TCM Schedule for Thursday, January 1 -- New York vs. L.A.

[Staph]

Today we have the perfect antidote for an overdose of football -- screwball comedies! In place of Sugar, Oranges, Cotton, Roses and Fiestas, we have Nothing Sacred, My Favorite Wife, It Happened One Night, The Awful Truth, and, my personal favorite, Bringing Up Baby. Tonight we've got thrillers based on the coasts, including the original 1933 King Kong and 1950's The Killer That Stalked New York. Enjoy and have a happy new year!


5:00am -- Short Film: THE MGM STORY (1950)
A collection of MGM previews with an introduction by Lionel Barrymore.
Cast: Lionel Barrymore, Dore Schary.
BW-57 mins, TV-G

A nearly one-hour-long promotion for upcoming MGM films for late 1950 and all of 1951.


6:00am -- Nothing Sacred (1937)
When a small-town girl is diagnosed with a rare, deadly disease, an ambitious newspaper man turns her into a national heroine.
Cast: Walter Connolly, Carole Lombard, Fredric March, Charles Winninger
Dir: William A. Wellman
C-74 mins, TV-PG

Boxer 'Slapsie Maxie' Rosenbloom, who also acted in this film, gave boxing lessons to Carole Lombard before her discussion with Fredric March in this film.


7:15am -- Twentieth Century (1934)
A tempestuous theatrical director tries to win back the star he created and then drove away.
Cast: John Barrymore, Walter Connolly, Carole Lombard
Dir: Howard Hawks
BW-91 mins, TV-PG

Howard Hawks was concerned when Carole Lombard could not perform the kicking scene very well. Hawks took her out for a walk and recalls, "I asked her how much money she was getting for this picture. She told me and I said, 'What would you say if I told you you'd earned your whole salary this morning and didn't have to act anymore?' And she was stunned. So I said, 'Now forget about the scene. What would you do if someone said such and such to you?' And she said, 'I'd kick him in the balls.' And I said, 'Well, he (John Barrymore) said something like that--why don't you kick him?' She said, 'Are you kidding?' And I said, 'No.'" Hawks ended the conversation with, "Now we're going back in and make this scene and you kick, and you do any damn thing that comes into your mind that's natural, and quit acting. If you don't quit, I'm going to fire you this afternoon." Hawks' white lies did the trick, and the scene was filmed. In addition, Hawks claimed that after that, Lombard never began another movie without sending him a telegram that read, "I'm gonna start kicking him."


9:00am -- Libeled Lady (1936)
When an heiress sues a newspaper, the editor hires a reporter to compromise her.
Cast: Jean Harlow, Myrna Loy, Spencer Tracy
Dir: Jack Conway
BW-98 mins, TV-G

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture

When leading lady Jean Harlow was entombed in Glendale's Forest Lawn Cemetery in 1937, she was dressed in the gown she wore in this film.


10:40am -- Short Film: One Reel Wonders: A Day At Santa Anita (1937)
A top thoroughbred race horse, Wonder Boy, responds well only to a child. After the girl's father is killed in an accident, she inherits Wonder Boy and becomes his owner, but child authorities threaten to take custody. A familiar story that still holds its sentimental value.
Cast: Sybil Jason, Marcia Ralston.
Dir: Bobby Connelly.
C-18 mins

Cameos by Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland, Allen Jenkins, Al Jolson, Ruby Keeler, and Edward G. Robinson.


11:00am -- Bringing Up Baby (1938)
A madcap heiress upsets the staid existence of a straitlaced scientist.
Cast: Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, May Robson, Charlie Ruggles
Dir: Howard Hawks
BW-102 mins, TV-G

The scene in which Susan's dress is ripped was inspired by something that happened to Cary Grant. He was at the Roxy Theater one night and his pants zipper was down when it caught on the back of a woman's dress. Grant impulsively followed her. When he told this story to Howard Hawks, Hawks loved it and put it into the film.


