Saturday | November 4, 2006 9:30 pm

Servants’ Entrance

Screening on Film

Directed by Frank Lloyd.
With Janet Gaynor, Lew Ayres, Ned Sparks.
US, 1934, 35mm, black & white, 88 min.

A charming, unpretentious little programmer pumped up to “A”-class production standards, Servants’ Entrance was one in a series of immensely successful talkie vehicles Fox designed for Gaynor in the early ’30s. Gaynor stars as an erstwhile rich girl who takes work as a maid in preparation for an impoverished future and falls in love with a handsome chauffeur played by Lew Ayres. The press hailed the picture as “an agreeable romantic comedy which should—and unquestionably will—find high favor with those who visit the cinema primarily in search of entertainment” (New York Times). Especially noteworthy is Gaynor’s cartoon anxiety dream, an animated sequence produced for the film by none other than Walt Disney.