Kennedy, Swanson Partnership to Be
Explored in Academy Film Scholars Event

Beverly Hills, CA — The partnership between screen legend Gloria Swanson and producer Joseph P. Kennedy will be among the topics explored by Academy film scholar Cari Beauchamp in a program featuring highlights from her upcoming book, Joseph P. Kennedy Presents, on Thursday, November 1, at 7:30 p.m. at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Linwood Dunn Theater in Hollywood.  A rare screening of “The Trespasser,” the 1929 film produced by Kennedy and starring Swanson, will follow Beauchamp’s presentation.  Admission is free.

Joseph P. Kennedy Presents, which offers the first serious look at Kennedy’s years as a film mogul, draws on material in his recently released personal papers. Instrumental in the conversion from silent to sound films, Kennedy is the only man ever to run three film studios (FBO, Pathé and First National) and a theater circuit simultaneously. Beauchamp’s presentation will include insight into her research process and will focus on the unique producing partnership between Kennedy and Swanson.

In “The Trespasser,” Swanson stars as a stenographer who elopes with the son of a wealthy family, only to find the marriage annulled by her husband’s father.  She returns to her previous job financially strapped, pregnant and beholden to her old boss.  The security of her child is later threatened when her ex-father-in-law realizes the boy is his only chance for an heir to the family fortune.

Written and directed by Edmund Goulding, “The Trespasser” features Swanson in her first talking and singing role.  For her performance she earned her second Academy Award® nomination.

The Academy’s Institutional Grants Committee selected Beauchamp as an Academy Film Scholar in 2004.  This event will celebrate the upcoming release of Joseph P. Kennedy Presents (fall 2008).  Beauchamp previously authored Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Powerful Women of Early Hollywood and edited Anita Loos Rediscovered: Film Treatments and Fiction.

Established in 1999, the Academy Film Scholars program is designed to stimulate and support the creation of new and significant works of film scholarship about aesthetic, cultural, educational, historical, theoretical or scientific aspects of theatrical motion pictures.  Film scholars receive $25,000 to research and produce new works of film scholarship, which can take the form of books, multimedia presentations, curatorial projects, DVDs or Internet sites.

For grant guidelines and information about the Academy Film Scholars program, visit http://www.oscars.org/grants/filmscholars.

Admission to the Academy Film Scholars presentation is free, but tickets are required.  Tickets are available by mail, at the Academy box office, or online at www.oscars.org.  Doors open at 6:30 p.m.  All seating is unreserved.  The Linwood Dunn Theater is located at 1313 Vine Street in Hollywood.  Free parking is available through the entrance on Homewood Avenue.  For more information, call (310) 247-3600.

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