TCM Schedule for Friday, December 18 -- Directed by Mike Newell

[Staph]

Today is the 105th anniversary of the birth of director George Stevens, and we've got a delightful selection of his films, including Alice Adams (1935) with Katharine Hepburn, Swing Time (1936) with Astaire and Rogers, and Shane (1953). Then this evening we celebrate the films of Mike Newell, with Enchanted April (1991) and Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994). Enjoy!


5:30am -- MGM Parade Show #15 (1955)
George Murphy hosts a special Christmas show featuring Judy Garland performing "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" in a clip from "Meet Me in St. Louis."
BW-26 mins, TV-G

Murphy was elected to the U.S. Senate in a special election held following the death of Senator Clair Engle (Democrat of California) from a malignant brain tumor in 1964. Murphy's opponent in this election was former JFK press secretary Pierre Salinger, who was trounced by a huge margin. During Murphy's term (1965-1971) he contracted throat cancer. He battled this successfully, but, sadly, because of the cancer it was necessary to remove his larynx, causing him to be unable to speak above a whisper for the remainder of his life.


6:00am -- Bachelor Bait (1934)
A romantic starts a marriage agency so he can play Cupid.
Cast: Stuart Erwin, Rochelle Hudson, Pert Kelton, "Skeets" Gallagher
Dir: George Stevens
BW-75 mins, TV-G

Prior to the Pearl Harbor attack on December 7, 1941, in a minor way Rochell Hudson assisted her husband Harold Thompson, who was doing espionage work in Mexico as a civilian. Together they posed as a vacationing couple to various parts of Mexico, to detect if there was any German activity in these areas. One of their more successful vacations uncovered a supply of high test aviation gas hidden by German agents in Baja.


7:26am -- One Reel Wonders: Katherine Hepburn Biography (1962)
BW-4 mins

In The Lion in Winter (1968) Hepburn played the mother of Richard Lionheart, who was played by Anthony Hopkins. Hopkins later said that Hepburn's voice was, in part, the basis for Hannibal Lecter's voice.


7:30am -- Alice Adams (1935)
A small-town girl with social ambitions falls in love with a local playboy.
Cast: Katharine Hepburn, Fred MacMurray, Fred Stone, Evelyn Venable
Dir: George Stevens
BW-100 mins, TV-G

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Katharine Hepburn, and Best Picture

There was a disagreement among Katharine Hepburn and George Stevens about the post-party scene. The script called for Hepburn to fall onto the bed and break into sobs, but Stevens wanted her to walk to the window and cry, with the rain falling outside. Hepburn could not produce the tears required, so she asked Stevens if she could do the scene as scripted. Stevens yelled furiously at Hepburn, which did the trick and the scene was filmed Stevens' way, and Hepburn's tears are real.


9:15am -- A Damsel In Distress (1937)
An American dancer on vacation in England falls for a sheltered noblewoman.
Cast: Fred Astaire, George Burns, Gracie Allen, Joan Fontaine
Dir: George Stevens
BW-101 mins, TV-G

Won an Oscar for Best Dance Direction -- Hermes Pan for "Fun House"

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Art Direction -- Carroll Clark

When Fred Astaire learned that Gracie Allen was nervous about dancing with him onstage, he reportedly made a point of tripping and falling in front of her the first day on the set to put her at her ease.


11:00am -- Swing Time (1936)
To prove himself worthy of his fiancee, a dancer tries to make it big, only to fall for his dancing partner.
Cast: Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Victor Moore, Helen Broderick
Dir: George Stevens
BW-104 mins, TV-G

Won an Oscar for Best Music, Original Song -- Jerome Kern (music) and Dorothy Fields (lyrics) for the song "The Way You Look Tonight"

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Dance Direction -- Hermes Pan for "Bojangles of Harlem"

President Barack Obama referred to a quote from the movie in his inauguration acceptance speech on 20th January, 2009. "Pick yourself up, dust yourself off" is a quote from the song Pick Yourself Up, lyrics by Dorothy Fields and music by Jerome Kern.


12:45pm -- Quality Street (1937)
A woman masquerades as her own niece to get back at a neglectful suitor.
Cast: Katharine Hepburn, Franchot Tone, Eric Blore, Fay Bainter
Dir: George Stevens
BW-83 mins, TV-G

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Music, Score -- Roy Webb (musical director)

The original Broadway play, written by J.M. Barrie of Peter Pan fame, starred legendary actress Maude Adams. It opened at the Knickerbocker Theatre in New York on November 11, 1901 and ran for 64 performances.


2:15pm -- Vivacious Lady (1937)
After a whirlwind courtship, a nightclub singer has to adjust to her professor husband's conservative family.
Cast: Ginger Rogers, James Stewart, James Ellison, Beulah Bondi
Dir: George Stevens
BW-90 mins, TV-G

Nominated for Oscars for Best Cinematography -- Robert De Grasse, and Best Sound, Recording -- James Wilkinson (RKO Radio SSD)

After four days of shooting in April 1937, James Stewart became ill, but then left to star in Of Human Hearts (1938). RKO considered replacing Stewart, but shelved the production until December 1937. Actors Donald Crisp and Fay Bainter (as well as others), who were cast in the original production, were replaced by Charles Coburn and Beulah Bondi.


