TCM Schedule for Friday, October 5, 2018 -- What's On Tonight -- Margaret Lockwood

[Staph]

In the daylight hours, TCM is playing matchmaker. Then in prime time, TCM is featuring beauty and actress Margaret Lockwood, who started on stage at age 12 as a fairy in A Midsummer Night's Dream, played small parts in films before gaining big notice in Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes (1938), and last performed on film as the Stepmother in The Slipper and the Rose: The Story of Cinderella (1976). Enjoy!



6:00 AM -- BABES IN THE GOODS (1934)
In this comedic short, two women are offered a job in a department store... and are locked in after hours.
Dir: Gus Meins
Cast: Patsy Kelly, Thelma Todd, Arthur Housman
BW-19 mins,


6:30 AM -- VILLAGE OF DAUGHTERS (1962)
A traveling salesman stumbles into the job of matchmaker in a small Italian village.
Dir: George Pollock
Cast: Eric Sykes, Scilla Gabel, Gregoire Aslan
BW-86 mins, Letterbox Format

This film was part of a double-bill with "Ride The High Country", the second film directed by Sam Peckinpah.


8:00 AM -- LUXURY LINER (1948)
The daughter of a ship's captain becomes a sea-going cupid.
Dir: Richard Whorf
Cast: George Brent, Jane Powell, Lauritz Melchior
C-98 mins, CC,

In her autobiography, Jane Powell says that years later, she reconnected with George Brent who would occasionally court her. He proposed marriage and she turned him down, because she wasn't interested in getting married again. Brent was upset with her when she married James Fitzgerald in 1965.


9:45 AM -- UNEXPECTED UNCLE (1941)
A bored retiree decides to play matchmaker.
Dir: Peter Godfrey
Cast: Anne Shirley, James Craig, Charles Coburn
BW-67 mins,

According to contemporary articles in The Hollywood Reporter, RKO bought he rights to the novel as a vehicle for Ginger Rogers and Charles Laughton, and that John Barrymore was also considered for the lead.


11:00 AM -- THE COURTSHIP OF EDDIE'S FATHER (1963)
A young boy plays matchmaker for his widowed father.
Dir: Vincente Minnelli
Cast: Glenn Ford, Shirley Jones, Stella Stevens
C-119 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Appearing in "Courtship of Eddie's Father" in his film debut in the uncredited role of Child at Party in Indian headdress is Ron Howard's (Eddie) younger brother, Clint Howard. This marks the beginning of a career for Clint punctuated by appearing in film and television work that also involves his brother Ron.


1:00 PM -- WEDDING REHEARSAL (1932)
To avoid marriage, a nobleman schemes to marry off the eligible women on his family's list.
Dir: Alexander Korda
Cast: Maurice Evans, Roland Young, John Loder
BW-79 mins, CC,

Merle Oberon's first credited film role.


2:30 PM -- TISH (1942)
Three small-town spinsters adopt a baby.
Dir: S. Sylvan Simon
Cast: Marjorie Main, ZaSu Pitts, Aline MacMahon
BW-85 mins, CC,

Founded in part on stories by Mary Roberts Rinehart.


4:00 PM -- HURRY, CHARLIE, HURRY (1941)
A small-town banker and his wife quarrel over their daughter's love life.
Dir: Charles E. Roberts
Cast: Leon Errol, Mildred Coles, Kenneth Howell
BW-65 mins,

From the story by Luke Short.


5:15 PM -- MAKE WAY FOR A LADY (1936)
A widower's daughter plays matchmaker for her father.
Dir: David Burton
Cast: Herbert Marshall, Anne Shirley, Gertrude Michael
BW-65 mins,

From a novel by Elizabeth Jordan.


6:30 PM -- BACHELOR BAIT (1934)
A romantic starts a marriage agency so he can play Cupid.
Dir: George Stevens
Cast: Stuart Erwin, Rochelle Hudson, Pert Kelton
BW-75 mins,

Based on a story by Edward and Victor Halperin.



