TCM Schedule for Thursday, May 15, 2014 -- Hypochondriacs

[Staph]

During the daylight hours, TCM is showing films about preachers of dubious distinction, and in prime time, we're subjected to the preoccupancies of hypochrondriacs. Enjoy, but don't forget to wash your hands first!


7:30 AM -- Till The Clouds Roll By (1946)
True story of composer Jerome Kern's rise to the top on Broadway and in Hollywood.
Dir: Richard Whorf
Cast: June Allyson, Lucille Bremer, Judy Garland
C-135 mins, CC,

Judy Garland, who played real-life singer-dancer Marilyn Miller, was pregnant with her first daughter, Liza Minnelli. She was placed behind stacks of dishes while singing "Look For the Silver Lining", but it was not to "hide her belly" as some have thought, because moments before her number, she is shown walking over to the set and even during her song as she is standing behind the dishes, her abdomen is not disguised.


9:51 AM -- Great Lady Has An Interview (Lana Turner) (1954)
BW-8 mins,


10:00 AM -- MGM Parade Show #4 (1955)
George Murphy tours Lake Metro, where "Mutiny on the Bounty" and "Show Boat" were shot, and introduces a clip from "Good News." These clips feature June Allyson and Peter Lawford.
BW-26 mins,


10:30 AM -- Hallelujah (1929)
A black laborer turns preacher after accidentally killing a man.
Dir: King Vidor
Cast: Daniel L. Haynes, Nina Mae McKinney, William E. Fountaine
BW-100 mins,

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Director -- King Vidor

King Vidor had been hoping to make the film for several years, and jumped at the chance to make it with the advent of sound. He so wanted to produce the picture that he offered to give up his salary.


12:15 PM -- Stars In My Crown (1950)
A parson uses six-guns and the Bible to bring peace to a Tennessee town.
Dir: Jacques Tourneur
Cast: Joel McCrea, Ellen Drew, Dean Stockwell
BW-89 mins, CC,

Cast includes a young James Arness and Amanda Blake. They would go on to appear together for 20 years in the TV series "Gunsmoke" as "Marshall Dillon" and "Miss Kitty."


2:00 PM -- Count Three and Pray (1955)
A Westerner turns preacher to overcome his shady past.
Dir: George Sherman
Cast: Van Heflin, Joanne Woodward, Phil Carey
C-102 mins, CC,

While Joanne Woodward had appeared in numerous television productions prior to this, this movie marked her debut in film. Joanne's middle daughter, Melissa, is supposedly named after the character she played in this.


3:47 PM -- Moviemakers - The Wild Rover's Featurette (1971)
This promotional short film provides a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the "Wild Rovers" (1971).
Dir: Ronald Saland
C-12 mins,


4:00 PM -- Wise Blood (1979)
An ambitious Southern boy tries to set himself up as a street preacher.
Dir: John Huston
Cast: Brad Dourif, Ned Beatty, Harry Dean Stanton
C-106 mins, Letterbox Format

Based on a novel by Flannery O'Connor.


6:00 PM -- The Night Of The Hunter (1955)
A bogus preacher marries an outlaw's widow in search of the man's hidden loot.
Dir: Charles Laughton
Cast: Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters, Lillian Gish
BW-93 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Stanley Cortez, the cinematographer on "Night of the Hunter", had also worked on Orson Welles's masterpiece, The Magnificent Ambersons (1942). He remarked some years after the making of this film that only two directors he'd worked with had understood light, "that incredible thing that can't be described": Welles and Laughton.


7:39 PM -- Shootin' Injuns (1925)
In this silent short comedy, a gang of children playing "cowboys" run away from home and find themselves in a haunted house.
Dir: Robert F McGowan
Cast: Mary Kornman, Harry Bowen, Jack Gavin
BW-21 mins,



TCM PRIMETIME - WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: HYPOCHONDRIACS



8:00 PM -- Why Worry? (1923)
In this silent film, a rich hypochondriac on vacation in the tropics gets mixed up with revolutionaries.
Dir: Fred Newmeyer
Cast: Harold Lloyd, Jobyna Ralston, John Aasen
BW-63 mins,

Harold Lloyd's first film with leading lady Jobyna Ralston. She was picked primarily because Lloyd wanted somebody who was exactly the opposite of his previous leading lady, Mildred Davis, who had by then retired from films to become Mrs. Harold Lloyd.


