TCM Schedule for Thursday, January 14 -- Music Composed by Malcolm Arnold

[Staph]

This evening we got a selection of films with music from Sir Malcolm Arnold, CBE. Aside from tonight's films, he also composed for The Belles of St Trinian's (1954), The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1958) and Whistle Down the Wind (1961). Enjoy!


5:30am -- Now Playing January (2010)
Features highlights of the month's programming on TCM, including festivals and stars.
BW-23 mins, TV-PG


6:00am -- The Most Dangerous Game (1932)
A big game hunter decides to stalk human prey.
Cast: Joel McCrea, Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong, Leslie Banks
Dir: Irving Pichel
BW-63 mins, TV-PG

The actor playing "Ivan the Cossack" was Noble Johnson, a multi-talented African American who was a childhood friend of Lon Chaney. This is the earliest known instance of a black actor working in "whiteface" to play a Caucasian character.


7:15am -- Night Nurse (1931)
A nurse discovers that the children she's caring for are murder targets.
Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, Ben Lyon, Joan Blondell, Clark Gable
Dir: William A. Wellman
BW-72 mins, TV-G

James Cagney was originally supposed to play Nick, but when The Public Enemy (1931) became a big hit, it was decided that he should no longer be relegated to supporting roles, allowing the relatively unknown Clark Gable to step in instead.


8:30am -- Night Must Fall (1937)
A charming young man worms his way into a wealthy woman's household, then reveals a deadly secret.
Cast: Merle Tottenham, Kathleen Harrison, Dame May Whitty, Rosalind Russell
Dir: Richard Thorpe
BW-116 mins, TV-PG

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Robert Montgomery, and Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Dame May Whitty

Starring the Patron Saint of the Classic Films Forum...



10:30am -- Rage In Heaven (1941)
A jealous man plots to fake his death and incriminate his wife's suspected lover.
Cast: Robert Montgomery, Ingrid Bergman, George Sanders, Lucile Watson
Dir: Robert B. Sinclair
BW-85 mins, TV-PG

W.S. Van Dyke took over the direction of the movie from Robert B. Sinclair, who became ill shortly after shooting began. Van Dyke was in the Marines, but was granted a 14-day leave to finish the picture. Neither Sinclair nor Van Dyke was available for retakes, which were then directed by Richard Thorpe.


12:00pm -- A Woman's Face (1941)
Plastic surgery gives a scarred female criminal a new outlook on life.
Cast: Joan Crawford, Melvyn Douglas, Conrad Veidt, Osa Massen
Dir: George Cukor
BW-106 mins, TV-PG

Remake of the Swedish film En kvinnas ansikte (1938), starring Ingrid Bergman.


2:00pm -- Cast A Dark Shadow (1955)
A wife-killer marries an innocent barmaid and plots her death.
Cast: Dirk Bogarde, Margaret Lockwood, Kay Walsh, Kathleen Harrison
Dir: Lewis Gilbert
BW-83 mins, TV-G

Based on the play Murder Mistaken by Janet Green.


3:30pm -- Anatomy Of A Murder (1959)
A small-town lawyer gets the case of a lifetime when a military man avenges an attack on his wife.
Cast: James Stewart, Lee Remick, Ben Gazzara, Arthur O'Connell
Dir: Otto Preminger
BW-161 mins, TV-PG

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- James Stewart, Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Arthur O'Connell, Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- George C. Scott, Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Sam Leavitt, Best Film Editing -- Louis R. Loeffler, Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium -- Wendell Mayes, and Best Picture

The part of the judge was offered to both Spencer Tracy and Burl Ives, but instead went to Joseph N. Welch who was a lawyer in real life who had represented the U.S. Army in the televised Army-McCarthy hearings in 1954.


6:15pm -- While The City Sleeps (1956)
Reporters compete to catch a serial killer.
Cast: Dana Andrews, Rhonda Fleming, George Sanders, Howard Duff
Dir: Fritz Lang
BW-100 mins, TV-PG

The sequence depicting the New York subway was actually filmed in the Los Angeles subway.


