TCM Schedule for Thursday, February 2, 2017 -- 31 Days of Oscar: Oscar A to Z

[Staph]

It's that wonderful time of the year, when TCM helps us to escape this terrifying present and go back to the golden days of Hollywood. Hooray for 31 Days of Oscar -- I may yet survive 2017! This year's the films are in alphabetical order, so today is 1987's Au Revoir Les Enfants through 1949's Battleground. Enjoy!


7:30 AM -- Au Revoir Les Enfants (1987)
A French boarding school harbors Jewish children during the Nazi occupation.
Dir: Louis Malle
Cast: Gaspard Manesse, Raphael Fejto, Francine Racette
C-105 mins,

Nominated for Oscars for Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen -- Louis Malle, and Best Foreign Language Film -- France

The film is based on events in the childhood of the director, Louis Malle, who at age 11 was attending a Roman Catholic boarding school near Fontainebleau. One day, he witnessed a Gestapo raid in which three Jewish students and a Jewish teacher were rounded up and deported to Auschwitz. The school's headmaster, Père Jacques, was arrested for harboring them and sent to the concentration camp at Mauthausen. He died shortly after the camp was liberated by the U.S. Army, having refused to leave until the last French prisoner was repatriated. Forty years later Yad Vashem, Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, granted Père Jacques the title of Righteous Among the Nations.


9:30 AM -- Auntie Mame (1958)
An eccentric heiress raises her nephew to be a free spirit.
Dir: Morton DaCosta
Cast: Rosalind Russell, Forrest Tucker, Coral Browne
C-143 mins, Letterbox

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Rosalind Russell, Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Peggy Cass, Best Cinematography, Color -- Harry Stradling Sr., Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White or Color -- Malcolm C. Bert and George James Hopkins, Best Film Editing -- William H. Ziegler, and Best Picture

The line, "Life is a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death," does not appear in the book. It is derived from the stage play, where it was originally, "Life is a banquet and most poor sons-of-bitches are starving to death." Though "damn" and "hell" are both heard in the film, "sons-of-bitches" was apparently thought too rough.


12:00 PM -- Baby Doll (1956)
A child bride holds her husband at bay while flirting with a sexy Italian farmer.
Dir: Elia Kazan
Cast: Karl Malden, Carroll Baker, Eli Wallach
BW-115 mins, CC

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Carroll Baker, Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Mildred Dunnock,
Best Writing, Best Screenplay - Adapted -- Tennessee Williams, and Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Boris Kaufman

When the film was released in 1956, it was enormously controversial for its extremely risqué subject matter. The Legion of Decency condemned the film for its "carnal suggestiveness". Francis Cardinal Spellman condemned the film in a stunning attack from the pulpit of St. Patrick's Cathedral two days before the film opened, saying that the film had been "responsibly judged to be evil in concept" and was certain that it would "exert an immoral and corrupting influence on those who see it", and exhorted all Catholics to refrain from patronizing the film "under pain of sin". Cardinal Spellman's condemnation of the film led to the Legion of Decency's first-ever nationwide boycott of an American-made film produced by a major studio. All over the country, almost 20 million Catholics protested the film and picketed theaters that showed it. The Catholic boycott nearly killed the film; it was cancelled by 77% of theaters scheduled to show it, and it only made a meager $600,000 at the box office. The film was also condemned by Time Magazine, which called it the dirtiest American-made motion picture that had ever been legally exhibited. Surprisingly, despite the film's sordid elements, the Production Code Administration gave it a seal of approval, but only after nearly a year of arguments. This was one of many examples of how the lax attitude of new Code official Geoffrey Shurlock, the successor at the PCA to the strict Catholic militant Joseph I. Breen, would lead to a schism with the Legon of Decency and the PCA's own downfall over the next few years. After this film, the PCA drifted farther and farther away from its traditional guidelines until it was replaced by the MPAA ratings system in 1968.


2:00 PM -- The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947)
A teenage girl's crush on a playboy spells trouble, particularly when he falls for her older sister.
Dir: Irving Reis
Cast: Cary Grant, Myrna Loy, Shirley Temple
BW-95 mins, CC

Won an Oscar for Best Writing, Original Screenplay -- Sidney Sheldon

Myrna Loy was almost 23 years older than her on-screen sister Shirley Temple.


4:00 PM -- Bachelor Mother (1939)
A fun-loving shop girl is mistaken for the mother of a foundling.
Dir: Garson Kanin
Cast: Ginger Rogers, David Niven, Charles Coburn
BW-82 mins, CC

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Writing, Original Story -- Felix Jackson

Was remade as a musical starring Debbie Reynolds & Eddie Fisher by RKO Pictures.


6:00 PM -- The Bad and the Beautiful (1952)
An unscrupulous movie producer uses everyone around him in his climb to the top.
Dir: Vincente Minnelli
Cast: Elaine Stewart, Sammy White, Leo G. Carroll
BW-118 mins, CC

Won Oscars for Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Gloria Grahame, Best Writing, Screenplay -- Charles Schnee, Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Robert Surtees, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White -- Cedric Gibbons, Edward C. Carfagno, Edwin B. Willis and F. Keogh Gleason, and Best Costume Design, Black-and-White -- Helen Rose

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Kirk Douglas

The scene in which Georgia drives off into the rainy night after discovering that Shields has been cheating on her was so complicated it took weeks after she had finished the rest of her scenes before she got to film it. Vincente Minnelli put the car's interior on a turntable, then choreographed the cameras moves in and out as the turntable shifted position. He then instructed Lana Turner to build her emotions to hysteria throughout the complicated take. It took a day to get all the angles Minnelli wanted, by which time Turner truly was hysterical. The scene was one of the most memorable in The Bad and the Beautiful.



