PORT TOWNSEND — A rare opportunity to see the 1935 movie version of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” comes at noon Saturday.
The Rose Theatre, 235 Taylor St., will screen the film, which stars a young James Cagney, an even younger — as in 14 years old — Mickey Rooney as Puck and Olivia de Havilland in her first movie role.
Admission is $10, and proceeds will benefit the Port Townsend School District’s ReCyclery bicycle education initiative as well as its ICE program.
Educational blend
ICE, or Individualized Choice Education, is an alternative program blending home-schooling and classroom time for students with Port Townsend public schoolteachers.
A troupe of ICE students is planning to stage its own “Midsummer Night’s Dream” next Saturday, March 12; the young actors will present a short preview just before this Saturday’s film screening.
“A Midsummer Night’s Dream” was the Hollywood film debut for co-director Max Reinhardt, who fled Nazi Germany in 1934. Reinhardt spoke no English at the time of the filming, and all directions had to be translated from German for the actors.
The Nazis banned the film because of the Jewish ancestry of both Reinhardt and Felix Mendelssohn, whose musical score from 1843 plays throughout the picture.
Advance tickets for Saturday’s fundraiser are on sale at the Food Co-Op, 414 Kearney St.; at Quimper Sound, 230 Taylor St.; and at the Rose Theatre.
