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TCM Schedule for Thursday, January 4, 2018 -- What's On Tonight: Star of the Month Charles Boyer
In the daylight hours, there are a bunch of marriage problems, from a 1915 Fatty Arbuckle comedy to a 1947 Susan Hayward soaper, Smash Up, The Story of a Woman (isn't that a great title!). Then in prime time, it's the beginning of Star of the Month Charles Boyer (swoon!). From the TCM website (films in boldface will play on TCM this month):In TCM's first-ever tribute to Boyer as "Star of the Month," we offer a comprehensive look at his career as an international film favorite, which encompasses five decades. "He was romance!" That succinct description of Charles Boyer comes from my 98-year-old friend, Ruth Viscioni, who lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and is a big fan of both Boyer and TCM. Ruth remembers the days of her youth in the 1930s and '40s as a romantic time principally "because of the movies, and all the beautiful ladies and handsome men. We could dream!"
For female audiences of the period, nobody inspired more ardent dreams than Boyer. His debonair good looks, resonant speaking voice and those hooded "bedroom eyes" made him perfect casting for the role of romantic lover--although his talent was such that he could also be convincing in roles ranging from villain to farceur. That dashing charm, a facility with sophisticated comedy and a certain sardonic streak led some to refer to him as "the French Cary Grant."
Boyer was born August 28, 1899, in Figeac, a country town in Southwestern France. The only child of a merchant and his amateur-musician wife, Charles was a shy and precocious boy who felt more comfortable with adults than with other children. He would later describe himself as "a very old man with a strong resemblance to a little boy, with whom other children had difficulty in forming friendships." When he was 10 years old, his father died suddenly from a stroke.
The young Charles found his escape in movies and in plays his mother took him to see in Paris. His academic career suffered from his preoccupation with theatrical matters; he read every theatre book he could find and acted in school productions. During World War I, with wounded soldiers returning home, he became a volunteer orderly at a local hospital and organized entertainment for the convalescing troops.
Enrolling as a student of philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris, Boyer departed the town of his birthplace and would not return for some 30 years. With the blessings of his mother, he studied acting at the prestigious Paris Conservatoire. In 1920, because of a photographic memory that allowed him to learn lines quickly, he became an emergency replacement for another actor in the play Les Jardins de Murcie. That same year, he made his film debut in the silent L'homme du large (1920) playing an "evil" character who lures a fisherman's son into bad behavior.
Boyer quickly became one of the most popular young actors in Paris. A play could be produced on the strength of his name alone, and he continued to appear in French silent films. Hollywood soon beckoned in the person of MGM producer Paul Bern (soon to become the husband of Jean Harlow). For a time, Boyer crossed the Atlantic repeatedly as he worked in both France and the U.S., where his early roles included a minor one in MGM's Red Headed Woman (1932), starring Harlow.
He found that he loved America and as soon as he had mastered English sufficiently, Boyer settled in California. In 1934 he married Pat Paterson, a starlet at 20th Century-Fox, and they bought a house in Beverly Hills where they would enjoy what was considered one of the film world's most devoted marriages. (Later, for health reasons, the couple moved to Arizona, which had been the site of their wedding.)
After the American musical Caravan (1934), opposite Loretta Young, and a French adaptation of Liliom (1934, TCM premiere), he had his first real break in Hollywood. Fellow countrywoman Claudette Colbert requested him as her leading man in Paramount's psychiatric drama Private Worlds (1935), which really caused female moviegoers to take notice of this seductive Frenchman.
Boyer would continue to make films in Europe, notably Mayerling (1936) with Danielle Darrieux, which helped make him an international star. But he quickly became a fixture in Hollywood movies starring opposite such glamour queens as Katharine Hepburn (Break of Hearts, 1935) and Marlene Dietrich (The Garden of Allah, 1936). Costarring in Conquest (1937), Boyer plays Napoleon to Greta Garbo's Marie Walewska and was said to be the only actor ever to dominate one of her movie vehicles. His portrayal earned him the first of four Academy Award® nominations.
1938 was the year of Boyer's signature role as Pepe le Moko in Algiers, which established him as a leading heartthrob and led to a second Oscar nomination. The line "Come wiz me to ze Casbah" (although Boyer never says it in the film) became a popular catchphrase of its era. Comedians and impressionists had a field day with the line, and the character's notoriety even spread into the world of cartoons, where animator Chuck Jones created a series featuring a romantic skunk called Pepé Le Pew.
