TCM Schedule for Saturday, December 29, 2018 -- What's On Tonight: ????

[Staph]

In the daylight hours, TCM has the usual Saturday matinee lineup of films and shorts. Then tonight, TCM's non-essential Essentials are, well, . . . , I have no idea. TCM didn't bother to title What's On Tonight, and I have not been able to come up with a connection between tonight's three featured films, The Young In Heart (1938), Keeper Of The Flame (1943), and Double Indemnity (1944). Do you have any ideas? Enjoy!




6:30 AM -- THE MAD MISS MANTON (1938)
A daffy socialite gets her friends mixed up in a murder investigation.
Dir: Leigh Jason
Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda, Sam Levene
BW-80 mins, CC,

The first of three screen pairings of Henry Fonda and Barbara Stanwyck. All were comedies. The other films being The Lady Eve (1941) and You Belong to Me (1941).


8:00 AM -- TOM AND JERRY: VENTRILOQUIST CAT (1950)
A bulldog is tricked by an alley cat posing as an ventriloquist.
Dir: Tex Avery
Cast: Red Coffey, Bill Thompson
C-7 mins, CC,

Remade as Cat's Meow (1957) (Short)


8:08 AM -- MASTER WILL SHAKESPEARE (1936)
This short film provides a brief biography of the Bard.
Dir: Jacques Tourneur
Cast: Harry Wilson, Ralph Bushman, John George
BW-11 mins,

Filmed as a promotion piece to the then-upcoming MGM film Romeo and Juliet (1936).


8:19 AM -- SO YOU THINK YOU'RE A NERVOUS WRECK (1946)
In this short film, Joe McDoakes fights his phobias and fears...and his boss. Vitaphone Release 1513A.
Dir: Richard Bare
Cast: Fred Kelsey, Tex Cooper, Jack Rice
BW-11 mins,

This film short is available as an extra in the Warner DVD of A Night in Casablanca (1946).


8:30 AM -- GUNS OF THE PECOS (1937)
Texas Rangers take on cattle rustlers.
Dir: Noel Smith
Cast: Dick Foran, Anne Nagel, Gordon Hart
BW-56 mins, CC,

Dick Foran's character Steve rides Smoke the Wonder Horse!


9:30 AM -- MANDRAKE, THE MAGICIAN: AT THE STROKE OF EIGHT (1939)
The eleventh installment of the Mandrake, the Magician series.
BW-19 mins,


10:00 AM -- POPEYE: LET'S GET MOVIN (1933)
Popeye is jealous when Olive hires Bluto to help her move and decides to compete for her attention.
Dir: Dave Fleischer
Cast: Jack Mercer, Mae Questel, Gus Wickie
BW-6 mins, CC,

This cartoon makes use of Fleischer's Tabletop process, which animates the cels vertically between multi-plane set pieces in order to create the feeling of depth. Used here for the city street in the last scene. The whole effect is lost in the color version, as the backgrounds is a flat redraw.


10:07 AM -- MURDER ON A BRIDLE PATH (1936)
Schoolteacher Hildegarde Withers matches wits with the police to solve the murder of a society bride in Central Park.
Dir: Edward Killy
Cast: James Gleason, Helen Broderick, Louise Latimer
BW-66 mins, CC,

Although this is the first and only time Helen Broderick played Hildegarde Withers in the six picture series, James Gleason did play Inspector Oscar Piper in all of them.


11:30 AM -- THE FUTURE IS NOW (1955)
This short film goes inside government research laboratories to showcase some of the products that will be used in the near future.
Dir: Larry O'Reilly
BW-15 mins,


12:00 PM -- A TALE OF TWO CITIES (1935)
Charles Dickens' classic story of two men in love with the same woman during the French Revolution.
Dir: Jack Conway
Cast: Ronald Colman, Elizabeth Allen, Edna May Oliver
BW-126 mins, CC,

Nominee for Oscars for Best Film Editing -- Conrad A. Nervig, and Best Picture

Actor Ronald Colman agreed to play the role of Sydney Carton with the sole condition that he not also be required to play the role of Charles Darnay, as was usually expected in adaptations of the Dickens novel. The plot of 'A Tale of Two Cities' turns on the physical resemblance between the two characters. Colman had long wanted to play Sidney Carton, and was even willing to shave off his beloved mustache to play the part.


