TCM Schedule for Friday, May 11 -- What's On Tonight: Peter Cook and Dudley Moore

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Last edited Fri May 11, 2012, 04:31 PM - Edit history (1)

Happy birthday to Margaret Rutherford, born Margaret Taylor Rutherford, on May 11, 1892 in Balham, London, England. We get three of her four starring roles as Agatha Christie's Miss Marple, along with a cameo in the Hercule Poirot film The Alphabet Murders. In primetime, we're treated to a trio of films starring the comic stylings of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. Enjoy!



6:00 AM -- Murder She Said (1961)
86 min, TV-G
When nobody will believe she witnessed a murder, elderly sleuth Miss Marple takes a job as a maid to ferret out clues.
Dir: George Pollock
Cast: Margaret Rutherford, Arthur Kennedy, Muriel Pavlow

This was the first of the "Miss Marple" series starring Margaret Rutherford. Joan Hickson, who plays Mrs. Kidder in this film, starred as Jane Marple in its remake Agatha Christie's Miss Marple: 4:50 from Paddington and many other TV-movies.


7:30 AM -- Murder At The Gallop (1963)
81 min, TV-G
Elderly sleuth Miss Marple suspects foul play when an old friend is supposedly scared to death by a cat.
Dir: George Pollock
Cast: Margaret Rutherford, Robert Morley, Flora Robson

When reporting the second murder to the police on the phone, Miss Marple uses the phrase "Murder most foul". A quote from William Shakespeare's "Hamlet", it was reused as the title of the following Miss Marple movie.


9:00 AM -- Murder Most Foul (1964)
91 min, TV-G
Elderly sleuth Miss Marple joins a small-town theatre to investigate a murder.
Dir: George Pollock
Cast: Margaret Rutherford, Ron Moody, Charles Tingwell

Like Murder at the Gallop, this movie was adapted from a Poirot novel, not a Miss Marple novel.


10:32 AM -- Scholastic England (1948)
C-8 min
In this "Traveltalk," we learn about the history of England's historic colleges and the towns that surround them.
Narrator: James A. FitzPatrick

Filmed on location in Oxford, Cambridge, and Eton.


10:45 AM -- Signpost to Murder (1964)
77 min, TV-PG
A convicted murderer, who escaped from a mental institution, hides out in the home of a woman whose husband is missing.
Dir: George Englund
Cast: Joanne Woodward, Stuart Whitman, Edward Mulhare

Remade in India as Ittefaq (1969).


12:15 PM -- The Alphabet Murders (1965)
91 min, TV-G
Belgian detective Hercule Poirot investigates a series of murders committed in alphabetical order.
Dir: Frank Tashlin
Cast: Tony Randall, Anita Ekberg, Robert Morley

The final film of Austin Trevor, the first Poirot.


1:49 PM -- So Your Wife Wants To Work (1956)
9 min
A Joe McDoakes comedy short.

One of the 62 Joe McDoakes shorts.


2:00 PM -- How To Murder Your Wife (1965)
C-119 min, TV-G
After marrying while drunk, a cartoonist puts his murderous fantasies into his work.
Dir: Richard Quine
Cast: Jack Lemmon, Virna Lisi, Terry-Thomas

During a taping of "The Tonight Show", Jack Lemmon told this story. Prior to filming How to Murder Your Wife, co-star Virna Lisi's husband made her promise that she would not be talked into doing a nude scene in her first American film. She assured him that she would not, signed the contract and traveled to Hollywood. While filming the 'revelation' scene, where Lemmon awakes to discover in horror that he got married at the bachelor party, Virna had to disrobe and lay in the bed nude but discreetly covered with a bedsheet. However, it was this day that her husband, an architect, arrived unannounced at the set to surprise his wife. When he walked into the scene, he became very upset. He focused his anger toward her co-star. Lemmon, realizing that discretion was the better part of valor, exited the set at full run with Virna's husband in tow. Running past several sound stages on the MGM lot, he quickly found a garbage dumpster, jumped in and closed the cover. He waited there until security officers found him.


4:00 PM -- The Honey Pot (1967)
C-132 min, TV-G
A millionaire fakes a terminal illness to fleece his former girlfriends.
Dir: Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Cast: Rex Harrison, Susan Hayward, Cliff Robertson

Anne Bancroft was originally cast as Merle McGill, but she turned it down for a stage role and was replaced by Edie Adams.


