Garden Grove to Celebrate With ’56 Films : Movies: ‘The Searchers’ and other classics from the same year the city was incorporated will be shown at Gem Theatre.

Hollywood had a pretty good year in 1956. Among the movies screening at the time were hits about a giant white whale, a beautiful but batty saloon singer, a suave jewel thief and a capering journey around the world in a balloon.

Garden Grove also looks back fondly on 1956 as the year the city was incorporated.

Garden Grove and Hollywood don’t have much else to connect them, but good memories of 1956 were enough for John Bushman, the city’s public relations director. He organized the Garden Grove Film Festival, which features seven popular movies from that year to mark the city’s 35th birthday.

“I felt really lucky that it was such a good year for the movies; there were plenty of great ones to choose from,” Bushman said of the festival, which runs Saturday and Sunday at the city-owned Gem Theatre, the home of the Grove Shakespeare Festival.

“I actually had some tough choices to make. We had to take a poll of city employees to find which ones to include.”

The series begins at 11 a.m. Saturday with “The Searchers,” directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne and Natalie Wood. Bushman said this selection was “a natural” because Wayne is such a well-known local figure.

But “The Searchers” is also a remarkable film that touches on racism and other dubious repercussions of the frontier spirit. It provided Wayne with one of his best, but least sympathetic, roles.

Double-billed with “The Searchers” is the John Huston-directed adaptation of Melville’s classic “Moby Dick,” with Gregory Peck as the obsessive Captain Ahab.

At 3 p.m. comes “High Society” with Frank Sinatra, Grace Kelly and Bing Crosby. It’s teamed with “To Catch a Thief,” directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Cary Grant and Grace Kelly.

On Sunday at 1 p.m. is the Joshua Logan-directed adaptation of William Inge’s “Bus Stop,” starring Marilyn Monroe as the soiled chanteuse who is pursued by Don Murray’s rambunctious cowboy. The film version of the popular musical “Carousel,” with Gordon MacRae and Shirley Jones, follows.

The festival closes at 4 p.m. with “Around the World in 80 Days,” the Academy Award winner for Best Picture in 1956. Directed by Michael Anderson, it stars David Niven, Shirley MacLaine and Cantinflas.

Bushman noted that, in keeping with the ‘50s flavor, tickets are $1 for adults and 50 cents for children and seniors for each double-bill, except for the solo screening of “Around the World in 80 Days.” Any profits, Bushman said, will be given to DARE (Drug Awareness, Resistance and Education), the Garden Grove Police Department’s anti-drug program.

The Garden Grove Film Festival on Saturday and Sunday will be held at the Gem Theatre, 12852 Main St., Garden Grove. Tickets: $1 and 50 cents. Information: (714) 741-5284.