TCM Schedule for Thursday, October 14 -- TCM Prime Time Feature -- Bob's Picks

[Staph]

Happy birthday to Lillian Gish, born on this day in 1893. We start the day with two of her films, and continue with five of Alfred Hitchcock's lesser known works. The evening wraps up with five films chosen by host Robert Osborne. Bob has an interesting sense of humor, choosing Murder He Says (1945) and Murder She Said (1961), as well as The Band Wagon (1953) and Band Waggon (1939). Enjoy!


4:35am -- One Reel Wonders: Land Of The Mayas (1946)
A James A. FitzPatrick travel short with a glimpse of everyday life among the Maya Indians.
Narrator: James A. Fitzpatrick
C-10 mins

This Traveltalks short visits the village of Chichicastenango, Guatemala and emphasizes the influence of the Mayan culture on its people. It shows how the residents intermingle ancient religious practices with Catholic teachings. Narrator FitzPatrick introduces, and greets on camera, Father Ildefonso Rossbach, a Catholic priest who ministers to the local population in the village and outlying areas.


4:45am -- Maya (1966)
An American boy runs away in the Indian jungle after a fight with his father.
Cast: Clint Walker, Jay North, I. S. Johar, Sajid Kahn
Dir: John Berry
C-91 mins, TV-G

Jay North starred in this film three years after completing his run in his signature television role as Dennis the Menace.


5:02am -- One Reel Wonders: Sacred City Of The Mayan Indians (1936)
In this "Traveltalk," we learn about city of Chichicastenango and the people who descended from the Mayan Indians.
Cast: James A. FitzPatrick
C-7 mins

The first of FitzPatrick's two short based in Chichicastenango, Guatemala.


6:30am -- Broken Blossoms (1919)
In this silent film, an Asian man in London falls in love with an abused child.
Cast: Lillian Gish, Donald Crisp, Arthur Howard, Richard Barthelmess
Dir: D. W. Griffith
BW-89 mins, TV-PG

Broken Blossoms or The Yellow Man and the Girl (1919) was produced by D.W. Griffith for Adolph Zukor's Artcraft company, a subsidiary of Paramount Pictures. But when Griffith delivered the final print of the film to Zukor, the producer was outraged. "How dare you deliver such a terrible film to me!" Zukor raged. "Everybody in the picture dies!" Infuriated, Griffith left Zukor's office and returned the next day with $250,000 in cash, which he threw on Zukor's desk. "Here," Griffith shouted, "If you don't want the picture, I'll buy it back from you." Zukor accepted the offer, and Broken Blossoms or The Yellow Man and the Girl (1919) thus became the first film released by United Artists, the production company formed in 1919 by Mary Pickford, Charles Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, and D.W. Griffith. Broken Blossoms or The Yellow Man and the Girl (1919) was a remarkably successful film, both critically and at the box office.


8:00am -- Orphans of the Storm (1921)
In this silent film, two sisters, one of them blind, fight to find each other during the French Revolution.
Cast: Lillian Gish, Dorothy Gish, Joseph Schildkraut, Frank Losee
Dir: D. W. Griffith
BW-151 mins, TV-G

D.W. Griffith used this movie as a means of commenting, obliquely, on contemporary politics of his time. He drew parallels between the anarchist mobs that overthrew the French aristocrats, and what he says in opening titles to the film are the present American dangers of succumbing to the kind of "anarchy and Bolshevism" he perceived in the recent Russian Revolution. It is a great historical irony that those Bolsheviks Griffith railed against were quite smitten with the director's incomparable ways of generating film tension in crosscutting as well as his cinematic means of conveying good and evil via sophisticated editing and framing techniques. As the father of film syntax Griffith was an enormous influence on the Soviet filmmakers Sergei M. Eisenstein and Vsevolod Pudovkin, who were inspired by many of his films including the anti-Bolshevik Orphans of the Storm (1921).


