Last Updated: 10/27/24

ALL SECRET CINEMA PRESENTATIONS ARE SHOWN IN 16mm (or larger!) FILM ON A GIANT SCREEN (NOT VIDEO...NOT EVER!)

Since 1992, the Secret Cinema has been the Philadelphia area’s premiere floating repertory cinema series, bringing hundreds of unique programs to nightclubs, bars, coffee houses, museums, open fields, colleges, art galleries, bookstores, and sometimes even theaters and film festivals. Drawing on its own large private film archive (as well as other collections), the Secret Cinema attempts to explore the uncharted territory and the genres that fall between the cracks, with programs devoted to educational and industrial films, cult and exploitation features, cartoons, rare television, local history, home movies, erotic films, politically incorrect material, and the odd Hollywood classic. As long as it exists on real celluloid, that is—Secret Cinema screenings never use video/digital projection. While mainly based in Philadelphia, the Secret Cinema has also brought programming to other cities and countries.

Screening and breakfast at outsider art gallery?

It's Breakfast in Hollywood

Friday, November 8, 2024
7:30 pm (doors open 6:45 pm)
Admission: $10.00

The Keen Collection at Bethany Mission
1527 Brandywine Street, Philadelphia
215-264-2135

On Friday, November 8, the Secret Cinema will again bring its 16mm projectors to the Keen Collection at Bethany Mission. This unique, collector-curated gallery provides a home for outsider art, including drawings & paintings by James Castle, Sam Doyle, Howard Finster, William Hawkins, Martin Ramirez, Bill Traylor and George Widener, to name a few.

The renovated 1869 Quaker meeting house was opened by Victor Keen to display his self-taught artist acquisitions as well as other art and object collections including folk art, Catalin radios, antique metal toys & banks, milk glass, ceramic pot lids, posters, banners & photographs and antique toasters.

Join us for "breakfast" (coffee and pastries included with admission!) as we watch the 1946 film Breakfast in Hollywood. With a nod to the beautiful 1920s, '30s and '40s radios on display, we'll once more present an old-time radio themed film program. The feature is a fun comedy/musical, built around a popular real-life radio show of the same name. The program featured famous musical performers, but devoted just as much time to conversations with its mainly female audience.

The screening will also include rare radio-themed short films.

There will be one complete show at 7:30 pm. Doors open at 6:45, allowing time to take in the collection (and breakfast!).

Admission is $10.00, but space is limited. Purchase tickets here.

A description of the feature follows…

Breakfast in Hollywood (1946, Dir: Harold Schuster)
For eight years Tom Breneman was the star of a real-life radio show, broadcast live from his own Hollywood restaurant. The morning talk show was especially popular with housewives, who filled the studio audience and would engage in banter with the genial host, in between regular visits from celebrity performers. So successful was this show, with ten million listeners at its peak, that this unusual musical/comedy/drama feature was constructed around it. Breakfast in Hollywood serves as a time capsule from a more innocent, pre-television era, when national radio networks dominated home entertainment (and sponsor's advertising budgets) -- and seeing a radio program being created was a rare novelty.

The plot cannily interweaves the stories of various audience members: a young woman (Bonita Granville) trying to find her sailor fiancé; an elderly fan (Beulah Bondi) who attends fresh from being struck by a car; a dowdy, middle-aged woman (Billie Burke) with a philandering husband (Raymond Walburn); and a dotty spinster (the inimitable ZaSu Pitts) hoping the host will notice her funny hat and interview her. Appearing as themselves are musical guests the Nat King Cole Trio, Spike Jones and his City Slickers, and crooner Andy Russell…and, of course, Tom Breneman.

FUTURE SECRET CINEMA EVENTS (more info soon):