Richard Barthelmess' last starring film, and one of the best of the earlier films directed by Mitchell Leisen, Four Hours to Kill was a revelation when it was introduced to PFA audiences in 1983 by William K. Everson, and a dream when we showed it, later that year, in the 35mm print from UCLA Film Archives which we also feature tonight. Norman Krasna's ingenious script weaves together diverse story lines from characters among the audience at New York's West Forty-third Street Theater. There is the checkroom boy who is being blackmailed by his file-clerk sweetheart, the department store owner's wife and her young paramour, and the escaped convict (Barthelmess) on his way back to Wyoming where he will be hanged. With four hours "to kill" before being transported back to prison, the convict sets out to square accounts with his betrayer. William K. Everson notes, "Something of a minor-league Grand Hotel (with a theater substituting for the hotel), this is a surprisingly powerful and poignant melodrama...and a surprisingly elaborate and glossy film for its relative commercial unimportance."