4:00pm -- Shane (1953)
A mysterious drifter helps farmers fight off a vicious gunman.
Cast: Alan Ladd, Jean Arthur, Van Heflin, Brandon de Wilde
Dir: George Stevens
C-118 mins, TV-G

Won an Oscar for Best Cinematography, Color -- Loyal Griggs

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Brandon De Wilde, Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Jack Palance, Best Director -- George Stevens, Best Writing, Screenplay -- A.B. Guthrie Jr., and Best Picture

In the funeral scene, the dog consistently refused to look into the grave. Finally, director George Stevens had the dog's trainer lie down in the bottom of the grave, and the dog played his part ably. The coffin (loaded with rocks for appropriate effect) was then lowered into the grave, but when the harmonica player began to play "Taps" spontaneously, the crew was so moved by the scene that they began shoveling dirt into the grave before remembering the dog's trainer was still there.


6:00pm -- George Stevens: A Filmmaker's Journey (1984)
Biography of the Academy Award winning director including dramatic color footage of WWII.
Cast: Jean Arthur, Fred Astaire, Montgomery Clift, Brandon deWilde
Dir: George Stevens Jr.
BW-112 mins, TV-G

As a cinematographer at Hal Roach Studios, Stevens was credited with saving the film career of young British comic Stan Laurel. Laurel's pale blue eyes would register as an unnatural white on orthochromatic film, the standard film in use at that time. Stevens knew of panchromatic film and was able to get a supply of it from Chicago. This film was sensitive to blue so that Laurel's eyes would photograph more naturally. Laurel would use Stevens for his short films at Roach. When Stan Laurel was teamed up with Oliver Hardy, the team make Stevens their cameraman of choice.


What's On Tonight: TCM PRIME TIME FEATURE: DIRECTED BY MIKE NEWELL


8:00pm -- Enchanted April (1991)
Four women search for happiness on an Italian vacation.
Cast: Miranda Richardson, Joan Plowright, Josie Lawrence, Polly Walker
Dir: Mike Newell
C-93 mins, TV-PG

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Joan Plowright, Best Costume Design -- Sheena Napier, and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium -- Peter Barnes

After filming wrapped, the cast and crew later remarked upon a number of supernatural experiences while filming on location in Italy. Alfred Molina reportedly felt an ice-cold hand grasp the back of his neck on a night-shoot, while Miranda Richardson felt her knee-high dress being aggressively yanked to the floor while waiting to film in an old castle. There were also several instances of crew-members having to leave the set after suddenly feeling unwell.


9:48pm -- One Reel Wonders: Looking At London (1946)
A colorful travelogue of London's most historic buildings and the residual damage still left from WWII.
Narrator: James A. FitzPatrick
C-10 mins

A good chance to see the damage done by the German bombers in WWII.


10:00pm -- Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994)
A young man's chance encounters with a beautiful woman are complicated by his close-knit extended family.
Cast: Hugh Grant, James Fleet, Simon Callow, John Hannah
Dir: Mike Newell
C-118 mins, TV-MA

Nominated for Oscars for Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen -- Richard Curtis, and Best Picture

In a deleted scene we find out that Charles, Matthew and Fiona were at university together, Gareth was a lecturer until he released a paper entitled "King Lear: Grandpa goes gaga" and Scarlett was found under Charles' kitchen table after a party and has lived there ever since.


12:00am -- Amazing Grace And Chuck (1987)
A Little League star organizes a sports boycott to end nuclear proliferation.
Cast: Jamie Lee Curtis, Alex English, Gregory Peck, William Petersen
Dir: Mike Newell
C-115 mins, TV-14

Actually filmed in Montana (in Bozeman and Livingston), where the film takes place.


2:00am -- Darktown Strutters (1975)
An all-female biker gang takes off in search of a member's mother.
Cast: Trina Parks, Edna Richardson, Sweet Bettye, Shirley Washington
Dir: William Witney
C-84 mins, TV-14

I can't decide if this is racist blaxploitation, or a satire of blaxploitation.


3:25am -- One Reel Wonders: Redd Fox Becomes A Movie Star (1976)
C-8 mins

Redd Foxx was one of the few performers to have the lead role in a television show on the three main networks. He was the lead in Sanford and Son, on NBC, the Royal Family, on CBS, and in the Redd Foxx show, and the Redd Foxx Comedy Hour on ABC.


3:45am -- Thank God It's Friday (1978)
Show biz hopefuls flock to the local disco in pursuit of their dreams.
Cast: Valerie Landsburg, Terri Nunn, Chick Vennera, Donna Summer
Dir: James W. Gavin
C-89 mins, TV-14

Won an Oscar for Best Music, Original Song -- Paul Jabara for the song "Last Dance"

This was the movie playing in the drive-in scene in the 1983 Stephen King thriller "Christine".