The comedy-drama Love Affair (1939) was a hit for Boyer and Irene Dunne that became the basis for the even more successful 1957 remake, An Affair to Remember. Boyer continued to burnish his romantic image in such popular films as All This and Heaven Too (1940), opposite Bette Davis; Hold Back the Dawn (1941), with Olivia de Havilland and Paulette Goddard; Back Street (1941), again opposite Sullavan; the anthology Tales of Manhattan (1942); and The Constant Nymph (1943) with Joan Fontaine. Together Again (1944) reunited Boyer yet again with Irene Dunne.
In 1943 Boyer was presented with an honorary Oscar® "for his progressive cultural achievement in establishing the French Research Foundation in Los Angeles as a source of reference."
Gaslight (1944), an adaptation of the stage thriller Angel Street, brought him a third Academy Award® nomination as the treacherous husband of Ingrid Bergman, who won the Oscar® itself. Boyer starred in the suspenseful Graham Greene story Confidential Agent (1945), then got to show off his light touch in Cluny Brown (1946), a charming romance from Ernst Lubitsch with Jennifer Jones in the title role.
Most of his leading ladies adored the gallant Frenchman. Irene Dunne chose Love Affair as her favorite of all her films, while Joan Fontaine picked Boyer as her favorite acting partner: "A man of intellect, taste and discernment." In her autobiography, Ingrid Bergman described Boyer as "widely read and well-educated," and the most intelligent actor she had ever worked with.
Bergman, who worked in three films with Boyer, became one of his best friends in Hollywood. After several attempts, the Boyers welcomed their only child, Michael Charles Boyer, during the filming of Gaslight. An amused Bergman recalled: "He had a son! Champagne! Everybody had to have champagne and Charles' tears were falling into every glass. You'd think no one in the world had ever had a son before."
As he aged, Boyer was wise enough to give up seductive roles and devote his considerable acting skills to character parts. Ironically, even in younger years his romantic image had been challenged by his unimpressive height (5 foot 9), premature loss of hair that demanded a toupee and a paunch that had to be corseted or concealed. There was a story that Bette Davis saw him in his natural state during the making of the film they did together and, failing to recognize him, asked that the unprepossessing "stranger" be removed from the set!
In the gentle family comedy The Happy Time (1952), Boyer played the paternal role. In the charming The Earrings of Madame De... (1953), shot in France by director Max Ophüls, he is one-third of a mature romantic triangle also involving Danielle Darrieux and Vittorio De Sica. In Vincente Minnelli's The Cobweb (1955), Boyer plays the self-effacing head of a mental institution where a younger doctor (Richard Widmark) is assuming control. Periodically returning to France, Boyer made such films as Une Parisienne (1957), a Brigitte Bardot comedy in which he plays a handsome older prince with whom her character flirts to make her boyfriend jealous.
Boyer was very active in episodic TV of the 1950s and '60s, particularly as one of the originators of CBS-TV's Four Star Playhouse (1952-56), which also featured Dick Powell, David Niven and Ida Lupino. The series spotlighted Boyer in some 30 episodes. He costarred with Gig Young in NBC's The Rogues (1964-65). He also worked on Broadway during this period, costarring with Mary Martin in Kind Sir (1953) and Claudette Colbert in The Marriage-Go-Round (1958). Notable critical success came for an appearance in Shaw's Don Juan in Hell (1951), which also starred Charles Laughton, Cedric Hardwicke and Agnes Moorehead.
Coming into his own as a mature character actor in films of the 1960s, Boyer earned his fourth and final Oscar® nomination for Fanny (1961), as a Marseille barkeeper who is the father of leading man Horst Buccholz. Key supporting roles of the period also included those of Glenn Ford's father in Minnelli's The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1962) and a matchmaker on the Riviera whose plans are foiled by an American (Ford again) in Love Is a Ball (1963).
Boyer appeared to have fun kidding his image as an aging Lothario in the film version of Neil Simon's Barefoot in the Park (1967); and played one of the conspirators plotting against Katharine Hepburn in The Madwoman of Chaillot (1969). He looked frail as the white-haired High Lama in the musical remake of Lost Horizon (1972), and even more so in his brief appearance as a decrepit lover from Ingrid Bergman's past in A Matter of Time (1976), the final film for both Boyer and director Minnelli.
