TCM Schedule for Thursday, July 17 -- Bob's Picks

[Staph]

Today is full of crime and courtroom dramas, and tonight Bob Osborne picks the films, including a couple of Rita Hayworth movies, Susan and God (1940) and Down To Earth (1947). Susan and God stars Joan Crawford in a strangely comic role of a woman who invents a new religion. Enjoy!


5:45am -- Short Film: Martin Block's Musical Merry-Go-Round (1948)
In this short, radio personality Martin Block interviews to guests.
Cast: Martin Block, Ray Noble, Buddy Clark.
Dir: Jack Scholl.
BW-11 mins

Musical numbers in this short include "I'll Dance at Your Wedding", "Goodnight, Sweetheart", "Linda", and "Serenade".


6:00am -- Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1961)
A factory worker lives for the chance to have fun on the weekends.
Cast: Albert Finney, Shirley Anne Field, Rachel Roberts.
Dir: Karel Reisz.
BW-89 mins, TV-14

The film had to go through some dialogue changes before release, mainly owing to the swear words in the original script. Although bastards, bloody, and bleedin' were allowed the censors refused to pass sod, christ and bogger (the latter being a script substitution for bugger).


7:45am -- Tomorrow We Live (1942)
A master criminal uses mind control to force an ex-con to commit crimes.
Cast: William Marshall, Emmett Lynn, Ray Miller.
Dir: Edgar G. Ulmer.
BW-63 mins, TV-PG

Born in Austria, Jacob Krantz emigrated with his family to New York. There he worked a number of jobs while he trained as an actor. When Jacob arrived in Hollywood to work in movies in 1922, the Valentino mania was in full swing. Never shy about changing a name and a background, the studio transformed Jacob Krantz from Austria into Latin Lover Ricardo Cortez from Spain. Such was (and is) life in Hollywood.


9:00am -- The Family Secret (1951)
When his son accidentally kills someone, a lawyer must defend the man wrongly charged with the murder.
Cast: John Derek, Lee J. Cobb, Jody Lawrance.
Dir: Henry Levin.
BW-85 mins, TV-G

Though never known as a great actor, John Derek had pretty good taste in women. His wives included Ursula Andress, Linda Evans, and Bo Derek.


10:30am -- They Won't Believe Me (1947)
A faithless husband is charged with a murder he didn't commit.
Cast: Robert Young, Susan Hayward, Rita Johnson.
Dir: Irving Pichel.
BW-80 mins, TV-PG

Based on a story written by Gordon McDonell, who also wrote the Oscar-nominated story for the Hitchcock film Shadow of a Doubt (1943).


12:00pm -- The Trial (1963)
In this adaptation of Kafka's classic, a man in a nameless country stands trial for an unnamed crime.
Cast: Orson Welles, Jeanne Moreau, Anthony Perkins.
Dir: Orson Welles.
BW-120 mins, TV-14

It has been reported that Orson Welles dubbed 11 voices in the movie, including a few lines of Anthony Perkins' dialog. Perkins later said he could never figure out which lines they were.


2:00pm -- THe People Against O'Hara (1951)
A defense attorney jeopardizes his career to save his client.
Cast: Spencer Tracy, Diana Lynn, Pat O'Brien.
Dir: John Sturges.
BW-102 mins, TV-PG

Spencer Tracy was considered an arch conservative during the 1930s, but his views moderated after he met Katharine Hepburn. He once said he believed actors had no place in politics. However, he attended the Democratic National Convention in 1944.


3:45pm -- Knock On Any Door (1949)
A crusading lawyer fights to save a juvenile delinquent charged with murder.
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, John Derek, George Macready.
Dir: Nicholas Ray.
BW-100 mins, TV-PG

When Humphrey Bogart was told that director Nicholas Ray wanted to film the entire 'sentencing statement for the defense' sequence in a single take, Bogart was concerned because he had never delivered such a long speech without cuts and feared he couldn't do it. Ray calmed Bogart down, suggested several rehearsals, and much to Bogart's surprise, Ray rolled during the rehearsals filming most of what has become the famous and well played sentencing sequence.


