TCM Schedule for Thursday, August 1, 2013 -- Summer Under The Stars -- Humphrey Bogart

[Staph]

It's the beginning of one of my favorite times of the year on TCM -- Summer Under The Stars. Today's star is Humphrey DeForest Bogart, born December 25, 1899, in New York City, and died on January 14, 1957, in Los Angeles, California. Almost all of the roles that made him a star (after a decade of toiling in minor films) were roles he got because George Raft had turned them down, from High Sierra (1941), in which Bogie was first noticed as a viable box office draw, to Casablanca (1942), which made him a true international star. Ironically, after having been overshadowed by Raft the whole first half of his career, Bogart remains a legend while Raft is all-but-forgotten. Enjoy!


6:00 AM -- Bogart: The Untold Story (1996)
Stephen Bogart hosts this one-hour special on the life and career of his legendary father, Humphrey Bogart.
Dir: Chris Hunt
Cast: Stephen Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Robert Sklar
C-46 min, TV-G

Features clips from Three on a Match (1932), The Petrified Forest (1936), Kid Galahad (1937), The Roaring Twenties (1939), The Maltese Falcon (1941), Casablanca (1942), To Have and Have Not (1944), The Big Sleep (1946), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), Key Largo (1948), In a Lonely Place (1950), The African Queen (1951), The Caine Mutiny (1954), and We're No Angels (1955).


8:50 AM -- We Never Sleep (1956)
This RKO-Pathé Screenliner short highlights the work of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, the USA's oldest private detective company.
Dir: Larry O'Reilly
Narrator: Peter Roberts
8 min

In the 1850s, Allan Pinkerton met Chicago attorney Edward Rucker in a local Masonic Hall and formed the North-Western Police Agency, later known as the Pinkerton Agency. Historian Frank Morn writes: "By the mid-1850s a few businessmen saw the need for greater control over their employees; their solution was to sponsor a private detective system. In February 1855, Allan Pinkerton, after consulting with six midwestern railroads, created such an agency in Chicago."


9:00 AM -- The Maltese Falcon (1941)
Hard-boiled detective Sam Spade gets caught up in the murderous search for a priceless statue.
Dir: John Huston
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Gladys George
100 min, TV-PG

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Sydney Greenstreet, Best Writing, Screenplay -- John Huston, and Best Picture

The role of Brigid O'Shaughnessy was first offered to 27-year-old Geraldine Fitzgerald. Although the studio desperately wanted the newcomer in the role, she turned it down flat because it interfered with a scheduled trip to the East Coast. Although Olivia de Havilland, Rita Hayworth, and Ingrid Bergman were briefly considered, the next port of call for the part of was Mary Astor. John Huston and Humphrey Bogart visited her at her home to talk over the script and she was immediately smitten by their palpable excitement in the project. Already familiar with the novel, Astor was even more impressed with the screenplay which she thought was a "humdinger". She signed on straight away.


10:45 AM -- To Have And Have Not (1944)
A skipper-for-hire's romance with a beautiful drifter is complicated by his growing involvement with the French resistance.
Dir: Howard Hawks
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Walter Brennan, Lauren Bacall
100 min, TV-G

The most famous scene in To Have and Have Not is undoubtedly the "you know how to whistle" dialog sequence. It was not written by Ernest Hemingway, Jules Furthman or William Faulkner, but by Howard Hawks. Hawks wrote the scene as a screen test for Bacall, with no real intention that it would necessarily end up in the film. The test was shot with Warner Bros. contract player John Ridgely acting opposite Bacall. The Warners staff, of course, agreed to star Bacall in the film based on the test, and Hawks thought the scene was so strong he asked Faulkner to work it into one of his later drafts of the shooting script.


