This three-part class will take a deep dive into romantic comedies from the 1930s to the 2000s with Joe Meyers, director of programming for Connecticut's Focus on French Cinema Festival and co-host of the Spotify podcast, Now a Major Motion Picture!.
Romantic comedies have gone in and out of critical and audience favor several times over the years. Dominating the box office during the 1930s in the wake of It Happened One Night, the genre made stars out of Claudette Colbert, Carole Lombard, Jean Arthur, and Rosalind Russell. Romantic comedies dwindled in the postwar years, but they made a comeback during the 1990s and the 2000s with the arrival of new romantic comedy stars such as Julia Roberts, Meg Ryan, and Sandra Bullock. In recent years, romance has been overshadowed in movie theaters by action and horror, but it has found a new home on streaming services.
Joe Meyers has written features about movies, theaters, and books for more than 30 years for Hearst Connecticut Media Group and other publications. He has given talks at various libraries and arts organizations in Connecticut and has hosted many public interviews at the Stamford non-profit movie theater, the Avon, with guests ranging from Frank Langella and Paul Schrader, to Gene Wilder and John Cameron Mitchell. In the late 1970s, Meyers ran the first and only art house on the Delmarva Peninsula, the Lewes Cinema. In 2012, the Mystery Writers of America gave Meyers the Ellery Queen Award for his writing on crime fiction.
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Verso University is the Library’s lifelong learning and education initiative, serving up year-round offerings of classes, workshops, and lectures designed to further education and learning. Offerings run the gamut of educational opportunities, ranging from one-time lectures to ongoing courses to classes that meet weekly or perhaps monthly.
The class size is limited. The class has a one-time registration fee of $25, and registration is mandatory. The Westport Library wants to ensure that all interested students can participate in Verso University courses, so if the registration fee is a barrier to entry for you, please contact jconnon@westportlibrary.org.
Verso University programs are made possible by the generous support of the Nancy J. Beard Lifelong Learning and Education Fund.