After decades of married serenity as a bookish homebody, Boyer experienced tragedy in the final phases of his life. His son died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at age 21 in 1965 and Boyer's wife died of cancer in 1978. Two days later - on August 26, two days before his own 79th birthday - Boyer committed suicide with an overdose of Seconal. He was taken to a hospital in Phoenix, Arizona, and later interred in Holy Cross Cemetery, Culver City, Calif., alongside his wife and son.
By Roger Fristoe
For female audiences of the period, nobody inspired more ardent dreams than Boyer. His debonair good looks, resonant speaking voice and those hooded "bedroom eyes" made him perfect casting for the role of romantic lover--although his talent was such that he could also be convincing in roles ranging from villain to farceur. That dashing charm, a facility with sophisticated comedy and a certain sardonic streak led some to refer to him as "the French Cary Grant."
Boyer was born August 28, 1899, in Figeac, a country town in Southwestern France. The only child of a merchant and his amateur-musician wife, Charles was a shy and precocious boy who felt more comfortable with adults than with other children. He would later describe himself as "a very old man with a strong resemblance to a little boy, with whom other children had difficulty in forming friendships." When he was 10 years old, his father died suddenly from a stroke.
The young Charles found his escape in movies and in plays his mother took him to see in Paris. His academic career suffered from his preoccupation with theatrical matters; he read every theatre book he could find and acted in school productions. During World War I, with wounded soldiers returning home, he became a volunteer orderly at a local hospital and organized entertainment for the convalescing troops.
Enrolling as a student of philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris, Boyer departed the town of his birthplace and would not return for some 30 years. With the blessings of his mother, he studied acting at the prestigious Paris Conservatoire. In 1920, because of a photographic memory that allowed him to learn lines quickly, he became an emergency replacement for another actor in the play Les Jardins de Murcie. That same year, he made his film debut in the silent L'homme du large (1920) playing an "evil" character who lures a fisherman's son into bad behavior.
Boyer quickly became one of the most popular young actors in Paris. A play could be produced on the strength of his name alone, and he continued to appear in French silent films. Hollywood soon beckoned in the person of MGM producer Paul Bern (soon to become the husband of Jean Harlow). For a time, Boyer crossed the Atlantic repeatedly as he worked in both France and the U.S., where his early roles included a minor one in MGM's Red Headed Woman (1932), starring Harlow.
He found that he loved America and as soon as he had mastered English sufficiently, Boyer settled in California. In 1934 he married Pat Paterson, a starlet at 20th Century-Fox, and they bought a house in Beverly Hills where they would enjoy what was considered one of the film world's most devoted marriages. (Later, for health reasons, the couple moved to Arizona, which had been the site of their wedding.)
After the American musical Caravan (1934), opposite Loretta Young, and a French adaptation of Liliom (1934, TCM premiere), he had his first real break in Hollywood. Fellow countrywoman Claudette Colbert requested him as her leading man in Paramount's psychiatric drama Private Worlds (1935), which really caused female moviegoers to take notice of this seductive Frenchman.
Boyer would continue to make films in Europe, notably Mayerling (1936) with Danielle Darrieux, which helped make him an international star. But he quickly became a fixture in Hollywood movies starring opposite such glamour queens as Katharine Hepburn (Break of Hearts, 1935) and Marlene Dietrich (The Garden of Allah, 1936). Costarring in Conquest (1937), Boyer plays Napoleon to Greta Garbo's Marie Walewska and was said to be the only actor ever to dominate one of her movie vehicles. His portrayal earned him the first of four Academy Award® nominations.
1938 was the year of Boyer's signature role as Pepe le Moko in Algiers, which established him as a leading heartthrob and led to a second Oscar nomination. The line "Come wiz me to ze Casbah" (although Boyer never says it in the film) became a popular catchphrase of its era. Comedians and impressionists had a field day with the line, and the character's notoriety even spread into the world of cartoons, where animator Chuck Jones created a series featuring a romantic skunk called Pepé Le Pew.
