TCM Schedule for Thursday, January 2, 2020 -- What's On Tonight: Bob Hope

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Last edited Mon Mar 23, 2020, 07:48 PM - Edit history (1)

Today in prime time, we have a quartet of films starring Leslie Townes Hope, aka Bob Hope. It's not his birthday, but despite his old school Republican politics, you should take a little time to appreciate his comic timing. Enjoy!



6:00 AM -- The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939)
Elizabeth I's love for the Earl of Essex threatens to destroy her kingdom.
Dir: Michael Curtiz
Cast: Bette Davis, Errol Flynn, Olivia De Havilland
BW-106 mins, CC

Nominee for Oscars for Best Cinematography, Color -- Sol Polito and W. Howard Greene, Best Art Direction -- Anton Grot, Best Sound, Recording -- Nathan Levinson (Warner Bros. SSD), Best Effects, Special Effects -- Byron Haskin (photographic) and Nathan Levinson (sound), and Best Music, Scoring -- Erich Wolfgang Korngold

Bette Davis had originally wanted Laurence Olivier for the role of Lord Essex, claiming that Errol Flynn could not speak blank verse well. She remained extremely upset about this through the entire filming, and Flynn and Davis never worked again together in a film. According to Olivia de Havilland, she and Davis screened the film again a short while before Davis suffered four strokes in 1983. At film's end, Davis turned to de Havilland and declared that she had been wrong about Flynn, and that he had given a fine performance as Essex.


8:00 AM -- Fort Apache (1948)
An experienced cavalry officer tries to keep his new, by-the-books commander from triggering an Indian war.
Dir: John Ford
Cast: John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Shirley Temple
BW-128 mins, CC

John Ford used Navajos to play Apaches, regarding them as "natural-born actors" and very dependable. He respected them and they enjoyed working for him. They loved it when a movie was being shot anywhere nearby because it meant work. They would travel many miles by wagon for a job, and knew they could count on a big lunch on a Ford set. The movie required 200 Navajos as Apache warriors and another 100 Navajo women and children. It also required 100 non-Indian extras as cavalry troops.


10:15 AM -- The Letter (1940)
A woman claims to have killed in self-defense, until a blackmailer turns up with incriminating evidence.
Dir: William Wyler
Cast: Bette Davis, Herbert Marshall, James Stephenson
BW-95 mins, CC

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Bette Davis, Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- James Stephenson, Best Director -- William Wyler, Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Tony Gaudio, Best Film Editing -- Warren Low, Best Music, Original Score -- Max Steiner, and Best Picture

After shooting was completed, William Wyler watched a rough cut and decided that he wanted the character of Leslie to be more sympathetic. He ordered some re-writes and planned to shoot them. Bette Davis recalled - "I was heartbroken," she said, "as I felt, after reading the rewrites, that my performance could be ruined with these additions. I asked Willie if I could see the film before doing the retakes. To my horror I was crying at myself at the end of the showing. There was dead silence in the projection room when the lights came up. I said, 'If we film these retakes, we will lose the intelligent audience. It is impossible to please everyone with any one film. If we try to accomplish this, we can lose all audiences.' Plus, to my shame, even though I played the part, I deeply sympathized with Leslie Crosbie. We only made one small addition to the original film. Wyler had agreed with me. Thank God!"


12:00 PM -- Suspicion (1941)
A wealthy wallflower suspects her penniless playboy husband of murder.
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock
Cast: Cary Grant, Joan Fontaine, Sir Cedric Hardwicke
BW-99 mins, CC

Winner of an Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Joan Fontaine

Nominee for Oscars for Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic Picture -- Franz Waxman, and Best Picture

In interviews, Sir Alfred Hitchcock said that an RKO executive ordered that all scenes in which Cary Grant appeared menacing be excised from the movie. When the cutting was completed, the movie ran only fifty-five minutes. The scenes were later restored, Hitchcock said, because he shot each piece of film so that there was only one way to edit them together properly.


1:45 PM -- A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
A fading southern belle tries to build a new life with her sister in New Orleans.
Dir: Elia Kazan
Cast: Vivien Leigh, Marlon Brando, Kim Hunter
BW-125 mins, CC

Winner of Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Vivien Leigh (Vivien Leigh was not present at the awards ceremony. Greer Garson accepted on her behalf.), Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Karl Malden, Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Kim Hunter (Kim Hunter was not present at the awards ceremony. Bette Davis accepted on her behalf.), and Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White -- Richard Day and George James Hopkins

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Marlon Brando, Best Director -- Elia Kazan, Best Writing, Screenplay -- Tennessee Williams, Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Harry Stradling Sr., Best Costume Design, Black-and-White -- Lucinda Ballard, Best Sound, Recording -- Nathan Levinson (Warner Bros.), Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture --Alex North, and Best Picture

Mickey Kuhn, who plays the young sailor who helps Vivien Leigh onto the streetcar at the beginning of the film, had previously appeared with Leigh in Gone with the Wind (1939) as Beau Wilkes (the child of Olivia de Havilland's character Melanie), toward the end of that film when the character was age 5. When Mickey Kuhn mentioned this to someone else on the set of "A Streetcar Named Desire," word got back to Leigh and she called him into her dressing room for a half-hour chat. In an interview in his seventies, Kuhn stated that Leigh was extremely kind to him and was "one of the loveliest ladies he had ever met."