6:15 PM -- Murderers' Row (1966)
C-105 min, TV-PG
Secret Agent Matt Helm must recover a stolen 'helio-beam' with the power to destroy the earth.
Dir: Henry Levin
Cast: Dean Martin, Ann-Margret, Karl Malden

Soon-Tek Oh's film debut.



TCM PRIMETIME - WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: PETER COOK & DUDLEY MOORE


8:00 PM -- Bedazzled (1967)
C-104 min, TV-14
A short-order cook makes a deal with the Devil to win a beautiful waitress.
Dir: Stanley Donen
Cast: Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Eleanor Bron

An article about Peter Cook that appeared in the New Yorker stated that the filmmakers didn't have a title for Bedazzled when it was being made. Cook suggested calling the film Raquel Welch. The producers didn't understand why Cook would want to name the movie after an actress that only appears for a few minutes in it. Cook explained that movie marquees put the lead actors names over the movie title. Thus the letters on the marquee would say "Peter Cook and Dudley Moore in Raquel Welch". The producers ended going for the more ordinary title.


9:48 PM -- Glimpses Of Old England (1949)
C-9 min
Another entry in the never ending James FitzPatrick series from MGM.

Filmed in the Cotswold Hills, Tintern, Wiltshire, and the Wye River Valley, England,


10:00 PM -- The Wrong Box (1966)
C-106 min, TV-PG
Two elderly brothers plot to kill each other for a fortune.
Dir: Bryan Forbes
Cast: John Mills, Ralph Richardson, Michael Caine

Peter Cook's wife, Wendy was nine months pregnant when filming began. Director Bryan Forbes promised them that he would let Peter leave the set as soon as Wendy went into labor. He kept his word and Peter made it to the hospital just in time for the birth of his daughter, Daisy. Forbes, Dudley Moore, Michael Caine and Peter Sellers filled his dressing room with flowers and champagne in celebration of Daisy's birth when he returned to work.


12:00 AM -- The Bed Sitting Room (1969)
C-91 min, TV-PG
A pregnant woman searches for love amidst the ruins of nuclear war.
Dir: Richard Lester
Cast: Rita Tushingham, Ralph Richardson, Peter Cook

The revised National Anthem lyrics are.... 'God save Mrs Ethel Shroake, Long live Mrs Ethel Shroake, God save Mrs Ethel Shroake of 393A High Street, Leytonstone'. Ethel Shroake was the Queen's Char Lady.


1:35 AM -- London Can Take It! (1940)
9 min
Despite the nightly Nazi air raids, London's citizens are shown to be courageous and determined.
Commentator: Quentin Reynolds

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Short Subject, One-reel


1:48 AM -- All Eyes On Sharon Tate (1966)
10 min
A short behind the scenes promo for "Eye of the Devil" (1966), showcasing the late Sharon Tate, then a young, 22-year-old hopeful at MGM.
Cast: Sharon Tate, Martin Ransohoff, J. Lee Thompson

The scenes of Sharon Tate and David Hemmings dancing in a London discotheque were filmed by legendary cameraman and cinematographer Albert Maysles. There exists a longer version of this sequence as well as on-set footage from The Fearless Vampire Killers that have been part of a traveling festival of films made by the Maysles Brothers in recent years. Albert Maysles has also gone on record saying that Sharon Tate was the sexiest woman he ever filmed.


2:00 AM -- Let's Scare Jessica To Death (1971)
C-89 min, TV-PG
A woman has bizarre experiences after moving into a supposedly haunted country farmhouse
Dir: John Hancock
Cast: Zohra Lampert, Barton Heyman, Kevin O'Connor

The first night the film crew arrived to the farmhouse location, an eerie fog rolled into the area. They quickly made use of this by shooting the outside of the house as this happened, and that footage was used for transitions throughout the film.


3:30 AM -- Zigzag (1970)
C-104 min, TV-14
A dying man frames himself for murder so his widow can collect the reward.
Dir: Richard A. Colla
Cast: George Kennedy, Anne Jackson, Eli Wallach

Remade three times in India as Majboor (1974), Raja (1976), and Naan Vaazha Vaippen (1979).


5:15 AM -- Her Name Was Ellie, His Name Was Lyle (1967)
29 min, TV-14
In New York City, a relationship is threatened when a young man discovers he's caught syphilis from a tryst with a waitress.
Dir: Lothar Wolff
Cast: Lynne Lipton, John Pleshette, Amy Taubin

Produced for the Bureau for Public Health Education, New York City Department of Health.