TCM Schedule for Saturday, May 13, 2017 -- What's On Tonight: The Essentials - Jo Van Fleet

[Staph]

Tonight's Essentials feature Jo Van Fleet, Broadway star and veteran of the Actor's Studio, who made a few memorable films and a potload of television appearances. Enjoy!


6:30 AM -- CAMELOT (1967)
The romance between Guinevere and Lancelot destroys King Arthur's dream kingdom.
Dir: Joshua Logan
Cast: Richard Harris, Vanessa Redgrave, Franco Nero
C-180 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Won Oscars for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration -- John Truscott, Edward Carrere and John Brown, Best Costume Design -- John Truscott, and Best Music, Scoring of Music, Adaptation or Treatment -- Alfred Newman and Ken Darby

Nominated for Oscars for Best Cinematography -- Richard H. Kline, and Best Sound

Joshua Logan saw the film as an opportunity to correct the faults he found with the Broadway musical, despite its huge success. For one thing, he thought Richard Burton made a very distracted, absent-minded king and he felt that Julie Andrews was too wholesome as Guenevere whom he saw as a true femme fatale. The biggest problem for Logan though was the character of Lancelot. Later Logan wrote that Lancelot is "probably the most difficult part to play....Lancelot is French and has come across the Channel to espouse Arthur's passionate cause. He happens to be a holy young man who is able to perform miracles, including bringing back to life one of the knights he has killed in jousting. He does this by praying. And shortly thereafter he readily goes to bed with Arthur's wife. Lancelot is, so to speak, a holy cad. All of which makes him very difficult to play."


9:45 AM -- MGM PARADE SHOW #29 (1955)
Walter Pidgeon introduces Part Three of "Captains Courageous" and a clip from "Tribute to a Badman."
BW-29 mins, CC,


10:30 AM -- UNDERCOVER MAISIE (1947)
A stranded showgirl joins the police force and risks her life to expose a phony psychic.
Dir: Harry Beaumont
Cast: Ann Sothern, Barry Nelson, Mark Daniels
BW-90 mins, CC,

The last of MGM's 10 "Maisie" frolics released between 1939 and 1947, this film was the only installment which failed to net a contemporary New York Times review.


12:15 PM -- RING OF FIRE (1961)
A group of delinquents hold a sheriff hostage in the middle of a forest fire.
Dir: Andrew L. Stone
Cast: David Janssen, Joyce Taylor, Frank Gorshin
C-91 mins, CC,

The wreckage from the train crashing into the river is still there today, decades later! The wreckage is located at N 47°19.785 W 123° 38.595, along the Wynoochee River, near the Olympic National Forest in Washington State.


2:00 PM -- THE NAKED SPUR (1953)
A captive outlaw uses psychological tactics to prey on a bounty hunter.
Dir: Anthony Mann
Cast: James Stewart, Janet Leigh, Robert Ryan
C-92 mins, CC,

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay -- Sam Rolfe and Harold Jack Bloom

When this film was released in Spain, its title was changed to "Colorado Jim" and the name of James Stewart's character was also changed from "Howard Kemp" to "Colorado Jim", for unknown reasons.


4:00 PM -- CAHILL, UNITED STATES MARSHAL (1973)
A tough lawman has to bring in his own sons for a train robbery.
Dir: Andrew V. McLaglen
Cast: John Wayne, Gary Grimes, George Kennedy
C-102 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

John Wayne was sixty-five years old at the time the movie was filmed. He had already had a cancerous lung removed and was suffering from emphysema. Wayne was so weakened that he had to use a stepladder to climb onto his horse in the film. In addition to his own declining health, news that his friend and mentor John Ford was dying of cancer forced the actor to consider his own mortality. After Ford's death in August of 1972, Wayne told reporters, "I'm pretty much living on borrowed time."


6:00 PM -- CHISUM (1970)
A cattle baron enlists Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid to help him fight a land war.
Dir: Andrew V. McLaglen
Cast: John Wayne, Forrest Tucker, Christopher George
C-111 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Although clearly labeled as the older man, at 57 Patric Knowles was actually five years younger than John Wayne. Wayne's character, John Chisum, died five or six years after the events portrayed in this movie, at age 60. In real life cattle baron John Tunstall was 24 when he was murdered; he was played by the 57-year-old Knowles. The real John Chisum was 54 at the time the events in this film occurred, but he was played by the 62-year-old Wayne.