4:00 PM -- Adam's Rib (1949)
Husband-and-wife lawyers argue opposite sides in a sensational women's rights case.
Dir: George Cukor
Cast: Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Judy Holliday
BW-101 mins, CC

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay -- Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin

Katharine Hepburn, George Cukor and Garson Kanin managed to turn Judy Holliday's performance into a screen test for Born Yesterday (1950). In particular, one long scene in which Doris recounts how and why she shot her husband was written as a near monologue for the character. Holliday shot her close-up of the speech in one take. Then Hepburn refused to shoot more than a few brief reaction shots, thus forcing Cukor to focus the entire scene on Holliday. That scene convinced Cohn to test Holliday. After three tests (she borrowed a gown from Hepburn for one of them), he finally cast her over such glamorous stars as Rita Hayworth, Lucille Ball and the young Marilyn Monroe. Hepburn would later explain her generosity to Kanin: "It was the kind of thing you do because people have done it for you."


5:45 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

Humphrey Bogarts portrayal of 'Dobbs' in this film was cited by Steven Spielberg as the main inspiration for the character of Indiana Jones.



TCM PRIMETIME - WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: BOB HOPE



8:00 PM -- Road to Morocco (1942)
Two castaways get mixed up in an Arabian nightmare when they're caught between a bandit chief and a beautiful princess.
Dir: David Butler
Cast: Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Dorothy Lamour
BW-82 mins, CC

Nominee for Oscars for Best Writing, Original Screenplay -- Frank Butler and Don Hartman, and Best Sound, Recording -- Loren L. Ryder (Paramount SSD)

The scene where the camel spits in Turkey's (Bob Hope's) face wasn't planned. The camel did it of its own accord while the cameras were rolling, and Hope's recoil and Bing Crosby's reaction were so funny that it was left in the final cut of the film.


9:30 PM -- Road to Utopia (1946)
Two song-and-dance men on the run masquerade as killers during the Alaskan gold rush.
Dir: Hal Walker
Cast: Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Dorothy Lamour
BW-90 mins, CC

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Writing, Original Screenplay -- Norman Panama and Melvin Frank

Bob Hope recalled that during the scene where he and Bing Crosby were bedding down beside their cabin in the Klondike, they were to be joined by a bear. They were told that the bear was tame and its trainer would always be nearby. Against their better judgment they went along with it. However, when the cameras started filming, the bear ambled over to Hope and, instead of lying down next to him like it was supposed to, the animal sniffed him and started growling. Hope and Crosby immediately stopped the scene and refused to work with the bear any longer, despite the trainer's protestations that it was tame and harmless. The next day the bear attacked its trainer and tore his arm off.


1:00 AM -- My Favorite Brunette (1947)
A baby photographer mistaken for a private eye ends up framed for murder.
Dir: Elliott Nugent
Cast: Bob Hope, Dorothy Lamour, Peter Lorre
BW-86 mins, CC

The film contains a number of in-jokes. Bob Hope's character is just saying that he wants to be a private detective like Alan Ladd - when Ladd appears, playing a private detective. Dorothy Lamour's character looks longingly after Bing Crosby for a moment (in their "Road" movies with Bob Hope, Crosby nearly always got the girl) before Hope wins back her attention. There is also a comic reference to legendary music conductor Arturo Toscanini, then considered the greatest conductor in the world, and who at that time was conducting the NBC Symphony Orchestra. (Bob Hope had a radio program on NBC and was soon to make his TV debut on NBC as well.)


2:45 AM -- Alias Jesse James (1959)
An insurance agent lands in hot water when people mistake him for the infamous western outlaw.
Dir: Norman Z. McLeod
Cast: Bob Hope, Rhonda Fleming, Wendell Corey
C-92 mins, CC

The climactic gunfight featured cameos by Bing Crosby, and surprise appearances by actors who, at the time, were starring or had recently starred in extremely popular Western television series (such as Maverick (1957), The Roy Rogers Show (1951), and Annie Oakley (1954)) and Western movies such as High Noon (1952) (Gary Cooper). They appeared playing the same roles that they had played on their shows.


4:30 AM -- I Shot Jesse James (1949)
After shooting his best friend, an outlaw tries to cope with guilt.
Dir: Samuel Fuller
Cast: Preston Foster, Barbara Britton, John Ireland
BW-81 mins, CC

Director Samuel Fuller said that he wanted to make this picture because, unlike many filmmakers in Hollywood, he did not see the real Jesse James as a "folk hero" or someone to be admired. Fuller saw him as a cold-blooded psychopath who shot down women, children, the elderly, the helpless (his gang once stopped a Union hospital train and executed every wounded federal soldier on it) and, in Fuller's words, Bob Ford "did something that should have been done quite a bit earlier in the life of Jesse Woodson James".