TCM Schedule for Thursday, May 29 -- Race and Hollywood

[Staph]

A day and night of some terrific actresses -- Sophia Loren (Oscar winner for Two Women and Oscar-nominated for Marriage Italian-style), Nancy Olson (Oscar-nominated for Sunset Boulevard), Doris Day (Oscar-nominated for Pillow Talk), Jane Wyman (Oscar winner for today's film Johnny Belinda and Oscar-nominated for The Yearling, The Blue Veil, and Magnificent Obsession), Eva Marie Saint (Oscar winner for On the Waterfront), and the amazing Anna May Wong. Enjoy!


5:20am -- Short Film: From The Vaults: Madame - Sophia Loren (Trailer) (1961)
C-2 mins

Trailer for Madame Sans-Gêne (1962), starring Sophia Loren with a mixed cast of French and Italian actors. The story is based on the 1893 play by Victorien Sardou and Émile Moreau, about the life of Catherine Hubscher, who started as a laundress and ended up as a duchess and the wife of a Marshall of France during the time of Napoleon.


5:30am -- C'era una Volta (1967)
A prince falls for a peasant girl in a fairy tale kingdom.
Cast: Sophia Loren, Omar Sharif, Dolores Del Rio.
Dir: Francesco Rosi.
C-103 mins, TV-PG

Sophia Loren may have been the voluptuous sex goddess as an adult, but until the age of 14, she was a skinny child and considered an ugly duckling, nicknamed 'The Stick' and 'Toothpick'.


7:15am -- Ghosts - Italian Style (1969)
An unemployed opera singer and his wife find jobs as caretakers in a haunted castle.
Cast: Sophia Loren, Vittorio Gassman, Francesco Tensi.
Dir: Renato Castellani.
C-93 mins, TV-PG

Sophia is Drew Barrymore's godmother.


8:49am -- Short Film: From The Vaults: Italy's In Season (1967)
Cast: Tammy Grimes, Sylvia Koscina, David McCallum, Robert Vaughn.
C-7 mins

A look at Italy's popular tourist spots.


9:15am -- Union Station (1950)
A secretary gets caught up in the hunt for kidnappers.
Cast: William Holden, Nancy Olson, Barry Fitzgerald.
Dir: Rudolph Mate.
BW-81 mins, TV-PG

The movie shows Union Station in its heyday. Due to closures and a subway that was built, many of the scenes in "Union Station" (i.e., the scenes involving the ransom payments) cannot be shot again in the same way. The chase scene on the elevated train used the Third Ave El in New York City for long shots and the Pacific Electric Railway cars in L.A. for close in shots on the train.


10:45am -- Love Me Or Leave Me (1955)
True story of torch singer Ruth Etting's struggle to escape the gangster who made her a star.
Cast: Doris Day, James Cagney, Cameron Mitchell.
Dir: Charles Vidor.
C-122 mins, TV-PG

Won an Oscar for Best Writing, Motion Picture Story -- Daniel Fuchs

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- James Cagney, Best Music, Original Song -- Nicholas Brodszky (music) and Sammy Cahn (lyrics) for the song "I'll Never Stop Loving You", Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture -- Percy Faith and George E. Stoll, Best Sound, Recording -- Wesley C. Miller (M-G-M), and Best Writing, Screenplay -- Daniel Fuchs and Isobel Lennart

The character James Cagney played, Martin Snyder (aka "Moe the Gimp"), was portrayed in the film as a small-time hood. Ironically he ended up working in the license department in Chicago's City Hall.


1:00pm -- Johnny Belinda (1948)
A small-town doctor helps a deaf-mute farm girl learn to communicate.
Cast: Jane Wyman, Lew Ayres, Agnes Moorehead.
Dir: Jean Negulesco.
BW-102 mins, TV-G

Won an Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Jane Wyman

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Lew Ayres, Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Charles Bickford, Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Agnes Moorehead, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White -- Robert M. Haas and William Wallace, Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Ted D. McCord, Best Director -- Jean Negulesco, Best Film Editing -- David Weisbart, Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture -- Max Steiner, Best Sound, Recording, Best Writing, Screenplay -- Irma von Cube and Allen Vincent, and Best Picture.

Jane Wyman's Best Actress Oscar acceptance speech is reportedly the shortest on record: "I won this award by keeping my mouth shut and I think I'll do it again."


