TCM Schedule for Thursday, July 5 -- What's On Tonight: TCM Guest Programmer Spike Lee

[Staph]

In the daylight hours, TCM is showing films whose titles are women's names. In prime time, the guest programmer is Spike Lee. He has a interesting selection! Enjoy!


7:00 AM -- Evelyn Prentice (1934)
79 min, TV-G
A criminal lawyer's wife faces blackmail when she has an affair.
Dir: William K. Howard
Cast: William Powell, Myrna Loy, Una Merkel

Film debut of Rosalind Russell.


8:30 AM -- Annie Oakley (1935)
90 min, TV-G
The famed female sharpshooter learns that you can't get a man with a gun when she falls for a rival marksman.
Dir: George Stevens
Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, Preston Foster, Melvyn Douglas

A highly fictionalized version of the life of Annie Oakley. Not to be confused with the highly fictionalized Irving Berlin musical Annie Get Your Gun.


10:15 AM -- Mildred Pierce (1945)
111 min, TV-PG
A woman turns herself into a business tycoon to win her selfish daughter a place in society.
Dir: Michael Curtiz
Cast: Joan Crawford, Jack Carson, Zachary Scott

Won an Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Joan Crawford (Joan Crawford was not present at the awards ceremony and feigned ill that night. Meanwhile she listened to the show on the radio. When she won, she ushered the press into her bedroom, where she finally accepted her Oscar.)

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Eve Arden, Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Ann Blyth, Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Ernest Haller, Best Writing, Screenplay -- Ranald MacDougall, and Best Picture

Shooting the early scenes, director Michael Curtiz accused Joan Crawford of needlessly glamorizing her working mother role. She insisted she was buying her character's clothes off the rack, but didn't mention that her own dressmaker was fitting the waists and padding out the shoulders.


12:15 PM -- Portrait of Jennie (1948)
C-86 min, TV-PG
An artist discovers his gift when he falls for a beautiful ghost.
Dir: William Dieterle
Cast: Jennifer Jones, Joseph Cotten, Ethel Barrymore

Won an Oscar for Best Effects, Special Effects -- Paul Eagler (visual), J. McMillan Johnson (visual), Russell Shearman (visual), Clarence Slifer (visual), Charles L. Freeman (audible) and James G. Stewart (audible)

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Joseph H. August

Although almost the entire film is in black and white, the tidal wave sequence towards the end is shown in green tint, and the final shot of the completed portrait of Jennie is in full Technicolor. The original theatrical releases in Los Angeles (Carthay Circle Theatre), New York (Rivoli Theatre) and Boston (Esquire & Mayflower Theatres) presented the tidal wave sequence in Magnascope on the Cycloramic screen with Multi-Sound. The Cycloramic screen was claimed to be more reflective than regular screens with no distortion visible from any seat in the theatre, Multi-Sound was an early version of a Surround Sound-type speaker installation. Bosley Crowther, film critic for the New York Times, described it as "a howling hurricane that will blast you out of your seat."


1:45 PM -- Julie (1956)
98 min, TV-PG
A stewardess is stalked by her psychotic estranged husband.
Dir: Andrew L. Stone
Cast: Doris Day, Louis Jourdan, Barry Sullivan

Nominated for Oscars for Best Music, Original Song -- Leith Stevens (music) and Tom Adair (lyrics) for the song "Julie", and Best Writing, Best Screenplay - Original -- Andrew L. Stone

While making this film on location, Doris Day repeatedly complained to her husband Martin Melcher, whose first film as a producer this was, that she felt ill and needed a rest. He insisted that she adhere to her Christian Science beliefs - and the film's shooting schedule - and "have faith" that whatever was ailing her would pass. Once shooting was completed, Day consulted her doctor in Beverly Hills, and discovered a large ovarian tumor, which required her to have a hysterectomy.


3:30 PM -- Mary, Mary (1963)
126 min, TV-PG
A man on the verge of divorce is shocked by wife's glamorous makeover.
Dir: Mervyn LeRoy
Cast: Debbie Reynolds, Barry Nelson, Michael Rennie

The original Broadway production of "Mary, Mary" by Jean Kerr opened at the Helen Hayes Theater in New York on March 8, 1961 and ran for 1572 performances.


5:45 PM -- Penelope (1966)
C-98 min, TV-PG
A neglected wife turns to bank robbery to get her husband's attention.
Dir: Arthur Hiller
Cast: Natalie Wood, Ian Bannen, Dick Shawn

There seems to be a scene cut from the movie, perhaps a fantasy sequence. Some lobby cards show Natalie Wood and her husband in the film in their beds. The husband looks bored and uninterested in Natalie. In others from the same scene he reads a newspaper or has a boardroom meeting while Natalie sits in bed looking gorgeous.


