For a month, classic movie fans can wallow in a surprise glut of 1930s films—most surprisingly little-known—as part of Film Forum’s Hollywood on the Hudson retrospective.

Yes, that’s right: All of the eight feature films (and a program of shorts) included in the series were filmed right in our own backyard. And while the chance to see The Marx Brothers in Animal Crackers or the Ernst Lubitsch musical The Smiling Lieutenant is a welcome one, the real prizes are in the films you’ve never heard of.

That being said, don’t be tricked by the pedigree behind The Scoundrel. Written, produced and directed by crack team Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur (The Front Page), even the presence of a young Noel Coward can’t save the implausible script (implausible even for a ’30s film, which is saying something) and shoddy production values. Wait for the series’ gem, the criminally underappreciated Laughter (James Harvey unfairly dismissed it in his otherwise masterly Romantic Comedy in Hollywood), which plays Aug. 3. A 1930 precursor to the screwball comedies that would soon follow, Laughter is a giddy delight, enlivened by stars Nancy Carroll and Fredric March and blessed with a Donald Ogden Stewart script.

Also featured in the retrospective are The Emperor Jones (one of the rare films of the time to have a black lead, in this case Paul Robeson), a Bessie Smith short from 1929, silent W.C. Fields comedy So’s Your Old Man, and another Hecht-MacArthur production, Crime Without Passion. There are few better ways to pass a sultry New York City than relaxing in the cool darkness of Film Forum while a black-and-white movie plays in front of you, so even the lesser films (I’m looking at you, The Scoundrel) won’t be a waste of time.

Hollywood on the Hudson, every Tuesday from July 13 through Aug. 10.