5:30am -- Short Film: Social Seminar: Changing (1971)
A young family tries to cope with shifting social values.
Dir: Hubert Smith.
C-28 mins, TV-MA

Produced by the Extension Media Center, University of California, Los Angeles for the National Institute of Mental Health.

[Staph]

1. Enchanted April (1991)

A gloriously escapist film based on the 1922 novel by Elizabeth von Arnim, Enchanted April (1992) extols the joys of a vacation in Italy and its salutary effects on four lonely, bored women and two marriages. Lottie (Josie Lawrence) and Rose (Miranda Richardson), each married to difficult men, meet in dreary, rain-drenched London and are both attracted to a newspaper ad offering an Italian villa for rent during the month of April. They take it, signing up two other women sight unseen to help with costs -- imperious dowager Mrs. Fisher (Joan Plowright), and socialite Lady Caroline (Polly Walker), who wants to escape the London social whirl. When Lottie and Rose arrive at San Salvatore, they find that their two housemates are already there and have taken the best accommodations. But the beauty of the place is seductive, and all four women find themselves changing as their tensions dissipate in the warmth of the Italian sun. Then Lottie and Rose's husbands and their landlord arrive unexpectedly, taking their idyll in new directions.

This was the second time that von Arnim's novel had been filmed. A 1935 RKO version starred Ann Harding (miscast as Lottie), with a delightful performance by character actress Jessie Ralph as Mrs. Fisher. The problem with the earlier film was that the magical beauty of San Salvatore was much talked about but never seen -- the film was shot on studio soundstages. Director Mike Newell rectified that mistake in the remake, shooting on location at the villa that had served as the inspiration for von Arnim's novel. The lush cinematography captures the splendor of the setting, and makes it an important character in the film.

An Australian born British novelist, von Arnim was as flamboyant as the heroines of her romantic yet psychologically probing novels. Her first husband was a Prussian count, and she lived a life of privilege, writing about it in her autobiographical first novel, Elizabeth and her German Garden (1898). Left penniless by her husband's death in 1910, she turned to writing full time. After an affair with novelist H.G. Wells ended in 1916, she impulsively remarried. That marriage was a disaster, and in 1919 she fled to Portofino, Italy, where she stayed in a castle that inspired her to write the novel about the power of beauty to soothe and transform troubled souls.

Both the director and the star of Enchanted April were unlikely choices for a frothy comedy of manners. Mike Newell had directed Miranda Richardson to an Academy Award nomination in Dance with a Stranger (1985), a grim, fact-based drama about murderess Ruth Ellis, the last woman executed in Great Britain in 1955. According to an article in the New York Times, Newell had been trying without success to get financing for a film version of a darker von Arnim novel, Vera (1921). When that didn't work out, his producer suggested Enchanted April instead, but Newell told her, "I don't do happy." Fortunately, he changed his mind. The classically trained Richardson was easier to convince. She had proved adept in comedy as well as drama, playing a wacked-out Queen Elizabeth I in the Blackadder television series.

The comic standout in Enchanted April is Joan Plowright, playing the namedropping grande dame whose withering putdowns go unnoticed in the rarefied air of San Salvatore, which soon mellows her. Plowright was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Supporting actress, but lost to Marisa Tomei. Enchanted April was also nominated for its adapted screenplay, and for costume design.

The reviews were as glowing as a Portofino morning. If some curmudgeonly critics grumbled a bit about the lack of substance in Enchanted April ("apparently there are no bad people," wrote David Denby in New York magazine, "only people who live in bad weather."), most surrendered to its spell. Jami Bernard of the New York Post called it "charming, disarming, and thoroughly enchanting." According to Newsweek's David Ansen, "It's a tribute to Newell's seductive filmmaking, and to the delicious wit of the sterling cast, that this unlikely romantic idyll casts so potent a spell. Enchanted April won't bear much scrutiny; just bask in it indulgently like a spring sun." The film was a worldwide hit, and Newell went on to make other crowd-pleasers such as Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005).

Director: Mike Newell
Producer: Ann Scott
Screenplay: Peter Barnes, based on the novel by Elizabeth von Arnim
Cinematography: Rex Maidment
Editor: Dick Allen
Costume Design: Sheena Napier
Production Designer: Malcolm Thornton
Music: Richard Rodney Bennett
Principal Cast: Miranda Richardson (Rose Arbuthnot), Josie Lawrence (Lottie Wilkins), Joan Plowright (Mrs. Fisher), Polly Walker (Lady Caroline Dester), Alfred Molina (Mellersh Wilkins), Jim Broadbent (Frederick Arbuthnot), Michael Kitchen (George Briggs), Davide Manuli (Beppo), Adriana Facchetti (Francesca).
C-101m. Letterboxed.

by Margarita Landazuri