TCM Schedule for Friday, September 17 -- TCM Prime Time Feature -- Code Breakers

[Staph]

Sixty-nine years ago today, the beautful Anne Bancroft was born in the Bronx. She's been gone five years, and her skills in both comedy and drama are greatly missed. Tonight, we have a selection of films that crossed the line and broke the production code of their time. It's surprising how tame most of these shockers are! Enjoy!


6:00am -- Man Hunt (1941)
An Englishman goes behind enemy lines to assassinate Hitler.
Cast: Walter Pidgeon, Joan Bennett, George Sanders, John Carradine
Dir: Fritz Lang
BW-102 mins, TV-PG

When Thorndike (Pidgeon) is captured, the George Sanders character inspects his belongings including his rifle, which bears the maker's name of "Hammond and Hammond, Bond Street". There was no such gunsmith in the UK and it seems likely they name is borrowed from a very famous gunsmith called Holland and Holland of Bruton Street, which is situated nearby.


7:45am -- The White Cliffs Of Dover (1944)
An American woman with a British husband fights to keep her family together through two world wars.
Cast: Irene Dunne, Alan Marshal, Roddy McDowall, Frank Morgan
Dir: Clarence Brown
BW-126 mins, TV-PG

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- George J. Folsey

Irene Dunne filmed this movie while filming was held up for A Guy Named Joe (1943) due to Van Johnson's automobile accident. She even helped Johnson land a small role in this film.


10:00am -- Holiday In Mexico (1946)
An ambassador's daughter falls for a famous musician.
Cast: Walter Pidgeon, José Iturbi, Roddy McDowall, Ilona Massey
Dir: George Sidney
C-128 mins, TV-G

One of two films in which a young Fidel Castro appears as an extra, mostly in crowd scenes.


12:15pm -- The Girl In Black Stockings (1957)
A young girl's murder leaves a hotel full of suspects.
Cast: Lex Barker, Anne Bancroft, Mamie Van Doren, John Dehner
Dir: Howard W. Koch
BW-75 mins, TV-PG

In 1999, Bancroft became the 15th performer to win the Triple Crown of acting. Oscar: Best Actress, The Miracle Worker (1962), Tonys: Best Supporting Actress-Play, "Two for the Seesaw" (1958) & Best Actress-Play, "The Miracle Worker" (1960), and Emmy: Best Supporting Actress-Miniseries/Movie, Deep in My Heart (1999) (TV).


1:36pm -- One Reel Wonders: Searchers For A Special City (1966)
Director Delbert Mann and his production team are scouting locations in New York City for the filming of the movie Mister Buddwing (1966).
Narrator: Herschel Bernardi.
BW-9 mins

Mister Buddwing (1966), based on the novel by Evan Hunter, was nominated for Oscars for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White -- George W. Davis, Paul Groesse, Henry Grace and Hugh Hunt, and Best Costume Design, Black-and-White -- Helen Rose


1:45pm -- The Pumpkin Eater (1964)
A woman drifts through multiple marriages in search of stability.
Cast: Anne Bancroft, Peter Finch, James Mason, Janine Gray
Dir: Jack Clayton
BW-110 mins, TV-PG

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Anne Bancroft

Patricia Neal was offered the lead, but it was not 100% confirmed she would get the role. She then opted, to her later regret, to make Psyche 59 (1964) instead, since it was an official offer.


3:45pm -- Seven Women (1966)
The women staffing an isolated Chinese mission fight to survive a bandit attack.
Cast: Anne Bancroft, Sue Lyon, Margaret Leighton, Flora Robson
Dir: John Ford
C-87 mins, TV-PG

The last movie that John Ford directed.


5:15pm -- Young Winston (1972)
The young Winston Churchill overcomes a bad family life and early military mistakes to launch his political career.
Cast: Simon Ward, Peter Cellier, Ronald Hines, Dino Shafeek
Dir: Richard Attenborough
C-153 mins, TV-PG

Nominated for Oscars for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration -- Donald M. Ashton, Geoffrey Drake, John Graysmark, William Hutchinson and Peter James, Best Costume Design -- Anthony Mendleson, and Best Writing, Story and Screenplay Based on Factual Material or Material Not Previously Published or Produced -- Carl Foreman

Robert Hardy who plays the Headmaster later went on to portray Winston Churchill in five separate films; "Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years" (1981), "The Woman He Loved" (1988), "War and Remembrance" (1988), "Bomber Harris" (1989) and "Agatha Christie Marple: The Sittaford Mystery (2006) (TV)".


