Re:Vision: 8 Girls in a Boat

SUN, SEP 27 | 6:10 PM Roxie Theater

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About

At an all-girls school in Switzerland, Christa Storm (Dorothy Wilson) is a star pupil and stroke seat on the rowing team, but her clandestine affair with a young chemist from another college leads her into trouble when she discovers she’s pregnant. As Christa’s attention in school slips, she incurs the discipline of the team’s steely coach, Hannah (Kay Johnson), who removes her from the boat and threatens expulsion. Worse, Christa’s businessman father (Walter Connelly) objects to marriage between Christa and David over concerns that David’s studies doom him to a life of poverty. How will Christa and her coming baby keep an even keel through all this choppy water?

This pre-Code film was a remake of a 1932 German original (Acht Mädels im Boot) and billed as “America’s daring reply to Mädchen in Uniform (1931)”. Paramount’s advertising played up the salacious suggestion of a female-only school where men are forbidden. Most of the cast members were selected through a nationwide beauty contest aimed at filling out the ensemble with new faces to Hollywood, including Jean Rogers of Flash Gordon (1936). Silent child star Peggy-Jean “Baby Peggy” Montgomery (also known as Diana Serra Cary), now a teenager, appears as one of the students. — Brian Belak

Restored in 2026 by UCLA Film & Television Archive and The Packard Humanities Institute at The PHI Stoa Film Lab, Audio Mechanics and Simon Daniel Sound laboratories, from the 35mm original nitrate picture negative, a 35mm acetate composite fine-grain positive and a 35mm nitrate print.

8 Girls in a Boat will screen with the following short:

TRIBUNE-AMERICAN DREAM PICTURE (United States, 1924) 8m, DCP
This 1920s silent film produced by the Oakland Tribune is a documentary reenactment of a humorous nightmare sourced from a written description by a local woman. Mrs. L.L. Nicholson stars in this on-screen depiction of her own anxiety dream, one in which her baby boy goes entirely missing in the bustle of a ferry ride to San Francisco. Cars veer erratically and rowboats loop in a time-lapse while the vessel of Mrs. L.L. Nicholson’s imagination overflows. — Elise Schierbeek

Restored by the National Film Preservation Foundation from a 16mm print held by the Library of Congress.

Runtime
1h 33m

Year
1934

Director
Richard Wallace

Format
35mm

Country
USA

Language
English with Open Captions

First Showing
September 27, 2026

Categories

RE:VISION — FESTIVAL OF RESTORATION AND REDISCOVERY
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Roxie Theater

3117 16th Street
District: Dogpatch Area: San Francisco