This July, I will be teaching a new course in the Hutton House Lectures: which is being offered this Summer at LIU:C.W. Post. In Acting Shakespeare, I will discuss and screen five films. In each film, we will find that scenes from the plays of William Shakespeare, play a major role. In Lowell Sherman’s Morning Glory (1933), Katherine Hepburn (in the first of her four Academy Award Winning roles), is an aspiring Actress, who recites Hamlet’s “To Be Or Not To Be” at a party. In Ernst Lubitch’s To Be Or Not To Be (1942), Polish Actor Joseph Tura (Jack Benny) finds that Robert Stack always leaves upon hearing “To Be Or Not To Be”. Hamlet prevails again in John Ford’s My Darling Clementine (1946), in which a visiting theatrical troupe intends to perform Hamlet in DIdge City; In George Cukor’s A Double Life (1947), Ronald Colman is a stage actor whose mind becomes affected by the role of Othello; and in George Sidney’s 1953 adaptation of Cole Porter’s Kiss Me Kate, a formerly married couple star in a Broadway musical version of The Taming of The Shrew. Course is offered on five consecutive Fridays: July 12th, 19th, 26th, August 2nd, and 9th. All classes begin at 1PM. Fee for this five film series is $100. For more information, and to register, please call 516-299-2580

Just a few moments ago, while driving, I was listening to Dimitri Tiomkin’s musical score to Alfred Htichcock’s 1951 thriller about criss-cross murders, Strangers On A Train. This will be the subject of my last lecture at the Tribeca branch of the 92nd Street Y, located on Hudson Street, in lower Manhattan. Come Fall, 2013, I will begin lecturing at the main branch of the 92nd Street Y, with two courses: Master of Suspense: Alfred Hitchcock, and Fred Astaire In New York. On Tuesday, June 4th, I will discuss the aforementioned Strangers On A Train, which stars Farley Granger and Robert Walker. It’s based on a novel by Patricia Highsmith (who was annoyed when she received a minimal amount of money for the film rights). It is a story about two men who meet on a train: one is a tennis player, about to divorce his trampish wife, in order to marry the senator’s daughter; the other is a psychotic playboy misfit in search of his next thrill. Thus, an exchanger of murders. This film, produced by Warner Brothers in 1951, came at a time when HItchcock was taking flight from Selznick, and becoming his own boss. He had a few clinkers prior to Strangers. After Strangers, would come I Confess, and then Rear Window, the second version of The Man Who Knew Too Much… pretty much the start of Hitchcock’s golden period of the 1950s (including his collaboration with Composer Bernard Herrmann). A New York town also appears in this Hitchcock film: Forest HIlls, Queens, the site of the tennis stadium (after all, Guy Haines (Farley Granger) is a tennis pro!