What's On Tonight: TCM PRIME TIME FEATURE: MUSIC COMPOSED BY MALCOLM ARNOLD


8:00pm -- The Bridge On The River Kwai (1957)
The Japanese Army forces World War II POWs to build a strategic bridge in Burma.
Cast: William Holden, Alec Guinness, Jack Hawkins, Sessue Hayakawa
Dir: David Lean
C-162 mins, TV-PG

Won Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Alec Guinness (Alec Guinness was not present at the awards ceremony. Jean Simmons accepted the award on his behalf.), Best Cinematography -- Jack Hildyard, Best Director -- David Lean, Best Film Editing -- Peter Taylor, Best Music, Scoring -- Malcolm Arnold, Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium -- Pierre Boulle, Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson (Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson were blacklisted at the time and received no screen credit. They were posthumously awarded Oscars in 1984. Pierre Boulle was not present at the awards ceremony. Kim Novak accepted the award on his behalf.), and Best Picture

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Sessue Hayakawa

David Lean initially wanted Nicholson's soldiers to enter the camp while singing "Hitler Has Only Got One Ball", a popular (during World War II) parody version of the "Colonel Bogey March" poking fun at Adolf Hitler and various other Nazi leaders. Sam Spiegel told him it was too vulgar, and the whistling-only version was used instead.


10:46pm -- One Reel Wonders: Dr. Zhivago: Behind The Camera With David Lean (1965)
A behind the scenes look with legendary director David Lean showcasing the development and filming of "Dr. Zhivago" (1965).
C-10 mins

Dr. Zhivago won five Academy Awards and was nominated for another five.


11:00pm -- Hobson's Choice (1954)
A widower father fights to control the lives of his three strong-willed daughters.
Cast: Charles Laughton, John Mills, Brenda De Banzie, Daphne Anderson
Dir: David Lean
BW-108 mins, TV-G

Alexander Korda suggested to David Lean that he should adapt Harold Brighouse's 1915 stage comedy for the cinema.


1:00am -- No Love For Johnnie (1961)
A British politician is torn between winning an election and being true to the woman he loves.
Cast: Peter Finch, Stanley Holloway, Mary Peach, Donald Pleasence
Dir: Ralph Thomas
BW-111 mins

Watch for Oliver Reed in a small, uncredited part at a party, with a wastebasket on his head.


3:00am -- Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)
A dowager tries to buy a lobotomy to silence the woman who witnessed her son's murder.
Cast: Elizabeth Taylor, Katharine Hepburn, Montgomery Clift, Albert Dekker
Dir: Joseph L. Mankiewicz
BW-114 mins, TV-PG

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Katharine Hepburn, Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Elizabeth Taylor, and Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White -- Oliver Messel, William Kellner and Scott Slimon

Patricia Neal played the title role to so much acclaim on the London stage she was sure she would be given the part in the film adaptation, even without her agent promoting her the job. She then woke up in shock to find Elizabeth Taylor had been assigned the role.

[Staph]

1. THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI Trivia

Director David Lean was raised as a Quaker and was not allowed to go to movies as a child. He studied to become an accountant but joined the film industry, first as a gofer, then rising through the ranks as a clapper/loader, cutting room assistant, assistant director, and finally editor on Movietone newsreels. His first directing assignment was another war picture, as co-director with Noel Coward on In Which We Serve (1942).

Lean also won a Best Director Academy Award for Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and was nominated for Great Expectations (1946), Summertime (1955), Doctor Zhivago (1965), and A Passage to India (1984).

Lean was given Life Achievement awards from the American Film Institute (1990) and the Directors Guild of America (1973).

According to some accounts, David Lean's wife, English actress Ann Todd, divorced him on grounds of desertion because he spent so long in the jungles of Ceylon filming the picture.

Screenwriter Carl Foreman received Academy Award nominations for the screenplays of Champion (1949), The Men (1950), and High Noon (1952) before being blacklisted for alleged ties to the Communist Party. He moved to England and wrote scripts for films (including this one) anonymously. Foreman eventually started his own production company, releasing The Guns of Navarone (1961), which he wrote and produced.

Screenwriter Michael Wilson shared an Academy Award with Harry Brown for the script of A Place in the Sun (1951) before the blacklist forced him to work uncredited on many films, including Kwai, Friendly Persuasion (1956), and David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia (1962). His first film again under his own credit was The Sandpiper (1965), and his last work was on the political biography Che! (1969).

Because they had been blacklisted at the time of the film's release, screenwriters Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson were not credited on original prints (although their names were added in the restored version), and only Pierre Boulle, whose novel the writers adapted, was listed. Therefore, only Boulle was given the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. In 1985, the Academy posthumously awarded Wilson and Foreman their Oscars.

Pierre Boulle caused quite a flap when he accepted the British Academy Award for Best Screenplay and told the audience that he hadn't written all of it. To disguise the fact that he had used two blacklisted screenwriters, producer Sam Spiegel began spreading the word that what Boulle meant was that director David Lean and Spiegel himself helped with rewriting during production. Blacklisted co-writer Carl Foreman, who was then living and working in England, sent a cable to U.S. trade papers denying he had anything to do with the movie.

