Monday's Millinery Musings - Hat Movies

By guest blogger Jennifer

Jennifer's Etsy Store

I adore movies and my favorite place to see them is in the lovely old Sebastiani Theater on the plaza in my hometown of Sonoma. Thanks to extensive refurbishing about 7 years ago the theater is enjoying a "second spring". The Sebastiani showed its first movie, Fugitive Lovers, on April 7, 1934.

Answers.com movie review says about Fugitive Lovers: "Escaping from her gangster boyfriend Legs (Nat Pendleton), chorus girl Letty (Madge Evans) boards a Greyhound bus bound for California. Likewise a passenger -- albeit a non-paying one -- is Porter (Robert Montgomery), a fugitive from justice. As the bus rolls ever onward, hero and heroine are inexorably drawn together, despite the looming twin threats of arrest and/or extermination."  Pretty exciting stuff in 1934!

Although this is an old photo, the theater still looks much the same. A tiny wooden ticket booth, just big enough for one person, stands at the entrance of the long passage to the front door and current lobby where tickets are sold. Inside the booth sits the "ticket taker".

Years ago I asked her name and was told then that she had no name.  I think of her as Lily, sometimes Edna or Mavis depending on her outfit, which changes every once in awhile. Notice that she is wearing a hat, you can just see it...a little ribbony clam shell affair. Although LilyEdnaMavis can't sell you a ticket, she has great presence and I check in with her several times a week when I walk to town.

But all of this is diverting me from the true purpose of this post which is to give you a list of some of my favorite hat films (and please, please, PLEASE share yours with me) :

Coco Chanel (not the recent Coco Before Chanel which has only a few interesting hats)
Enchanted AprilOut of Africa
The Moderns
Mrs. Parker and Her Vicious Circle
Henry and June 
Little Dorrit (Charles Dickens BBC Series)
Marie Antoinette (for color, costume, feathers, silk, over-the-top hair and hats)

Until next time,  let's pop some corn, put up our feet and go to the movies!