TCM Schedule for Thursday, October 15, 2015 -- TCM Spotlight: Trailblazing Women

[Staph]

In the daylight hours, TCM is featuring the films of director Mervyn LeRoy, born October 15, 1900 and a survivor of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. In prime time, TCM is celebrating women behind the camera, in series of films on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Tonight's feature is Women Film Pioneers -- Essential Documentaries. Enjoy!


6:00 AM -- The Heart of New York (1932)
When he invents a new washing machine plumber becomes a millionaire.
Dir: Mervyn LeRoy
Cast: Charles Dale, Aline MacMahon, George MacFarlane
BW-73 mins,

The credits for Joe Smith and Charles Dale include a parenthetical statement "members of the Avon Comedy Four." That group, which included Irving Kaufman and Harry Goodwin, was founded about in 1901 and continued as a vaudeville comedy team for 30 years.


7:15 AM -- Three on a Match (1932)
A woman's childhood friends try to rescue her from gangsters.
Dir: Mervyn LeRoy
Cast: Frankie Darro, Patricia Ellis, Mary Doran
BW-63 mins, CC,,

The title refers to the superstition that if three people light their cigarettes with the same match, the third person will soon die. While some attribute the superstition to World War I, where it was sometimes thought that lighting a match long enough to light three cigarettes would attract enemy gunfire, it is now known that a match company "created" the superstition to cut down on sharing of matches and thus increase sales.


8:30 AM -- Elmer The Great (1933)
A country hick bats his way to baseball stardom.
Dir: Mervyn LeRoy
Cast: Patricia Ellis, Preston S. Foster, Charles Delaney
BW-72 mins, CC,

Gale Gordon's first film. Most of us remember him best as fussbudget characters of various television series starring Lucille Ball.


9:45 AM -- Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933)
Three chorus girls fight to keep their show going and find rich husbands.
Dir: Mervyn LeRoy
Cast: Aline MacMahon, Neely Edwards, Dorothy Coonan
BW-98 mins, CC,

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Sound, Recording -- Nathan Levinson (sound director)

At 5:55 PM PST on March 10, 1933, the Long Beach earthquake hit southern California, measuring 6.4 on the Richter scale. When the earthquake hit, Busby Berkeley was filming the "Shadow Waltz" dance sequence on a sound stage on the Warner Brothers lot in Burbank. The earthquake caused a blackout on the sound stage and short-circuited some of the neon-tubed violins. Berkeley was almost thrown from a camera boom, and dangled by one hand until he could pull himself back up. Since many of the chorus girls in the dance number were on a 30-foot-high scaffold, Berkeley yelled for them to sit down and wait until the stage hands and technicians could open the sound stage doors and let in some light.


11:30 AM -- Anthony Adverse (1936)
An orphan runs off to a life of adventure, then returns to France in search of the girl he left behind.
Dir: Mervyn LeRoy
Cast: Fred Malatesta, Dennis D'Auburn, Antonio Filauri
BW-141 mins, CC,

Won Oscars for Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Gale Sondergaard, Best Cinematography -- Tony Gaudio, Best Film Editing -- Ralph Dawson, and Best Music, Score -- Leo F. Forbstein (head of department) with score by Erich Wolfgang Korngold.

Nominated for Oscars for Best Art Direction -- Anton Grot, Best Assistant Director -- William H. Cannon, and Best Picture

Tony Curtis was a huge fan of the book. He changed his name from Bernard Schwartz to Tony Curtis in homage to the lead character and was even buried with a copy of the novel.


2:00 PM -- They Won't Forget (1937)
Bigotry flares when a teacher is accused of killing a small-town girl in the South.
Dir: Mervyn LeRoy (uncredited)
Cast: Gloria Dickson, Clifford Soubier, Paul Everton
BW-95 mins, CC,

Based on the notorious rigged murder trial and subsequent lynching of Leo Frank, the film does not mention that Frank was Jewish, a fact that contributed more to his being tried for a murder he didn't commit, found guilty and lynched than his Northern background (although that was also a factor). The real-life victim, Mary Phagan, was only 13 years old, a far cry from Lana Turner's post-pubescent sweater girl of 16.


