A Free Soul at Glasgow Film Theatre
Wednesday 7 September, 2022 at 6.15 pm
Film writers and critics Pamela Hutchinson and Christina Newland present some of Hollywood’s most risqué films (all new restorations, care of Park Circus and Warner Bros) made before the 1930’s Hays Code was enforced, in Pre-Code Hollywood: Rules Are Made to be Broken.
The divine Norma Shearer stars as an independent-minded young society woman who has been trained by her defence attorney father (Lionel Barrymore) to live without restraint, and who becomes trapped in a love triangle between the monied, kind Leslie Howard and the good-for-nothing rogue played by the delightfully evil Clark Gable. Her father, loving but consistently sozzled, successfully defends the gangster against a murder rap, not realising that his beloved daughter is about to embark on a lusty affair with the reprobate.
Penned by iconoclastic gossip columnist Adela Rogers St Johns and loosely recalling her own upbringing (her father was a real defence attorney too, even once representing disgraced silent star Fatty Arbuckle), A Free Soul is psychologically complex and earnest in spite of its sensationalist leanings: a genuinely open-minded exploration of what happens to nice girls when they fall for the bad boy – hard.
Christina Newland, Pre-Code Hollywood Season Co-Curator
GFT, 12 Rose Street, Glasgow G3 6RB
This section: Cinema, What's On Glasgow West End: cinema, clubs, theatre, music, events, festivals, community and more
Filed under: Cinema, What's On Glasgow West End: cinema, clubs, theatre, music, events, festivals, community and more
Prevous page or post | Next page or post
Written by : Pat Byrne
Publisher of Pat's Guide to Glasgow West End; the community guide to the West End of Glasgow. Fiction and non-fiction writer.
Related Pages
- WestFest 2026: Full Programme Announced
- Storytelling For Adults, Alexandria
- The Scotland Channel presents Hillhead Hoolie
- Heritage Festival West Dunbartonshire- Speakeasy
- Paintings on Railings at West Fest
- Westfest 2026 – Step into the Arlington Baths
- Creative Heritage Cafe – Dalmuir
- The Wizard of the Kremlin at GFT
- Children’s Walk for Gaza, Glasgow Green
- Everbody to Kenmure Street at GFT
- Connected Community Talk: Stolen Stories
- National Theatre Live: All My Sons
- Old Kilpatrick Graveyard, Walk and Talk
- Foraging Walk at The Saltings, Old Kilpatrick
- Writing Short Stories like Agnes Owens with Kirstin Innes
- Mayday: That Sinking Feeling, University of Glasgow – live performance
- Book Launch: The History of Working-Class Courtship, Marriage and Divorce in Scotland, 1855-1939
- Celebrating the Music of John Martyn
- Responding to Alasdair Gray’s ‘Lanark’ University of Glasgow
- Could you open your home and heart to a guide dog puppy, and help change a life?