5:30pm -- Lilith (1964)
A young psychiatrist finds himself drawn to a beautiful young mental patient.
Cast: Warren Beatty, Jean Seberg, Peter Fonda.
Dir: Robert Rossen.
BW-114 mins, TV-PG

The debut film for both Rene Auberjonois and Jessica Walters.


7:30pm -- Festival of Shorts #25 (2000)
TCM promotes two Passing Parade shorts:
Our Old Car (1946)
John Nesbitt traces his life and his neighborhood history by the succession of cars his father owned.
Cast: Billy Gray, Arthur Space, Jacqueline White.
Dir: Cy Endfield.
BW-11 mins, TV-G

The soundtrack includes excerpts from the second movement of the Symphony No.5 in E Minor, Op.64 (1888) Written by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

Annie Was a Wonder (1949)
In this entry in the Passing Parade series, narrator John Nesbitt tells the story of Annie Swenson, who worked as a cook/housekeeper in the Nesbitt home when she was growing up.
Cast: Kathleen Freeman, Howard Negley, Ruth Lee.
Dir: Edward L. Cahn.
BW-11 mins, TV-G

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Short Subject, One-reel -- Herbert Moulton


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


8:00pm -- Susan And God (1940)
A flighty socialite neglects her family to promote a new religious group.
Cast: Joan Crawford, Fredric March, Rita Hayworth.
Dir: George Cukor.
BW-117 mins, TV-PG

The play by Rachel Crothers originally opened on 10 April, 1937, in Princeton, New Jersey, and moved to New York City on 7 October, 19s37, where it ran for 288 performances. Gertrude Lawrence played the role of Susan.


10:00pm -- Down to Earth (1947)
The goddess of the dance comes to Earth to take over a musical lampooning the gods.
Cast: Rita Hayworth, Larry Parks, James Gleason.
Dir: Alexander Hall.
C-101 mins, TV-G

After Kitty (Rita Hayworth) and Danny (Larry Parks) finish their fight about how the information in the play is all wrong, Hayworth picks up a snow globe from a table and throws it at a mirror. It is the same snow globe that Charles Foster Kane drops when he dies in Citizen Kane (1941). Charles Foster Kane was played by Orson Welles, who was Hayworth's husband at the time.


11:45pm -- Short Film: One Reel Wonders: A Word For The Greeks (1951)
In this "Traveltalk," we learn about the history, culture, and people of Greece.
Cast: James A. Fitzpatrick
C-8 mins

Another Fitzpatrick TravelTalk.


12:00am -- Honky Tonk (1941)
A young girl falls for a western gambler.
Cast: Clark Gable, Lana Turner, Frank Morgan.
Dir: Jack Conway.
BW-105 mins, TV-PG

Gable's wife at the time of production, Carole Lombard, was often on the set, well aware of Turner's party girl reputation and her husband's affinity for blondes.


2:00am -- Homecoming (1948)
A married man's wartime love affair spells trouble when peace comes.
Cast: Clark Gable, Lana Turner, Anne Baxter.
Dir: Mervyn LeRoy.
BW-113 mins, TV-PG

With Gable's character name as Col. Ulysses Delby Johnson and Anne Baxter as his wife Penny Johnson, I wonder if this is a remake of The Odyssey. I can't find any information that confirms or denies. I suppose that I'll have to watch it and find out!

[Staph]

1. Susan and God

After a European holiday, charming, fashionable society matron Susan Trexel (Joan Crawford) flits back to Long Island where she surprises her wealthy, jaded friends with the news that she has found a new religion. Not content to merely preach the benefits of her new faith, Susan begins an aggressive campaign to convert her friends and family through a process of publicly revealing their sins.

Based on Rachel Crothers' satirical play, Susan and God (1940) treats religion as just one in a series of fads or styles in superficial Susan's life. Claiming that she merely wants to help her friends, Susan has soon wrecked two relationships, including the only recently sealed union between wealthy Hutchins Stubbs (Nigel Bruce) and his gorgeous young wife Leonora (Rita Hayworth), and is working on adding her own dissolving marriage to Barry Trexel (Fredric March) to the scrap heap.