3:45 PM -- Random Harvest (1942)
A woman's happiness is threatened when she discovers her husband has been suffering from amnesia.
Dir: Mervyn LeRoy
Cast: Philip Dorn, Al Ferguson, Herbert Evans
BW-126 mins, CC,

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Ronald Colman, Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Susan Peters, Best Director -- Mervyn LeRoy, Best Writing, Screenplay -- George Froeschel, Claudine West and Arthur Wimperis, Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Black-and-White -- Cedric Gibbons, Randall Duell, Edwin B. Willis and Jack D. Moore, Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture -- Herbert Stothart, and Best Picture

Ronald Colman had first-hand experience of shell shock - he had fought in the British army at the Battle of Ypres in World War I, during which he was also gassed.


6:00 PM -- East Side, West Side (1949)
A chic New York couple is torn apart by a seductive model.
Dir: Mervyn LeRoy
Cast: Rita Lynn, Lou Lubin, Barbara Freking
BW-108 mins, CC,

Gale Sondergaard, who plays Barbara Stanwyck's mother in this film, was 50 years old when it was produced. Stanwyck was 42.



TCM PRIMETIME - WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: TCM SPOTLIGHT: TRAILBLAZING WOMEN



8:00 PM -- Araya (1959)
Cameras capture the workings of an ancient Venezuelan salt mine.
Dir: Margot Benacerraf
Cast: José Ignacio Cabrujas, Laurent Terzieff
BW-83 mins,

"Araya" is an old natural salt mine located in a peninsula in northeastern Venezuela which was still, by 1959, being exploited manually five hundred years after its discovery by the Spanish. Margot Benacerraf captures in images, the life of the "salineros" and their archaic methods of work before their definite disappearance with the arrival of the industrial exploitation.


9:30 PM -- Harlan County, U.S.A. (1976)
Kentucky miners risk their lives in a violent strike.
Dir: Barbara Kopple
Cast: Tom Pysell, Florence Reese, Dr. Hawley Wells Jr.
C-104 mins, Letterbox Format

Won an Oscar for Best Documentary, Features -- Barbara Kopple

When filming began, the film was intended to be about the 1972 campaign by Arnold Miller and Miners For Democracy to unseat UMWA president Tony Boyle, in the aftermath of Joseph Yablonski's murder; but the Harlan County strike began and caused the filmmakers to change their principal subject, with the campaign and murder becoming secondary subjects.


11:30 PM -- The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter (1980)
Interviews and rare film clips capture the lives of women doing factory work during World War II.
Dir: Connie Field
Cast: Wanita Allen, Margaret Wright, Lola Weixel
C-65 mins, CC,

This film was selected to the National Film Registry, Library of Congress, in 1996.


12:45 AM -- Portrait of Jason (1967)
An aspiring entertainer reveals what it means to be black and gay in the '60s.
Dir: Shirley Clarke
Cast: Jason Holliday,
BW-108 mins, CC,

Due to be released on October 20, 2015, the film Jason and Shirley (starring Sarah Schulman as Shirley Clarke and Jack Waters as Jason) tells a fictional version of the making of Portrait of Jason.


2:45 AM -- The Decline of Western Civilization (1981)
Documentary cameras capture the thriving Los Angeles punk scene of the early 1980s.
Dir: Penelope Spheeris
Cast: Black Flag, Malissa, Lorna
C-100 mins, CC,

After the film was screened in Los Angeles, punk music fans got into so many fights and caused so much trouble that then-L.A. Police Chief Daryl Gates wrote the filmmakers a letter asking them not to screen the film again.


4:45 AM -- The Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Story (1950)
A collection of MGM previews with an introduction by Lionel Barrymore.
Dir: Herman Hoffman
C-57 mins, CC,