the best performance of his career as Osgood Fielding III), Nehemiah Persoff (as the Mafioso “Little Bonaparte”), Laurie Mitchell, George E. Stone, Billy Gray, Edward G. Robinson Jr. and Mike Mazurki.

Wilder’s comedy masterpiece earned an Academy Award for Best Costume Design as well as nominations for Best Director, Best Actor (Lemmon), Best Adapted Screenplay (by Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond), Best Cinematography and Best Art Direction. Some Like It Hot also collected Golden Globe Awards for Best Comedy Film, Best Actor (Lemmon) and Best Actress (Monroe). The movie was added to the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry in 1989, three decades after its original release.

The Screening Room’s January schedule continues at the library with James Stewart and Grace Kelly in a special 60^th-anniversary showing of Alfred Hitchcock’s supreme suspense thriller Rear Window(1954) at 7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 30.

Sponsored by the library and Pillar of Fire, The Screening Room series is organized and hosted by film historian and Pillar of Fire director Terry Pace, who teaches English at the University of North Alabama.

Screening Room admission is always free, but be sure to arrive at the library early enough to stop by Bookmarks Coffee Shop and purchase coffee, specialty drinks, sandwiches, soft drinks, desserts and other tasty treats to enjoy during the movie.

Also, if you haven’t attended a Screening Room program recently, be sure you stop by and try out our comfortable new seats! They’re receiving rave reviews from all ages!

“Real diamonds! They must be worth their weight in gold!” – Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe) in director Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot (1959)