TCM Schedule for Friday, February 17 -- 31 Days of Oscar -- The American South

[Staph]

It's a full day of movies from the American South, including Ted Turner's favorite film, Gone With The Wind (1939). Enjoy!



6:30 AM -- Baby Doll (1956)
A child bride holds her husband at bay while flirting with a sexy Italian farmer.
Dir: Elia Kazan
Cast: Karl Malden, Carroll Baker, Eli Wallach
115 min, TV-14, CC

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Carroll Baker, Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Mildred Dunnock, Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Boris Kaufman, and Best Writing, Best Screenplay - Adapted -- Tennessee Williams

When the film was released in 1956, it was enormously controversial for its extremely risqué subject matter. The Legion of Decency condemned the film for its "carnal suggestiveness". Francis Cardinal Spellman condemned the film in a stunning attack from the pulpit of St. Patrick's Cathedral two days before the film opened, saying that the film had been "responsibly judged to be evil in concept" and was certain that it would "exert an immoral and corrupting influence on those who see it", and exhorted all Catholics to refrain from patronizing the film "under pain of sin". Cardinal Spellman's condemnation of the film led to the Legion of Decency's first-ever nationwide boycott of an American-made film produced by a major studio. All over the country, almost 20 million Catholics protested the film and picketed theaters that showed it. The Catholic boycott nearly killed the film; it was cancelled by 77% of theaters scheduled to show it, and it only made a meager $600,000 at the box office. The film was also condemned by Time Magazine, which called it the dirtiest American-made motion picture that had ever been legally exhibited. Surprisingly, despite the film's sordid elements, the Production Code Administration gave it a seal of approval, but only after nearly a year of arguments. This was one of many examples of how the lax attitude of new Code official Geoffrey Shurlock, the successor at the PCA to the strict Catholic militant Joseph Breen, would lead to a schism with the Legon of Decency and the PCA's own downfall over the next few years. After this film, the PCA drifted farther and farther away from its traditional guidelines until it was replaced by the MPAA ratings system in 1968.


8:30 AM -- The Miracle Worker (1962)
True story of the determined teacher who helped Helen Keller overcome deafness and blindness to learn to communicate.
Dir: Arthur Penn
Cast: Anne Bancroft, Patty Duke, Victor Jory
107 min, TV-PG, CC

Won Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Anne Bancroft (Anne Bancroft was not present at the awards ceremony. Joan Crawford accepted the award on her behalf.), and Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Patty Duke

Nominated for Oscars for Best Costume Design, Black-and-White -- Ruth Morley, Best Director -- Arthur Penn, and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium -- William Gibson

Patty Duke later played Annie Sullivan (with Melissa Gilbert as Helen Keller) in a 1979 TV production (The Miracle Worker).


10:30 AM -- All the King's Men (1949)
A backwoods politician rises to the top only to become corrupted.
Dir: Robert Rossen
Cast: Broderick Crawford, John Ireland, Joanne Dru
110 min, TV-PG, CC

Won Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Broderick Crawford, Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Mercedes McCambridge, and Best Picture

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- John Ireland, Best Director -- Robert Rossen, Best Film Editing -- Robert Parrish and Al Clark, and Best Writing, Screenplay -- Robert Rossen

Producer-Director Robert Rossen offered the role of Willie Stark to John Wayne. Rossen sent a copy of the script to Wayne's agent, Charles K. Feldman, who forwarded it to Wayne. After reading the script, Wayne sent it back with an angry letter attached. In it, he told Feldman that before he sent the script to any of his other clients, he should ask them if they wanted to star in a film that "smears the machinery of government for no purpose of humor or enlightenment," that "degrades all relationships," and that is populated by "drunken mothers; conniving fathers; double-crossing sweethearts; bad, bad, rich people; and bad, bad poor people if they want to get ahead." He accused Rossen of wanting to make a movie that threw acid on "the American way of life." If Feldman had such clients, Wayne wrote that the agent should "rush this script... to them." Wayne, however, said to the agent that "You can take this script and shove it up Robert Rossen's derriere..." Wayne later remarked that "To make Huey Long a wonderful, rough pirate was great," he said; "but, according to this picture, everybody was s - t except for this weakling intern doctor who was trying to find a place in the world." Broderick Crawford, who had played a supporting role in Wayne's Seven Sinners, eventually received the part of Stark. In a bit of irony, Crawford was Oscar-nominated for the part of Stark and found himself competing against Wayne, who was nominated the same year for Sands of Iwo Jima. Crawford won the Best Actor Oscar, giving Rossen the last laugh.


