TCM Schedule for Thursday, June 12 -- Race and Hollywood

[Staph]

An interesting day and night. Laugh with two of the Thin Man films, grab a big box of tissues to watch The Yearling, and try to understand why Hollywood insisted on using white actors to play Asians (they call it "yellowface") in The Good Earth and a couple of other Pearl Buck stories. Enjoy!


3:45am -- Brass Target (1978)
Gold thieves plot to assassinate General Patton in the days following World War II.
Cast: John Cassavetes, Sophia Loren, George Kennedy.
Dir: John Hough.
C-111 mins, TV-MA

In real life, George Kennedy, who plays General George S. Patton, served under him during World War II.


5:37am -- Short Film: From The Vaults: 2010: The Odyssey Continues (1984)
This promotional short for 2010 (1984) shows moviegoers how some of the film's visual effects were created.
Cast: Richard Edlund, Arthur C. Clarke, Michael Westmore.
Dir: Les Mayfield.
C-18 mins

The film 2010 ended up with five Oscar nominations, including Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Best Costume Design, Best Effects, Visual Effects (Richard Edlund), Best Makeup (Michael Westmore), and Best Sound.


6:00am -- MGM Parade Show #7 (1955)
Ray Bolger performs in a clip from "The Great Ziegfeld"; Debbie Reynolds introduces a clip from "The Tender Trap." Hosted by George Murphy.
BW-26 mins, TV-G

The Great Ziegfeld won three Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role (Luise Rainer), Best Dance Direction (Seymour Felix for "A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody") and Best Picture, and was nominated for four Oscars for Best Art Direction, Best Director (Robert Z. Leonard), Best Film Editing, and Best Writing, Original Story.


6:34am -- Short Film: One Reel Wonders: The Great American Pie Co. (1935)
Cast: Charles "Chic" Sale.
Dir: Nick Grinde.
BW-11 mins

Based on a short story by Ellis Parker Butler.


6:45am -- The Thin Man (1934)
A husband-and-wife detective team takes on the search for a missing inventor and almost get killed for their efforts.
Cast: William Powell, Myrna Loy, Maureen O'Sullivan.
Dir: W.S. Van Dyke II.
BW-91 mins, TV-G

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- William Powell, Best Director -- W.S. Van Dyke, Best Writing, Adaptation -- Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, and Best Picture.

Given three weeks to shoot the film, W.S. van Dyke managed it all in 12 days for the paltry budget of $231,000. The film surprised everyone by becoming a major box office hit, ranking in $1.4 million, and becoming the first of a series of six Thin Man films. If you haven't seen this one before, add it to your list!


8:30am -- Another Thin Man (1939)
Not even the joys of parenthood can stop married sleuths Nick and Nora Charles from investigating a murder on a Long Island estate.
Cast: William Powell, Myrna Loy, C. Aubrey Smith.
Dir: W. S. Van Dyke II.
BW-103 mins, TV-G

The placard outside the West Indies Club advertised the dance team as René y Estela, but the opening credits anglicized it as Renee and Stella. They were real headliners at New York's Havana-Madrid Club.


10:15am -- Myrna Loy: So Nice to Come Home To (1991)
Kathleen Turner hosts this retrospective look at Loy's career.
Cast: Kathleen Turner.
Dir: Richard Schickel.
BW-46 mins, TV-G

A devout Democrat and feminist, she later dismissed her work in the pre-Civil Rights-era movie Ham and Eggs at the Front (1927) as "shameful". She later organized an opposition to the House Unamerican Activities Committee in Hollywood.


11:15am -- The Tender Trap (1955)
A swinging bachelor finds love when he meets a girl immune to his line.
Cast: Frank Sinatra, Debbie Reynolds, Celeste Holm.
Dir: Charles Walters.
C-111 mins, TV-PG

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Music, Original Song -- Jimmy Van Heusen (music) and Sammy Cahn (lyrics) for the song "(Love Is) The Tender Trap".


1:15pm -- The Yearling (1946)
A Florida boy's pet deer threatens the family farm.
Cast: Gregory Peck, Jane Wyman, Claude Jarman, Jr.
Dir: Clarence Brown.
C-128 mins, TV-G

Won Oscars for Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Color -- Cedric Gibbons, Paul Groesse and Edwin B. Willis, and Best Cinematography, Color -- Charles Rosher, Leonard Smith and Arthur E. Arling. Claude Jarman, Jr. was also given a special Oscar for his performance in this film.

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Gregory Peck, Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Jane Wyman, Best Director -- Clarence Brown, Best Film Editing -- Harold F. Kress, and Best Picture

Though this will not make sense if you have never seen this film, Jane Wyman's daughter refused to speak to her for two weeks after she saw the film.


