TCM Schedule for Thursday, October 23 -- Happy Anniversary!

[Staph]

A day of 1940s and 1950s suspense films, and an evening that celebrates the anniversary of ... something. The TCM website doesn't say what this is the anniversary of. TCM was started in 1994, and RKO Studios, celebrating their 80th anniversary, was not the producer of this evening's films, which were produced in 1928, 1938, 1948, 1958, and 1968. So I'm going to guess that today we are celebrating the creation of the world, October 23, 4004 B.C., according to the calculations of Archbishop James Ussher. Enjoy!


5:30am -- The Body Snatcher (1945)
To continue his medical experiments, a doctor must buy corpses from a grave robber.
Cast: Boris Karloff, Henry Daniell, Bela Lugosi.
Dir: Robert Wise.
BW-78 mins, TV-PG

This film was the last on-screen teaming of Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi.


7:00am -- Eyes In The Night (1942)
Blind detective Duncan Maclain gets mixed up with enemy agents and murder when he tries to help an old friend with a rebellious stepdaughter.
Cast: Edward Arnold, Donna Reed, Ann Harding.
Dir: Fred Zinnemann.
BW-80 mins, TV-G

One of the first actors to seriously consider running for public office, Edward Arnold ran for Lon Angeles City Alderman as a Republican in the mid-1940s. He lost, in a close election, and expressed his views afterward that entertainment and politics were incompatible. Of course, he has been proven wrong numerous times since then.


8:30am -- My Name Is Julia Ross (1945)
A young girl finds herself entrenched in a murder cover-up when she goes to work for a wealthy widow.
Cast: Nina Foch, George Macready, Dame May Whitty.
Dir: Joseph H. Lewis
BW-65 mins, TV-PG

Also known in the US as The Woman In Red.


9:45am -- Dear Murderer (1947)
When a man discovers his wife is having an affair, he commits the perfect crime.
Cast: Eric Portman, Greta Gynt, Dennis Price.
Dir: Arthur Crabtree.
BW-94 mins

Husband and wife writers Sydney and Muriel Box won an Oscar two years earlier for writing The Seventh Veil (1945).


11:30am -- The Big Sleep (1946)
Private eye Philip Marlowe investigates a society girl's involvement in the murder of a pornographer.
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Dorothy Malone.
Dir: Howard Hawks.
BW-116 mins, TV-PG

While working on the script, writers William Faulkner and Leigh Brackett couldn't figure out from the novel who murdered a particular character. So they phoned Raymond Chandler, who angrily told them the answer was right there in the book. They shrugged and returned to their work. Chandler soon phoned to say that he looked at the book himself and couldn't figure out who killed the character, so he left it up to them to decide. In the original cut, shown to the armed services, this question is resolved; in the film as released, it isn't.


1:30pm -- The October Man (1947)
The survivor of a bus crash becomes a murder suspect.
Cast: John Mills, Joan Greenwood, Kay Walsh.
Dir: Roy Ward Baker.
BW-95 mins, TV-G

The screenplay was written by Eric Ambler, and based on his novel of the same name. The best known film based on his work is probably Topkapi (1964), based on his novel The Light Of Day.


3:15pm -- D.O.A. (1950)
The victim of a slow-acting poison tracks down his own killer.
Cast: Edmond O'Brien, Pamela Britton, Luther Adler.
Dir: Rudolph Mate.
BW-84 mins, TV-14

Debut of Neville Brand and Beverly Garland. Remade as Color Me Dead (1969) starring Tom Tryon, and D.O.A (1988) starring Dennis Quaid.


4:40pm -- Short Film: One Reel Wonders: A Gun In His Hand (1945)
Dennis Nordell joins the police force in order to pursue a career of undetected crime.
Cast: Tom Trout, Richard Gaines, Anthony Caruso.
Dir: Joseph Losey.
BW-19 mins

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Short Subject, Two-reel -- Chester M. Franklin


5:00pm -- Cloudburst (1951)
A WWII code breaker tracks down his wife's killers.
Cast: Robert Preston, Elizabeth Sellers, Colin Tapley.
Dir: Francis Searle.
BW-83 mins, TV-G

Screenplay author Leo Marks was head of code development and code security for the Special Operations Executive (SOE). The SOE was reponsible for supplying and coordinating resistance activities against the Axis powers during WWII.