3:00pm -- Exodus (1960)
A young Israeli activist fights to set up a homeland for his people.
Cast: Paul Newman, Eva Marie Saint, Sal Mineo.
Dir: Otto Preminger.
C-208 mins, TV-PG

Won an Oscar for Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture -- Ernest Gold

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Sal Mineo, and Best Cinematography, Color -- Sam Leavitt

When the filmmakers bought the ship that they used as the refugee ship, the company they bought it from was so thrilled that they delivered it with a fresh coat of paint. Unfortunately, this was unsuitable, since the ship was meant to look old, so fake rust had to be painted on at great expense.


6:30pm -- Festival of Shorts #24 (2000)
TCM promotes two MGM comedy shorts produced by Peter Smith: Menu (1933) and Penny Wisdom (1937).
C-22 mins, TV-G

In Menu (Oscar nominated), a wife receives help with her dinner menu and her husband's upset stomach when a chef magically appears in her kitchen. The couple are played by Una Merkel and Franklin Pangborn. In Penny Wisdom (Oscar winner), Prudence Penny, culinary columnist for the LA Examiner, helps a housewife prepare a dinner for her husband's boss when the cook quits at the last moment.


7:00pm -- Anna May Wong-Frosted Yellow Willows: Her Life, Times and Legend (2008)
A documentary on the life and career of pioneering Chinese-American actress Anna May Wong.
Narrated by Nancy Kwan.
Dir: Elaine Mae Woo.
C-50 mins

Anna May Wong was born Wong Liu Tsong on January 3, 1905, in Los Angeles, California. Her parents ran a laundry in the city's Chinatown section. Anna became a photographer's model when she was still attending Hollywood High School. She was fascinated with the movie industry at a young age, having observed several films being shot in and around her neighborhood. When she was almost 14, her actor cousin, James Wong Howe, showed a photograph of her to a director, which resulted in her getting a bit part in Dinty (1920) (unfortunately for film buffs, there are no prints of the movie in existence, because of deterioration).


What's On Tonight: TCM SPOTLIGHT: RACE AND HOLLYWOOD


8:00pm -- The Toll of the Sea (1922)
An American sailor marries then deserts the Chinese beauty who had saved his life.
Cast: Anna May Wong, Kenneth Harlan, Beatrice Bentley.
Dir: Chester M. Franklin.
C-54 mins, TV-PG

The seventh color feature, the second Technicolor feature, the first color feature made in Hollywood, and the first color feature anywhere that did not require a special projector to be shown.


9:00pm -- Old San Francisco (1927)
In this silent film, an Asian villain menaces a family of aristocratic Spanish settlers.
Cast: Dolores Costello, Warner Oland, Anna May Wong.
Dir: Alan Crosland.
BW-89 mins, TV-G

The original credits include a music score, conductor and orchestra, despite the film being a silent film. The Vitaphone Symphony Orchestra played at the first-run performance in New York, and the credit was also in printed programs distributed to the audience.


10:45pm -- Piccadilly (1929)
In this silent film, the dancers at a London nightclub get wrapped up in jealousy and murder.
Cast: Gilda Gray, Jameson Thomas, Anna May Wong.
Dir: E.A. Dupont.
BW-109 mins, TV-G

Charles Laughton has a small part as a nightclub patron who complains about a dirty plate.


12:45am -- Daughter of the Dragon (1931)
A Chinese princess gets caught between the ruthless warlord Fu Manchu and a handsome secret agent.
Cast: Anna May Wong, Warner Oland, Sessue Hayakawa.
Dir: Lloyd Corrigan.
BW-70 mins

Warner Oland's fourth and last time playing as Dr. Fu Manchu. Oland, a native of Sweden, is best remembered for his 16 appearances as Charlie Chan. Oland didn't need make-up when he played Charlie Chan; all he would do is curl down his moustache and curl up his eyebrows. In fact, the Chinese often mistook him for one of their own countrymen. He attributed this to the fact that his Russian grandmother was of Mongolian descent.


