TCM Schedule for Saturday, November 19, 2016 -- What's On Tonight - Harry Palmer

[Staph]

Tonight's not-really-the-Essentials films are all about Len Deighton's British spy, Harry Palmer. Palmer is very much the anti-James Bond -- Palmer was an army sergeant drafted into the intelligence game to pay for his black marketeering. Enjoy!


7:15 AM -- SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL (1964)
A journalist sets out to expose a female sex expert but falls for her instead.
Dir: Richard Quine
Cast: Tony Curtis, Natalie Wood, Henry Fonda
C-114 mins, CC,

While dressed in a woman's nightgown, Tony Curtis' character says he looks just like Jack Lemmon in the movie where he dresses up like a girl. Tony Curtis co-starred in that movie, Some Like it Hot (1959), with Jack Lemmon, where they both dressed up like girls.


9:15 AM -- THE GREAT RACE (1965)
A bumbling villain plots to win an early 20th-century auto race.
Dir: Blake Edwards
Cast: Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, Natalie Wood
C-160 mins, CC,

Won an Oscar for Best Effects, Sound Effects -- Treg Brown

Nominated for Oscars for Best Cinematography, Color -- Russell Harlan, Best Sound -- George Groves (Warner Bros. SSD), Best Film Editing -- Ralph E. Winters, and Best Music, Original Song -- Henry Mancini (music) and Johnny Mercer (lyrics) for the song "The Sweetheart Tree"

This film was the inspiration for the Saturday morning cartoon show Wacky Races (1968). Natalie Wood (playing Maggie DuBois) became Penelope Pitstop (even wearing the same pink racing outfit). Dick Dastardly was based on Jack Lemmon's character Professor Fate and Dastardly's sidekick Muttley was loosely based on Peter Falk's character Max Meen.


12:00 PM -- THE SWARM (1978)
Killer bees extend their territory into the U.S., with devastating effect.
Dir: Irwin Allen
Cast: Michael Caine, Katharine Ross, Richard Widmark
C-116 mins, CC,

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Costume Design -- Paul Zastupnevich

Managing the bees was a huge challenge on this film. The production went through several bee keepers before finding one who solved the problem by hiring people to clip the stingers off of the bees. This was accomplished in a refrigerated trailer, as bees are incapacitated by freezing temperatures. This operation, which went on all summer, made the bees safer for use around the cast and crew, although a few stingers were missed. But, as it turned out, some lingering venom got into the air on the sound stages and produced some allergic reactions. In addition, everyone had little yellow dots on their clothing - bee poop, probably.


2:15 PM -- AFI LIFE ACHIEVEMENT AWARD: A TRIBUTE TO JOHN WILLIAMS (2016)
The American Film Institute for the first time honors a composer, John Williams, with its highest honor.
C-66 mins, CC,

The music score for Jaws is one of the most recognizable, iconic, and suspenseful movie scores of all time. When composer John Williams played it for director Steven Spielberg for the first time, Spielberg couldn't help but laugh, feeling that it was so simple it could never work. The final version after all uses just two music notes: E and F. But Williams persuaded Spielberg to use it, and after a few tweaks, one of the most famous film scores of all time was born. This was the second film on which Williams and Spielberg collaborated (after The Sugarland Express), and the two have worked together on almost every film Spielberg has done since.


3:30 PM -- JAWS (1975)
The sheriff of an island town takes to the seas when a bloodthirsty shark invades the local waters.
Dir: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Roy Scheider, Richard Dreyfuss, Robert Shaw
C-124 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Won Oscars for Best Sound -- Robert L. Hoyt, Roger Heman Jr., Earl Madery and John R. Carter, Best Film Editing -- Verna Fields, and Best Music, Original Dramatic Score -- John Williams

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture

Originally, Steven Spielberg was not the director of Jaws (1975). The first director was fired after a meeting with producers and studio executives. In the meeting, he said that his opening shot would have the camera come out of the water to show the town, then the whale (instead of the shark) would come out of the water. The producers said that they were not making Moby Dick (1956) and they would not work with someone who did not know the difference between a whale and a shark.


