TCM Schedule for Friday, May 29 -- Star of the Month -- Sean Connery

[Staph]

Today we've got crime all day long, with lots of murderers and Rita Hayworth as a pair of shady ladies and even Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes. Tonight is our final look at star of the month, Sean Connery, with a trio of his non-Bond films -- three of my absolute Connery films -- The Wind and the Lion (1975), The Great Train Robbery (1979), and Robin and Marian (1976) with a luminous Audrey Hepburn. Enjoy!


4:45am -- Terror In A Texas Town (1958)
A whaler inherits his father's farm but has to fight off a corrupt town boss.
Cast: Sterling Hayden, Sebastian Cabot, Carol Kelly, Eugene Martin
Dir: Joseph H. Lewis
BW-81 mins, TV-PG

This was the final feature film for director Joseph H. Lewis. He would spend much of the next decade directing television episodes before retiring from the industry.


6:15am -- Bluebeard (1944)
A 19th-century Parisian puppeteer is killing the young women he employs.
Cast: John Carradine, Jean Parker, Nils Asther, Ludwig Stossel
Dir: Edgar G. Ulmer
BW-70 mins, TV-PG

John Carradine's own favorite performance.


7:30am -- The Woman in Green (1945)
Sherlock Holmes investigates a series of seemingly unrelated murders.
Cast: Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, Hillary Brooke, Henry Daniell
Dir: Roy William Neill
BW-67 mins, TV-G

The eleventh of fourteen films based on Arthur Conan Doyle's fictional consulting detective Sherlock Holmes starring Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Doctor Watson. Although he is not seen, the only reference to Mycroft Holmes in the Basil Rathbone / Nigel Bruce series is made in this film.


8:45am -- The Blue Dahlia (1946)
A veteran fights to prove he didn't kill his cheating wife.
Cast: Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake, William Bendix, Howard Da Silva
Dir: George Marshall
BW-99 mins, TV-PG

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Writing, Original Screenplay -- Raymond Chandler

Many of the cars in the film have a "B" sticker on the windshields. This is a reflection of the wartime rationing of gasoline. Gas was rationed primarily to save rubber, because Japan had occupied Indochina, Malaysia, and Indonesia. (There was a shortage of gas on the East Coast until a pipeline from Texas was constructed to replace the transport of crude oil by sea.) The B sticker was the second lowest category, entitling the holder to only 8 gallons of gas a week.


10:30am -- Gilda (1946)
A gambler discovers an old flame in South America, but she's married to his new boss.
Cast: Rita Hayworth, Glenn Ford, George Macready, Joseph Calleia
Dir: Charles Vidor
BW-110 mins, TV-PG

In the scene where Gilda is brought back to Argentina by Tom, she slaps Johnny hard across both sides of his face. In reality,

Rita Hayworth's smacks broke two of 'Glenn Ford''s teeth. He held his place until the take was finished.


12:30pm -- Hollow Triumph (1948)
A crook on the lam poses as a psychiatrist.
Cast: Paul Henreid, Joan Bennett, Eduard Franz, Leslie Brooks
Dir: Steve Sekely
BW-83 mins, TV-PG

Debut of Thomas Browne Henry. His last, uncredited role was in Airport (1970). He is the passenger that comes out of the plane's bathroom behind the mad bomber, Guerrero.


2:00pm -- The Lady From Shanghai (1948)
A romantic drifter gets caught between a corrupt tycoon and his voluptuous wife.
Cast: Rita Hayworth, Orson Welles, Everett Sloane, Glenn Anders
Dir: Orson Welles
BW-87 mins, TV-PG

According to Orson Welles, this film grew out of an act of pure desperation. Welles, whose Mercury Theatre company produced a musical version of "Around the World in 80 Days," was in desperate need of money just before the Boston Preview. Mere hours before the show was due to open, the costumes had been impounded and unless Welles could come up with $55,000 to pay outstanding debts, the performance would have to be canceled. Stumbling upon a copy of "The Man I Killed," the novel upon which this film is based, Welles phoned Harry Cohn, instructing him to buy the rights to the novel and offering to write, direct and star in the film so long as Cohn would send $55,000 to Boston within two hours. The money arrived, and the production went on as planned.


3:30pm -- The Big Heat (1953)
A police detective whose wife was killed by the mob teams with a scarred gangster's moll to bring down a powerful gangster.
Cast: Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame, Jocelyn Brando, Alexander Scourby
Dir: Fritz Lang
BW-90 mins, TV-14

When Lee Marvin first sees Glenn Ford face to face, the music in the background is "Put the Blame on Mame," a reference to Ford's performance in Gilda (1946).


5:00pm -- The Bigamist (1953)
A woman discovers her husband has another family in another city.
Cast: Joan Fontaine, Ida Lupino, Edmund Gwenn, Edmond O'Brien
Dir: Ida Lupino
BW-79 mins, TV-PG

During the tour of the Hollywood stars, the driver points out the home of Edmund Gwenn, the star of Miracle on 34th Street (1947). Gwenn is in fact also in the film, playing Mr Jordan.