2:15 PM -- THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS (1942)
A possessive son's efforts to keep his mother from remarrying threaten to destroy his family.
Dir: Orson Welles
Cast: Joseph Cotten, Dolores Costello, Anne Baxter
BW-88 mins, CC,

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Agnes Moorehead, Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Stanley Cortez, Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Black-and-White -- Albert S. D'Agostino, A. Roland Fields and Darrell Silvera, and Best Picture

According to Peter Bogdanovich, Orson Welles said many times that this film could've been "much better than Citizen Kane (1941)." Also, while Welles always refused to watch any of his films, he was in a hotel room in the 1970s with many friends and the film was showing on TV, and he was talked into watching the rest of it. It is said that he was teary throughout, and confessed that although the ending didn't work, he still liked the film.


4:00 PM -- THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE (1948)
Three prospectors fight off bandits and each other after striking-it-rich in the Mexican mountains.
Dir: John Huston
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Walter Huston, Tim Holt
BW-126 mins, CC,

Winner of Oscars for Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Walter Huston, Best Director -- John Huston, and Best Writing, Screenplay -- John Huston

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Picture

In his Oscar acceptance speech, Walter Huston said, "Many, many years ago, I brought up a boy and I said to him, 'Son, if you ever become a writer, try to write a good part for your old man sometime'. Well, by cracky, that's what he did!"


6:15 PM -- RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY (1962)
Two aging gunslingers sign on to transport gold from a remote mining town.
Dir: Sam Peckinpah
Cast: Randolph Scott, Joel McCrea, Mariette Hartley
C-94 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Final film of Randolph Scott. He retired from acting once he saw the finished film, saying he wanted to quit while he was ahead and that he would never be able to better his work here.



TCM PRIMETIME - WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: ????



8:00 PM -- THE YOUNG IN HEART (1938)
A family of con artists saves the life of a wealthy old woman and plots to fleece her.
Dir: Richard Wallace
Cast: Minnie Dupree, Paulette Goddard, Richard Carlson
BW-91 mins, CC,

Nominee for Oscars for Best Cinematography -- Leon Shamroy, Best Music, Scoring -- Franz Waxman, and Best Music, Original Score -- Franz Waxman

Legendary stage actress Laurette Taylor (Amanda Wingfield in the original 1945 Broadway production of "The Glass Menagerie" ) made a screen test for David O. Selznick for the role of Miss Fortune, eventually played in the film by Minnie Dupree. The screen test can be seen in the documentary Broadway: The Golden Age, by the Legends Who Were There (2003).


9:37 PM -- THE FLAME SONG (1934)
In this short film, a prince is such a playboy that his subjects revolt and place his cousin (who is worse) on the throne, forcing the former prince to find a way to overthrow the dictator. Vitaphone Release 1762-1763.
Dir: Joseph Henabery
Cast: Bernice Claire, Bobette Christine, J. Harold Murray
BW-22 mins,

J. Harold Murray's final film appearance.


10:00 PM -- KEEPER OF THE FLAME (1943)
A reporter digs into the secret life of a recently deceased political hero.
Dir: George Cukor
Cast: Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Richard Whorf
BW-101 mins, CC,

Elements of the film would seem to be based on the so-called "Business Plot" from the mid-1930s. In 1934, former Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler revealed to the public that he had been approached the previous year by the representative of a number of Wall Street bankers with the intention of having him create a fascist veterans' organization for use in a coup against President Franklin Roosevelt. The claims were investigated by the House of Representatives Special Committee on Un-American Activities who came to the conclusion there was some basis for Butler's accusations though no one was ever prosecuted. Like Forest, Butler was a famed soldier and much admired by many Americans of the time though Butler exposed the plot that came to his attention rather than taking part in it as Forest does in the film.


