TCM Schedule for Thursday, July 18, 2013 -- TCM Guest Programmer -- Frank Rich

[Staph]

Tonight's guest programmer is Frank Rich, essayist, op-ed columnist & writer who has held various positions within The New York Times from 1980 to 2011. In his days as a theatre critic, he was referred to as the Butcher of Broadway, and in his later career on the op-ed page, his nickname evolved to the Butcher of the Beltway. Enjoy!


6:00 AM -- Double Harness (1933)
After tricking a playboy into marriage, a woman sets out to win his love honestly.
Dir: John Cromwell
Cast: Ann Harding, William Powell, Lucile Browne
BW-69 mins, TV-PG, CC,

This film hadn't been shown for decades and was found in a Merian C. Cooper collection that had been used for television. A 2-1/2-minute sequence that had been cut from the print was located in a French negative discovered in the National Center for Cinematography in France and restored to the print. The brief segment had been cut for television because it indicated that the characters of Joan Colby (Ann Harding) and John Fletcher (William Powell) were having pre-marital sex.


7:30 AM -- The Lady And The Mob (1939)
A woman sets out to break a criminal gang controlling the dry cleaning business.
Dir: Ben Stoloff
Cast: Fay Bainter, Ida Lupino, Lee Bowman
BW-66 mins, TV-G,

Based on a story by George Bradshaw and Price Day.


9:00 AM -- Born For Trouble (1942)
Two reporters take on a murder ring at the state pen.
Dir: B. Reeves Eason
Cast: Van Johnson, Faye Emerson, George Meeker
BW-59 mins, TV-G, CC,

Originally titled Murder In The Big House.


10:30 AM -- Larceny, Inc. (1942)
An ex-convict and his gang try to use a luggage store to front a bank robbery, but business keeps getting in the way.
Dir: Lloyd Bacon
Cast: Edward G. Robinson, Jane Wyman, Broderick Crawford
BW-95 mins, TV-PG, CC,

The play opened in New York City, New York, USA on 10 April 1941 and closed 27 April 1941 after 22 performances. The opening cast included Shelley Winters.


12:15 PM -- Child of Manhattan (1933)
A taxi dancer tries to pick up the pieces when her marriage to a millionaire playboy collapses.
Dir: Edward Buzzell
Cast: Nancy Carroll, John Boles, Charles "Buck" Jones
BW-70 mins, TV-PG,

The Broadway production of "Child of Manhattan" by Preston Sturges opened at the Fulton Theater on May 1, 1932 and ran for 87 performances.


1:30 PM -- Christmas In July (1940)
An unemployed dreamer thinks he's won a big radio contest.
Dir: Preston Sturges
Cast: Dick Powell, Ellen Drew, Raymond Walburn
BW-67 mins, TV-G, CC,

This film was based on a play called "A Cup of Coffee" which Preston Sturges wrote in the summer of 1931. The play also features a character named Jimmy MacDonald who works for a coffee company and enters a contest for a rival company with the slogan "If you can't sleep at night it isn't the coffee, it's the bunk." Much of the play's plot and supporting characters were changed for the film, but the dialogue between Jimmy and his girlfriend about his slogan is repeated almost verbatim. "A Cup of Coffee" was never produced in Sturges' lifetime, but it was eventually staged by the New York theater company Soho Rep in a production that opened in March of 1988, fifty-seven years after the play was written and twenty-nine years after Sturges' death.


2:45 PM -- Sullivan's Travels (1941)
A filmmaker masquerades as a hobo to get in touch with the little people.
Dir: Preston Sturges
Cast: Joel McCrea, Veronica Lake, Robert Warwick
BW-91 mins, TV-G, CC,

Not only was 'Veronica Lake' pregnant during the making of this movie, she was between six and eight months pregnant. Production took place from June 12 to July 22 1941, and her daughter Elaine Detlie was born on August 21, 1941. The only other people involved in the production who knew of her condition were the costume designer, Edith Head, and Louise Sturges, wife of Preston. Miss Head designed costumes to hide the condition. Miss Lake was afraid that she would not be allowed to make the movie if her advanced state of pregnancy was revealed, owing to the physical demands of the role.


4:30 PM -- Hail The Conquering Hero (1944)
A group of veterans help a small-town fraud convince his family he was a war hero.
Dir: Preston Sturges
Cast: Eddie Bracken, Ella Raines, Raymond Walburn
BW-101 mins, TV-G, CC,

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Writing, Original Screenplay -- Preston Sturges

As the marines are leaving the Oakridge station, a billboard behind them is advertising The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, another film by Preston Sturges, and also starring Eddie Bracken!