12:45pm -- Theodora Goes Wild (1936)
A woman's two lives as small-town innocent and author of torrid romances collide.
Cast: Melvyn Douglas, Irene Dunne, Thomas Mitchell
BW-94 mins, TV-G

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Irene Dunne, and Best Film Editing -- Otto Meyer

According to the March 31, 1941 issue of Time magazine, Melvyn Douglas and Edward G. Robinson bid $3,200 for the fedora hat that Franklin D. Roosevelt had worn during his three successful campaigns for the Presidency. They acquired the hat at a special Hollywood auction to benefit the Motion Picture Relief Fund. Both Robinson and Douglas were identified as "loyal Democrats." Douglas was extremely active in liberal causes in the 1930s and '40s, which opened him up to charges of being a "Fellow traveler" during the McCarthyite period. Douglas' wife, Helen Gahagan Douglas would later serve as U.S. Representative (Democrat-California) and be defeated in her 1950 bid for the U.S. Senate by Republican Congressman Richard Nixon, who dubbed her the "pink lady" for her leftist leanings. (President John F. Kennedy would appoint her Treasurer of the United States in 1961.) About Democrat-turned-Republican Ronald Reagan), Douglas said after he was elected President of the United States in 1980 that his former friend (and former liberal Democrat) had begun to believe in the speeches he delivered for General Electric when he was the star of a Western TV series sponsored by GE.


2:30pm -- My Favorite Wife (1940)
A shipwrecked woman is rescued just in time for her husband's re-marriage.
Cast: Irene Dunne, Cary Grant, Gail Patrick
Dir: Garson Kanin
BW-88 mins, TV-G

Nominated for Oscars for Best Art Direction, Black-and-White -- Van Nest Polglase and Mark-Lee Kirk, Best Music, Original Score -- Roy Webb, and Best Writing, Original Story -- Leo McCarey, Bella Spewack and Sam Spewack

The movie was inspired by Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem, "Enoch Arden." Although it is not credited on-screen, the writers gave tribute to it by calling the main characters "Arden."


4:03pm -- Short Film: One Reel Wonders: I Love My Wife, But! (1946)
A short about the various types of wives that one can have and how to deal with them.
Cast: Dave O'Brien.
Dir: Dave O'Brien.
BW-9 mins

Pete Smith demonstrates some of the horrors men face being married to women. Women are always late. Women are always nagging. Women are terrible drivers. Women are annoying. Women are pests. I doubt that this was amusing for women in 1946, and I know that I am not amused in 2009.


4:15pm -- The Awful Truth (1937)
A divorced couple keeps getting mixed up in each other's love lives.
Cast: Ralph Bellamy, Cecil Cunningham, Irene Dunne, Cary Grant
Dir: Leo McCarey
BW-91 mins, TV-PG

Won an Oscar for Best Director -- Leo McCarey

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Ralph Bellamy, Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Irene Dunne, Best Film Editing -- Al Clark, Best Writing, Screenplay -- Viña Delmar, and Best Picture

It was in this film that Irene Dunne first utters the name 'Jerry The Nipper' implying that Grant's character was often fond of a stiff drink or two. The following year in Bringing Up Baby (1938), in the scene when they're all in the lock up Katherine Hepburn says "Haven't you heard of Jerry The Nipper?" To which Grant replies that "She's making it up out of Motion Pictures she's seen".


6:00pm -- It Happened One Night (1934)
A newspaperman tracks a runaway heiress on a madcap cross-country tour.
Cast: Claudette Colbert, Clark Gable
Dir: Frank Capra
BW-105 mins, TV-PG

Won Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Clark Gable (In 1996, Steven Spielberg anonymously purchased Clark Gable's Oscar to protect it from further commercial exploitation, gave it back to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, commenting that he could think of "no better sanctuary for Gable's only Oscar than the Motion Picture Academy".), Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Claudette Colbert (Claudette Colbert was so convinced that she would lose the Oscar to write-in nominee Bette Davis that she didn't attended the ceremony originally. She was summoned from a train station to pick up her Academy Award.), Best Director -- Frank Capra, Best Writing, Adaptation -- Robert Riskin, and Best Picture (This was the first film to win the Oscar "grand slam" (Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director and Screenplay).)

Friz Freleng's unpublished memoirs mention that this was one of his favorite films, and that it contains at least three things upon which the character "Bugs Bunny" was based: - The character Oscar Shapely's (Roscoe Karns) personality - The manner in which Peter Warne (Clark Gable) was eating carrots and talking quickly at the same time - An imaginary character mentioned once to frighten Oscar Shapely named "Bugs Dooley." Other mentions of "Looney Tunes" characters from the film include Alexander Andrews (Walter Connolly) and King Westley (Jameson Thomas) being the inspirations for Yosemite Sam and Pepé LePew, respectively.


What's On Tonight: TCM SPOTLIGHT: NEW YORK VS. L.A.