12:00 AM -- DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944)
An insurance salesman gets seduced into plotting a client's death.
Dir: Billy Wilder
Cast: Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G. Robinson
BW-108 mins, CC,

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Barbara Stanwyck, Best Director -- Billy Wilder, Best Writing, Screenplay -- Raymond Chandler and Billy Wilder, Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- John F. Seitz, Best Sound, Recording -- Loren L. Ryder (Paramount SSD), Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture -- Miklós Rózsa, and Best Picture

Author James M. Cain later admitted that if he had come up with some of the solutions to the plot that screenwriters Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler did, he would have employed them in his original novel.


2:15 AM -- LIFEBOAT (1944)
Survivors of a torpedoed boat take in a German Naval officer from the sub that sank them.
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock
Cast: Tallulah Bankhead, William Bendix, Walter Slezak
BW-97 mins, CC,

Nominee for Oscars for Best Director -- Alfred Hitchcock, Best Writing, Original Story -- John Steinbeck, and Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Glen MacWilliams

DIRECTOR CAMEO (Sir Alfred Hitchcock): In "before" and "after" pictures in a newspaper advertisement for Reduco Obesity Slayer. The pictures were genuine, as he had just been on a crash diet (although not with the fictional Reduco) from three hundred to two hundred pounds. However, the so-called "Reduco Obesity Slayer" diet pill or potion ad seemed so real, that people who had seen this movie called the studio and wrote letters to Hitchcock asking where could they get this product. (In Rope (1948), a neon sign advertising "Reduco" with Hitchcock's famous silhouette is seen outside the Manhattan apartment where the movie takes place.)


4:00 AM -- TITANIC (1953)
An unhappily married couple realize their problems seem minor when the ship hits an iceberg.
Dir: Jean Negulesco
Cast: Clifton Webb, Barbara Stanwyck, Robert Wagner
BW-98 mins, CC,

Winner of an Oscar for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay -- Charles Brackett, Walter Reisch and Richard L. Breen

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White -- Lyle R. Wheeler, Maurice Ransford and Stuart A. Reiss

The filming of the disaster had a powerful effect on Barbara Stanwyck, who recalled: "The night we were making the scene of the dying ship in the outdoor tank at Twentieth, it was bitter cold. I was 47 feet up in the air in a lifeboat swinging on the davits. The water below was agitated into a heavy rolling mass and it was thick with other lifeboats full of women and children. I looked down and thought: If one of these ropes snaps now, it's goodbye for you. Then I looked up at the faces lined along the rail - those left behind to die with the ship. I thought of the men and women who had been through this thing in our time. We were re-creating an actual tragedy and I burst into tears. I shook with great racking sobs and couldn't stop."


5:43 AM -- THE ROYAL RODEO (1939)
In this short film, a young monarch invites a traveling rodeo show to perform at his palace. Vitaphone Release 9539-9540.
Dir: George Amy
Cast: Cliff Edwards, Boyd Irwin, Stuart Holmes
C-15 mins,

[rdmtimp]

1. According to the December At a Glance...

the Saturday theme is "Based on I.A.R. Wylie" (both THE YOUNG IN HEART and KEEPER OF THE FLAME are based on works of hers).

[Staph]

2. Thanks, RDM!

I looked on the day by day schedule and the monthly schedule, and both left the day's theme blank.

From Wikipedia:

I. A. R. Wylie

Ida Alexa Ross Wylie (16 March 1885 – 4 November 1959), known by her pen name I. A. R. Wylie, was an Australian-British-American novelist, screenwriter, short story writer, and poet who was honored by the journalistic and literary establishments of her time, and was known around the world. Between 1915 and 1953, more than thirty of her novels and stories were adapted into films, including Keeper of the Flame (1942), which was directed by George Cukor and starred Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn.

I learn something new every day!

[SharonAnn]

3. Keeper of the Flame is a great movie. Recommend watching it.

Saturday, 10 PM.

Was just thinking about this movie the other day.