5:45 PM -- TIME AFTER TIME (1979)
When Jack the Ripper steals his time machine, author H.G. Wells travels to modern-day San Francisco to track him down.
Dir: Nicholas Meyer
Cast: Malcolm McDowell, David Warner, Mary Steenburgen
C-112 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

When H.G. Wells gives a false name to the police, he uses "Sherlock Holmes". And one of the police officers is named Inspector Gregson, a character from the original Sherlock Holmes stories. Director Nicholas Meyer wrote The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976), which is considered to be one of the best Sherlock Holmes story not written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.



TCM PRIMETIME - WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: HARRY PALMER



8:00 PM -- THE IPCRESS FILE (1965)
Secret agent Harry Palmer fights to survive brainwashing when a traitor hands him over to the enemy.
Dir: Sidney J. Furie
Cast: Michael Caine, Nigel Green, Guy Doleman
C-107 mins, Letterbox Format

Palmer is the first action hero to wear glasses (Michael Caine is myopic in real life). Caine chose to wear glasses because he expected the film to be the first of a series, similar to the Bond movies. He feared being over-identified with the character of Harry Palmer and so he wore the glasses so that he could remove them for other roles.


10:00 PM -- FUNERAL IN BERLIN (1966)
The British send their top secret agent to help a Soviet intelligence officer defect.
Dir: Guy Hamilton
Cast: Michael Caine, Eva Renzi, Paul Hubschmid
C-102 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Russian soldiers on the east side of the Berlin wall purposely disrupted filming by using mirrors to reflect sunlight into the film cameras. The scene where Harry Palmer walks to Checkpoint Charlie for the first time had to be filmed from a long distance for that reason.


12:00 AM -- BILLION DOLLAR BRAIN (1967)
A retired spy gets mixed up with plans to overthrow Communism using a new supercomputer.
Dir: Ken Russell
Cast: Michael Caine, Karl Malden, Ed Begley
C-108 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

During filming, Karl Malden's London hotel room was burgled and his cash was stolen, but his travellers' cheques were left untouched. The incident inspired him to become the spokesman for American Express travellers' cheques in a long-running series of commercials with the slogan "Don't leave home without them".


2:00 AM -- ZABRISKIE POINT (1970)
A young girl helps a student radical escape the police.
Dir: Michelangelo Antonioni
Cast: Mark Frechette, Daria Halprin, Rod Taylor
C-114 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Michelangelo Antonioni's leftist politics made the film controversial from the start. The production was harassed by groups opposed to the movie's alleged "anti-Americanism." FBI agents tailed cast and crew members. Filming locations were besieged by right-wingers protesting an alleged scene of flag desecration, which never happened. Militant anti-establishment students worried they were being "sold out". The sheriff of Oakland, California, accused Michelangelo Antonioni of provoking the riots he had come to film. Death Valley park rangers initially refused to allow Michelangelo Antonioni to shoot at Zabriskie Point because they thought he planned to stage an orgy at the site; it was conceptualized, but never seriously considered. The U.S. Attorney's office in Sacramento opened grand jury investigations into both the film's alleged "anti-Americanism" and possible violations of the Mann Act, a 1910 law prohibiting the transportation of women across state lines "for immoral conduct, prostitution or debauchery," during the Death Valley filming. The investigation was dropped, reluctantly, when they learned that Zabriskie Point was at least 13 miles west of the California-Nevada border.


4:00 AM -- HEAD (1968)
A manufactured rock group tries to find its own identity in a world gone mad.
Dir: Bob Rafelson
Cast: Peter Tork, Davy Jones, Micky Dolenz
C-86 mins, CC,

Rumors abound that the title was chosen in case a sequel was made. The advertisements would supposedly have read: "From the people who gave you HEAD."


5:30 AM -- MATCH YOUR MOOD (1968)
Westinghouse shows women how to improve their lives by decorating their refrigerators in this short film.
C-6 mins,


5:30 AM -- THE BOTTLE AND THE THROTTLE (1965)
In this short film, a teenager runs down a mother and child after having one too many alcoholic beverages.
C-10 mins,


5:30 AM -- R.F.D. GREENWICH VILLAGE (1969)
A couple tours around New York in this promotional short for corduroy clothing.
C-11 mins,