In-person: Kenneth Turan, author of " Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg: The Whole Equation;" film critic Justin Chang. Book signing with Turan before the screening.

Admission is free. No advance reservations. Your seat will be assigned to you when you pick up your ticket at the box office. Seats are assigned on a first come, first served basis. The box office opens one hour before the event.

Archive Talks pairs leading historians and scholars with screenings of the moving image media that is the focus of their writing and research. Each program will begin with a special talk by the invited scholar that will introduce audiences to new insights, interpretations and contexts for the films and media being screened.

Bombshell

U.S., 1933

Beginning in the 1920s, studio head Louis B. Mayer and his wunderkind vice president of production Irving Thalberg built MGM into an image-making machine so potent that they could reveal its very workings in an evening’s entertainment and audiences would still be seduced by its illusions. Case in point, the outlandish screwball comedy Bombshell. Jean Harlow glitters as the titular starlet who keeps her studio and a comic coterie of hangers-on in the green with the help of an unscrupulous publicity man (the inimitable Lee Tracy) who spins their foibles and charms, alike, into front page headlines and ticket sales. The Archive is honored to host long-time Los Angeles Times film critic Kenneth Turan at the Billy Wilder Theater for this special screening presented in conjunction with his latest book, Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg: The Whole Equation. 

35mm, b&w, 96 min. Director: Victor Fleming. Screenwriter: John Lee Mahin, Jules Furthman. With: Jean Harlow, Lee Tracy, Frank Morgan.