6:30pm -- Cop Hater (1958)
Members of the 87th Precinct search for a cop killer who has already murdered two of their own.
Cast: Robert Loggia, Gerald O'Loughlin, Ellen Parker.
Dir: William A. Berke.
BW-75 mins

A trio of great future TV stars in this one, including Gerald S. O'Loughlin (Lt. Ed Ryker in The Rookies), Jerry Orbach (Det. Lennie Briscoe in every version of Law & Order ever produced), and Vincent Gardenia (guest star in a bazillion different series).


What's On Tonight: TCM PRIME TIME FEATURE: HAPPY ANNIVERSARY


8:00pm -- 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Classic sci-fi epic about a mysterious monolith that seems to play a key role in human evolution.
Cast: Keir Dullea, William Sylvester, Gary Lockwood.
Dir: Stanley Kubrick.
C-149 mins, TV-G

Won an Oscar for Best Effects, Special Visual Effects -- Stanley Kubrick

Nominated for Oscars for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration -- Anthony Masters, Harry Lange and Ernest Archer, Best Director -- Stanley Kubrick, and Best Writing, Story and Screenplay - Written Directly for the Screen -- Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke

Incrementing each letter of "HAL" gives you "IBM". Arthur C. Clarke (co-screenwriter) claimed this was
unintentional, and if he had noticed it before it was too late, he would have changed it. HAL stands for Heuristic Algorithmic Computer. I met Clarke at a book-signing in 1978 and asked him about it. HAL is not IBM.


10:45pm -- Touch Of Evil (1958)
A narcotics agent risks his wife's life to investigate a crooked cop.
Cast: Orson Welles, Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh.
Dir: Orson Welles.
BW-111 mins, TV-14

This film was screened at the 1958 Brussels World's Fair, where judges (and then critics) Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut awarded it the top-prize. It was said the film was a great influence on starting Godard's and Truffaut's illustrious careers, both of whom within a year went on to make their first films À bout de souffle (1960) and Quatre cents coups, Les (1959), respectively.


12:45am -- The Red Shoes (1948)
A young ballerina is torn between her art and her romance with a young composer.
Cast: Anton Walbrook, Marius Goring, Moira Shearer.
Dir: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger.
C-134 mins, TV-G

Won Oscars for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color -- Hein Heckroth and Arthur Lawson, and Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture -- Brian Easdale

Nominated for Oscars for Best Film Editing -- Reginald Mills, Best Writing, Motion Picture Story -- Emeric Pressburger, and Best Picture

When people complained to Hein Heckroth about the grim ending, he pointed out to them that in Hans Christian Andersen's original fairy tale, the ballerina had her feet hacked off by a woodsman to stop her dancing.


3:00am -- The Lady Vanishes (1938)
A young woman on vacation triggers an international incident when she tries to track an elderly friend who has disappeared.
Cast: Margaret Lockwood, Michael Redgrave, Dame May Whitty.
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock.
BW-96 mins, TV-G

The fictitious country where most of the story takes place is named in the movie: in her first scene, Miss Froy says, "Bandrika is one of Europe's few undiscovered corners." The first two stations in the movie are identified by briefly visible signs, and the third in dialog: they are Zolnay, Dravka, and Morsken.

Although he uses the fictitious Bandrikan language when speaking to his staff, at the end of the phone conversation in which he conveys Iris's room service order for "champagne", Boris, the harassed hotel manager, exclaims, "Oy vey is mir", a Yiddish expression meaning "woe is me."


4:45am -- The Circus (1928)
In this silent film, the Little Tramp joins a circus to hide from the police.
Cast: Charles Chaplin, Merna Kennedy, Allan Garcia.
Dir: Charles Chaplin.
BW-69 mins, TV-G

Final Charles Chaplin film of the silent era. He would make two more "silent" films, bucking the trend towards sound, however both City Lights (1931) and Modern Times (1936) would nonetheless include significant compromises to incorporate sound.