2:00am -- Shanghai Express (1932)
A beautiful temptress re-kindles an old romance while trying to escape her past during a tension-packed train journey.
Cast: Marlene Dietrich, Clive Brook, Anna May Wong.
Dir: Josef von Sternberg.
BW-82 mins, TV-14

Won an Oscar for Best Cinematography -- Lee Garmes

Nominated for Oscars for Best Director -- Josef von Sternberg, and Best Picture

The extras in the film are all speaking Cantonese, a Chinese dialect focused mainly in southern China. If the film were to be more true to life, the extras would be speaking Mandarin, a more spoken dialect. However, most Chinese residents in the Los Angeles area spoke Cantonese, making von Sternberg use Cantonese.


3:30am -- Anna May Wong-Frosted Yellow Willows: Her Life, Times and Legend (2008)
A documentary on the life and career of pioneering Chinese-American actress Anna May Wong.
Narrated by Nancy Kwan.
Dir: Elaine Mae Woo.
C-50 mins


4:30am -- A Study in Scarlet (1933)
Sherlock Holmes is called in to solve the case when secret society members start dropping like flies.
Cast: Reginald Owen, Anna May Wong, June Clyde.
Dir: Edwin L. Marin.
BW-72 mins, TV-G

Although the movie is credited as having been "based on the novel A STUDY IN SCARLET by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle," in fact, the plot is very different from that of the novel itself, which first introduced the character of Sherlock Holmes to the general public. Even the characters other than Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are not the original ones that appeared in the story.

[Staph]

1. Introduction to "Asian Images in Film"

In a continuing series of festivals that look at Hollywood portrayals of minorities, TCM contemplates the treatment of Asians in the movies. Previous festivals have looked at African-American and gay/lesbian images.

The current fest explores the variety of Asian characters depicted in American films, ranging from negative stereotypes and Caucasian actors made up to look Asian to the emergence of martial arts films that created their own Asian superstars, and the more sensitive and sophisticated vehicles of such dedicated actors as Sessue Hayakawa, Miyoshi Umeki and Pat Morita. Peter Feng, an expert on the subject matter from the University of Delaware, will serve as a consultant in partnership with host Robert Osborne to provide context and commentary to the festival.

An early example of a Caucasian actor in Hollywood “yellowface” came in Broken Blossoms (1919), in which D.W. Griffith cast Richard Barthelmess as a kindly young Chinese aristocrat who shelters an abused girl (Lillian Gish). Demonic (and, many would say, racist) portrayals of a classic Chinese villain were delivered by a heavily made-up Boris Karloff in the 1930s in The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932) and Christopher Lee in the ’60s in The Castle of Fu Manchu (1968). Although such cross-racial casting has since fallen into disrepute, German-born Luise Rainer won an Oscar® for her impersonation of a Chinese peasant in The Good Earth (1937), and Marlon Brando received favorable contemporary reviews for playing a cheeky Okinawan interpreter in The Teahouse of the August Moon (1956).

One stereotype that was very prominent in the '30s and '40s was that of the Chinese detective, most famously Charlie Chan. TCM will be premiering two Charlie Chan films made by Fox - Charlie Chan at the Circus (1937) in which Swedish actor Warner Oland plays the iconic detective, and Charlie Chan in Honolulu (1939) where Kansas-born Sidney Toler takes over the lead role after Oland's death.

The first Asian-American leading man to crack the Hollywood star system was James Shigeta, who was born in Hawaii of Japanese ancestry and enjoyed romantic leads in several films including Bridge to the Sun (1916). Mioshi Umeki, cast alongside fellow Japanese actress Miiko Taka as the romantic leads of Sayonara (1957), became the first Asian performer to win an Oscar®. The second was Cambodian native Haing S. Ngor, a physician who was held captive by the Khmer Rouge during the civil war in his country before being cast as photographer Dith Pran in The Killing Fields (1984).

The festival includes several TCM premieres, among them Anna May Wong-Frosted Yellow Willows: Her Life, Times and Legend (2008), a documentary about Anna May Wong, the first Chinese- American actress to achieve stardom; and Rush Hour 2 (2001), a buddy comedy and vehicle for Hong Kong–born action idol Jackie Chan.

by Roger Fristoe

[BuelahWitch]

2. I have been waiting to see "Frosted Yellow Willows" for some time

In 2000, I had the honor of meeting the producer, Elaine Mae Woo at a Cinecon festival. A friend taped it for me and I got it today. I really enjoyed it, as I think Anna May Wong was a wonderful actress. I'm glad she's finally getting some recognition.