The Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center is launching an all-new Legacies film series on Thursday afternoons between March 10 and April 28. The series celebrates the legacies of the late great stars of the screen. After each screening, participants will discuss the mark each star left on cinema, television or culture with fellow attendees in WHBPAC’s lounge.
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967)
March 10, 1 p.m.
When Joanna Drayton (Katharine Houghton), a free-thinking white woman, and Black doctor John Prentice (Sidney Poitier) become engaged, they travel to San Francisco to meet her parents. Matt Drayton (Spencer Tracy) and his wife Christina (Katharine Hepburn) are wealthy liberals who must confront the latent racism the coming marriage arouses. Also attending the Draytons’ dinner are Prentice’s parents (Roy E. Glenn Sr., Beah Richards), who vehemently disapprove of the relationship.
Sidney Poitier was the first Black man to win an Academy Award for Best Actor (“Lilies of the Field”). His prodigious body of work established him as the first black matinée idol, and his career in Hollywood spanned 76 years. After starring in three major hits in 1967, he turned his attention behind the camera, where he once again found box office success, this time as the director of “Uptown Saturday Night” (1974), “Let’s Do It Again” (1975) and “Stir Crazy” (1980). His talent, his refusal to play to stereotypes and his general likability helped to ensure that he broke down barriers in an industry that still has problems with racial representation and bias.
Robin Williams Remembered (2014)
March 17, 1 p.m.
A documentary celebrating the life of Robin Williams with interviews, tributes and clips from his career.
Robin Williams, widely regarded as one of the best comedians of all time, was known for his improvisational skills and the wide variety of characters he created on the spur of the moment. After rising to fame portraying Mork in the ABC sitcom, “Mork & Mindy,” he went on to star in comedic movies and critically acclaimed films alike, including “Good Morning, Vietnam” (1987), “Dead Poets Society” (1989), “Patch Adams” (1998) and “One Hour Photo” (2002). A string of family friendly box office successes like “Hook” (1991), “Aladdin” (1992), “Mrs. Doubtfire” (1993), “Jumanji” (1995) and the “Night at the Museum” trilogy (2006–2014) further cemented the breath-taking scope of his career and earned him new generations of fans. He won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor with his role in “Good Will Hunting” (1997) and was nominated for four Oscars in total. His many other accolades included two Primetime Emmy Awards, six Golden Globe Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and five Grammy Awards.
Beginners (2010)
March 24, 1 p.m.
After his mother dies, Oliver (Ewan McGregor) is stunned when his father, Hal (Christopher Plummer), recently diagnosed with terminal cancer, comes out of the closet. When Hal passes away a few years later, Oliver grows depressed, struggling with his failing career as an artist while constantly remembering his childhood and time spent with his dad. Oliver’s loneliness is eased when he meets actress Anna (Mélanie Laurent), but their relationship is threatened by their mutual fear of commitment.
Arthur Christopher Orme Plummer was a Canadian actor whose career spanned seven decades and several mediums, including film, television, and stage. His roles were varied and included historical figures, Shakespearean characters and animated antagonists, although the role he was possibly most widely known for was that of Captain Georg Von Trapp in 1965’s musical film “The Sound of Music.” In 2012, at age 82, he won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for “Beginners,” becoming the oldest person to win until Anthony Hopkins’s win in 2021. At age 88, he was nominated for “All The Money In The World,” making him the oldest person to be nominated in any acting category at the Academy Awards. Plummer was also the recipient of two Emmy Awards, two Tony Awards, a Golden Globe Award, a SAG Award and a British Academy Film Award.
The Time Machine (1960)
March 31, 1 p.m.
Scientist H. George Wells (Rod Taylor) builds a time machine, and despite the warning from his friend, David, (Alan Young) against “tempting the laws of providence,” decides to visit the future. Jumping ahead 14 years, he observes changes in women’s fashion. Jumping ahead 40, he meets David’s son (also Young) amid a terrible war. Finally, he travels thousands of years ahead to discover a post-apocalyptic world inhabited by humanoid Eloi and the monstrous Morlocks that feed on them. There, he also meets Weena (Yvette Carmen Mimieux in her break-out role).