What's On Tonight: TCM PRIME TIME FEATURE: CODE BREAKERS


8:00pm -- The Moon Is Blue (1953)
Two womanizers fall for a woman determined to keep her virginity.
Cast: William Holden, David Niven, Maggie McNamara, Tom Tully
Dir: Otto Preminger
BW-99 mins, TV-PG

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Maggie McNamara, Best Film Editing -- Otto Ludwig, and Best Music, Original Song -- Herschel Burke Gilbert (music) and Sylvia Fine (lyrics) for the song "The Moon Is Blue".

First post-Hayes mainstream Hollywood film to use the word "virgin," after a battle with the official and unofficial censors. Also the first use of "seduce" and "mistress" (as a sexual partner). The movie was banned from theaters in Boston for using these words.


9:44pm -- One Reel Wonders: The Soundman (1950)
This short on movie sound men starts with a short history of sound in the movies.
Cast: Lola Albright, Jack Carson, George Cooper.
BW-10 mins

Features clips from Lights of New York (1928), In Old Arizona (1928), Tugboat Annie (1933), One Night of Love (1934), The Voice That Thrilled the World (1943), The Jolson Story (1946), The Bishop's Wife (1947), The Return of October (1948), and The Good Humor Man (1950).


10:00pm -- The Man With The Golden Arm (1955)
A junkie must face his true self to kick his drug addiction.
Cast: Frank Sinatra, Eleanor Parker, Kim Novak, Arnold Stang
Dir: Otto Preminger
BW-119 mins, TV-14

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Frank Sinatra, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White -- Joseph C. Wright and Darrell Silvera, and Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture -- Elmer Bernstein

The Motion Picture Association of America originally refused to issue a seal for this movie because it shows drug addiction. The next year the production code was changed to allow movies to deal with drugs, kidnapping, abortion and prostitution. The film was eventually assigned certificate no. 17011.


12:15am -- Baby Doll (1956)
A child bride holds her husband at bay while flirting with a sexy Italian farmer.
Cast: Karl Malden, Carroll Baker, Eli Wallach, Mildred Dunnock
Dir: Elia Kazan
BW-115 mins, TV-14

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Carroll Baker, Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Mildred Dunnock, Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Boris Kaufman, and Best Writing, Best Screenplay - Adapted -- Tennessee Williams

When the film was released in 1956, it was enormously controversial for its extremely risqué subject matter. The Legion of Decency condemned the film for its "carnal suggestiveness". Francis Cardinal Spellman condemned the film in a stunning attack from the pulpit of St. Patrick's Cathedral two days before the film opened, saying that the film had been "responsibly judged to be evil in concept" and was certain that it would "exert an immoral and corrupting influence on those who see it", and exhorted all Catholics to refrain from patronizing the film "under pain of sin". Cardinal Spellman's condemnation of the film led to the Legion of Decency's first-ever nationwide boycott of an American-made film produced by a major studio. All over the country, almost 20 million Catholics protested the film and picketed theaters that showed it. The Catholic boycott nearly killed the film; it was cancelled by 77% of theaters scheduled to show it, and it only made a meager $600,000 at the box office. The film was also condemned by Time Magazine, which called it the dirtiest American-made motion picture that had ever been legally exhibited. Surprisingly, despite the film's sordid elements, the Production Code Administration gave it a seal of approval, but only after nearly a year of arguments. This was one of many examples of how the lax attitude of new Code official Geoffrey Shurlock, the successor at the PCA to the strict Catholic militant Joseph Breen, would lead to a schism with the Legon of Decency and the PCA's own downfall over the next few years. After this film, the PCA drifted farther and farther away from its traditional guidelines until it was replaced by the MPAA ratings system in 1968.