12:30 PM -- Sounder (1972)
Black sharecroppers during the Depression fight to get their children a decent education.
Dir: Martin Ritt
Cast: Cicely Tyson, Paul Winfield, Kevin Hooks
C- 105 min, TV-PG, CC

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Paul Winfield, Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Cicely Tyson, Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium -- Lonne Elder III, and Best Picture

In 2003, ABC's The Wonderful World of Disney produced a new TV version of Sounder. Kevin Hooks directed, and Paul Winfield played the teacher. (It was one of Winfield's last roles before his death in 2004.)


2:30 PM -- The Defiant Ones (1958)
Two convicts, a white racist and an angry black, escape while chained to each other.
Dir: Stanley Kramer
Cast: Tony Curtis, Sidney Poitier, Theodore Bikel
96 min, TV-PG, CC

Won Oscars for Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Sam Leavitt, and Best Writing, Story and Screenplay - Written Directly for the Screen -- Nedrick Young and Harold Jacob Smith (Nedrick Young had been blacklisted at the time and the Oscar went to his pseudonym 'Nathan E. Douglas'. In 1993 AMPAS restored Young's credit upon the request of his widow and recommendation of the Academy's writers branch.)

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Tony Curtis, Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Sidney Poitier, Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Theodore Bikel, Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Cara Williams, Best Director -- Stanley Kramer, Best Film Editing -- Frederic Knudtson, and Best Picture

Robert Mitchum turned down the Tony Curtis' role. Mitchum, a real-life veteran of a Southern chain gang, said that he didn't believe the premise that a black and white man would be chained together, as such a thing would never happen in the very strictly segregated South. Over the years, this reason was corrupted to the point where many people now believe Mitchum turned down the role because he didn't want to be chained to a black man, an absolute falsehood.

The film's co-writers, Nedrick Young and Harold Jacob Smith, were cast as the prison truck drivers, with the writing credits below their faces, because Young was blacklisted and writing under a pseudonym at the time and producer Stanley Kramer wanted to identify them truthfully.


4:15 PM -- Panic in the Streets (1950)
A killer evades the police not knowing he has a deadly plague.
Dir: Elia Kazan
Cast: Richard Widmark, Paul Douglas, Barbara Bel Geddes
96 min, TV-PG

Won an Oscar for Best Writing, Motion Picture Story -- Edna Anhalt and Edward Anhalt

Jack Palance's feature film debut. According to Richard Widmark, Jack Palance did his own stunt of climbing the boat rope after two stuntmen failed.


6:00 PM -- In The Heat Of The Night (1967)
A black police detective from the North forces a bigoted Southern sheriff to accept his help with a murder investigation.
Dir: Norman Jewison
Cast: Sidney Poitier, Rod Steiger, Warren Oates
C- 110 min, TV-14, CC

Won Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Rod Steiger, Best Film Editing -- Hal Ashby, Best Sound -- (Samuel Goldwyn SSD), Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium -- Stirling Silliphant, and Best Picture

Nominated for Oscars for Best Director -- Norman Jewison, and Best Effects, Sound Effects -- James Richard

Sidney Poitier insisted that the movie be filmed in the north because of troubles that other productions filmed in the south had had when using black actors, including Hurry Sundown which had recently been shot in Louisiana (hence the selection of Sparta, Illinois for the location filming). Nevertheless, the filmmakers and actors did venture briefly into Mississippi for the outdoor scenes at the cotton plantation, because there was no similar cotton plantation in Illinois that could be used.



TCM PRIMETIME - WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: 31 DAYS OF OSCAR: THE AMERICAN SOUTH



8:00 PM -- Glory (1989)
A green officer is assigned to lead an all-black unit in the Civil War.
Dir: Edward Zwick
Cast: Matthew Broderick, Cary Elwes, Morgan Freeman
C- 122 min, TV-MA, CC

Won Oscars for Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Denzel Washington, Best Cinematography -- Freddie Francis, and Best Sound -- Donald O. Mitchell, Gregg Rudloff, Elliot Tyson and Russell Williams II

Nominated for Oscars for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration -- Norman Garwood and Garrett Lewis, and Best Film Editing -- Steven Rosenblum

The scenes for the party were filmed in Jim Williams' house in Savannah. This house and its owner were the basis for the film Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.