TCM PRIMETIME - WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: THE ESSENTIALS: THE ESSENTIALS: JO VAN FLEET



8:00 PM -- EAST OF EDEN (1955)
Two brothers compete for their father's approval and a woman's love.
Dir: Elia Kazan
Cast: Julie Harris, James Dean, Raymond Massey
C-118 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Won an Oscar for Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Jo Van Fleet

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- James Dean (This was the first posthumous acting nomination in Academy Awards history.), Best Director -- Elia Kazan, and Best Writing, Screenplay -- Paul Osborn

The film's premiere, at New York's Astor Theater, also served as the first in a long line of benefit events organized to help pay for the purchase and renovation of the newly acquired home of The Actors Studio, which had itself provided arguably the film's three most powerful performances, courtesy of James Dean, Julie Harris, and Jo Van Fleet, as well as strong supporting turns from Lois Smith, Barbara Baxley, and Lonny Chapman (and to whom Warner Brothers prez Jack L. Warner had generously offered the entire proceeds of the New York premiere). The celebrity ushers on hand included Margaret Truman, Arlene Francis, Jayne Meadows, Marjorie Steele (aka Mrs. Huntington Hartford), Roberta Peters, Carol Channing, Eva Marie Saint, and... oh yeah, Marilyn Monroe. Moreover, the event's organizer, Morton Gottlieb, worried that patrons would balk at the hefty fee charged for just a movie, organized a lavish post-screening party featuring free entertainment, including Channing, accompanied by Jule Styne, singing the song he wrote for her in Broadway's Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" (Gottlieb having failed in his attempt to persuade Miss Monroe to reprise her hit from 1953's Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)), composer Harold Arlen performing a piano medley, a song composed for the occasion, performed by its authors, Howard Dietz and Arthur Schwartz, and, last but hardly least, a young and still little known Sammy Davis Jr. (less than four months after the near-fatal auto accident which had cost him his left eye, and more than one year before he'd make his official Broadway debut in "Mr. Wonderful&quot , here making his Big Apple downtown debut and bringing down the house in the process.


10:15 PM -- I'LL CRY TOMORROW (1955)
True story of singer Lillian Roth's battle against alcoholism.
Dir: Daniel Mann
Cast: Susan Hayward, Richard Conte, Eddie Albert
BW-119 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Won an Oscar for Best Costume Design, Black-and-White -- Helen Rose

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Susan Hayward, Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Arthur E. Arling, and Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White -- Cedric Gibbons, Malcolm Brown, Edwin B. Willis and Hugh Hunt

Jo Van Fleet (Katie Roth - mother of Lillian) is just two and half years older than Susan Hayward (Lillian Roth).


12:30 AM -- WILD RIVER (1960)
A government employee faces hostility as he prepares Tennessee farmers for a new dam's construction.
Dir: Elia Kazan
Cast: Montgomery Clift, Lee Remick, Jo Van Fleet
C-110 mins, CC,

One morning Kazan saw actress Jo Van Fleet applying what appeared to be brown liver spots on her hands. Kazan told her it was unnecessary as the camera wouldn't be near enough to her to pick them up. The method actress replied that she was applying them for herself.


2:30 AM -- THE WORLD'S GREATEST SINNER (1965)
A bored insurance salesman quits his job to go into politics.
Dir: Timothy Carey
Cast: Timothy Carey, Gil Baretto,
C-78 mins, Letterbox Format

Soundtrack was created by Frank Zappa, later of the Mother's of Invention rock group. It was recorded at Chaffey College in Altaloma, CA.


4:00 AM -- BAYOU (1957)
A Cajun beauty faces resistance from friends and family when she falls for a visiting architect.
Dir: Harold Daniels
Cast: Peter Graves, Lita Milan, Douglas Fowley
BW-85 mins, CC,

Repackaged as "Poor White Trash", The film ran for years on the south's drive-in circuit on a successful double feature with the similarly themed "I Hate Your Guts" (aka Shame).


5:30 AM -- GYPSY (1962)
A domineering mother pushes her two daughters to burlesque stardom.
Dir: Mervyn LeRoy
Cast: Rosalind Russell, Natalie Wood, Karl Malden
C-143 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Nominated for Oscars for Best Cinematography, Color -- Harry Stradling Sr., Best Costume Design, Color -- Orry-Kelly, and Best Music, Scoring of Music, Adaptation or Treatment -- Frank Perkins

Before the decision was made to dub most of her vocals, Rosalind Russell attempted to do her own singing. The highly unsatisfactory results can be heard as an extra feature on the soundtrack CD. After Ethel Merman's death, a tape of the Russell recordings was found in a box in Merman's closet. Merman, who was infuriated that she had not been cast in the film, evidently had retained this copy of the Russell vocals as a strange and somewhat vengeful consolation prize.