3 Classics Of The Silver Screen: Volume 1

Triple-bill of Hollywood classics. In ‘His Private Secretary’ (1933) John Wayne stars as tearaway millionaire’s son Dick Wallace, who is forever chasing around after girls. When the playboy meets and falls in love with Marion Hall (Evalyn Knapp), the woman of his dreams, his father refuses to believe that she is anything more than a gold digger. Young Dick therefore makes an effort to change his ways, in the hope that he can convince his father this is the real thing. In the Howard Hawks screwball comedy ‘His Girl Friday’ (1940) Walter Burns (Cary Grant) is a newspaper editor trying to hang on to his star reporter and ex-wife Hildy Johnson (Rosalind Russell). Hildy is leaving journalism to go off and marry Bruce (Ralph Bellamy), but an escaped convict, hiding behind a desk in the newsroom, is the perfect bait for Walter to lure Hildy back to her job and to him. Finally, in ‘The Amazing Adventure’ (1937), rich, idle socialite Ernest Bliss (Cary Grant) has a bet with his Harley Street physician that he can live on his wits alone for a year, otherwise he must give 50,000 to the doctor’s favourite charity. Along the way he meets the beautiful Frances Clayton (Mary Brian) and loses his bet as he is forced to spend money to save her from a loveless forced marriage.