[Staph]

1. Why 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY is Essential

The creation of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) was as big an epic as the movie itself. Employing teams of
professionals in every field from space flight to food services, Stanley Kubrick set out to make what he simply described as a "good science fiction film." His first step was to contact famed author Arthur C. Clarke, and over the next four years the two men crafted a "fictionalized science lesson" which was to be a coming of age of the entire human race.

One of the crowning achievements of 2001: A Space Odyssey was the level of detail, which surpassed even Kubrick's usual demands. With the help of Scientific Consultant, Frederick Ordway, the production collaborated with companies like Whirlpool, RCA, GE, IBM, Pan Am, and NASA to provide a technological product placement. In exchange for discussing their plans for the future, and providing feasible designs for futuristic devices, cooperating companies would earn a place in the movie's environments. Hence, 2001 ASO is littered with amusing logos like Pan Am on the shuttle, and Howard Johnson's on the hotel in the space station. These little touches make life in space that much more believable.

This same commitment to detail was extended to the groundbreaking special effects in the film. During the "Dawn of Man" sequence, Kubrick employed front projection rather than rear projection, which was most common. Kubrick felt that rear projection never looked convincing, so he mounted a projector from above and projected the background slide behind the set pieces at very low light. The result was a completely realistic environment. But without convincing ape-men, the background would have gone entirely to waste, so Kubrick employed British makeup artist Stuart Freeborn to bring early man to life. Though Freeborn was snubbed for an Oscar for makeup in lieu of Planet Of the Apes (1968), Freeborn's complex masks and prosthetics actually allowed actors to articulate their lips more convincingly than those used for Planet of the Apes. Stuart Freeborn went on to design creatures for the Star Wars films.

With only 40 minutes of dialogue, 2001: A Space Odyssey is one of the most purely cinematic film experiences since the coming of sound. In a Playboy interview, Kubrick described it as "...a visual experience, one that bypasses verbalized pigeonholing and directly penetrates the subconscious with emotional and philosophic content." Many hailed it as the mainstream's absorption of underground filmmaking techniques and the death knell of the big-budget, traditional narrative Hollywood film. It clearly inspired later filmmakers to view their work more as visual experience than cohesive storytelling.

The space sequences proved no less imaginative. Because characters would be traveling and living in a variety of environments onboard spaceships, Kubrick needed to find a realistic way to blend both gravity and weightless conditions. The techniques ranged from the simple method of mounting a pen on a piece of rotating plexi-glass so that it appeared to be floating, to actually rotating the set, while the actors roamed about inside. The weightless space walk sequences were achieved by suspending actors, and in some cases set pieces like the "pod" transports, from the ceiling by wires. The "floating" actors were then shot from below, their bodies hiding the wires. For the "stargate" sequence, FX Supervisor Douglas Trumbull devised what was called a "slitscan machine." The machine helped with the process of photographing backlit transparencies of artwork, exposing each frame for a full minute, and moving the camera and artwork in sync, recording the art with a "streaked," stylized fashion. The result was the appearance that Dave Bowman was moving through time and space at infinite speeds.

Taking just over four years, and costing MGM $11 million, 2001: A Space Odyssey was met with mixed reviews when it premiered on April 12, 1968. Critics pretty much hated the film, calling it slow, boring, and confusing. Luckily, for Kubrick and Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey struck a cord with younger audiences, who made the film the second biggest box office draw of 1968.

2001: A Space Odyssey is now widely praised as a remarkable achievement for its realistic depiction of space flight during a time when our space program was in its infancy. Years before we actually set foot on the moon, Kubrick and Clarke not only envisioned settlements there; they showed us an unsettlingly accurate portrayal of the lunar surface.

True, the film can be confusing -- a point that Clarke concedes. During a trip to Hawaii from his home in Sri Lanka, Clarke was detained by an immigration official who joked, "I'm not going to let you in until you explain the ending of 2001 to me." But the film's ambiguity is part of its importance. Had Kubrick spelled it out entirely, he would have robbed viewers of the experience, and we would not still debate it today. As Kubrick himself commented, "...it's a non verbal experience - the truth is in the feel of it, not the think of it."

by Bill Goodman