10:45am -- Rich and Strange (1932)
An unexpected inheritance proves less than a boon to a young married couple.
Cast: Henry Kendall, Joan Barry, Percy Marmont, Betty Amann
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock
BW-83 mins, TV-PG

The title comes from Ariel's song in "The Tempest": "Full fathom five thy father lies, / Of his bones are coral made, / Those are pearls that were his eyes: / Nothing of him that doth fade, / But doth suffer a sea-change / Into something rich and strange."


12:15pm -- I Confess (1953)
A priest suspected of murder can only clear himself by violating the sanctity of the confessional.
Cast: Montgomery Clift, Anne Baxter, Karl Malden, Brian Aherne
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock
BW-95 mins, TV-PG

In his interview with François Truffaut, Alfred Hitchcock said he was so impressed with the performance of Anita Björk in Miss Julie (1951) that he hired her for this movie. However, when she arrived in Hollywood, Bjork brought her lover, writer Stig Dagerman, and their baby daughter. Since they were not married, Warner Bros. insisted that Hitchcock find another actress for the role of Ruth Grandfort, in this case Anne Baxter.


2:00pm -- Stage Fright (1950)
An acting student goes undercover to prove a singing star killed her husband.
Cast: Jane Wyman, Marlene Dietrich, Michael Wilding, Richard Todd
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock
BW-110 mins, TV-PG

The scenes where Jane Wyman first enters Marlene Dietrich's home undercover she introduces her self as Doris Tynsdale, but Dietrich refers to her first as Phyliss, then Elsie, then Doris, then lastly Mavis. It was classic dialogue play for Hitchcock.


4:00pm -- The Wrong Man (1956)
A musician is mistaken for a vicious thief, with devastating results.
Cast: Henry Fonda, Vera Miles, Anthony Quayle, Harold J. Stone
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock
BW-105 mins, TV-PG

When Manny (Henry Fonda) is taken to prison was filmed in a real prison...as he is led to his cell , you can hear one of the inmates shout, "What'd they get ya for, Henry?" and several of the other prisoners laughing.


5:47pm -- One Reel Wonders: Wrong Way Butch (1950)
A comic safety awareness video by Pete Smith. Wrong Way Butch just never seems to be able to grasp basic safety guidelines, but if he can't learn from his mistakes, at least we can.
Cast: Dave O'Brien, Pete Smith
Dir: David Barclay
BW-10 mins

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Short Subject, One-reel -- Pete Smith

Made in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Labor.


6:00pm -- Dial M For Murder (1954)
A straying husband frames his wife for the murder of the man he'd hired to kill her.
Cast: Ray Milland, Grace Kelly, Robert Cummings, John Williams
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock
C-105 mins, TV-PG

Alfred Hitchcock arranged to have Grace Kelly dressed in bright colors at the start of the film and made them progressively darker as time goes on.


7:46pm -- One Reel Wonders: Third Dimensional Murder (1941)
A 3-D short subject in which the narrator goes to a creepy old house in search of his missing aunt.
Narrator: Pete Smith
Dir: George Sidney
BW-7 mins

The first 3-D feature film was The Power of Love (1922)!


What's On Tonight: TCM PRIME TIME FEATURE: BOB'S PICKS


8:00pm -- Incendiary Blonde (1945)
In this true story, Texas Guinan rises from Wild West shows to become New York's ?Queen of the Nightclubs? during Prohibition.
Cast: Betty Hutton, Arturo de Cordoba, Charles Ruggles, Albert Dekker
Dir: George Marshall
C-113 mins

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture -- Robert Emmett Dolan

The real-life Texas Guinan served as an inspiration for Whoopi Goldberg's bartender character Guinan in Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994).


10:00pm -- Murder, He Says (1945)
A pollster stumbles on a family of small-town killers.
Cast: Fred MacMurray, Helen Walker, Marjorie Main, Jean Heather
Dir: George Marshall
BW-94 mins

Grandma gives Pete a cross-stitched sampler on which is stitched a line of music to a nonsense song: "Honors flysis/Income beezis/Onches nobis/Inob keesis".


