Baby Face at the Alamo Ritz with Paul

In honor of our own JeniferSF and her birthday (happy B-Day, Jenifer), PaulT and I headed down to the Alamo Ritz this evening for a rare archival screening of Stanwyck in Baby Face and to try the "Bellflower" cocktail.

the Bellflower

From the Alamo's menu:

BellflowerThis easy drinking, refreshing blend of brandy and lillet blanc is like a booze fueled iced tea for the end of summer.

No, I don't know what lillet blanc is, and the only brandy I drink is Christian Bros. out of a plastic bottle.  So...  anyway, it was an adventure.

PaulT and I each had one, and at first I didn't particularly care for it, but once you squeezed the citrus in there, that thing was actually okay.  Not as good as Matt's improvement of my usual household Old Fashioneds (apparently we're going to start muddling the hell out of the fruit), but a lively little drink.

I'm a bit of an amateur Stanwyck fan (and she has serious fans out there, people) for all the usual reasons one likes Stanwyck.*

Here, Stanwyck is going almost full Honey Badger.

The movie was hosted by The Alamo's Lars and UT film prof Caroline Frick, who is also a film preservationist, which is near and dear to my library-employed heart.

The movie was as fantastic as I'd heard, and we got to see a cut from the Library of Congress that predated several cuts made to the film as it went for wider distribution and had to deal with local censors, etc...  Its an incredibly racy film, mixing Nietzsche with capitalism, sex and more sex and not in the suggestive manner of what would be in films by the 1940's.  There's no question regarding what's going on in this movie, and its pretty clear what its about.

Anyhoo...  it does run on Turner Classic from time to time, and I highly recommend watching this particular rags-to-riches story as its not exactly got "work hard and your dreams will come true" as its central message.

Mo' money, mo' problems for our protagonist

That's all I've got.


*if I have to explain, I've already lost you