The 1952 comedy “Monkey Business,” starring Cary Grant, Ginger Rogers and Marilyn Monroe, will be shown as part of the Brigham Young University Motion Picture Archive Film Series on Friday, March 28, at 7 p.m. in the Harold B. Lee Library Auditorium. Admission is free.
The auditorium doors will open at 6:30 p.m. and seating is limited. Children ages 8 and older are welcome, and no food or drink is permitted in the auditorium. The film will be introduced by James V. D’Arc, curator of the BYU Motion Picture Archive.
In “Monkey Business,” Cary Grant portrays a research scientist searching for a formula of eternal youth, using chimpanzees as laboratory subjects for the experiments. When one of the chimps inadvertently mixes the successful formula, Grant and his wife, played by Ginger Rogers, revert to adolescence. The pair creates havoc in the research foundation, whose employees include a curvaceous secretary played by Marilyn Monroe.
The film’s director, Howard Hawks, was one of America’s top directors and excelled in almost every major film genre. He advanced the careers of stars like Gary Cooper, John Wayne, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. Hawks’ papers are preserved in the L. Tom Perry Special Collections of BYU’s Harold B. Lee Library.
The Motion Picture Archive Film Series is co-sponsored by the Friends of the Harold B. Lee Library and Dennis and Linda Gibson. “Monkey Business” and all of the films shown in the series are part of the permanent collection of motion pictures in Special Collections.
A complete series schedule is available at sc.lib.byu.edu.
For more information, contact James D’Arc at (801) 422-6371.
Writer: Marissa Ballantyne