The comedy-drama Love Affair (1939) was a hit for Boyer and Irene Dunne that became the basis for the even more successful 1957 remake, An Affair to Remember. Boyer continued to burnish his romantic image in such popular films as All This and Heaven Too (1940), opposite Bette Davis; Hold Back the Dawn (1941), with Olivia de Havilland and Paulette Goddard; Back Street (1941), again opposite Sullavan; the anthology Tales of Manhattan (1942); and The Constant Nymph (1943) with Joan Fontaine. Together Again (1944) reunited Boyer yet again with Irene Dunne.
In 1943 Boyer was presented with an honorary Oscar® "for his progressive cultural achievement in establishing the French Research Foundation in Los Angeles as a source of reference."
Gaslight (1944), an adaptation of the stage thriller Angel Street, brought him a third Academy Award® nomination as the treacherous husband of Ingrid Bergman, who won the Oscar® itself. Boyer starred in the suspenseful Graham Greene story Confidential Agent (1945), then got to show off his light touch in Cluny Brown (1946), a charming romance from Ernst Lubitsch with Jennifer Jones in the title role.
Most of his leading ladies adored the gallant Frenchman. Irene Dunne chose Love Affair as her favorite of all her films, while Joan Fontaine picked Boyer as her favorite acting partner: "A man of intellect, taste and discernment." In her autobiography, Ingrid Bergman described Boyer as "widely read and well-educated," and the most intelligent actor she had ever worked with.
Bergman, who worked in three films with Boyer, became one of his best friends in Hollywood. After several attempts, the Boyers welcomed their only child, Michael Charles Boyer, during the filming of Gaslight. An amused Bergman recalled: "He had a son! Champagne! Everybody had to have champagne and Charles' tears were falling into every glass. You'd think no one in the world had ever had a son before."
As he aged, Boyer was wise enough to give up seductive roles and devote his considerable acting skills to character parts. Ironically, even in younger years his romantic image had been challenged by his unimpressive height (5 foot 9), premature loss of hair that demanded a toupee and a paunch that had to be corseted or concealed. There was a story that Bette Davis saw him in his natural state during the making of the film they did together and, failing to recognize him, asked that the unprepossessing "stranger" be removed from the set!
In the gentle family comedy The Happy Time (1952), Boyer played the paternal role. In the charming The Earrings of Madame De... (1953), shot in France by director Max Ophüls, he is one-third of a mature romantic triangle also involving Danielle Darrieux and Vittorio De Sica. In Vincente Minnelli's The Cobweb (1955), Boyer plays the self-effacing head of a mental institution where a younger doctor (Richard Widmark) is assuming control. Periodically returning to France, Boyer made such films as Une Parisienne (1957), a Brigitte Bardot comedy in which he plays a handsome older prince with whom her character flirts to make her boyfriend jealous.
Boyer was very active in episodic TV of the 1950s and '60s, particularly as one of the originators of CBS-TV's Four Star Playhouse (1952-56), which also featured Dick Powell, David Niven and Ida Lupino. The series spotlighted Boyer in some 30 episodes. He costarred with Gig Young in NBC's The Rogues (1964-65). He also worked on Broadway during this period, costarring with Mary Martin in Kind Sir (1953) and Claudette Colbert in The Marriage-Go-Round (1958). Notable critical success came for an appearance in Shaw's Don Juan in Hell (1951), which also starred Charles Laughton, Cedric Hardwicke and Agnes Moorehead.
Coming into his own as a mature character actor in films of the 1960s, Boyer earned his fourth and final Oscar® nomination for Fanny (1961), as a Marseille barkeeper who is the father of leading man Horst Buccholz. Key supporting roles of the period also included those of Glenn Ford's father in Minnelli's The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1962) and a matchmaker on the Riviera whose plans are foiled by an American (Ford again) in Love Is a Ball (1963).
Boyer appeared to have fun kidding his image as an aging Lothario in the film version of Neil Simon's Barefoot in the Park (1967); and played one of the conspirators plotting against Katharine Hepburn in The Madwoman of Chaillot (1969). He looked frail as the white-haired High Lama in the musical remake of Lost Horizon (1972), and even more so in his brief appearance as a decrepit lover from Ingrid Bergman's past in A Matter of Time (1976), the final film for both Boyer and director Minnelli.
After decades of married serenity as a bookish homebody, Boyer experienced tragedy in the final phases of his life. His son died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at age 21 in 1965 and Boyer's wife died of cancer in 1978. Two days later - on August 26, two days before his own 79th birthday - Boyer committed suicide with an overdose of Seconal. He was taken to a hospital in Phoenix, Arizona, and later interred in Holy Cross Cemetery, Culver City, Calif., alongside his wife and son.
