Happy Independent Bookstore Day! Every last Saturday in April, since 2015, bookworms across the country have celebrated indie bookshops: marvellous, idiosyncratic creatures that these days feel like an endangered species. It’s a great excuse to buy books. Not that I’ve ever needed one. Glancing at my shelves, I’ve sometimes wondered if I’m in danger of an avalanche. Books on the brain led me to bookshops on film and a handful of movies which feature bookshops in starring or supporting roles.
The Big Sleep (1946)
Wading through an increasingly convoluted case, Detective Philip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) ducks into a bookshop and gets a few clues from the bookseller (Dorothy Malone). The bookshop might be generic (‘Acme Book Shop’) but Malone’s saleswoman is anything but ordinary: intelligent, sharp-witted and remarkably observant. For all the sparks that fly between Marlowe and Lauren Bacall’s heiress, part of me is always sad he didn’t pay Malone a return visit.
Heaven Can Wait (1943)
Playboy Henry Van Cleve (Don Ameche) overhears a beautiful woman (Gene Tierney) lying to her mother on the phone at a department store. Fascinated, he follows her into a Brentano’s and pretends to be a clerk. She’s looking for a book called How to Make Your Husband Happy but confesses she isn’t married, yet. Naturally, he does everything he can to talk her out of her purchase and her engagement. Henry may be a roué, but he’s sensible enough to realise he’s met the love of his life.
Notting Hill (1999)
William Thacker (Hugh Grant) is minding his own business, and his bookshop, when the most famous actress in the world, Anna Scott (Julia Roberts), strolls in. She looks on as he tackles a brazen shoplifter, buys a book, is charming and polite, and leaves. That would be that, except they bump into each other again moments later—a collision that has dire consequences for his cup of orange juice and her blouse. The incident and the relationship that follows are surreal, but nice.
Crossing Delancey (1988)
Izzy Grossman (Amy Irving) organises the reading series for New Day Books, the epitome of Upper West Side indie bookstores. New Day is cosy, high-minded, a meeting place for the literati and, at the beginning of the film, narrowly saved from closure. It’s sobering to realise that bookshops were being driven out of business by rent hikes even in the 1980s.
Funny Face (1957)
“It’s movingly dismal. We couldn’t have done better if we’d designed it ourselves.” This is Maggie Prescott’s (Kay Thompson) verdict on the bookshop where Jo (Audrey Hepburn) works when she invades with a barrage of models, lighting equipment and photographer Dick Avery (Fred Astaire) and commandeers the shop for a shoot. Jo is scandalised, not only by their rudeness but also by the fashion industry, which she objects to eloquently. Maggie’s response? “We’re going to have trouble. She’s a thinker.”
Gumshoe (1971)
Eddie Ginley (Albert Finney), an aspiring stand-up comedian who works at a bingo hall in Liverpool, dreams of being an old-fashioned, smart-mouthed private eye. He even thinks in Chandleresque prose. When he advertises his services in the local paper, he quickly becomes embroiled in a plot involving a girl, a gun, a Sydney Greenstreet lookalike and, in a nod to The Big Sleep, a bookshop. Specialising in the occult, the Atlantis Bookshop seems silly but harbours a nasty secret—fitting for a film that both parodies and celebrates film noir.
Beauty and the Beast (1991)
Belle (Paige O’Hara) is a bookworm’s bookworm, dancing in and out of her local bookshop on a daily basis. The bookseller is a dear old man, giving his best customer her favourite book as a gift. However, given the stubborn anti-intellectualism of the rest of the townsfolk (“With a dreamy, far-off look/ And her nose stuck in a book/ What a puzzle to the rest of us is Belle”), I fear for his business. If ever a bookshop needed attention on Indie Bookstore Day, it’s this one.
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