Saturday, February 15, 2025, 2 p.m., Dryden Theatre
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(Preston Sturges, US 1941, 94 min., 35mm)
Aboard a cruise ship leaving the Amazon, woman-shy snake expert Charles Pike (Henry Fonda) finds himself the chosen prey of a father-daughter card shark team. Everything is driven astray however, when the daughter, Jean Harrington (Barbara Stanwyck), falls head-over-heels in love with the sucker. He gets wise and breaks it off. However, she’s not done with him . . . Stanwyck is perfectly cast as the hard-edged con woman with a heart in Preston Sturges’s clever, fast-moving, hugely entertaining “vexiest picture”!
Introduction by Garrett Sullivan, Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English at Penn State University