6:15 PM -- The Sin Of Harold Diddlebock (1947)
When he loses his job, a middle-aged bookkeeper goes out on the town.
Dir: Preston Sturges
Cast: Harold Lloyd, Jimmy Conlin, Raymond Walburn
BW-90 mins, TV-G, CC,

During the scene were Harold Lloyd's character meets Jackie the lion, on the first take when Harold pets Jackie, the lion actually bit him on his right hand. But Harold was not injured at all because the lion's teeth scraped against his two prosthetic fingers. After that, Harold refused to pet the lion ever again on or off screen, and in the second take which was used for the film, Harold's terrified squirming over the lion standing next to him is genuine.



TCM PRIMETIME - WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: TCM GUEST PROGRAMMER: FRANK RICH



8:00 PM -- The Palm Beach Story (1942)
To finance her husband's career, a married woman courts an eccentric millionaire.
Dir: Preston Sturges
Cast: Claudette Colbert, Joel McCrea, Mary Astor
BW-88 mins, TV-G, CC,

In-joke: The character John D. Hackensacker performs the song "Goodnight Sweetheart", associated in the 1930s with Rudy Vallee who plays the part.


9:45 PM -- The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
A Korean War hero doesn't realize he's been programmed to kill by the enemy.
Dir: John Frankenheimer
Cast: Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, Janet Leigh
BW-127 mins, TV-PG, CC, Letterbox Format

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Angela Lansbury, and Best Film Editing -- Ferris Webster

In the scene where Frank Sinatra gives the all-queens deck of cards to Laurence Harvey, Sinatra is out of focus. He had trouble recreating his performance, so director John Frankenheimer left the footage as is. Audiences weren't bothered; they interpreted it as Harvey's blurred perspective.


12:00 AM -- Rules of the Game (original title - La règle du jeu (1939))
A famed flier pursues a married woman during a weekend at her husband's country estate.
Dir: Jean Renoir
Cast: Nora Gregor, Jean Renoir, Marcel Dalio
BW-106 mins, TV-14,

Despite now being considered by historians to be one of the best films ever made, the picture almost became a lost art. Claiming that it was bad for the morale of the country (due to impending war), the French government banned the film about a month after its original release. When Germany took over France the following year, it was banned by the Nazi party as well, who also burnt many of the prints. Allied planes then accidentally destroyed the original negatives. It was thought to be a lost picture. In 1956, some followers of director Jean Renoir found enough pieces of the film scattered throughout France to reconstitute it with Renoir's help. Renoir claimed only one minor scene from the original cut was missing.


2:00 AM -- Petulia (1968)
A married doctor falls for the young wife of an abusive rich man.
Dir: Richard Lester
Cast: Julie Christie, George C. Scott, Richard Chamberlain
C-105 mins, TV-MA, CC, Letterbox Format

The film includes concert footage of both Big Brother & the Holding Co. (featuring Janis Joplin) and the Grateful Dead. Additionally, the hippies who observe Petulia taken out of Archie's apartment on a stretcher are members of the Grateful Dead and their communal entourage.


4:00 AM -- I Love You, Alice B. Toklas (1968)
A henpecked L.A. lawyer escapes into the world of hippies and free love.
Dir: Hy Averback
Cast: Peter Sellers, Jo Van Fleet, Leigh Taylor-Young
C-94 mins, TV-14, Letterbox Format

The film's title is a tribute to Gertrude Stein's lifelong partner, Alice B. Toklas, who published a cookbook in 1954 that contained the first printed recipe for hash fudge. In one of the movie's most famous scene Harold Fine unknowingly serves some marijuana-laced brownies baked by Nancy to his parents and fiancée.

[longship]

1. Larceny Inc.

Watch for a very young Jackie Gleason as a soda jerk. IIRC, it was his first cinematic role.

[Staph]

2. According to IMDB,

he had a few minor roles before then. His first role was supposedly Navy Blues (1941), but I don't necessarily trust their trivia.

[rdmtimp]

3. I always thought that it was John Simon...

...who was referred to as the "Butcher of Broadway".

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

4. The star of Rules Of The Game was the great French actor Marcel Dalio

who was in Renoir's masterpiece Grand Illusion. Dalio was also the croupier in the film Casablanca, famous for telling Captain Renault (Claude Raines) "your winnings, sir" when the latter said he was shocked that gambling was taking place at Rick's.

He also had a nice role in To Have And Have Not with Bogart. Dalio was Jewish and had to flee to the U.s. during the war.