11:50pm -- One Reel Wonders: Touring Northern England (1950)
In this "Traveltalk," we learn about the history, culture, and people of Northern England.
Cast: James A. FitzPatrick
C-9 mins

Filming locations include Hawkshead, Lake Windermere, Morecambe Bay, and York.


12:00am -- Murder She Said (1961)
When nobody will believe she witnessed a murder, elderly sleuth Miss Marple takes a job as a maid to ferret out clues.
Cast: Margaret Rutherford, Arthur Kennedy, Muriel Pavlow, James Robertson-Justice
Dir: George Pollock
BW-86 mins, TV-G

The first of Agatha Christie's Miss Marple films starring Margaret Rutherford.


1:30am -- The Band Wagon (1953)
A Broadway artiste turns a faded film star's comeback vehicle into an artsy flop.
Cast: Fred Astaire, Cyd Charisse, Oscar Levant, Nanette Fabray
Dir: Vincente Minnelli
C-112 mins, TV-G

Nominated for Oscars for Best Costume Design, Color -- Mary Ann Nyberg, Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture -- Adolph Deutsch, and Best Writing, Story and Screenplay -- Betty Comden and Adolph Green

The movie reflects two real-life situations. In the movie Tony Hunter (Fred Astaire) is washed up. In real life Astaire's career was at a standstill. In the movie much is made of whether Cyd Charisse's character is too tall for Fred's character. This was also true in real life. Whenever Cyd and Fred are together she is in shoes with low heels.


3:30am -- Band Waggon (1939)
A pair of radio clowns discover a German spy ring operating out of an old castle.
Cast: Jonah Barrington, Michael Standing, C.H. Middleton, Sherman Fisher Girls
Dir: Marcel Varnel
BW-79 mins, TV-G

Spin-off from a popular BBC Radio series.

[Staph]

1. Lillian Gish

AKA: Dorothy Elizabeth Carter; Lillian Niles; Lillian Diana Gish
Born: 1893-10-14
Birth place: Springfield, Ohio, USA
Death: 1993-02-27
Nationality: United States
Profession: actor, director


Biography

Lillian Gish virtually invented screen acting. Entering films at a time when most "serious" thespians regarded motion pictures as a rather base form of employment, Gish brought to her roles a sense of craft substantially different from that practiced by her theatrical colleagues. In time, her sensitive performances elevated not only her stature as an actress, but also the reputation of movies as an art form.

Both Lillian and her younger sister Dorothy were introduced to stage work at an early age. In 1912, the girls travelled to New York to pay a courtesy call on their friend Gladys Smith, who came to be more widely known as Mary Pickford. Smith was acting at the time in films for the Biograph Company. At the studio the Gish sisters were introduced to Biograph's top director, D W Griffith, who was smitten with the girls' innocent charm and cast them immediately in his current production. Lillian and Dorothy soon gave up their theatrical ambitions and signed with Griffith's unit.

Griffith's contributions to the cinema have been well-documented, but his association with Lillian Gish was one of those rare times when two visions combine to revolutionize an art form. Gish was a firm believer in art as a higher ideal; she did not consider acting to be a mere profession. She soon came to share her director's opinion that film was a legitimate medium which inherently possessed more potential for artistic expression than the stage. The pictures Griffith and Gish made together over nine years bear witness to this conviction.

There was a certain symbiotic nature to the Gish-Griffith collaborations. Gish's angelic beauty was emblematic of Griffith's Victorian notions of womanhood, but her manner also served an important narrative purpose. In most Griffith films, tension is created when an innocent young girl is imperiled by the capriciousness of a cruel world. The climax of these films is often a rescue scene which requires the actress to look suitably distraught. Gish excelled at playing the victim in the early two-reelers, but as Griffith began experimenting with longer pictures, her roles assumed a different function. Rather than the object of endangerment, Gish and her tremendous acting ability were required to help sustain the story. As the films became more complex, so did her characterizations. For example, in "The Mothering Heart" (1913), Gish plays a pregnant wife deserted by her husband. She gives birth alone, the baby dies, and she wanders out into the garden and thrashes the blossoms off a rose bush. This tragic moment could have easily become maudlin, but Gish handles the scene with such restraint that we only feel the young woman's grief. The strategy of controlling emotion--particularly in close-ups--became a hallmark of Gish's technique. Unlike the arm-waving, eyelid-fluttering histrionics engaged in by other actresses (a method carried over from stage productions), Gish practiced the art of the small yet meaningful gesture.

