TCM Schedule for Saturday, January 21, 2017 -- What's On Tonight - Starring Dana Andrews

[Staph]

Tonight's not-quite-the-Essentials features films starring leading man of the 1940s and 1950s, Dana Andrews. Fun fact - Andrews' younger brother is actor Steve Forrest. Enjoy!


6:00 AM -- MGM PARADE SHOW #26 (1955)
Eleanor Powell performs in a clip from "Broadway Melody"; Spencer Tracy performs in a clip from "Captains Courageous." Hosted by George Murphy.
BW-25 mins,


6:30 AM -- OTHELLO (1952)
The legendary Moor of Venice battles his growing suspicions that his wife is unfaithful.
Dir: Orson Welles
Cast: Orson Welles, Michael MacLiammoir, Suzanne Cloutier,
BW-93 mins,

To pay the bills on this film, which took three years to make, Orson Welles took supporting roles in several films, one of which was The Black Rose (1950). During the filming of this, he greatly annoyed director Henry Hathaway by borrowing various costumes and cameras for use on "Othello". Hathaway complained to his boss Darryl F. Zanuck about this, but the latter, a friend of Welles', just laughed it off. Hathaway was still complaining in interviews in the 1970s. When he made The Black Rose (1950), Orson Welles insisted that the coat his character wore be lined with mink, even though the lining would never be visible in the finished film. The producers acquiesced to this demand. When the shoot was over, the coat disappeared. In "Othello", Orson Welles can be seen wearing the same coat, complete with mink lining.


8:15 AM -- A TALE OF TWO CITIES (1935)
Charles Dickens' classic story of two men in love with the same woman during the French Revolution.
Dir: Jack Conway
Cast: Ronald Colman, Elizabeth Allen, Edna May Oliver,
BW-126 mins, CC,

Nominated for Oscars for Best Film Editing -- Conrad A. Nervig, and Best Picture

Actor Ronald Colman agreed to play the role of Sydney Carton with the sole condition that he not also be required to play the role of Charles Darnay, as was usually expected in adaptations of the Dickens novel. The plot of 'A Tale of Two Cities' turns on the physical resemblance between the two characters. Colman had long wanted to play Sidney Carton, and was even willing to shave off his beloved mustache to play the part.


10:30 AM -- LOOKING FOR DANGER (1957)
The Bowery Boys' leader recalls his days as a World War II spy in Arabia.
Dir: Austen Jewell
Cast: Huntz Hall, Stanley Clements, Lili Kardell,
BW-62 mins, CC,

The forty-sixth of forty-eight Bowery Boys movies.


12:00 PM -- IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD (1963)
A group of greedy clowns tears up the countryside in search of buried treasure.
Dir: Stanley Kramer
Cast: Spencer Tracy, Milton Berle, Sid Caesar,
C-159 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Won an Oscar for Best Effects, Sound Effects -- Walter Elliott

Nominated for Oscars for Best Cinematography, Color -- Ernest Laszlo, Best Sound -- Gordon Sawyer (Samuel Goldwyn SSD),
Best Film Editing -- Frederic Knudtson, Robert C. Jones and Gene Fowler Jr., Best Music, Original Song -- Ernest Gold (music) and Mack David (lyrics) for the song "It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World", and Best Music, Score - Substantially Original -- Ernest Gold

Edie Adams almost didn't accept the role of Monica, because her husband Ernie Kovacs had been killed in an auto accident a few months earlier. However, she did accept because Kovacs had died deeply in debt and she had vowed to pay off all of her husband's creditors (a pledge she was able to fulfill by accepting this and all other roles she was offered after his death.)


3:00 PM -- THE BIG COUNTRY (1958)
Feuding families vie for water rights in the old West.
Dir: William Wyler
Cast: Gregory Peck, Jean Simmons, Carroll Baker,
C-167 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Won an Oscar for Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Burl Ives

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture -- Jerome Moross

According to Gregory Peck, director William Wyler intended the film to be a left-wing allegory for the Cold War. Peck believed the United States should have retained good relations with the Soviet Union and China after World War II.


6:00 PM -- BEND OF THE RIVER (1952)
A westerner with a questionable past leads a wagon train into the Oregon territory.
Dir: Anthony Mann
Cast: James Stewart, Arthur Kennedy, Julia Adams,
C-91 mins, CC,

Though the film received generally poor reviews, it is noteworthy as marking a turning point in James Stewart's career, as he began to play much more violent, cynical and ruthless characters.



TCM PRIMETIME - WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: STARRING DANA ANDREWS



8:00 PM -- BOOMERANG (1947)
A prosecutor fights to prove the defendant in a scandalous murder case is innocent.
Dir: Elia Kazan
Cast: Dana Andrews, Jane Wyatt, Lee J. Cobb,
BW-88 mins, CC,

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Writing, Screenplay -- Richard Murphy

Playwright Arthur Miller is the tall suspect in the line-up. He was close to director Elia Kazan who would two years later direct Miller's "Death of a Salesman" on Broadway. For the play, Kazan plucked Boomerang's Lee J. Cobb to play Willy Loman, and for his son Biff, Arthur Kennedy.


9:45 PM -- FALLEN ANGEL (1945)
A man is accused of killing a waitress he had tried to seduce with his wife's money.
Dir: Otto Preminger
Cast: Alice Faye, Dana Andrews, Linda Darnell,
BW-97 mins, CC,

According to Wade Williams in Biography: Alice Faye: The Star Next Door (1996), when Alice Faye saw a rough cut of the film and realized that Otto Preminger's editing had diminished the impact of her performance in favor of newcomer Linda Darnell, she got up from the screening, drove off the 20th Century Fox lot, threw her dressing room key to the security guard, and vowed never to work for the studio again.


11:30 PM -- WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS (1956)
Reporters compete to catch a serial killer.
Dir: Fritz Lang
Cast: Dana Andrews, Rhonda Fleming, George Sanders,
BW-100 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

The movie was based on a real murder case that took place in 1946. In that year William Heirens killed three women and left a message scrawled in lipstick on a bathroom mirror after the second murder. In the message he urged the police to catch him before he killed again. Because of this the press dubbed him The Lipstick Killler.


1:15 AM -- BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT (1956)
A novelist frames himself for murder to prove the fallibility of circumstantial evidence.
Dir: Fritz Lang
Cast: Dana Andrews, Joan Fontaine, Sidney Blackmer,
BW-80 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

The last film that Fritz Lang made in the USA before returning to Germany.


2:45 AM -- THE HIDDEN (1987)
An alien parasite drives those that it infects to commit violent crimes.
Dir: Jack Sholder
Cast: Michael Nouri, Kyle Maclachlan, Ed O'Ross,
C-97 mins, CC,

Claudia Christian (Brenda the stripper) likes to tell two stories about her experience in this film. First is the design of her wardrobe: the producers found her breasts visually inadequate, and so designed her costumes to emphasize her buttocks instead. Second is her eye injury: the material exploding from a prop gun scratched her cornea painfully. Because of this, whenever she had to fire a prop gun on Babylon 5 (1994) she would instinctively turn her face away when pulling the trigger, even though this was unnecessary because the Babylon 5 prop guns did not really fire, as all visual effects were to be added in later.


4:30 AM -- THE TERMINAL MAN (1974)
To end his violent seizures, a computer whiz has a microcomputer implanted in his brain.
Dir: Mike Hodges
Cast: George Segal, Joan Hackett, Richard Dysart,
C-104 mins, CC,

Michael Crichton was fired from writing the screenplay due to the fact that his script did not follow the novel (which he had written) closely enough.