9:15 PM -- Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)
Three sisters deal with their tangled relationships amidst the wonders of New York City.
Dir: Woody Allen
Cast: Woody Allen, Moses Farrow, Michael Caine
C-107 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Won Oscars for Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Michael Caine (Michael Caine could not attend the awards ceremony because he was busy filming for Jaws: The Revenge (1987). Co-Presenter Sigourney Weaver accepted the award on his behalf.), Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Dianne Wiest, and Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen -- Woody Allen (Woody Allen was not present at the awards ceremony. Presenter Shirley MacLaine accepted the award on his behalf.)

Nominated for Oscars for Best Director -- Woody Allen, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration -- Stuart Wurtzel and Carol Joffe, Best Film Editing -- Susan E. Morse, and Best Picture

The character of Frederick, played by Max Von Sydow, complains bitterly while watching TV that if Jesus were to come back and see what religion had become, "he'd never stop throwing up." Von Sydow played Jesus earlier in his career in The Greatest Story Ever Told.


11:15 PM -- Up In Arms (1944)
A hypochondriac's imagined illnesses aren't enough to keep him out of the military.
Dir: Elliott Nugent
Cast: Danny Kaye, Dinah Shore, Dana Andrews
C-105 mins,

Nominated for Oscars for Best Music, Original Song -- Harold Arlen (music) and Ted Koehler (lyrics) for the song "Now I Know", and Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture -- Louis Forbes and Ray Heindorf

This was the first full length theatrical release for Danny Kaye.


1:15 AM -- Send Me No Flowers (1964)
When he mistakenly thinks he's dying, a hypochondriac tries to choose his wife's next husband.
Dir: Norman Jewison
Cast: Rock Hudson, Doris Day, Tony Randall
C-100 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Although many people think Doris Day and Rock Hudson co-starred as often as Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, this was only their third - and final - appearance as a screen team. Tony Randall also appeared with them in all three films: Pillow Talk (1959), Lover Come Back (1961) and this.


3:00 AM -- Little Shop Of Horrors (1960)
A clumsy young man nurtures a bloodthirsty plant that forces him to kill to feed it.
Dir: Roger Corman
Cast: Jonathan Haze, Jackie Joseph, Mel Welles
BW-72 mins,

Charles B. Griffith not only wrote most of the screenplay, he also stars uncredited as several characters; among them: the screaming dental patient that runs out of Dr. Farb's office, the burglar that breaks into the flower shop, and even the voice of Audrey Jr. Griffith also put several of his relatives in the film; Myrtle Vail - "grandmother" Myrt - for example, is actually his grandmother, and the hobo that Dr. Farb tortures in his office is Griffith's father. He also placed several of his relatives in crowd scenes. The bums in the background of the street shots on Skid Row are real transients, however, and were filmed in the actual skid row area of Los Angeles.


4:15 AM -- Gold Diggers of 1937 (1936)
A group of insurance salesmen try to get into show business.
Dir: Lloyd Bacon
Cast: Dick Powell, Joan Blondell, Glenda Farrell
BW-101 mins, CC,

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Dance Direction -- Busby Berkeley for "Love and War"

The song "Hush Mah Mouth" by Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg was written for the picture but not used in the final print.

[CBHagman]

1. Dubious preachers...

I've only seen one of the films, The Night of the Hunter, a frankly terrifying yet understated film, but I have to wonder at the number of movies made about bogus and/or flawed preachers during the era when the Production Code still held sway. I know that the 1940 Pride and Prejudice ran afoul of the censors because of the figure of the ridiculous clergyman (Mr. Collins, who if anything was more obnoxious in Jane Austen's novel), whose profession was duly altered.

[onager]

2. Check out "Wise Blood."

You get not one but TWO crooked preachers! Played by Harry Dean Stanton and Ned Beatty.

And they are directed by John Huston. Based on Flannery O'Connor's oddball tale of Southern religious extremes. (O'Connor was a devout Catholic who went to Mass every day. Much of her writing seems to deal with the tension between her fairly mundane Catholicism and the more...exotic devotions of her Fundamentalist neighbors in Georgia.)

O'Connor's literary executors had input with the script. And what a script! Dialogue examples:

"I'm going to start me a new church. Where the blind don't see, the crippled don't walk, and what's dead stays that way."

"I'm a preacher."
"What denomination?"
"First Church of Christ Without Christ."
"Is that Protestant?"

"A man with a good car don't need Jesus."

I will admit, this movie certainly isn't everybody's cup of tea. You may enjoy it a lot more if you grew up in the South, around tent revivals, street preachers etc. etc.

I saw "Wise Blood" for the first time at an "art theater" in Los Angeles. (It only played art theaters.) My date was a woman who grew up in the South, like me. We laughed like crazy all the way thru the movie (until the end, but no SPOILERS here.) Most of the people around us just sat there deadpan, looking at us like we WERE crazy.