TCM Schedule for Friday, July 7, 2017 -- What's on Tonight: TCM Spotlight - 50 Years of Hitchcock

[Staph]

In the daylight hours, TCM is featuring the films of director Anthony Mann. Mann is noted for his psychological Westerns and his experiments with widescreen by putting the action on the far right or left edge of the screen -- and sometimes both! And in prime time, there is more of 50 Years of Hitchcock. Enjoy!


6:30 AM -- ARROWSMITH (1931)
A crusading doctor fights his way through tragedy to find his true calling.
Dir: John Ford
Cast: Ronald Colman, Helen Hayes, Richard Bennett
BW-99 mins, CC,

Nominated for Oscars for Best Writing, Adaptation -- Sidney Howard, Best Cinematography -- Ray June, Best Art Direction -- Richard Day, and Best Picture

The first American sound film to feature a black character ("Dr. Oliver Marchand" played by Clarence Brooks) with a university degree who speaks perfect English, does not shuffle, and does not act in the usual stereotypical manner in which blacks were depicted in Hollywood films at the time.


8:15 AM -- TWO O'CLOCK COURAGE (1945)
An amnesiac discovers he's wanted for murder.
Dir: Anthony Mann
Cast: Tom Conway, Ann Rutherford, Richard Lane
BW-66 mins, CC,

One of two wartime murder/mysteries starring Tom Conway in which he is aided by a female taxicab driver (due to the "man"-power shortage of WWII). Coincidentally, Emory Parnell and Jean Brooks also appear in both films. The other is "The Falcon In Hollywood" (1944).


9:30 AM -- BORDER INCIDENT (1949)
Police try to crack down on the illegal immigration racket.
Dir: Anthony Mann
Cast: Ricardo Montalban, George Murphy, Howard Da Silva
BW-95 mins, CC,

Based on a story by John C. Higgins and George Zuckerman.


11:19 AM -- GRANDAD OF RACES (1950)
This short film presents the annual horse race held in the Piazza del Campo in Siena. Vitaphone Release 1950A.
Dir: André De La Varre Jr.
C-10 mins,


11:30 AM -- SIDE STREET (1950)
A New York City mailman is chased by both cops and crooks when he steals a shipment of dirty money.
Dir: Anthony Mann
Cast: Farley Granger, Cathy O'Donnell, James Craig
BW-83 mins, CC,

The drugstore that Joe Norson calls from is the set of another MGM "film noir", Tension (1949), which was shooting at approximately the same time.


1:00 PM -- THE BAMBOO BLONDE (1946)
A nightclub singer inspires a World War II flyer who names his bomber after her.
Dir: Anthony Mann
Cast: Frances Langford, Ralph Edwards, Russell Wade
BW-68 mins, CC,

Though Frances Langford appeared in numerous films this is the only one where she played the lead. Nowadays, Langford is probably best remembered (by those of us of a certain age) as the vocalist that traveled with Bob Hope on his USO tours, during WWII, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. Her last public concert was in 1966 on tour in Vietnam. She was 53 years old.


2:15 PM -- RAW DEAL (1948)
When the gangster for whom he took the rap welches, a convict breaks out of prison to get revenge.
Dir: Anthony Mann
Cast: Dennis O'Keefe, Claire Trevor, Marsha Hunt
BW-79 mins, CC,

Jane Randolph was wanted for the role of Pat Cameron. However, she turned it down, as she was upset at being uncredited in Anthony Mann's previous picture, T-Men. Claire Trevor was eventually cast.


3:45 PM -- MEN IN WAR (1957)
Two enemies join forces to save their men during a retreat from the North Koreans.
Dir: Anthony Mann
Cast: Robert Ryan, Aldo Ray, Robert Keith
BW-98 mins,

Actor Vic Morrow, who played Corporal Zwickly, became famous playing Sgt. Saunders in the ABC tv series Combat.


5:30 PM -- CIMARRON (1960)
A pioneer couple plays a major role in the settling of Oklahoma.
Dir: Anthony Mann
Cast: Glenn Ford, Maria Schell, Anne Baxter
C-147 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Nominated for Oscars for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color -- George W. Davis, Addison Hehr, Henry Grace, Hugh Hunt and Otto Siegel, and Best Sound -- Franklin Milton (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer SSD)

The fictional town of Osage was built on three sound stages. It comprised 11 acres of land at the MGM lot, the biggest western town in the studio's history.