10:30 PM -- Gone With the Wind (1939)
Classic tale of Scarlett O'Hara's battle to save her beloved Tara and find love during the Civil War.
Dir: Victor Fleming
Cast: Thomas Mitchell, Barbara O'Neil, Vivien Leigh
C- 233 min, TV-PG, CC

Won an Honorary Oscar Award for William Cameron Menzies for outstanding achievement in the use of color for the enhancement of dramatic mood in the production of Gone with the Wind (plaque).

Won Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Vivien Leigh, Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Hattie McDaniel (Became the first African American to be nominated for and win an Oscar), Best Art Direction -- Lyle R. Wheeler, Best Cinematography, Color -- Ernest Haller and Ray Rennahan, Best Director -- Victor Fleming, Best Film Editing -- Hal C. Kern and James E. Newcom, Best Writing, Screenplay -- Sidney Howard, and Best Picture

Won a Technical Achievement Award for R.D. Musgrave (Selznick International Pictures Inc.) for pioneering in the use of coordinated equipment in the production Gone with the Wind.

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Clark Gable, Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Olivia de Havilland, Best Effects, Special Effects -- Jack Cosgrove (photographic), Fred Albin (sound) and Arthur Johns (sound), Best Music, Original Score -- Max Steiner, and Best Sound, Recording -- Thomas T. Moulton (Samuel Goldwyn SSD)

The film had its first preview on 9 September 1939 at the Fox Theatre in Riverside, California. In attendance were David O. Selznick, his wife Irene Mayer Selznick, investor John Hay Whitney and editor Hal C. Kern. Kern called for the manager and explained that his theater had been chosen for the first public screening of Gone with the Wind though the identity of the film was to remain undisclosed to the audience until the very moment it began. People were permitted to leave only if they didn't want to hang around for a film that they didn't know the name of, but after they'd gone, the theater was to be sealed with no re-admissions and no phone calls. The manager was reluctant but eventually agreed. His one request was to call his wife to come to the theater immediately, although he was forbidden to tell her what film she was about to see. Indeed, Kern stood by him while he made his phone call to ensure he maintained the secret. When the film began, the audience started yelling with excitement. They had been reading about this film for nearly 2 years, so were naturally thrilled to see it for themselves.


2:30 AM -- The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter (1968)
A deaf mute changes the lives of all he meets.
Dir: Robert Ellis Miller
Cast: Alan Arkin, Chuck McCann, Stacy Keach Jr.
C- 124 min, TV-PG, CC

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Alan Arkin, and Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Sondra Locke

Mary Badham tested unsuccessfully for the role of Mick, eventually played by Sondra Locke. Badham is best known for playing Atticus Finch's daughter Scout in To Kill A Mockingbird (1962).


4:45 AM -- I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang (1932)
A World War I veteran faces inhuman conditions when he's sentenced to hard labor.
Dir: Mervyn Le Roy
Cast: Paul Muni, Glenda Farrell, Helen Vinson
93 min, TV-PG, CC

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Paul Muni, Best Sound, Recording -- Nathan Levinson (sound director) (Warner Bros. Studio Sound Department), and Best Picture

The film was based on the true story of Robert E. Burns. It sticks basically to the facts except for two instances: Burns actually did steal the $5.29 in order to eat, and he finally succeeded in evading the Georgia legal system with the help of three New Jersey governors. Burns actually slipped into Hollywood and worked for a few weeks on the film, but ultimately the stress and risk were too much, and he fled back to the safety of New Jersey. The book and film helped bring about the collapse of the brutal chain gang system in Georgia. Warner Bros. took a big chance on the film, as social commentary was not normally done in Hollywood pictures. However, this film was a critical and financial success and helped establish Warners as the studio with a social conscience - it also helped save the financially ailing company. Even though Georgia was never specifically named in the film, numerous lawsuits were filed against the studio, the film was banned in Georgia, and the studio's head and the film's director were told that should they ever find themselves in Georgia they would be treated to a dose of the "social evil" they so roundly denounced.