2:15am -- College Confidential (1960)
A professor's study of student lives and values erupts into scandal.
Cast: Steve Allen, Jayne Meadows, Walter Winchell, Mickey Shaughnessy
Dir: Albert Zugsmith
BW-91 mins, TV-PG

In the film, Walter Winchell describes Sally Blake as a "Mamie Van Doren-type." Sally is played by Mamie Van Doren.


3:47am -- One Reel Wonders: Gym College (1955)
In this Sportscope series entry, members of the Florida State University gymnastics team demonstrate their athletic skills.
Narrator: Peter Roberts
Dir: Howard Winner
BW-8 mins

Filmed on location at Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida.


4:00am -- Get Yourself A College Girl (1964)
A music publisher courts a student songwriter at a ski resort.
Cast: Mary Ann Mobley, Chad Everett, Joan O'Brien, Nancy Sinatra
Dir: Sidney Miller
C-87 mins, TV-PG

Songs include "Get Yourself A College Girl", "The Swingin' Set", "The Swim", "Bony Moronie", "The Girl From Ipanema", "Around and Around", "Comin' Home Johnny", "The Sermon", and "Blue Feeling".


5:30am -- Short Film: Distant Drummer: Flowers of Darkness (1972)
Filmmakers trace the history of opium and its role in today's drug trade.
Narrator: Paul Newman
Dir: Charles E. Francis, William Templeton.
C-22 mins, TV-14

[Staph]

1. The Moon is Blue (1953)

Few of the films that challenged the Hollywood Production Code seem as innocuous today as the 1953 romantic comedy, The Moon Is Blue...at least on the surface. Publicity at the time hinted that the main bone of contention was the inclusion of such then-forbidden words as "virgin," "mistress" and "seduce," which were enough to get the picture banned in Boston. But later scholars have discovered within the Production Code files objections to the film's entire moral tone. When United Artist defied the Production Code and released the picture without changes -- the first time a major Hollywood studio had done so -- the controversy was enough to make The Moon Is Blue a box-office winner.

Writer F. Hugh Herbert had enjoyed a successful career both in Hollywood and on Broadway, bringing the prissy efficiency expert Mr. Belvedere (Clifton Webb) to the screen in Sitting Pretty (1948) and scoring a stage hit with the enterprising teenager Corliss Archer in Kiss and Tell, filmed with Shirley Temple in 1945. He took a more adult turn with The Moon Is Blue, which opened on Broadway in 1951. Charming audiences with its tale of Patty O'Neill, an aspiring actress who will gladly discuss sex but refuses to take part in it until after marriage, the play ran for over two years and established leading lady Barbara Bel Geddes as a light comedienne.

Having directed the stage version, Otto Preminger secured the film rights to The Moon Is Blue and cut a very advantageous deal with United Artists. He deferred his salary for producing and directing in return for 75 percent of the profits and total artistic control. The only limitation on him was the traditional clause requiring that the finished film pass Production Code scrutiny. He flexed his muscle immediately by insisting on casting David Niven in the second male lead, an aging roué intent on seducing Patty first. Studio executives thought Niven's career was fading, but Preminger fought for the actor, then put him in the play's West Coast company so he could craft and perfect his performance. For box-office insurance, he cast William Holden to star as the architect who develops more conventionally romantic feelings for Patty, offering the actor 20 percent of the profits. Although there were several up-and-coming film stars who would have been perfect for the female lead, Preminger opted for newcomer Maggie McNamara, who had played Patty in the play's Chicago company but had never made a film before.

The film was completed in a mere 24 days, despite the fact that Preminger simultaneously shot a version in German starting Hardy Kruger and Johanna Matz, who appeared in the English-language version as tourists. Holden and McNamara played the tourists in the German version. Preminger also played a small role in that version and dubbed Gregory Ratoff's lines as the taxi driver into German. In later years, he would state his preference for the English-language film, claiming the material had not translated well.

