TCM Schedule for Friday, March 2 -- 31 Days of Oscar -- Space

[Staph]

It's the last day of 2012's 31 Days of Oscar, and we're headed out into the wild blue yonder. In the daylight hours, we're circling the globe, with glimpses of heaven. And in primetime, space will become TCM's final frontier for this Oscar season. Enjoy!



8:00 AM -- The Great Race (1965)
A bumbling villain plots to win an early 20th-century auto race.
Dir: Blake Edwards
Cast: Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, Natalie Wood
C- 160 min, TV-PG

Won an Oscar for Best Effects, Sound Effects -- Treg Brown

Nominated for Oscars for Best Cinematography, Color -- Russell Harlan, Best Film Editing -- Ralph E. Winters, Best Music, Original Song -- Henry Mancini (music) and Johnny Mercer (lyrics) for the song "The Sweetheart Tree", and Best Sound -- George Groves (Warner Bros. SSD)

Features the largest pie fight ever staged, with a running gag that The Great Leslie remains clean while everyone else is covered in pie. Tony Curtis was required to change clothes several times when he was accidentally splattered with debris from a pie that had hit someone else. The pies used during the pie throwing scene were real, containing fruit, custard, whipped cream and other ingredients. Following this scene the crew devoured more than 300 leftover pies.


10:45 AM -- Around The World In 80 Days (1956)
A Victorian gentleman bets that he can beat the world's record for circling the globe.
Dir: Michael Anderson
Cast: Cantinflas, Finlay Currie, Robert Morley
C- 182 min, TV-G, CC

Won Oscars for Best Cinematography, Color -- Lionel Lindon, Best Film Editing -- Gene Ruggiero and Paul Weatherwax, Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture -- Victor Young (Posthumously), Best Writing, Best Screenplay - Adapted -- James Poe, John Farrow and S.J. Perelman, and Best Picture

Nominated for Oscars for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color -- James W. Sullivan, Ken Adam and Ross Dowd, Best Costume Design, Color -- Miles White, and Best Director -- Michael Anderson

The following famous people appear in small parts in the film, and are credited: A.E. Matthews, Alan Mowbray, Andy Devine, Basil Sydney, Beatrice Lillie, Buster Keaton, Cesar Romero, Charles Boyer, Charles Coburn, Tim McCoy, Edmund Lowe, Edward R. Murrow, Evelyn Keyes, Fernandel, Finlay Currie, Frank Sinatra, George Raft, Gilbert Roland, Glynis Johns, Harcourt Williams, Hermione Gingold, Jack Oakie, Joe E. Brown, John Carradine, John Mills, José Greco, Luis Miguel Dominguín, Martine Carol, Marlene Dietrich, Melville Cooper, Mike Mazurki, Noel Coward, Peter Lorre, Red Skelton, Reginald Denny, Richard Wattis, Robert Morley, Ronald Colman, Ronald Squire, Cedric Hardwicke, John Gielgud, Trevor Howard and Victor McLaglen.


2:00 PM -- A Guy Named Joe (1943)
A downed World War II pilot becomes the guardian angel for his successor in love and war.
Dir: Victor Fleming
Cast: Spencer Tracy, Irene Dunne, Van Johnson
120 min, TV-G, CC

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Writing, Original Story -- David Boehm and Chandler Sprague

Van Johnson was critically injured in an automobile accident on 31 March 1943 and MGM was set to replace him, but Spencer Tracy insisted that they shoot around him during his convalescence. Johnson didn't return to work until the first week in July of 1943, more than three months later.


4:15 PM -- Cabin In The Sky (1943)
God and Satan battle for the soul of a wounded gambler.
Dir: Vincente Minnelli
Cast: Ethel Waters, Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, Lena Horne
99 min, TV-G, CC

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Music, Original Song -- Harold Arlen (music) and E.Y. Harburg (lyrics) for the song "Happiness Is a Thing Called Joe"

Apart from the "Shine" sequence, this was Vincente Minnelli's first sole directing assignment. Minnelli had been directing on Broadway, which gave this film a feel that had nothing of the typical "Hollywood Studio System" in it.


6:00 PM -- The Bishop's Wife (1947)
An angel helps set an ambitious bishop on the right track.
Dir: Henry Koster
Cast: Cary Grant, Loretta Young, David Niven
109 min, TV-G, CC

Won an Oscar for Best Sound, Recording -- Gordon Sawyer (Samuel Goldwyn SSD)

Nominated for Oscars for Best Director -- Henry Koster, Best Film Editing -- Monica Collingwood, Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture -- Hugo Friedhofer, and Best Picture

Originally Cary Grant played the bishop and David Niven the angel. When original director William A. Seiter left the film, Henry Koster replaced him and viewed what had been shot so far. He realized that the two were in the wrong roles. It took some convincing because Grant wanted the title role of the Bishop. He soon accepted the change and his role as the angel was one of the most widely praised of his career.