6:30pm -- Man in the Attic (1953)
A landlady suspects her mysterious new tenant is Jack the Ripper.
Cast: Jack Palance, Constance Smith, Byron Palmer, Frances Bavier
Dir: Hugo Fregonese
BW-82 mins, TV-PG

Based on the short story The Lodger, by Marie Bellec Lowndes, sister of essayist and poet Hilaire Belloc.


What's On Tonight: STAR OF THE MONTH: SEAN CONNERY


8:00pm -- The Wind And The Lion (1975)
An Arab chief triggers an international incident when he kidnaps an American widow and her children.
Cast: Sean Connery, Candice Bergen, Brian Keith, John Huston
Dir: John Milius
C-119 mins, TV-MA

Nominated for Oscars for Best Music, Original Score -- Jerry Goldsmith, and Best Sound -- Harry W. Tetrick, Aaron Rochin, William L. McCaughey and Roy Charman

Roosevelt's quote, "Why spoil the beauty of the thing with legality", is paraphrased from a statement made by Philander Knox, Roosevelt's Attorney General from 1901-1904, made in reference to Roosevelt's involvement in the Panamian Revolution and the construction of the Panama Canal. Knox's actual quote went: "Mister President, do not let so great an achievement suffer from any taint of legality."


10:03pm -- Short Film: From The Vaults: Alfred The Great (1969)
Promotional short for the feature film "Alfred the Great" (1969).
Cast: Clive Donner, David Hemmings, Prunella Ransome, Michael York.
C-5 mins

Alfred is venerated as a saint by the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church and is regarded as a hero of the Christian Church in the Anglican Communion, with a feast day of 26 October, and may often be found depicted in stained glass in Church of England parish churches. Also, Alfred University, in New York State, was named after him; a large statue of his likeness
is in the center of campus.


10:15pm -- The Great Train Robbery (1979)
Three crooks plot to steal a fortune in gold from a moving train.
Cast: Sean Connery, Donald Sutherland, Lesley-Anne Down, Alan Webb
Dir: Michael Crichton
C-111 mins, TV-MA

Sean Connery spent several days running on top of a moving train. The train was supposed to be traveling at 35mph; Connery argued it was going faster. The train driver was counting telegraph poles to measure the speed. A helicopter pilot confirmed Connery's suspicion - the train was traveling at over 55mph.


12:15am -- Robin and Marian (1976)
An aging Robin Hood comes home to resume his relationship with Maid Marian and his battles against the Sheriff of Nottingham.
Cast: Sean Connery, Audrey Hepburn, Robert Shaw, Richard Harris
Dir: Richard Lester
C-107 mins, TV-14

At 44, Sean Connery was the oldest actor to play Robin Hood up to that point. As best as I can tell, he has since been beaten by Russell Crowe, who will be 46 at the release of Robin Hood (2010), and Stuart Wilson, who was 45 at the release of TV movies Princess of Thieves (2001).


2:15am -- The Harder They Come (1972)
An aspiring Reggae singer gets mixed up with big-city drug dealers.
Cast: Jimmy Cliff, Carl Bradshaw, Janet Bartley, Ras Daniel Hartman
Dir: Perry Henzell
C-103 mins, TV-14

As the first feature film produced in Jamaica, this movie is in English, but the actors have such strong Jamaican accents that there are subtitles in English for much of the movie on the original theatrical print.


4:00am -- Machine Gun McCain (1970)
A gangster defies the mob by going ahead with a casino job they had called off.
Cast: John Cassavetes, Britt Ekland, Peter Falk, Gabriele Ferzetti
Dir: Giuliano Montaldo
C-96 mins, TV-MA

Also known as For a Price, and Gli intoccabili.


5:45am -- Short Film: The Bottle and the Throttle (1965)
A teenager runs down a mother and child after having one too many.
Cast: Narrated by Timothy Farrell.
C-10 mins, TV-PG

Standing 6'4", producer Sid Davis was the long-time stand-in for John Wayne (1941-52). They often played chess together on the set between takes and were good friends off-set (Wayne bankrolled Davis' first instructional film, The Dangerous Stranger (1950). Once, when the stand-ins were called back to the set and Wayne wanted Davis to finish his move, Duke went to the set himself and stood in for his own stand-in.

[Staph]

1. Robin and Marian

In 1976 Columbia Pictures released Robin and Marian, a historic romance that picked up the legend of Robin Hood twenty years after the happy fade-out in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). It heralded the return of Audrey Hepburn to film after a nine-year hiatus and also starred Sean Connery, who was still trying to break away from his James Bond screen persona. Directed by Richard Lester, the genesis of the film has an interesting story. Reputedly, Lester was approached by Columbia production chief Peter Guber with several film ideas printed on 3x5 index cards. Lester, riding on he heels of the enormously successful The Three Musketeers (1973), was immediately intrigued by one idea in particular which was simply stated as "Robin Hood as an old man meets Maid Marian." The one line concept quickly took on a life of its own.