TCM PRIMETIME - WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: 31 DAYS OF OSCAR: OSCARS A TO Z



8:00 PM -- The Band Wagon (1953)
A Broadway artiste turns a faded film star's comeback vehicle into an artsy flop.
Dir: Vincente Minnelli
Cast: Fred Astaire, Cyd Charisse, Oscar Levant
C-112 mins, CC

Nominated for Oscars for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay -- Betty Comden and Adolph Green, Best Costume Design, Color -- Mary Ann Nyberg, and Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture -- Adolph Deutsch

According to supplemental information on the DVD Nanette Fabray stated that Oscar Levant was very difficult to work with. Whenever something would go wrong and he would make a mistake he would blame whoever was around instead of himself. This Included stage hands, other actors, lighting technicians or whoever was handy. She said that, since she was usually closest, she caught the brunt of it. Following the scene where they shot the botched rehearsal he blamed her for something and she lost her temper and told him off using unladylike language. Everyone on the set applauded her. After that he was much easier to work with.


10:00 PM -- The Barefoot Contessa (1954)
A Spanish dancer becomes an international star but still longs to get her feet in the dirt.
Dir: Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Ava Gardner, Edmond O'Brien
C-130 mins, CC. Letterbox

Won an Oscar for Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Edmond O'Brien

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay -- Joseph L. Mankiewicz

The character of Maria Vargas is said to be based on Rita Hayworth, who was actually offered the part. Hayworth was a Latina who later married a prince, Prince Aly Khan. However, some elements were taken from Ava Gardner's life as well. The stormy relationship between Maria and the tycoon movie producer Kirk Edwards (Warren Stevens) is based on Gardner's own relationship with billionaire film producer Howard Hughes.


12:15 AM -- Barry Lyndon (1975)
An Irish rogue cheats his way to the top of 18th-century British society.
Dir: Stanley Kubrick
Cast: Ryan O'Neal, Marisa Berenson, Patrick Magee
C-185 mins, CC

Won Oscars for Best Cinematography -- John Alcott, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration -- Ken Adam, Roy Walker and Vernon Dixon, Best Costume Design -- Ulla-Britt Söderlund and Milena Canonero, and Best Music, Scoring Original Song Score and/or Adaptation -- Leonard Rosenman

Nominated for Oscars for Best Director -- Stanley Kubrick, Best Writing, Screenplay Adapted From Other Material -- Stanley Kubrick, and Best Picture

Production was moved from Ireland to England after Stanley Kubrick received word that his name was on an IRA hit list for directing a film featuring English soldiers in Ireland.


3:30 AM -- The Battle of Algiers (1966)
Algiers revolts against the French Foreign Legion.
Dir: Gillo Pontecorvo
Cast: Jean Martin, Yacef Saadi, Brahim Haggiag
BW-122 mins, CC, Letterbox

Nominated for Oscars in 1969 for Best Director -- Gillo Pontecorvo, and Best Writing, Story and Screenplay - Written Directly for the Screen -- Franco Solinas and Gillo Pontecorvo

Nominated for an Oscar in 1967 for Best Foreign Language Film -- Italy

Director Gillo Pontecorvo and composer Ennio Morricone had regular disagreements over the movie's score. At one point, Pontecorvo had a melody stuck in his mind which he desperately wanted as a theme in the movie. He went to Morricone's apartment to play it for him, and hummed the tune all the way up to the top floor. Then Morricone asked him to wait with the tune, since he had conceived a melody of his own. To Pontecorvo's surprise, the tune was exactly the same as the one he had in mind, and he was delighted to find out that after all those months of struggling, they had finally found something, separate from each other, on which they could agree. It wasn't until months later at the Venice film festival that Morricone admitted that he had pulled a prank on him; he had already heard Pontecorvo humming the song while coming up the stairs, and decided to pretend he had come up with the same melody himself.


5:45 AM -- Battleground (1949)
American soldiers in France fight to survive a Nazi siege just before the Battle of the Bulge.
Dir: William Wellman
Cast: Van Johnson, John Hodiak, Ricardo Montalban
BW-119 mins,

Won Oscars for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay -- Robert Pirosh, and Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Paul Vogel

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- James Whitmore, Best Director -- William A. Wellman, Best Film Editing -- John D. Dunning, and Best Picture

Screenwriter Robert Pirosh based this story on his experiences as an infantryman during the Battle of the Bulge. Pirosh did not serve with the 101st Airborne and wanted to create a script that was faithful to their experiences. He used his first-hand knowledge of the battle to write the script. This was done with the blessing of Gen. Anthony McAuliffe, who was commanding the 101st during the siege of Bastogne. Consequently, many of the incidents in the film--such as Pvt. Kippton's habit of always losing his false teeth, or the Mexican-American soldier from Los Angeles who had never seen snow until he got to Belgium--that have always been derided as "typical Hollywood phony baloney" actually happened.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

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