TCM PRIMETIME - WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: TCM SPOTLIGHT: 50 YEARS OF HITCHCOCK



8:00 PM -- NUMBER SEVENTEEN (1932)
A detective sets out to recover a necklace lifted by jewel thieves.
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock
Cast: Leon M. Lion, Anne Grey, Donald Calthrop
BW-64 mins,

Alfred Hitchcock did not want to make this film. He had wanted to direct a prestige production of John Van Druten's play "London Wall," but to punish Hitchcock for the financial failure of his previous film East of Shanghai (1931), British International Pictures head John Maxwell took him off "London Wall" and put him on this film instead. Hitchcock himself has referred to the film as "a terrible picture . . . very cheap melodrama".


9:22 PM -- THE 42ND. STREET SPECIAL (1933)
This promotional short, part of Warner Bros. studios publicity campaign for "42nd Street" (1933), presents the send-off for a 7-car train assembled in conjunction with the film.
Cast: Darryl F. Zanuck, Joe E. Brown, Leo Carrillo
BW-6 mins,


9:30 PM -- THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (1934)
A British family gets mixed up with spies and an assassination plot while vacationing in Switzerland.
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock
Cast: Leslie Banks, Edna Best, Nova Pilbeam
BW-76 mins, CC,

When Peter Lorre arrived in Great Britain, his first meeting with a British director was with Alfred Hitchcock. By smiling and laughing as Hitchcock talked, the director was unaware that Lorre, a Hungarian, had a limited command of the English language. Hitchcock subsequently decided to cast Lorre in this film, and the young actor learned much of his part phonetically.


11:00 PM -- THE 39 STEPS (1935)
A man falsely suspected of killing a spy races across Scotland handcuffed to the beautiful blonde who turned him in.
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock
Cast: Robert Donat, Madeleine Carroll, Lucie Mannheim
BW-87 mins, CC,

Before filming the scene where Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll run through the countryside, Alfred Hitchcock handcuffed them together and pretended for several hours to have lost the key in order to put them in the right frame of mind for such a situation.


12:45 AM -- THE LADY VANISHES (1938)
A young woman on vacation triggers an international incident when she tries to track an elderly friend who has disappeared.
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock
Cast: Margaret Lockwood, Michael Redgrave, Paul Lukas
BW-96 mins, CC,

In an interview with Peter Bogdanovich, Alfred Hitchcock revealed that this film was inspired by a legend of an Englishwoman who went with her daughter to the Palace Hotel in Paris in the 1880s, at the time of the Great Exposition. The woman was taken sick and they sent the girl across Paris to get some medicine in a horse-vehicle, so it took about four hours. When she came back she asked, "How's my mother?" "What mother?" "My mother. She's here, she's in her room. Room 22." They go up there. Different room, different wallpaper, everything. And the payoff of the whole story is, so the legend goes, that the woman had bubonic plague and they dared not let anybody know she died, otherwise all of Paris would have emptied.


2:32 AM -- THE LITTLE RANGER (1938)
After being dumped by his girlfriend, a young boy fantasizes about revenge in a movie theater in this short film.
Dir: Gordon Douglas
Cast: Buckwheat Thomas, Darwood Kaye, Harold Switzer
BW-11 mins,

Very first production "Our Gang" comedy short by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Longtime producer, Hal Roach sold the group of "Our Gang" children to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, in May of 1938, after filming and production finished on Hide and Shriek (1938).


2:45 AM -- JAMAICA INN (1939)
A young woman on the British coast stumbles onto a ring of bloodthirsty scavengers.
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock
Cast: Charles Laughton, Horace Hodges, Hay Petrie
BW-100 mins, CC,

This was the last movie that Alfred Hitchcock made in England before going to Hollywood under contract to David O. Selznick.


4:30 AM -- AVENTURE MALGACHE (1944)
In World War II Madagascar, a Resistance leader clashes with a collaborationist.
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock
Cast: The Moliere Players,
BW-31 mins,

Alfred Hitchcock did not make his customary cameo appearance in Aventure malgache (1944) nor did he in his other short propaganda war film Bon Voyage (1944).


5:15 AM -- BON VOYAGE (1944)
A downed British flyer is used by Nazi agents in World War II France.
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock
Cast: John Blythe, The Moliere Players
BW-26 mins,

Apart from John Blythe all the other actors in this film were French, and were simply credited as "The Molière Players" in order to protect their families from the Nazis.