Karina Longworth, the writer, film historian and voice behind the podcast You Must Remember This, will be stopping at Varsity Cinema in Des Moines and FilmScene in Iowa City in the days ahead to tour the latest season of the show, titled “The Bisexuals.”
First launched in 2014, You Must Remember This features diligent research on Hollywood history, particularly its first century, to highlight the various, often conflicting reports that come out of the past. Longworth will be visiting cinemas across the country that are programming screenings of films mentioned throughout the season. Little Village spoke with Longworth before her visits to talk about the inspiration for the season, embarking on a national tour and the importance of repertory cinema in today’s film landscape.
For “The Bisexuals,” Longworth centers on actress, torch singer and socialite Libby Holman, who found success in 1930s New York City, but is more likely to be regarded for the mysterious death of her husband Zachary Smith Reynolds. Holman also engaged in several romantic relationships with women, and in the ’50s, became involved with American actor and heartthrob Montgomery Clift, who worked to keep his own long-term relationships with men a secret. It was here that Longworth found her title for the season.
“I wanted to tell the story of Libby Holman and Montgomery Clift, and then I expanded it out from them to some of the people that they collaborated with and were in their social lives. It just kind of happened that most of those people were queer, in the sense that they would have sex with both men and women.”
Bisexuality, Longworth continued, “is still something that feels kind of controversial; there are still people who think of bisexuality as a myth or joke about it being a myth, but it’s also a real experience that many people have and an identity that many people have. It’s something that we don’t talk about in terms of how it plays a role in people’s Hollywood careers.”
Longworth is no stranger to introducing and programming films, but this will mark the first time she is doing a national tour for the show.
“I went back to school to study film preservation at the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, New York, and I was honestly feeling a little stir-crazy in Rochester,” she joked. “I knew I was gonna have a podcast season coming out in the fall, and I just thought it would be really cool to go to repertory cinemas in a bunch of places that I hadn’t been before … I feel like it’s connected to the work that I was doing studying film preservation, because I’m interested in going to these different parts of the country and talking to different theater managers and audiences about what kinds of repertory film works in these places, and what we can do to get more movies seen in more places.”
While it’s important for moviegoers to see new releases to help the film do well and gain exposure while showing studios that audiences do, in fact, want original movies, repertory cinema is just as vital and enriching an experience. In an age in which many films are, quite literally, nowhere to be found on streaming, and Turner Classic Movies faces an existential crisis every time Warner Bros. merges with another company, screenings of older films become an opportunity for intergenerational conversation and comprehension.
Longworth hopes to facilitate some of those conversations in the post-screening discussions of her tour. For the Iowa leg, she will visit Varsity Cinema in Des Moines on Nov. 8, where audience members can enjoy 1951’s A Place in the Sun, starring Montgomery Clift. The following evening, Nov. 9, Iowa City’s FilmScene will be screening 1948’s Key Largo in 35mm, which features a performance of Libby Holman’s signature song “Moanin’ Low.”
“I definitely don’t think you need to have listened to the podcast to enjoy either Key Largo or A Place in the Sun,” stressed Longworth. “These are some of the classic movies of the 20th century. A Place in the Sun is a Best Picture winner. It’s one of those movies that, if you have any interest in the history of Hollywood at all, should be at the top of your list to see. Key Largo is maybe not one of the top five film noirs … but I find it to be a really interesting film that takes into account not just film noir, which was getting started at the time that the movie was made, but also feels like a hangover of the gangster film, or almost a revisionist gangster film.”
One of Longworth’s main goals in focusing on Libby Holman in her podcast was to offer a more honest historical account of the Jazz Age celebrity.
“Her story is really fascinating, and there are definitely things in it that I empathize with, while at the same time, there are other things I can be critical of. One of the reasons why I wanted to tell her story is because she’s somebody who — in all of the official writing about her — there’s a sense of making fun of her a little bit. Branding her a black widow, turning her almost into an urban legend of somebody whose very presence around men was dangerous to their livelihoods. I just think that her story is so much more complicated than the easy ways that she’s been framed.”
You can listen to “The Bisexuals” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
Upcoming events:
A Place in the Sun w/ Karina Longworth of You Must Remember This podcast
Des Moines | Varsity Cinema | Sunday, Nov. 8, 7 p.m.
Key Largo on 35mm w/ You Must Remember This
Iowa City | FilmScene | Monday, Nov. 9, 7 p.m.