3:30pm -- The Women (1939)
A happily married woman lets her catty friends talk her into divorce when her husband strays.
Cast: Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell.
Dir: George Cukor.
BW-133 mins, TV-PG

There are over 130 roles in this movie, all played by women. Phyllis Povah, Marjorie Main, Mary Cecil and Marjorie Wood originated their roles in the play, which opened on 7 September 1937 and had 666 performances at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre in New York. No doubles were used in the fight sequence where Rosalind Russell bites Paulette Goddard. Despite the permanent scar resulting from the bite, the actresses remained friends.

The film has been remade for release in September 2008, starring Meg Ryan, Eva Mendes and Annette Benning in the roles played by Shearer, Crawford and Russell respectively.


5:45pm -- My Favorite Brunette (1947)
A baby photographer mistaken for a private eye ends up framed for murder.
Cast: Bob Hope, Dorothy Lamour, Peter Lorre.
Dir: Elliott Nugent.
BW-86 mins, TV-G

On a Capitol Records 78, Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour recorded two Jay Livingston-Ray Evans tunes: the romantic "Beside You," a Lamour solo in the film, and a comic-banter ditty named after the movie, although this number was not performed in the picture.


7:30pm -- 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.


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


8:00pm -- The Good Earth (1937)
Epic adaptation of the Pearl Buck classic about Chinese farmers battling the elements.
Cast: Paul Muni, Luise Rainer, Walter Connolly.
Dir: Sidney Franklin.
BW-138 mins, TV-PG

Won Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Luise Rainer, and Best Cinematography -- Karl Freund

Nominated for Oscars for Best Director -- Sidney Franklin, Best Film Editing -- Basil Wrangell, and Best Picture

Irving Thalberg envisioned casting only Chinese actors for the movie, but gave up the idea because there were not enough suitable Chinese actors. Because the Sino-Japanese war was in progress, the Chinese government threatened not to approve the movie if any Japanese actors were cast in any role.


10:30pm -- Dragon Seed (1944)
Chinese peasants fight to survive the Japanese occupation during World War II. Based on another Pearl Buck novel.
Cast: Katharine Hepburn, Walter Huston, Agnes Moorehead.
Dir: Jack Conway.
BW-148 mins, TV-PG

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Aline MacMahon, and Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Sidney Wagner

Filmed in 1943 on the MGM lot in Culver City during the Second World War, the film features an unusual assortment of non-Asian actors with odd accents playing Chinese and Japanese: Russian-born and Stanislavski-trained Akim Tamiroff as Wu Lien; Turhan Bey, Viennese born son of a Turkish father and Czechoslovakian mother as the middle son, Lao Er Tan; New England patrician Katharine Hepburn as his wife; American Aline MacMahon, no longer one of the wisecracking Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933), as the wife of Ling Tang; English born Henry Travis (best remembered as Clarence the Angel from It's a Wonderful Wife (1946)) as the Third Cousin; Irish-American J. Caroll Naish as the Japanese Kitchen Overseer; and finally Jewish-American Robert Lewis, co-founder of the Actors Studio and Meryl Streep's teacher at the Yale Drama School as the Japanese Captain Sato.


1:00am -- China Sky (1945)
A dedicated doctor joins the Chinese in their fight against Japanese invaders.
Cast: Randolph Scott, Ruth Warrick, Anthony Quinn.
Dir: Ray Enright.
BW-78 mins, TV-PG

In the 1980s, Ruth Warrick admitted to having had a "torrid romance" with Anthony Quinn while making this film.


2:30am -- First Yank Into Tokyo (1945)
An army pilot infiltrates the Japanese during World War II.
Cast: Tom Neal, Richard Loo, Barbara Hale.
Dir: Gordon Douglas.
BW-83 mins, TV-PG

The war ended before filming was completed. Because of this the producers decided to rewrite the script to include references to the atomic bomb, including a side plot involving a kidnapped American nuclear physicist.


4:00am -- Back To Bataan (1945)
An Army colonel leads a guerrilla campaign against the Japanese in the Philippines.
Cast: John Wayne, Anthony Quinn, Beulah Bondi.
Dir: Edward Dmytryk.
BW-95 mins, TV-PG

As the script for the movie was being written, the battle for Bataan was still being fought. The screenwriters were constantly updating the script based on the latest news from the front.

[CBHagman]

1. I saw the trailer for the 2008 version of "The Women."

I have no problem with remakes and/or updating, and I did watch the recent Broadway cast version (with Cynthia Nixon and a Who's Who of actresses) on PBS. But someone has to say it: Norma Shearer will be sorely missed!