By Roger Fristoe
Enjoy!
6:00 AM -- In This Our Life (1942)
A neurotic southerner steals her sister's husband then vies with her for another man.
Dir: John Huston
Cast: Bette Davis, Olivia De Havilland, George Brent
BW-97 mins
Both Bette Davis' and Olivia de Havilland's characters have masculine given names--"Stanley" and "Roy," respectively. The film never hints that there is anything unusual about their names, nor does it offer any explanation. In David Maraniss' 2012 biography of President Barack Obama, titled "Barack Obama: The Story", he reports that Obama's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham Obama Soetoro, was named "Stanley" not after her own father, Stanley Dunham, but after the Bette Davis character in this film. Maraniss says that Obama's maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, saw the movie while pregnant with Obama's mother, and she thought the name sounded sophisticated for a girl.
7:45 AM -- Flaming Gold (1933)
Two friends working a jungle oil field clash when one marries a lady of the evening.
Dir: Ralph Ince
Cast: Bill Boyd, Mae Clarke, Pat O'Brien
BW-53 mins, CC,
Based on a story by Houston Branch.
8:45 AM -- Fatty's Tintype Tangle (1915)
In this silent short, a henpecked husband is mistaken for a beautiful woman's jealous husband.
Dir: Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle
Cast: Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, Edgar Kennedy, Louise Fazenda
BW-28 mins,
This film was selected to the National Film Registry, Library of Congress, in 1995.
9:30 AM -- Expensive Women (1931)
A bright young thing can't decide which of her flirtations should lead to marriage.
Dir: Hobart Henley
Cast: Dolores Costello, H. B. Warner, Warren William
BW-60 mins,
Written by Wilson Collison, novelist who created the character Maisie, played in a film series by Ann Sothern.
10:45 AM -- Smilin' Through (1932)
A young woman falls in love with the son of an old family enemy.
Dir: Sidney Franklin
Cast: Norma Shearer, Fredric March, Leslie Howard
BW-98 mins,
Nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture
Fredric March commented to his first cousin, Kathryn Davis, about working with Norma Shearer, that, yes, she was a great actress, professional, etc., but could be difficult, because she constantly expected perfection. When Davis asked what that specifically meant, March replied, "She was never satisfied, kept having us do take after take." Pausing, he continued, unabashed, "Especially our love scenes. She always wanted to redo all the love scenes, several times!" Davis wanted to ask why he supposed Shearer always wanted to retake the love scenes in particular, but thought better of it and kept silent.
12:30 PM -- The Chocolate Soldier (1941)
A jealous husband tests his opera-singer wife's fidelity by pretending to be another man.
Dir: Roy Del Ruth
Cast: Nelson Eddy, Risë Stevens, Nigel Bruce
BW-102 mins, CC,
Nominated for Oscars for Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Karl Freund, Best Sound, Recording -- Douglas Shearer(M-G-M SSD), and Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture -- Herbert Stothart and Bronislau Kaper
When the stage version of "The Chocolate Soldier" premiered, it was as a musical adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's satirical play "Arms and the Man". Shaw strongly voiced his outrage over the way his play had been adapted and forbade any other musical adaptations of his plays (at least, as long as he was alive). "The Chocolate Soldier" had already been made into a silent film using the plot of Shaw's "Arms and the Man" (The Chocolate Soldier (1914)), but when this film was made, the plot of Ferenc Molnar's "The Guardsman" was used so as not to further offend Shaw, who was still alive.
2:30 PM -- Smash-Up, the Story of a Woman (1947)
A singer's wife turns to the bottle when she fears she's lost her husband to success.
Dir: Stuart Heisler
Cast: Susan Hayward, Lee Bowman, Marsha Hunt
BW-103 mins, CC,
Nominated for Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Susan Hayward, and Best Writing, Original Story -- Dorothy Parker and Frank Cavett
Reportedly suggested by the life and career of Bing Crosby and songstress wife Dixie Lee; when his popularity as an entertainer eclipsed that of Lee, she drifted into extreme alcoholism, just as Susan Hayward's character does in film.
4:30 PM -- Fifth Avenue Girl (1939)
To annoy his family, a millionaire hires an out-of-work girl to pose as a gold digger.