12:30 PM -- The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
Three prospectors fight off bandits and each other after striking-it-rich in the Mexican mountains.
Dir: John Huston
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Walter Huston, Tim Holt
126 min, TV-PG

Won Oscars for Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Walter Huston, Best Director -- John Huston, and Best Writing, Screenplay -- John Huston

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture

B. Traven was the pen name of a presumably German novelist, whose real name, nationality, date and place of birth and details of biography are all subject to dispute. A rare certainty is that B. Traven lived much of his life in Mexico, where the majority of his fiction is also set—including The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1927), which was adapted for the Academy Award winning film of the same name in 1948.

Virtually every detail of Traven's life has been disputed and hotly debated. There were many hypotheses on the true identity of B. Traven, some of them wildly fantastic. Most agree that Traven was Ret Marut, a German stage actor and anarchist, who supposedly left Europe for Mexico around 1924. There are also reasons (see below) to believe that Marut/Traven's real name was Otto Feige and that he was born in Schwiebus in Brandenburg, modern day Świebodzin in Poland. B. Traven in Mexico is also connected with Berick Traven Torsvan and Hal Croves, both of whom appeared and acted in different periods of the writer's life. Both, however, denied being Traven and claimed that they were his literary agents only, representing him in contacts with his publishers.


2:45 PM -- Tokyo Joe (1949)
An American in post-war Japan gets caught up in the black market.
Dir: Stuart Heisler
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Alexander Knox, Florence Marley
89 min, TV-PG

This was the first movie allowed to film in post-war Japan.

SCAP, an acronym used several times in the movie, stood for "Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers." This was not only the title given to Gen. Douglas MacArthur, head of the Occupation forces, but was also used to refer to the offices of the Occupation - a staff of several hundred U.S. civil servants as well as military personnel who administered the Occupation of Japan.


4:15 PM -- Beat The Devil (1953)
A group of con artists stake their claim on a bogus uranium mine.
Dir: John Huston
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Jennifer Jones, Gina Lollobrigida
90 min, TV-PG

Humphrey Bogart was involved in a serious automobile accident during production of this film, which knocked out several of his teeth and hindered his ability to speak. John Huston hired a young British actor noted for his mimicry skills to rerecord some of Bogart's spoken lines during post-production looping. Although it is undetectable when viewing the film today, it is Peter Sellers who provides Bogart's voice during some of the scenes in this movie.


6:00 PM -- In a Lonely Place (1950)
An aspiring actress begins to suspect that her temperamental boyfriend is a murderer.
Dir: Nicholas Ray
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Gloria Grahame, Frank Lovejoy
93 min, TV-PG

Robert Warwick and Humphrey Bogart worked together in 1922 in the stage play Drifting. Producer/star Bogart never forgot the kindness Warwick showed to him as a young actor and made Andrew Solt write a role for Warwick, who was then struggling.


7:38 PM -- Luckiest Guy In The World (1946)
A man destroys his life through gambling debts and and stealing company funds in this short film.
Dir: Joseph M. Newman
Cast: Barry Nelson, Eloise Hardt, George Travell
21 min

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Short Subject, Two-reel -- Jerry Bresler

Released over a year after its predecessor, Purity Squad (1945), this was the final episode in the long and successful Crime Does Not Pay 2-reel series.



TCM PRIMETIME - WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: SUMMER UNDER THE STARS: HUMPHREY BOGART



8:00 PM -- The Big Sleep (1946)
Private eye Philip Marlowe investigates a society girl's involvement in the murder of a pornographer.
Dir: Howard Hawks
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, John Ridgely
114 min, TV-PG

The fussy persona that Marlowe adopts upon arriving in Geiger's bookstore has been a subject of argument for years; Lauren Bacall said that Humphrey Bogart came up with it while Howard Hawks claimed in interviews that it was his idea. What both of them failed to notice is that it was in the original book ("I had my horn-rimmed glasses on. I put my voice high and let a bird twitter in it.&quot ; all Bogart did was elaborate on it.


