A Literary Lunch Break and an ICA Screening

Two College of Communication faculty are taking center stage at cultural events this weekend.

First up is Dick Lehr, a COM professor of journalism, New York Times best-selling author of Black Mass: The Irish Mob, the FBI, and a Devil’s Deal (Public Affairs 2000), and a former Boston Globe reporter, who will answer questions about and sign copies of his newest book, Birth of a Nation: How a Legendary Filmmaker and a Crusading Editor Reignited America’s Civil War (Public Affairs 2014). He will speak today beneath South Station’s destination board at 1 p.m. as part of the recently instituted Boston Literary District’s Literary Lunch Break Series.

Lehr’s new book recounts the public battle that erupted between D. W. Griffith, the director of one of the silent film era’s most famous movies, Birth of a Nation, and William Monroe Trotter, the respected editor and founder of the Boston Guardian, an African American newspaper, who tried to block the film from being shown in Boston. Griffith’s film glorified the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, and Trotter helped lead a movement to suppress the release of the film that lasted for months.

Tomorrow and twice on Sunday, Gerald Peary, a COM lecturer in the film and television department and the curator of BU’s screening series Cinematheque, will bring his own film, Archie’s Betty, to the Institute of Contemporary Art for its New England premiere.

Working with coproducer Shaun Clancy, Peary has tracked down the real-life inspirations for the characters brought to life by the Archie comic book creator Bob Montana, who died in 1975. Montana based Riverdale—the fictional hometown of Archie, Betty, Jughead, and other members of the Archie comics—on his  hometown, Haverill, Mass., and modeled some of the characters on his Haverill High School classmates. The 69-minute documentary’s final scene takes viewers to Edison, N.J., and introduces them to a now 94-year-old woman who dated Montana when he was a young man, and who may have been the model for Betty.

The Literary Lunch Break Series featuring Dick Lehr takes place today, Friday, May 30, from 1 to 2 p.m. at South Station, 700 Atlantic Ave., Boston. The event is free and open to the public. Other local authors featured in the series include Stephen Kurkjian (CAS’66), the author of Master Thieves: The Boston Gangsters Who Pulled Off the World’s Greatest Art Heist (June 5); Michael Blanding, author of The Map Thief: The Gripping Story of an Esteemed Rare-Map Dealer Who Made Millions Stealing Priceless Maps (June 12), and Susan Wilson, author of Heaven, by Hotel Standards, which recounts visits by famous literary luminaries, including Mark Twain, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Malcolm X, to Boston’s Omni Parker House, where Wilson serves as historian (June 19). Via public transportation, take any inbound Green Line trolley to Park Street and transfer to an outbound Red Line train to South Station.

Archie’s Betty will screen at the Institute of Contemporary Art, 100 Northern Ave., Boston, on Saturday, May 30, at 7 p.m. and on Sunday, May 31, at 12 p.m. and 3 p.m. Tickets are $5 for members and students, $10 for nonmembers. By public transportation, take any MBTA Green Line trolley to Park Street, transfer to a Red Line inbound train to South Station, then to the Silver Line Waterfront bus. The ICA is within walking distance of the World Trade Center or Courthouse stations.

Paula Sokolska can be reached at ps5642@bu.edu.