TCM PRIMETIME - WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: MARGARET LOCKWOOD



8:00 PM -- NIGHT TRAIN TO MUNICH (1940)
A British agent masquerades as a Nazi officer to protect an inventor and his daughter.
Dir: Carol Reed
Cast: Margaret Lockwood, Rex Harrison, Paul von Henreid
BW-95 mins, CC,

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Writing, Original Story -- Gordon Wellesley

The second of four cinematic appearances by Charters and Caldicott (played by Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne). They first appeared in The Lady Vanishes (1938), also written by Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder. They later appeared in Crook's Tour (1941), and in Millions Like Us (1943), which was also written by Gilliat and Lauder.


10:00 PM -- 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." The urban legend, known as the Vanishing Hotel Room, also formed the basis of one segment of the German portmanteau film Eerie Tales (1919), So Long at the Fair (1950) (in which the missing person was the young woman's brother as opposed to her mother) and Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Into Thin Air (1955) starring Hitchcock's daughter Patricia Hitchcock.


11:40 PM -- A LADY FIGHTS BACK (1944)
This short film details the "life" of a luxury liner that is eventually used to assist in the war effort.
BW-10 mins,

The closing shot shows the Normandie being towed away and the narrator suggests that she would be repaired and returned to service. However, by this time the war had turned in the Allies favor and it was realized that by the time repairs were complete the war would be over. Ultimately, the Normandie never sailed again and was sold for scrap.


12:00 AM -- THE WICKED LADY (1945)
A married woman finds new thrills as a masked robber on the highways.
Dir: Leslie Arliss
Cast: Margaret Lockwood, James Mason, Patricia Roc
BW-104 mins,

Both Margaret Lockwood and Patricia Roc were brought back to Gainsborough to re-shoot some of their scenes with less revealing décolleté versions of their revealing wardrobe. Despite this, "The Wicked Lady" was the very first British film to be cut by Hollywood censors due to leading lady Margaret Lockwood's still remaining revealing cleavage.


2:00 AM -- DEADLY FRIEND (1986)
A boy tries to save his friend by implanting robotic microchips in her brain.
Dir: Wes Craven
Cast: Matthew Laborteaux, Kristy Swanson, Anne Twomey
C-90 mins, CC,

Director Wes Craven and screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin's original vision for the film was a PG-rated supernatural science fiction thriller, with the primary focus being on the macabre love story between Paul and Samantha, as well as a secondary focus on the adults around them and how they are truly monsters inside themselves. Craven filmed this version of the film and Warner Bros. decided to screen it to a test audience mostly consisting of Craven's fans. The response from fans was negative, criticizing the lack of violence and gore seen in Craven's previous films. The studio eventually discovered Craven's popularity as a horror film director. The president of Warner Bros. at the time, Mark Canton, demanded Rubin write six additional gore scenes into his script, each bloodier than the last. Rubin worked very hard with Craven to create a very deep and heartfelt movie out of it. Unfortunately, added gore scenes, re-shoots and post production re-editing of the movie heavily changed the original story. Craven and Rubin expressed strong anger at the studio and thus disowned the film.


3:45 AM -- DEMON SEED (1977)
A sophisticated computer falls in love with its creator's wife and terrorizes her.
Dir: Donald Cammell
Cast: Julie Christie, Fritz Weaver, Gerritt Graham
C-95 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Dr. Harris' futuristic-looking car was actually a production car, unmodified at the time of filming - a Bricklin SV-1. The Bricklin was built in Canada but intended for the U.S. market, featuring high performance and a number of innovative safety features (in fact, the model number stood for Safety Vehicle 1). The SV-1 was the only production vehicle in automotive history to have powered gull-wing doors that opened and closed at the touch of a button (on other gull-wing cars, like the DeLorean it's often compared to, the doors must be opened and closed manually). Fewer than 3,000 were produced during its short run from 1974-1976, and it's estimated that fewer than 1,120 remain in existence.


5:30 AM -- NARCOTICS PIT OF DESPAIR PART 1 (1967)
In this short film, a drug dealer seduces a high-school student into drug addiction.
Dir: Mel Marshall
Cast: Kevin Tighe, Gerald LeRoy, Julie Conners
C-29 mins,

Film debut of Kevin Tighe.