Harold and Maude

HAROLD AND MAUDE (1971)
55 th Anniversary Screening
Laemmle NoHo Theatre
Wednesday, March 25, at 7:30 PM

Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series present a tribute to the late Bud Cort with a screening of his most famous movie, the offbeat romantic comedy, HAROLD AND MAUDE

Cort had attracted attention in two films directed by Robert Altman, the Oscar-winning black comic hit M*A*S*H and the eccentric comedy, Brewster McCloud. He also played one of the student protestors in The Strawberry Statement, one of a handful of movies about student rebellion that the major studios produced in the early 1970s. But when he joined forces with Ruth Gordon, the Oscar-winning co-star of Rosemary’s Baby, to play one of the oddest couples in movie history, he gained a stronger following. Cort plays Harold, a death-obsessed young man determined to commit suicide, but his outlook changes when he meets the vibrant 79-year-old Maude and falls in love with her.

The oddball film romance, written by Colin Higgins and directed by Hal Ashby, was a critical
and financial flop when it first opened in December of 1971. Major critics like Roger Ebert and Vincent Canby of The New York Times panned the film, and it struggled to find an audience. Pauline Kael gave it a mixed review, noting that it flaunted a bizarre concept but added, “the film has been made with considerable wit and skill.” She also noted the impact it had on young viewers: “Many young moviegoers have returned to this eccentric film repeatedly (in 1974, one 22-year-old claimed to have seen it 138 times).” The venerable New York Review of Books called it “a philosophical black comedy for grandparents and grandchildren.” In 1983, 12 years after its initial release, the film finally turned a profit, and Cort, Gordon, and the filmmakers received royalty checks. In 1997 the film was tagged for preservation by the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. And in 2004 Entertainment Weekly ranked it #4 on its list of the top 50 cult films of all time.

Ashby and Higgins also went on to much bigger successes. Ashby directed The Last Detail,
Shampoo, Bound for Glory, Coming Home, and Being There, all of them Oscar-nominated and some winning Oscars. Higgins wrote the smash hit Gene Wilder-Richard Pryor comedy, Silver Streak, and then directed the popular Foul Play and 9 to 5. Vivian Pickles and Cyril Cusack co-star in HAROLD AND MAUDE, which is also remembered for its iconic musical score by Cat Stevens.

Join us in remembering Bud Cort at the one-night-only screening at Laemmle’s NoHo 7.