The censorship problems started long before the film began shooting. In fact, before Preminger had even bought the rights, Joe Breen, head of the Production Code Administration (PCA) had advised Warner Bros. and Paramount against acquiring the property. His objection was not just to the use of such hitherto forbidden words as "virgin," mistress" and "seduce," which he considered merely vulgar, but to the film's overall questionable tone. He felt the comic treatment of seduction created insurmountable problems for even though the leading man eventually proposes to the still-virginal leading lady, he soundly criticizes her moral pose, dubbing her a "professional virgin" and suggesting that "those who advertise usually have something to sell." In Breen's opinion, this violated the Code's prohibition against inferences that "low forms of sex relationships are accepted as common things."

Preminger knew of Breen's objections, of course, and decided to make The Moon Is Blue a test case. At first he refused to submit the script at all, but a copy got to Breen, who wrote objecting to the subject matter and insisting that there needed to be some condemnation of the Niven character's womanizing. Preminger agreed only to the latter, then set out to make the film in his own way. When it was finished, Breen denied it the Production Code's official Seal of Approval. Preminger appealed, but by that time the film had been condemned by the Legion of Decency (some have suggested they only did so in support of Breen). When the appeal was denied, UA dropped the contract clause requiring that Preminger deliver a film capable of passing the Production Code, quit the PCA's parent organization, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), and distributed the film without the Code Seal. This was a landmark in the battle against censorship; no other major studio had ever dared release a film without the PCA Seal. Under the initial agreement with the MPAA, theatres owned by the studios were forbidden from showing films that did not bear the Seal. But with the court-mandated sale of the studio's theatre chains, the Code's hold on them had been weakened. Although some chains canceled their bookings of The Moon Is Blue, others picked it up, hoping the controversy would pay off at the box office.

It did. The film brought in $4 million domestically, suggesting that audiences were a mite more mature (or as gullible) than the censors had suspected. By year's end, The Moon Is Blue was the nation's 15th highest-grossing film. The advertising campaign, alluding to the film as "The picture everyone is talking about" and "Sensationally Funny -- For Adults Only," helped draw attention to the controversy. When it was banned in Boston and Memphis, patrons drove to theatres just outside of town to see what the fuss was all about. Bans in Maryland and Kansas were overturned by the courts. Ultimately, the controversy made the censors look bad. Many critics noted that for all the discussion of sex, nothing really happened. By the end, traditional values, although lightly satirized, had been upheld. When Birmingham, AL, censors tried to cut the film and restrict viewing to those over 21, local women's club members complained that the film provided "a good moral lesson to teenagers." Preminger seized the opportunity to lead a campaign for some kind of system for labeling mature but respectable films as "adults only" (the actual ratings system that replaced the PCA was still 15 years away), with even conservative commentators jumping on the bandwagon.

Hollywood showed its own support of the film. David Niven won the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Musical/Comedy, and Oscar® nominations went to Maggie McNamara, the editing and the title song. As a result, the move to liberalize the Production Code began gathering steam. By 1961, times had changed so much that a reissue of the film won the PCA Seal with no problems. It also became a lingering embarrassment for Breen, particularly since most coverage of the controversy charged him with banning the film simply because of its language. When asked about The Moon Is Blue in later years, all he could say was, "Well, we're entitled to one mistake every few years, aren't we?".

The Moon Is Blue's position as a part of U.S. cultural history was underlined in the '70s, when it became the subject of an episode of the popular sitcom M*A*S*H. After hearing the picture was banned in Boston, Hawkeye (Alan Alda) spends most of the episode trying to secure a print for screening to the 4077 (the film had also been banned by the military), only to find, when he finally sees it, that the movie is surprisingly tame. They had to use the word "virgin," he reasons, because "everyone in the movie was!"

Producer-Director: Otto Preminger
Screenplay: F. Hugh Herbert
Based on his play
Cinematography: Ernest Laszlo
Score: Herschel Burke Gilbert
Art Direction: Nicolai Remisoff
Cast: William Holden (Donald Gresham), David Niven (David Slater), Maggie McNamara (Patty O'Neill), Tom Tully (Michael O'Neill), Dawn Addams (Cynthia Slater) Fortunio Bonanova (Television Performer), Gregory Ratoff (Taxi Driver), Hardy Kruger (Tourist).
BW-99m.

by Frank Miller

SOURCES:
Cleveland Plain Dealer
Variety