TCM Schedule for Thursday, June 20, 2013 -- What's On Tonight -- Mamie Van Doren

[Staph]

The daylight theme appears to be one-name titles, and in the prime time TCM is featuring films of sex kitten Mamie Van Doren. Along with fellow platinum-blonde goddesses Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield, she was known as one of "The Three M's." Enjoy!


6:00 AM -- Sunny (1930)
A showgirl falls for a society boy but has to win over his family.
Dir: William Seiter
Cast: Marilyn Miller, Lawrence Gray, Joe Donahue
BW-78 mins, TV-PG, CC,

In the film Till the Clouds Roll By (1946), a biography of composer Jerome Kern, Judy Garland played Marilyn Miller and performed two songs from this show, "Sunny" and "Who?"


7:30 AM -- Slim (1937)
Electric linemen compete on the job and in love.
Dir: Ray Enright
Cast: Pat O'Brien, Henry Fonda, Stuart Erwin
BW-86 mins, TV-PG, CC,

When O'Brien and Fonda are driving through the desert, Fonda's wearing a brown hat, but the longer shots of his double shows a white hat.


9:00 AM -- Remember? (1939)
A bickering couple takes an amnesia potion so they can re-discover each other.
Dir: Norman Z. McLeod
Cast: Robert Taylor, Greer Garson, Lew Ayres
BW-83 mins, TV-G, CC,

MGM studio chief Louis B. Mayer quickly rushed this movie into production to cash in on the popularity of the newly discovered Greer Garson, who had just triumphed in Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939). But despite it's title, the movie was all but forgotten and was a box office dud.


10:30 AM -- Reno (1940)
A divorce lawyer prospers as a gambling tycoon.
Dir: John Farrow
Cast: Richard Dix, Gail Patrick, Anita Louise
BW-73 mins, TV-PG, CC,

Based on a story by Ellis St. Joseph, later a prolific writer for television.


12:00 PM -- Manpower (1941)
Power linemen feud over the love of a sultry nightclub singer.
Dir: Raoul Walsh
Cast: Edward G. Robinson, Marlene Dietrich, George Raft
BW-103 mins, TV-PG, CC,

While visiting his friend George Raft on the set, Bugsy Siegel was introduced to Virginia Hill. In the scene where Raft gets into a brawl with Barton MacLane, Hill appears as the hat-check girl to whom Raft gives a smashed chair as he leaves the nightclub. The brawl scene and Bugsy Siegel's first meeting with Virginia Hill on the gas station movie set are recreated in Bugsy (1991).


2:00 PM -- Conflict (1945)
A man murders his wife so he can be free to marry her sister.
Dir: Curtis Bernhardt
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Alexis Smith, Sydney Greenstreet
BW-86 mins, TV-PG, CC,

The statue of the Maltese Falcon is clearly displayed as an ornament on the top of the wooden filing cabinet in Det. Lt. Egan's office when Richard visits. A few years earlier, Bogart and Greenstreet has appear in the movie about this statue, by the same name. No reference to it in the dialogue is made.


3:30 PM -- Cornered (1946)
A World War II veteran hunts down the Nazi collaborators who killed his wife.
Dir: Edward Dmytryk
Cast: Dick Powell, Walter Slezak, Micheline Cheirel
BW-103 mins, TV-PG, CC,

Luther Adler is given a special solo credit card at the film's conclusion.


5:30 PM -- Ada (1961)
A call girl weds an easygoing politician and helps him against corrupt state officials.
Dir: Daniel Mann
Cast: Susan Hayward, Dean Martin, Wilfrid Hyde-White
C-108 mins, TV-G, CC, Letterbox Format

Based on the Pulitzer-prize nominated novel Ada Dallas, by Wirt Williams.


7:30 PM -- Now Playing July (2013)
Features highlights of the month's programming on TCM, including festivals and stars.
BW-22 mins, TV-PG, CC,



TCM PRIMETIME - WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: MAMIE VAN DOREN



8:00 PM -- Untamed Youth (1957)
When they're put in a small-town jail, two sisters fight to expose prison corruption.
Dir: Howard W. Koch
Cast: Mamie Van Doren, Lori Nelson, John Russell
BW-80 mins, TV-PG, CC, Letterbox Format

In 1957, this film was distributed on a double bill with Hell's Crossroads featuring Robert Vaughn.