10:00 PM -- Key Largo (1948)
A returning veteran tangles with a ruthless gangster during a hurricane.
Dir: John Huston
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson, Lauren Bacall
101 min, TV-G

Won an Oscar for Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Claire Trevor

In a classic case of a director being emotionally manipulative, John Huston informed Claire Trevor that they were to film her song that very day. Trevor was not a trained singer, and had not even rehearsed the song yet. She also felt very intimidated by the A-list actors seated directly in front of her. The result was a hesitant, nervous, uncomfortable rendition, exactly the feeling Huston was hoping to get.

Fourth and final film pairing of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. A fifth film was planned several years later, but Bogart died before it could be made.


11:45 PM -- Stuff For Stuff (1949)
A very simplified educational short of the history of international trade and industry, and promoting the new United Nations trade committee, which promises to restore international trade to the levels of the pre-depression era.
Cast: Paul Hoffman, Adolph Hitler
11 min

The economic and political views expressed in this short reflect the progressive political philosophy of then-current MGM boss Dore Schary.


12:00 AM -- The Caine Mutiny (1954)
Naval officers begin to suspect their captain of insanity.
Dir: Edward Dmytryk
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Jose Ferrer, Van Johnson
C-125 min, TV-PG

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Humphrey Bogart, Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Tom Tully, Best Film Editing -- William A. Lyon and Henry Batista, Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture -- Max Steiner, Best Sound, Recording -- John P. Livadary (Columbia SSD), Best Writing, Screenplay -- Stanley Roberts, and Best Picture

Columbia Pictures was determined to hire Humphrey Bogart for the top role of Capt. Queeg, and Bogart was enthusiastic about playing it, but the Columbia brass did not want to pay him his top salary. Bogart was rather miffed at this, complaining to wife Lauren Bacall, "This never happens to Gary Cooper, or Cary Grant or Clark Gable, but always to me." Bogart correctly figured that Harry Cohn and company knew that Bogart wanted to play the part so fervently that he would agree to take less money rather than surrender the part to someone else.


2:15 AM -- The Left Hand of God (1955)
The new priest at a Chinese mission takes an unorthodox approach to spreading God's word.
Dir: Edward Dmytryk
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Gene Tierney, Lee J. Cobb
C-87 min, TV-PG

William Faulkner completed an adaptation of the 1950 novel for director Howard Hawks, a longtime collaborator, but the results were deemed "rather dull and sincere with an abundance of narration" by Hawks biographer Todd McCarthy and was shelved.


3:49 AM -- Four Minute Fever (1956)
Sportscope short that takes a look at the races involving running a mile in under four minutes.
Dir: William Deeke
Cast: Harry Wismer, Paavo Nurmi, Fiorello LaGuardia
9 min

Very short shrift was given to actually breaking the record in this little movie. In fact, they don't even mention that Roger Bannister was the first person to break that barrier. No, they leave you believing it was John Landy. It wasn't. And they don't give you the date it happened. One would expect the climax to this little short would actually be when the feat was accomplished, but after they showed Landy doing it over a month after Bannister already had, there was still 3 minutes left to this 9 minute "documentary".

It came as a shock that the climax was the day, two years after the barrier had already been broken, that the first sub four minute mile was run on American soil. That, apparently, made it official. (For the record - Englishman Roger Bannister was the first to officially break the four minute mile in 3 minutes 59.4 seconds, on May 6th, 1954, in England.)


4:00 AM -- The Harder They Fall (1956)
A cynical press agent exposes inhuman conditions in the boxing game.
Dir: Mark Robson
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Rod Steiger, Jan Sterling
109 min, TV-PG

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Burnett Guffey

Primo Carnera unsuccessfully sued the film's makers, claiming it damaged his reputation for implying that he was involved in fixed fights. Carnera's career is one of the biggest mysteries in boxing, as many of the sport's historians believe that, without Carnera's knowledge, his managers paid most of his opponents to throw their fights.

Humphrey Bogart's last film.

[CBHagman]

1. Interesting combination of the better-known and lesser-known films.

That's the advantage of TCM -- they repeat the acknowledged classics but also drag things out of the vaults.

[Auggie]

2. Beat the Devil is a lot of fun

John Huston gave it a modern vibe, different than many Bogart films.