Joel McCrea isn’t as well-remembered as Cary Grant, Humphrey Bogart and James Stewart, but he nonetheless was one of Hollywood’s most beloved leading men in the ’40s. McCrea starred in such classics as “Sullivan’s Travels,” “Foreign Correspondent,” “The More the Merrier” and “The Virginian.” He worked with such stars as Laraine Day, Veronica Lake and Jean Arthur and directors including Alfred Hitchcock, William Wyler, Howard Hawks, Preston Sturges and Jacques Tourneur.
An event in Easton on Tuesday, Jan. 24, will celebrate McCrea’s legacy, with a presentation by one who knew McCrea best, Peter McCrea, McCrea’s son with actress Frances Dee. McCrea will speak, accompanied by Jon Sonnenborn, who is a film historian.
The talk by McCrea and Sonnenborn will be followed by a screening of “The Palm Beach Story,” Sturges’ 1942 romantic comedy in which a woman plans to divorce her brilliant but penniless husband and marry a millionaire, so she can finance her true love’s new invention. It also stars Claudette Colbert, Mary Astor and Rudy Vallee.
The event begins at 7 p.m. at Easton Library, 692 Morehouse Road. Admission is free.
The event is the first in a four-part series of classic film screenings at the library on Tuesdays at 7 p.m. The other three films are the 1927 silent WWI romance “Seventh Heaven” with Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell on Feb. 14; the 1934 romantic comedy “The Merry Widow” with Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette McDonald on March 14; and the 1934 comedy “Twentieth Century” with John Barrymore and Carole Lombard on April 18. eastonlibrary.org.
