Academy to Unspool Celebrity Home Movies in NYC

New York, NY – Private home movies featuring Clark Gable, Cary Grant, Ginger Rogers, Marilyn Monroe and other Hollywood luminaries will screen at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ “Monday Nights with Oscar®” presentation of “Hollywood Home Movies: Treasures from the Academy Film Archive” on Monday, August 11, at 7 p.m. at the Academy Theater in New York City. The program will include commentary by family members of Humphrey Bogart, Gary Cooper, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Steve McQueen and Lauren Bacall, who will introduce their famous relatives’ home movies.

The evening will feature rarely seen footage of Alfred Hitchcock playing with his baby daughter, Bogart and Bacall sailing their yawl Santana, and Academy Award®-winning art director (and Oscar statuette designer) Cedric Gibbons and his wife Dolores del Rio entertaining guests, including Cooper and Marlene Dietrich, at a backyard party.

In addition the program will show early home movies of New York Harbor from 1927, a beauty contest parade in Atlantic City from 1935, and Times Square in the mid-1950s.

Since the 1920s people have delighted in using amateur cameras – first 16mm, then 8mm and Super 8mm – to capture ordinary and special moments in their daily lives. Film industry professionals were no exception. Hollywood’s stars recorded their children’s first steps, family vacations, favorite pastimes, and behind-the-scene activities on the sets of such classic films as “On the Waterfront” and “The Misfits.”

“Hollywood Home Movies” is curated by Academy Archivist Lynne Kirste and is presented in conjunction with ongoing 2008 Home Movie Day events around the world.

Tickets for “Hollywood Home Movies” are $5 for the general public and $3 for Academy members and students with a valid ID. Tickets may be reserved by calling 1-888-778-7575. Depending on availability, tickets may be purchased in person on the night of the screening. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. All seating is unreserved. The Academy Theater is located at 111 East 59th Street in New York City.