This program combines a tribute to native son James Thurber, perhaps the greatest American humorist of the 20th century, with a cinematic take on a Theodore Dreiser novel set partly in Columbus.

James Thurber was born in Columbus in 1894 and attended Ohio State from 1913 to 1918. (He never graduated but was awarded a degree posthumously.) The screening opens with The Unicorn in the Garden, a United Productions of America (UPA) cartoon based on a Thurber short story about a henpecked husband who gets the last laugh after finding a unicorn in the family garden. (William T. Hurtz, 1953, 7 mins., 35mm)

Our Thurber feature is The Male Animal, which stars Henry Fonda and Olivia de Havilland and is adapted from a hit Broadway play penned by Thurber and the film’s director, Elliott Nugent. Fonda plays an English professor at a football-crazed Midwestern university (sound familiar?) who finds himself under fire from the school’s board of trustees over his decision to include a controversial reading in his class. It all takes place during the weekend of the school’s big game with—you guessed it—Michigan! (101 mins., 35mm)

Based on Theodore Dreiser’s second novel, Jennie Gerhardt stars Sylvia Sidney in the title role as a poor young woman from Columbus who catches the eye of a US senator. He gives money to her family and promises to marry her but dies before they can wed. And she’s pregnant. She is forced to leave Columbus in shame and takes work as a servant to a wealthy family, all the while trying to hide from her scandalous past. With Edward Arnold, Donald Cook, and Mary Astor. (85 mins., 35mm)

Jennie Gerhardt begins at 9 PM.