THE JOHN GARFIELD STORY - JULIE GARFIELD in person!

With Pioneering Hollywood Producers/Directors/Authors JOAN KRAMER & DAVID HEELEY

Hosted by JUD NEWBORN, Curator of Special Programs

Cinema Arts CentreThu, Oct 27 at 7:30 PM

Thursday, October 27 at 7:30 pm |Members $20 | Public $25

Reception & Book Signing of In the Company of Legends and with live jazz guitar by Mike Soloway
20% off the book's list price - A $5 savings!

Born Julius Garfinkle to Jewish immigrants, Forties Hollywood legend John Garfield - nominated twice for Best Actor Academy Awards for Body and Soul and Four Daughters - was the most important star caught up in the Hollywood Blacklist. The stress surely contributed to his death in 1952, when he was only 39.  A forerunner to such tough-yet-sensitive rebels as Marlon Brando and James Dean, Garfield displayed what Lee Grant calls his "smoldering, somber, troubled street-guy kind of presence" in such hard-hitting classics as The Postman Always Rings Twice opposite Lana Turner (1946) and Humoresque opposite Joan Crawford (1946). He also played the Jewish GI who is Gregory Peck's best friend in Gentleman's Agreement (1947), the first post-Holocaust film to treat anti-Semitism in America. 

His impressive co-star list also includes Edward G. Robinson, Shelley Winters, Cary Grant, Ida Lupino, Patricia Neal, Jennifer Jones, and Maureen O'Hara. During WWII he was a force in creating the morale-boosting Hollywood Canteen (where stars waited tables and mingled with GIs), and appeared in a promotional film adaptation, Thank Your Lucky Stars, with an all-star cast that included Humphrey Bogart and Bette Davis.

In The John Garfield Story, narrated by Garfield's daughter and namesake, Julie Garfield, pioneering Hollywood Golden Age documentarians Joan Kramer and David Heeley trace Garfield's rise from a tough childhood on New York's Lower East Side through his vagabond youth and apprenticeship with the renowned Group Theatre to the era of his greatest films. They explore the machinations that resulted in his blacklisting and tragic death - a funeral mobbed by thousands of fans - the largest turnout for any actor since Rudolph Valentino. This program - a must-see just two weeks before the Presidential election - will also explore the relevance of Garfield's fate for today's election controversies. (USA, 2003, 58 min., English, NR, DCP | Dir. David Heeley | Writers/Producers David Heeley & Joan Kramer)