The resulting script, penned by James Goldman, was originally titled The Death of Robin Hood but the studio brass declared the working title too grim and changed it to Robin and Marian. It told the story of Robin of Locksley, returning to England after a twenty year absence, to find his beloved Maid Marian now a nun, and his old enemies waiting for him. Sean Connery was signed first, although Lester initially had him in mind for the role of Little John. Hepburn came on board next and was eager to play a different type of role for her return to the screen. Now forty-six, the actress stated, "Everything I'd been offered in recent years had been too kinky, too violent, or too young. I had been playing ingenues since the early fifties, and I thought it would be wonderful to play somebody of my own age in something romantic and lovely." But filmmaking methods had changed drastically since Hepburn had been out of the business and she found it difficult to adjust to the thirty-six day shooting schedule and Lester's working methods. In the biography, Audrey Hepburn by Barry Paris, the actress recalled, "I was literally petrified the first day on the set. Even after a few days, I was still shivering and shaking before each take. My hands were clammy. Making movies isn't like riding a bicycle. It doesn't all come back to you at once."

Lester's favored use of multiple cameras, as well as a one-take method of film-making, served to further unnerve Hepburn. On top of that, his cinematographer, David Watkin, used natural lighting and unfiltered close-ups that Hepburn feared would make her look unflattering. Hepburn also felt that Lester was downplaying the relationship of Robin and Marian in the film: "With all those
men, I was the one who had to defend the romance in the picture. Somebody had to take care of Marian." Nonetheless, Hepburn - being the consummate professional - quickly overcame her concerns, at least externally, and made the best of a difficult situation.

Lester, who had been responsible for such landmark films as The Beatles' Help! (1965) and A Hard Day's Night (1964), not to mention the British New Wave cult comedy, The Knack, and How to Get It (1965), certainly felt pressure to work quickly, though partly it was his own preference. As he stated in the aforementioned Barry Paris biography, "I'm prone to be impatient. Hard Day's Night was just under seven weeks. Juggernaut was six. Musketeers was seventeen weeks for the two parts, about eight and a half apiece. On Robin, I set out to shoot eight or nine pages a day. There were about fifty pages under a bloody tree, so why not? We had a location which suited the temperaments of the cast and, more important, their tax arrangements. There were five members of this distinguished English cast who couldn't set foot in England for tax reasons. In Nottinghamshire, where Sherwood
Forest really is, there are very few trees left that aren't held up by rope and heavy bits of steel. So we shot in Spain," about two hundred miles north of Madrid in Pamplona (the location for The Three Musketeers), where the director said it "looks like everyone's idea of what England looked like in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries."

Hepburn, who was living in Rome at the time, was delighted to be close to home and her two children, and brought them to the location to learn horseback riding and archery from the set experts. Her children were, in fact, a major impetus in her acceptance of the part: being avid James Bond fans, they convinced her to sign on in order to work with Connery. According to script supervisor Ann Skinner (in Audrey Hepburn by Warren G. Harris), Hepburn, during production, "rarely joined us for supper in the hotel dining room, preferring to have it in her suite with the children. Sean Connery, however, would come down every night, go in the bar, and share in the jollity with every member of the crew."

While Hepburn and Connery were the focus of every press release on Robin and Marian, the supporting cast was certainly impressive in their own right. Robert Shaw, best known as Quint in Jaws (1975), and Richard Harris, who garnered acclaim for his role in A Man Named Horse (1970), contribute strong performances as the Sheriff of Nottingham and King Richard, respectively. There are also memorable appearances by Denholm Elliott, well-remembered as Indy's sidekick Marcus Brody in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), and the versatile Ian Holm, who was recently seen in Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001). Elliott, incidentally, was the only cast member to not stay at the reserved hotel during shooting; he elected instead to reside in a nearby monastery, reportedly due to their abundant cheap, red wine!

Robin and Marian opened to glowing reviews, with one critic calling the pairing of Hepburn and Connery like "silk and chain mail." Frank Thompson in American Film wrote that the film "is a sad and satisfying hymn to heroism, myth and lost youth...Hepburn's Marian is the heart of the film; for once, neither fragile nor innocent. Her performance has steel in it, and a touch of madness."

The obvious hype of the film was Hepburn's return, illustrated by a standing ovation for the actress at a Hollywood screening. Columbia's promotion department, however, chose to put Connery in the limelight for the general public; a secret survey had revealed that the core potential audience - young people - really didn't know who Hepburn was. The film grossed a respectable four million, but more importantly, provided an admirable comeback for a screen legend, and proved that Connery was an intelligent actor capable of playing more challenging characters than James Bond.

Producer: Denis O'Dell, Richard Shepherd, Raymond Stark
Director: Richard Lester
Screenplay: James Goldman
Art Direction: Gil Parrondo
Cinematography: David Watkin
Editing: John Victor Smith
Music: John Barry
Cast: Sean Connery (Robin Hood), Audrey Hepburn (Maid Marian), Robert Shaw (Sheriff of Nottingham), Richard Harris (King Richard), Nicol Williamson (Little John), Denholm Elliott (Will Scarlett), Ian Holm (King John), Ronnie Barker (Friar Tuck), Kenneth Haigh (Sir Ranulf de Pudsey).
C-107m. Letterboxed.

by Eleanor Quin