TCM PRIMETIME - WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: 31 DAYS OF OSCAR: SPACE


8:00 PM -- The Right Stuff (1983)
The first astronauts fight for their place in space.
Dir: Philip Kaufman
Cast: Sam Shepard, Scott Glenn, Ed Harris
C- 193 min, TV-MA, CC

Won Oscars for Best Effects, Sound Effects Editing -- Jay Boekelheide, Best Film Editing -- Glenn Farr,
Lisa Fruchtman, Stephen A. Rotter, Douglas Stewart and Tom Rolf, Best Music, Original Score -- Bill Conti, and Best Sound -- Mark Berger, Thomas Scott, Randy Thom and David MacMillan

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Sam Shepard, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration -- Geoffrey Kirkland, Richard Lawrence, W. Stewart Campbell, Peter R. Romero, Jim Poynter and George R. Nelson, Best Cinematography -- Caleb Deschanel, and Best Picture

The closing narration states that Gordon Cooper was "the last American ever to go into space alone". While true when the film was made, Mike Melvill in June and September 2004 and Brian Binnie in October 2004 went into space alone in Scaled Composites' SpaceShipOne (Not a NASA spaceship or spaceflight). Binnie's flight was the day Gordon Cooper died.


11:30 PM -- 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Classic sci-fi epic about a mysterious monolith that seems to play a key role in human evolution.
Dir: Stanley Kubrick
Cast: Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, William Sylvester
C- 149 min, TV-G, CC

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

Originally, HAL was to be called Athena and have a female voice. According to Keir Dullea (Dave Bowman), Nigel Davenport and Martin Balsam were hired and later replaced before Douglas Rain finally landed the role of HAL. Davenport was actually on-set in England during filming, reading HAL's lines off-camera so that Dullea and Gary Lockwood could react to them. Apparently, Stanley Kubrick thought that Davenport's English accent was too distracting, so after a few weeks he dismissed him and for the remainder of the shoot HAL's lines were read by an assistant director who, according to Dullea, had a Cockney accent so thick that lines like "Better take a stress pill, Dave" came out like "Better tyke a stress pill, Dyve". Later Balsam was hired and recorded HAL's voice in New York, but again when Kubrick heard his lines he wasn't satisfied, so he finally got Rain to re-record everything during post-production. Rain recorded in Canada, speaking his lines barefoot with his feet resting on a pillow to get the relaxed tone. For the sequel, Peter Hyams' 2010, the opposite process was used: Rain recorded all of HAL's dialogue during pre-production prior to principal photography. That's why, to this day, Dullea and Rain have never actually spoken directly to each other or met in person.


2:15 AM -- 2010 (1984)
In this sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey, a U.S.-Soviet crew investigates a mysterious monolith orbiting Jupiter.
Dir: Peter Hyams
Cast: Roy Scheider, John Lithgow, Helen Mirren
C- 116 min, TV-14, CC

Nominated for Oscars for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration -- Albert Brenner and Rick Simpson, Best Costume Design -- Patricia Norris, Best Effects, Visual Effects -- Richard Edlund, Neil Krepela, George Jenson and Mark Stetson, Best Makeup -- Michael Westmore, and Best Sound -- Michael J. Kohut, Aaron Rochin, Carlos Delarios and Gene S. Cantamessa

Victor Milson (played by James McEachin) states that a U.S. Navy vessel called "U.S.S. Cunningham" participates in a deadly naval engagement with a Russian vessel. Given the film was made less than 10 years following the end of the Vietnam War, it could be held, that a futuristic Navy ship named "Cunningham" may have been named after U.S. Navy Commander Randy "Duke" Cunningham, whom, at the time, was a notable, decorated Vietnam War hero. By 2010, however, Cunningham will be best remembered by the public as a disgraced United States Congressman.


4:15 AM -- Forbidden Planet (1956)
A group of space troopers investigates the destruction of a colony on a remote planet.
Dir: Fred McLeod Wilcox
Cast: Walter Pidgeon, Anne Francis, Leslie Nielsen
C- 99 min, TV-PG, CC

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Effects, Special Effects -- A. Arnold Gillespie, Irving G. Ries and Wesley C. Miller

Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry has been quoted as saying that this film was a major inspiration for the series. Perhaps not accidentally, Warren Stevens, who plays "Doc" here, would later be a guest star in 1968's By Any Other Name, where the true shape of the alien Kelvans, like the Krell in this movie, was implied to be extremely non-humanoid but never shown.

The time aboard the C57D is stated as being 17:01 hours when the ship enters orbit around Altair IV. Gene Roddenberry, a fan of this movie, would later use 1701 as the naval construction contract number of the Starship Enterprise.