Yvette Carmen Mimieux was an American film and television actress, best known for her role as in ‘The Time Machine.” Throughout the course of her career, both contracted with MGM and after, she often was cast as “a wounded person, the ‘sensitive’ role,” citing it was a “soulful quality” of hers that led to that casting. However, by the 1970s, she began to express dissatisfaction with the types of roles available to women in general, calling them out as flat and uninteresting. Not content to sit back, she began writing short stories and films, and worked with Aaron Spelling and Leonard Goldberg to produce one of her scripts, a thriller, as a made-for-TV movie for ABC.
The Hunt For Red October (1990)
April 7, 1 p.m.
Based on the popular Tom Clancy novel, this suspenseful movie tracks Soviet submarine captain Marko Ramius (Sean Connery) as he abandons his orders and heads for the East Coast of the United States. Equipped with innovative stealth technology, Ramius’s submarine, “Red October,” is virtually invisible. However, when an American sub briefly detects the Russians’ presence, CIA agent Jack Ryan (Alec Baldwin) sets out to determine Ramius’s motives, fearing he may launch an attack on the U.S.
Sir Sean Connery was a Scottish actor. The first to cinematically portray British super-spy James Bond, he starred in seven Bond films between 1962 and 1983. The acclaim the Bond films brought him led to offers of work with remarkable directors like Alfred Hitchcock, Sidney Lumet, and John Huston, and his acting career spanned six decades, officially retiring in 2006. He was the winner of an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Untouchables, two BAFTAs, three Golden Globes, and received the U.S. Kennedy Center Honors lifetime achievement award. He was knighted in 2000, and won several honors related to his Scots nationality.
Betty White: The First Lady of Television (2018)
April 14, 1 p.m.
“Betty White: First Lady of Television” chronicles the remarkable career of this true television pioneer, who was the first woman to produce a national TV show, the first woman to star in a sitcom, the first woman to receive an Emmy nomination — and the first woman to ever appear on television, given her performance on an experimental broadcast in 1939.
Betty Marion White Ludden was an American actress and comedian. A pioneer of early television, with a career spanning over eight decades, White was noted for her vast work in the entertainment industry and being one of the first women to work both in front of and behind the camera. After an early career in radio, she transitioned to television, where after her initial sitcom work she became a game show staple. Her roles took her from soap operas to sketch comedies to legal comedy-dramas, but she is perhaps best known to contemporary audiences as Rose from “The Golden Girls.” A holder of a Guinness World Record for the longest TV career by a female entertainer, she was also the recipient of eight Emmy Awards, three SAG Awards, and a Grammy Award.
Up (2009)
April 21, 1 p.m.
In this animated Disney/Pixar film, Carl Fredricksen (Ed Asner), a 78-year-old balloon salesman, is about to fulfill a lifelong dream. Tying thousands of balloons to his house, he flies away to the South American wilderness. But curmudgeonly Carl’s worst nightmare comes true when he discovers a little boy named Russell is a stowaway aboard the balloon-powered house.
Ed Asner was an American actor, best remembered for portraying Lou Grant on both “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and its spin-off, “Lou Grant.” He was one of only a few television actors to portray the same character in both a comedy and a drama. When not acting on screen, he was president of the Screen Actors Guild, and served on various boards for non-profit organizations. He was the most honored male performer in the history of the primetime Emmy Awards with seven wins — five for portraying Lou Grant.
Special pricing for age 12 and younger.
The Gospel According to André (2017)
April 28, 1 p.m.
Filmmaker Kate Novack explores the life and career of fashion journalist André Leon Talley — from his childhood in the segregated South to his iconic, barrier-breaking work at Women’s Wear Daily, W and Vogue.
André Leon Talley was an American fashion journalist, stylist, creative director, and editor-at-large of Vogue magazine. He was the magazine’s fashion news director from 1983 to 1987, its first African-American male creative director from 1988 to 1995, and then its editor-at-large from 1998 to 2013.
The Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center is at 76 Main Street, Westhampton Beach. Learn more about the film series at whbpac.org.
Staff Writer on Feb 25, 2022