When he won the Oscar for Best Actor, Alec Guinness told William Holden, "I feel terrible. I received the award, while you were the star." Holden told him, "You deserved it, Alec, you were Guinness' best-known role was as Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars (1977), a film he hated so much he suggested his character's death as a way of limiting his involvement in the series and avoiding speaking "those bloody awful, banal lines."

Guinness was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1959.

Holden's percentage deal on the picture was generally considered among the best any star had made up to that point. Rather than face astronomical taxes on his earnings, Holden chose to defer payment over a period of time, at $50,000 a year. By 1979, with Columbia Pictures still holding more than $3 million of Holden's take (and accruing substantial interest on it), Holden's attorneys negotiated a settlement. In his will, the actor (who died in 1981) gave the remaining income to the Motion Picture and Television Fund, which provides health and human services to disadvantaged industry workers.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren attended the movie's December 1957 premiere in New York and the dinner party immediately following, which was thrown by producer Sam Spiegel for thousands of his friends on a Manhattan rooftop.

Charles Laughton, who had turned down the part of Colonel Nicholson, found himself competing with his replacement, Alec Guinness, on Oscar night. Laughton was nominated for Witness for the Prosecution (1957) but campaigned for Guinness, saying, "I never understood the part until I saw Guinness play it."

Alec Guinness' name was spelled with only one "n" in the original release prints of the film. The spelling was corrected in later prints.

Sessue Hayakawa, who portrayed Colonel Saito, the prison commandant, was a star of American silent movies as early as 1913, mostly as an Asian arch-villain. He had his own studio for a time and produced 23 pictures. In the sound era, he returned to work mostly on the stage.

Hayakawa was also an accomplished playwright, novelist, painter, martial arts expert, and a Zen priest.

In his long career, Hayakawa said no character captivated or challenged him more than Colonel Saito.

In 1996, the government of Thailand announced it planned to attract tourists to the rebuilt railway depicted in The Bridge on the River Kwai.

In a gesture of atonement, Japanese army veterans knelt at the graves of Allied prisoners of war on February 20, 1994, near the site of the real bridge over the Kwai River. On the same day, some British veterans and others were in the area to search for the graves of friends and relatives. The two groups of former foes coincidentally ended up in the same restaurant. Despite attempts by some Japanese at reconciliation, the British refused to speak to them, saying what the Japanese did (using POWs as slave labor to build the jungle railway) was unforgivable.

MEMORABLE QUOTES

SHEARS (William Holden): Here lies -- you know, Weaver, I've forgotten who we just buried. ... Oh yes, here lies Corporal Herbert Thompson, serial number 1234567. Valiant member of the King's own, or the Queen's own, or something. Who died of beriberi in the year of our Lord 1943 for the greater glory of -- what did he die for?

SHEARS: (watching the new group of POWs arrive) We'e going to be a busy pair of gravediggers, Weaver.

SAITO (Sessue Hayakawa): Be happy in your work.

NICHOLSON (Alec Guinness): Without law, Commander, there is no civilization.
SHEARS: That's just my point. Here there is no civilization.
NICHOLSON: Then we have the opportunity to introduce it.

SAITO: Do not speak to me of rules. This is war! This is not a game of cricket!

SAITO: Do you know what will happen to me if the bridge is not ready in time?
NICHOLSON: I haven't the foggiest.
SAITO: I will have to kill myself. What would you do if you were me?
NICHOLSON: I suppose if I were you, I'd have to kill myself.

SAITO: You are defeated but you have no shame. You are stubborn but you have no pride. You endure but you have no courage. I hate the British.

SHEARS: You give me powders, pills, baths, injections, enemas; when all I need is love.

SHEARS: You make me sick with your heroics. There's a stench of death about you. You carry it in your pack like the plague. This is just a game, this war. You and Colonel Nicholson, you're two of a kind, crazy with courage. For what? How to die like a gentleman, how to die by the rules, when the only important thing is how to live like a human being.

CLIPTON (James Donald): The fact is, what we're doing could be construed as -- forgive me, sir -- collaboration with the enemy. Perhaps even as treasonable activity. Must we work so well? Must we build them a better bridge than they could have built for themselves?
NICHOLSON: One day the war will be over. And I hope that the people that use this bridge in years to come will remember how it was built and who built it. Not a gang of slaves, but soldiers, British soldiers, Clipton, even in captivity.

NICHOLSON: On that day when, God willing, we all return to our homes again, you're going to feel very proud of what you have achieved here in the face of great adversity. What you have done should be, and I think will be, an example to all our countrymen, soldier and civilian alike. You have survived with honor, that and more, here in the wilderness. You have turned defeat into victory. I congratulate you. Well done.

CLIPTON: Madness! Madness!

Compiled by Rob Nixon