7:30 PM -- MGM Parade Show #13 (1955)
25 min, TV-G
George Murphy introduces clips featuring Susan Hayward and Fernand Gravet from "The Great Waltz" and "I'll Cry Tomorrow."


TCM PRIMETIME - WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: TCM GUEST PROGRAMMER: SPIKE LEE


8:00 PM -- Ace In the Hole (1951)
111 min, TV-14
A small-town reporter milks a local disaster to get back into the big time.
Dir: Billy Wilder
Cast: Kirk Douglas, Jan Sterling, Bob Arthur

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay -- Billy Wilder, Lesser Samuels and Walter Newman

In a 1950 memo to Wilder, Kirk Douglas objected to several aspects of Chuck Tatum's monologue about missing New York City: "No pastrami! No garlic pickles! No Madison Square Garden! No Yogi Berra!" among other things, Douglas asked, "... what the hell is a Yogi Berra!" Douglas' secretary, who was amused her boss didn't know who the New York Yankee star was, told him he was a catcher.


10:00 PM -- The Night Of The Hunter (1955)
93 min, TV-PG
A bogus preacher marries an outlaw's widow in search of the man's hidden loot.
Dir: Charles Laughton
Cast: Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters, Lillian Gish

Robert Mitchum's autobiography contains many spurious accounts of the making of the film; one, for example, concerns director Charles Laughton, and how he supposedly found the script by James Agee totally unacceptable, rewriting it himself. This has been disproved by the discovery of Agee's 293-page first draft, back in 2004, which is, scene-for-scene, the film that Laughton directed.


11:45 PM -- On The Waterfront (1954)
108 min, TV-PG
A young stevedore takes on the mobster who rules the docks.
Dir: Elia Kazan
Cast: Marlon Brando, Karl Malden, Lee J. Cobb

Won Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Marlon Brando, Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Eva Marie Saint, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White -- Richard Day, Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Boris Kaufman, Best Director -- Elia Kazan, Best Film Editing -- Gene Milford, Best Writing, Story and Screenplay -- Budd Schulberg, and Best Picture

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Lee J. Cobb, Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Karl Malden, Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Rod Steiger, and Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture -- Leonard Bernstein

On the Waterfront is widely known to be an act of expiation on the part of Elia Kazan for naming names to HUAC during the Joseph McCarthy witch-hunts of the 1950s. What is less widely reported is that Kazan intended it as a direct attack at his former close friend Arthur Miller who had been openly critical of Kazan's actions. Specifically, it was a direct response to Miller's play The Crucible.


1:45 AM -- A Face In The Crowd (1957)
126 min, TV-PG
A female television executive turns a folk-singing drifter into a powerful media star.
Dir: Elia Kazan
Cast: Andy Griffith, Patricia Neal, Anthony Franciosa

Keith Olbermann refers to FOX News host Glenn Beck as "Lonesome Rhodes" Beck after Andy Griffith's character in this movie.


4:00 AM -- Norma Rae (1979)
C-115 min, TV-14
A young single mother and her co-worker try to unionize the milll where they work.
Dir: Martin Ritt
Cast: Sally Field, Beau Bridges, Ron Leibman

Won Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Sally Field, and Best Music, Original Song -- David Shire (music) and Norman Gimbel (lyrics) for the song "It Goes Like It Goes"

Nominated for Oscars for Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium -- Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank Jr., and Best Picture

The movie is based on a true life union organizing campaign at J.P. Stevens Mill in Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina. The real life Norma Rae is named Crystal Lee Sutton. The union organizer, Reuben Warshowsky, is based on Eli Zivkovich. (In real life, Zivkovich was a 55-year-old former West Virginia coal miner, not a New Yorker, as depicted in the film.) In 1974, thanks to the efforts of Crystal Lee Sutton and Eli Zivkovich, workers at J.P. Stevens Mill voted to join the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union. However, it still took 10 years to get a union contract at J.P. Stevens after the workers won the election. Some real-life events from Crystal Lee Sutton's story are re-created verbatim in the movie, including the famous scene where Norma Rae holds up the "UNION" sign and the plant workers shut down their machines, and the following scene where Norma Rae wakes her children to tell them about her relationships with their fathers. Crystal Lee Sutton did both in real life.