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Description
Sunday, May 3 @ 6:00 PM
The Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts (Film Studies Center Screening Room)
915 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637
☆ ANYBODY’S WOMAN ☆
Directed by Dorothy Arzner • 1930
Dorothy Arzner and co-writer Zoe Akins (Working Girls, Christopher Strong) had a knack for imbuing their pictures with more complexity, emotional intelligence, and proto-feminist nuance than most contemporary male-driven studio fare. This one, a slippery sort of comic melodrama with a side of dry social satire, gives us the memorable Pansy Gray (Ruth Chatterton), a down-and-out former showgirl tired of bouncing from dead-end job to degrading hustle amid the Depression-era gig economy. We first meet her sprawled bare-legged across an overstuffed chair in a sweltering Manhattan hotel room, belting out a melancholy blues (she knows her way around a ukulele!). Listening from a nearby open window is heartsick Delaware attorney Neil Dunlap (Clive Brook), blackout drunk and unusually receptive to Pansy’s earthy charms. An impromptu hotel party ensues, and the next morning Pansy and Neil wake up having drunkenly wed; to make their marriage work, both must now navigate different gauntlets of shame and prejudice. Paul Lukas, who’d later pair with Chatterton so memorably in the similarly twisty Dodsworth, shines here as a wealthy rival for Pansy’s affection. (GW)
80 min • Paramount • 35mm from UCLA Film & Television Archive, permission Universal
Preceded by: “The Golf Specialist” (Monte Brice, 1930) – 20 min – 35mm
Date & Time
Sun, May 3, 2026 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM
Venue Details
Logan Center For the Arts Screening Room 201
915 East 60th StreetChicago, Illinois 60637