Gish perfected her skills in such memorable films as "The Birth of a Nation" (1915), "Hearts of the World" (1917) and "Broken Blossoms" (1919), in which she portrays Lucy, the wharf-rat daughter of a cockney fighter. Brutalized at home, she is adored by an Oriental shopkeeper, but when her father discovers this strange relationship he beats the girl to death. Gish's performance allows her to display a variety of emotions, from childish delight to utter panic. Her death scene is particularly discomforting: as her father administers the fatal beating, she cowers in a closet like a caged animal, twisting hysterically to ward off his blows. In her autobiography, Gish recalled that when the sequence was completed Griffith said, "My God, why didn't you warn me you were going to do that?"

She made several more movies with Griffith, most notably "Way Down East" (1920) and "Orphans of the Storm" (1921), before assuming control of her own career. At this point, her reputation was such that she was able to wield great power within the industry. She made two films for Inspiration Pictures before signing a five-picture deal with MGM in 1925. Because Gish's star image was intimately linked to her capabilities as a serious actress, MGM placed her in a series of literary adaptations. In "La Boheme" (1926) she played the consumptive Mimi; in "The Scarlet Letter" (1926) she was the adulterous Hester Prynne. Unfortunately, with her prestigious stature came rising production costs, which cut into the profit margins of her pictures.

Gish's best MGM film was "The Wind" (1928), a harrowing story of a genteel woman who is brutalized by a stranger in West Texas before shooting him and going mad. It was not only her last great performance in silent pictures, it was also her last successful starring role. By the end of the 20s, a new type of modern heroine, exemplified by Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford and Clara Bow, was in vogue; Gish's appeal was somewhat more nostalgic.

She accepted her decline gracefully, directing her attentions towards Broadway and television, while acting in an occasional film. She achieved screen prominence again with roles in "Duel in the Sun" (1947), "The Night of the Hunter" (1955) and a TV production of Horton Foote's "A Trip to Bountiful" (1953). Despite advancing age, she remained active, becoming a forceful advocate for film preservation. At the age of 90-plus she made "The Whales of August" (1987) with Bette Davis, displaying all the craft that made her one of the most respected performers in the history of motion pictures.


Family

FATHER: James Leigh Gish. Traveling salesman. Born c. 1875; alcoholic; separated from family; died in 1912.

MOTHER: Mary Robinson McConnell. Actor, department store worker. Born in September 1876; died in 1948.

SISTER: Dorothy Gish. Actor. Born on March 11, 1898; acted together in many films including their first, "An Unseen Enemy" (1912), and "Orphans of the Storm" (1921).


Companion

COMPANION: Virginia Nell Becker. Born in 1895; met when Gish lived in Massillon, Ohio; were lifelong friends; in a 1932 biography of Gish, writer Albert Bigelow Paine referred to an "instant attraction" and noted that "whatever romantic love she had, she gave to Nell".

COMPANION: Charles Duell. Producer. Began relationship in 1923 while he was still married; reportedly became engaged; went into business together briefly; relationship unraveled in 1924; in 1925, he sued her for breach of contract, but she won; Duell's wife sued Gish for alienation of affections but suit seems to have been dropped; in 1927, Duell once again sued Gish and MGM; he again sued her in 1930 and 1932.

COMPANION: George Jean Nathan. Critic. Born in 1882; was having simultaneous relationships with Gish and singer-dancer-actress Adele Astaire in 1924; separated c. 1936.