Dir: Gregory La Cava
Cast: Ginger Rogers, Walter Connolly, Verree Teasdale
BW-83 mins, CC,
The original ending of the movie just had Mary Grey leaving the Borden House, walking down Fifth Avenue, but the sneak preview audience complained at what it considered an unhappy ending. So the ending was changed to its current form, which essentially made it more palatable.
6:00 PM -- Deception (1946)
A woman tries to protect her refugee husband from her rich and powerful ex-lover.
Dir: Irving Rapper
Cast: Bette Davis, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains
BW-112 mins, CC,
Paul Henreid could not play the cello. While he was able to fake it in the long shots, to achieve the illusion in close up, he wore a special jacket with no sleeves and holes for two real cellists to insert their arms - one to bow, and one to accurately finger the music - while seated behind him, out of shot.
TCM PRIMETIME - WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: STAR OF THE MONTH: CHARLES BOYER
8:00 PM -- Love Affair (1939)
Near-tragic misunderstandings threaten a shipboard romance.
Dir: Leo McCarey
Cast: Irene Dunne, Charles Boyer, Maria Ouspenskaya
BW-88 mins, CC,
Nominated for Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Irene Dunne, Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Maria Ouspenskaya, Best Writing, Original Story -- Mildred Cram and Leo McCarey, Best Art Direction -- Van Nest Polglase and Alfred Herman, Best Music, Original Song -- Buddy G. DeSylva for the song "Wishing", and Best Picture
In 1957, director Leo McCarey remade the movie as An Affair to Remember (1957), starring Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr. (Cary Grant and Irene Dunne had previously co-starred in The Awful Truth (1937), which was also directed by McCarey.) The movie was remade a second time as Love Affair (1994), starring Warren Beatty, Annette Bening, and Katharine Hepburn, directed by Glenn Gordon Caron. The Grant/Kerr version is delightful. Avoid the Beatty/Bening version like the plague.
9:45 PM -- All This, and Heaven Too (1940)
A French nobleman falls in love with his children's governess.
Dir: Anatole Litvak
Cast: Bette Davis, Charles Boyer, Jeffrey Lynn
BW-143 mins, CC,
Nominated for Oscars for Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Barbara O'Neil, Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Ernest Haller, and Best Picture
Based on the true story of the Duc de Choiseul-Praslin, a French politician who was accused of the brutal murder of his wife Fanny Sebastiani in 1848. Praslin committed suicide via poison while under house arrest, subsequently causing the murder trial to be annulled. To this day the murder remains one of France's most famous "unsolved" murder cases. The real life governess, Henriette Deluzy-Deportes, was the great-aunt of Rachel Field, who wrote the novel that was the basis for this movie.
12:30 AM -- Liliom (1934)
Two women love the same man in a world of few prospects.
Dir: Fritz Lang
Cast: Charles Boyer, Madeleine Ozeray, Robert Arnoux
BW-117 mins, CC,
In his 1939 book about his Mexican travels, "The Lawless Roads", Graham Greene relates how the Mexican audiences prepared to walk out on the film when two forbidding-looking angels appeared, but settled back down to watch it when they realized that Heaven was going to be depicted in a humorous way.
2:45 AM -- Conquest (1937)
A Polish countess sacrifices her virtue to Napoleon to save her homeland.
Dir: Clarence Brown
Cast: Greta Garbo, Charles Boyer, Reginald Owen
BW-112 mins, CC,
Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Charles Boyer, and Best Art Direction -- Cedric Gibbons and William A. Horning
The lavish ballroom set where Napoleon dances with Marie Walewska is actually identical to that used in Maytime (1937) - the Jeanette McDonald /Nelson Eddy operetta. It has simply been redressed and given a different floor covering and shot from a different angle.
4:45 AM -- Algiers (1938)
A thief on the run from the law risks his life for love.
Dir: John Cromwell
Cast: Sigrid Gurie, Charles Boyer, Hedy Lamarr
BW-95 mins, CC,
Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Charles Boyer, Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Gene Lockhart, Best Cinematography -- James Wong Howe, and Best Art Direction -- Alexander Toluboff
Animator Chuck Jones based the Warner Brothers cartoon character "Pepe le Pew" on the "Pepe le Moko" character played by Charles Boyer in this film.
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