Playing the role of a spoiled heiress with irresistible panache, Joan Crawford's performance is greatly enhanced by the exquisite costumes created for Susan by legendary MGM chief costume designer Adrian who also designed memorable ensembles for other divas in the MGM stable including Greta Garbo, Norma Shearer and Jean Harlow. Adrian's typically bold silhouettes and patterns give an early indication that Susan's religious conversion is not altogether sincere, but more the spiritual dilettantism of a bored fashion plate. Adrian is credited with innovating the broad-shouldered, waist-slimming look that became Crawford's signature style, and his screen collaboration with Crawford on 28 films surely helped cement her reputation as a notorious Hollywood clothes horse.

Adapted for the screen by Anita Loos (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), The Women, 1939) who some claimed greatly improved upon the original play, Susan and God is an often penetrating, humorous indictment of spiritual fads and religious self-righteousness. Crothers' play was reportedly inspired by a real-life religious movement of the day, Dr. Frank Buchanan 's Oxford Group of the 1930s (which also inspired the creators of Alcoholics Anonymous). Like the Susan Trexel character in Susan and God Buchanan experienced a spiritual epiphany while visiting England, which would alter the course of his life and lead him to develop a faith based on confession of sins and conversion of others to the spiritual path. Buchanan's message of "Moral Re-Armament" and belief that personal change could lead to social change led him to speak out against the prewar military build-up in the late 1930s and landed him on the cover of Time magazine.

Ironically enough, Joan Crawford underwent a religious conversion of her own in the 1930s, to Christian Science, and reportedly consulted her practitionist almost daily for 25 years. But Crawford abided by a strict personal policy of never speaking openly about religion or politics, and kept her Christian Science views under wraps.

Susan and God signaled an important career transition for Joan Crawford, from a sex symbol in early films like Our Dancing Daughters (1928) and Mannequin (1937) to a mature, seasoned actress who later earned an Academy Award in 1945 for her portrait of an emotionally divided mother in Mildred Pierce (1945). Anxious to prove her abilities in Hollywood, Crawford accepted the role of Susan Trexel when her arch rival Norma Shearer, (often awarded the plum MGM roles denied Crawford, because Shearer was married to MGM head producer Irving Thalberg) turned the part down because she didn't want to play the mother of a teenage daughter onscreen.

Susan and God, like Crawford's previous film The Women, cast her as an unlikable character. While this was a welcome acting challenge for Crawford, it was more problematic for Adrian whose previous costume designs for the actress greatly influenced the fashion industry. In Gowns by Adrian: The MGM Years 1928-1941 (Abrams) by Howard Gutner, the author elaborates: "The advertising tag line for the film indicated how successful Crawford's stab at devising a new image had been, and also served to vindicate Louis B. Mayer's worst fears: "Joan's a gorgeous meanie again!" This was not the ideal image to sell fashion. The dark side that began to emerge in Crawford's characters after The Women necessarily affected any fashion influence they could have had. Audiences could be entertained by Joan Crawford as vain, silly Susan Trexel, but that didn't necessarily mean they wanted to be Susan. So why would they want to dress like her?" From this point on, Crawford's career at MGM went into a sharp decline in popularity and she was released from the studio in 1943.

Director: George Cukor
Producer: Hunt Stromberg
Screenplay: Anita Loos based on the play by Rachel Crothers
Cinematography: Robert Planck
Production Design: Cedric Gibbons
Music: Herbert Stothart
Cast: Joan Crawford (Susan Trexel), Fredric March (Barry Trexel), Ruth Hussey (Charlotte), John Carroll (Clyde Rochester), Rita Hayworth (Leonora Stubbs), Nigel Bruce (Hutchins Stubbs), Bruce Cabot (Michael O'Hara), Rose Hobart (Irene), Rita Quigley (Blossom Trexel).
BW-118. Closed captioning.

by Felicia Feaster