'THE PATSY'
Sunday: The 1928 silent "The Patsy" could have been shown first-run at the glorious old Heights Theater, a Beaux Arts picture palace built in 1926. True to its vintage, the theater hosts old film classics and rarities; Sunday it presents the Roaring Twenties farce with a 35mm print from the Library of Congress. It's a trifle about a neglected girl who becomes a flirtatious flapper to get a bit of attention. The star is the draw: Marion Davies was the mistress and artistic protégée of newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst, a relationship immortalized in "Citizen Kane." That film portrayed the publisher's consort as a talentless singer pushed into humiliating public performances by her bullheaded patron. By all accounts, the real Davies was a sunny comic talent. This MGM offering , directed by King Vidor, co-stars the formidable Marie Dressler, a battleship of an actress, as the girl's bossy mother. With musical accompaniment by Harvey Gustafson at the keyboard of the auditorium's Wurlitzer pipe organ. (7:30 p.m. Sun., $10, Heights Theater, 3951 Central Av. NE., Columbia Heights.)
Colin COVERT