9:30 PM -- The Beat Generation (1959)
A group of beatniks unwittingly harbor a serial rapist.
Dir: Charles Haas
Cast: Steve Cochran, Mamie Van Doren, Ray Danton
BW-95 mins, TV-PG, CC, Letterbox Format

"On the Road" author Jack Kerouac was disturbed that his friend, author John Clellon Holmes, managed to get his "Beat Generation" novel "Go" into print before his own was published ("Go", in which Kerouac is a main character, was published in 1952, while "On the Road" was not published until 1957). Kerouac was worried that Holmes was plagiarizing him, although Holmes was careful to credit Kerouac with creating the term "Beat" for their generation, and much of the material was common amongst them and other writers of their circle, such as Allen Ginsberg. Ironically, producer Albert Zugsmith outfoxed Kerouac by copyrighting the term "The Beat Generation", which he used as the title of this egregious exploitation film, which was released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1959. A year later, M.G.M. released a film of Kerouac's novel "The Subterraneans", made by with top talent: It proved to be a major disappointment as it grossly misrepresented the scene (as well as Kerouac's novel). Ironically, "The Subterraneans" probably is the premier contemporary movie about the Beats, as so few "Beat" movies were made ("On the Road" has never been filmed), the phenomenon occurring during a time of strict screen censorship in the United States. By the time censorship was lifted in 1967, the Beats had been supplanted by the Hippies.


11:15 PM -- Born Reckless (1959)
A saloon singer falls in love with a free roaming rider and tries to change his lifestyle.
Dir: Howard W. Koch
Cast: Mamie Van Doren, Jeff Richards, Arthur Hunnicutt
BW-79 mins, TV-PG, CC,

In December 1957, Director Howard W. Koch ordered a trainer to deliver "one mean bull" to the set. A huge Brahma bull was delivered which promptly broke through a chain link fence and pushed in the side of Koch's brand new convertible which was parked nearby.


12:45 AM -- Guns, Girls and Gangsters (1958)
An ex-con sets up an elaborate heist of a Vegas casino.
Dir: Edward L. Cahn
Cast: Mamie Van Doren, Gerald Mohr, Lee Van Cleef
BW-70 mins, TV-14, CC,

Based on a story by Paul Gangelin and Jerry Sackheim.


2:00 AM -- Vice Raid (1959)
A prostitute sets out to frame a cop.
Dir: Edward L. Cahn
Cast: Mamie Van Doren, Richard Coogan, Brad Dexter
BW-71 mins, TV-PG,

Van Doren, born Joan Lucille Olander, took her stage name Mamie from First Lady Mamie Eisenhower.


3:15 AM -- Sex Kittens Go to College (1960)
A stripper with a high IQ gets a job teaching at a college science department through a selection process determined by a robot.
Dir: Albert Zugsmith
Cast: Mamie Van Doren, Tuesday Weld, Mijanou Bardot
BW-94 mins, TV-PG,

Elektro was constructed by the Westinghouse Appliance Division of Mansfield Ohio and only one copy was made. The construction of Elektro began in 1937 and was put on public display in early 1939 just before being sent to the New York World's Fair of 1939. He was modified for the movie sex kittens, filling in the circle and putting in the square on his chest for the speaker.


5:00 AM -- The Girl In Black Stockings (1957)
A young girl's murder leaves a hotel full of suspects.
Dir: Howard W. Koch
Cast: Lex Barker, Anne Bancroft, Mamie Van Doren
BW-75 mins, TV-PG,

This movie was filmed in and around Parry Lodge in Kanab, Utah. This lodge was opened in the early 1930s by the Parry brothers, as a place in which to lodge Hollywood film crews who came out to that area of Utah to film some of the early westerns. Over the years many famous movie stars have stayed at this lodge.