WHAT'S PLAYING AT THE MOVIES TONIGHT, DEAR?

(A Domestic Drama in One Act)

Dramatis Personae:
Sam Evening, a husband home after a hard day’s work
Janet Evening, his wife, who had a tiring afternoon of bridge with her friends

The Setting:
Their living room, just following dinner

(Curtain)
Sam: What’s playing at the movies tonight, Dear?
Janet: (Turning newspaper pages) Hmm, let’s see ….. well, the Detroit has Gilda.
Sam: Who’s in it?
Janet: Gwyllyn Samuel Newton Ford and Margarita Carmen Cansino.
Sam: Seen it. What else?
Janet: The Graduate is on at the Hilliard Square. That’s the one where Anna Maria Luisa
Italiano seduces that young fellow just out of …..
Sam: Naw, too much sex. How about the Granada?
Janet: Aha! That exciting chariot race film, Ben Hur, with John Charles Carter.
Sam: Don’t like movies about horses. What else?
Janet: The Lincoln has a double feature. The first is Gone with the Wind. Remember, Vivian
Mary Hartley won an Oscar as …..
Sam: About the Civil War? Fooey. What’s the second one?
Janet: A horror film, the Son of Frankenstein. It has Philip St. John Rathbone, with William
Henry Platt as the monster.
Sam: Who plays Igor?
Janet: Umm ….. Bela Ferenc Dezso Blasko.
Sam: Naah, no frightening shows for me tonight. Anything else?
Janet: At the Lucier it’s Pillow Talk, a husband-wife comedy, with Roy Harold Scherer Jr. and
Doris Mary Ann Von Kappelhoff. Sounds good. What do you say we …..
Sam: Not tonight. Is there anything with a lot of dancing?
Janet: You bet. We can go to the Beach Cliff and watch Frederick Austerlitz and Virginia
Katherine McMath in …..
Sam: Never mind that. Try some of the downtown theaters.
Janet: Aah ….. at the Palace they have a cowboy flick starring Marion Michael Morrison, and the
State is featuring West Side Story, with Natalia Nikolaerna Zakharenko as the girl who
tragically gets shot …..
Sam: Doesn’t sound so hot to me. Try the Stillman.
Janet: They have that film about the criminal running around the Casbah to avoid the cops, but
falling for his girl friend, and …..
Sam: Who plays the female role?
Janet: That Austrian beauty, Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler.
Sam: Aw, I was hoping you’d say Greta Lovita Gustafsson. I liked her. Do you see her name
anywhere?
Janet: No. Sorry, but we might try the Hippodrome.
Sam: What’s there?
Janet: Psycho, where Jeanette Helen Morrison is stabbed to death in the shower.
Sam: Too gruesome. How about the Allen?
Janet: Oh, this looks pretty good. Love Is a Many Splendored Thing, with William Franklin
Beedle Jr. and Phyllis Lee Isley.
Sam: Too slushy for me. Let’s stay home. Look at the TV schedule.
Janet: (Turning more pages) Well, for the old movies, there’s Bernard Schwartz in the Boston
Strangler.
Sam: Hey! Knock it off with the violence!
Janet: Well, a slightly more toned down one could be I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang.
Sam: Who played in that?
Janet: A very fine method actor, named Meshilem Meier Weisenfreud.
Sam: Maybe. Still, I don’t go for prison movies that much. Any variety shows on? Singers and
stuff?
Janet: We can see that comedy piano player, Borge Rosenbaum ….. or the girl who had such hits
as Tennessee Waltz and Mockingbird Hill.
Sam: What’s her name?
Janet: Clara Ann Fowler.
Sam: How about old Lucy Shows?
Janet: Yes, at ten o’clock, starring Dianne Belmont, as always. Then, at eleven is a rerun of
Maverick, with James Scott Baumgarner, or else the Aaron Chwatt Show. You
remember, don’t you, the comedian who used to sing Strange Things Are Happening and
the Ho-Ho Song?
Sam: No.
Janet: All right, then, if you want to stay up until three AM, we’ll be able to see the old movie
My Fair Lady.
Sam: Who’s in that? I forget.
Janet: Reginald Carey Henderson as Professor Higgins and Audrey Kathleen Ruston as Eliza
Doolittle.
Sam: That sounds too corny. (Yawn) Guess I’d better hit the sack early. Big day tomorrow.
(Janet folds paper and sits back in her chair as the curtain falls)