8:00pm -- King Kong (1933)
A film crew discovers the "eighth wonder of the world," a giant prehistoric ape, and brings him back to New York, where he wreaks havoc.
Cast: Robert Armstrong, Bruce Cabot, Frank Reicher, Fay Wray
Dir: Merian C. Cooper
BW-105 mins, TV-PG

The native village huts were left over from RKO's Bird of Paradise (1932). The Great Wall was part of the Temple of Jerusalem set for Cecil B. DeMille's Biblical epic The King of Kings (1927). The Great Wall set was later reused in Selznick's The Garden of Allah (1936) and finally redressed with Civil War era building fronts, burned and pulled down by a tractor to film the burning of Atlanta munitions warehouses in Gone with the Wind (1939).


10:00pm -- Them! (1954)
Federal agents fight to destroy a colony of mutated giant ants.
Cast: Edmund Gwenn, James Whitmore
Dir: Gordon Douglas
BW-93 mins, TV-PG

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Effects, Special Effects

Walt Disney screened the movie because he was interested in casting James Arness as Davy Crockett. However, he was so impressed by Fess Parker as the "Crazy Texan Pilot" that he chose him for the part.


11:42pm -- Short Film: One Reel Wonders: Unseen Guardians (1939)
The unseen guardians are the Postal Inspection Service, the Underwriters' Laboratories, and those who run orphanages.
Narrator: John Nesbitt.
Dir: Basil Wrangell.
BW-11 mins

This is one of those earnest little movie house short subjects in the "Passing Parade" series which were meant to edify the audience. In the 1910 - 30s film began to become somewhat more informative, hoping to teach the audience a point or two. This one is how we overlook the Postal Inspectors on the search for fraud, the Underwriters who test and retest devices used with electricity or to retard fires, and the people at children asylums who decide which of the adult adoption candidates is really eligible.


12:00am -- The Killer That Stalked New York (1950)
Married jewel thieves struggle with infidelity, federal agents and the deadly smallpox virus.
Cast: William Bishop, Evelyn Keyes, Charles Korvin
Dir: Earl McEvoy
BW-76 mins, TV-PG

Based on a true story, documented in an article by Milton Lehman in Colliers Magazine.


1:30am -- The Satan Bug (1965)
A mad millionaire bribes a scientist to steal a deadly virus.
Cast: Dana Andrews, Richard Basehart, Anne Francis, George Maharis
Dir: John Sturges
C-115 mins, TV-PG

Based on a novel by Alistair MacLean (author of The Guns of Navarone and Ice Station Zebra), with the screenplay written by James Clavell (King Rat, Shogun, and To Sir With Love)


3:30am -- Speedy (1928)
In this silent film, a young man helps his girlfriend save the family trolley business.
Cast: Ann Christy, Harold Lloyd, Babe Ruth
Dir: Ted Wilde
BW-86 mins, TV-G

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Director, Comedy Picture -- Ted Wilde

Harold Lloyd was such a popular star at the time, the Coney Island scenes had to be filmed secretly, with the camera often hidden from view, to avoid attracting mobs of adoring fans. This was Harold Lloyd's last silent film.

[Staph]

1. King Kong (1933)

Whoever thought that a movie starring a giant ape would inspire countless imitations? But King Kong (1933) turned out to be a major blockbuster for its era and still remains the "king" of this peculiar genre. For those who need to brush up on their gorilla classics, here's the set-up: Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong), an arrogant documentary filmmaker, organizes a trek into unchartered territory in the hopes of discovering a unique animal that he can capture, bring back to civilization, and exploit for profit. After hiring Ann Darrow (Fay Wray), an attractive blonde, to help him on his mission, Denham leads his crew to mysterious, fog-enshrouded Skull Island where they encounter something tall, dark, and very hairy.

Working with a modest budget, Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, the producers of King Kong, had to make do with limited resources in terms of sets. Most of the budget was allocated to special effects and musical scoring. The jungle, overgrown with gigantic flora, was actually recycled from Schoedsack's previous film, The Most Dangerous Game (1932). He actually began shooting jungle locations for King Kong before The Most Dangerous Game had wrapped and between setups the crew would rush in to shoot their own jungle scenes. What made the schedule even more hectic was the fact that Fay Wray also starred in The Most Dangerous Game and had to race back and forth between the two films; Not surprisingly, her outfit for the jungle sequences in each film is suspiciously familiar!

Originally co-director Merian Cooper envisioned using a real gorilla for Kong, but once having screened Willis O'Brien's animation for a now-lost film called Creation, he knew that the special effects technician could bring his beast to life. Although in the film, Kong appears to be 40 feet tall; he was actually only an 18-inch model. The great ape was a skillful combination of a metal mesh skeleton, a mixture of rubber and foam for the muscle structure and rabbit fur for his hair. With trick photography, rear projection and an array of glass plates, Cooper and Schoedsack helped their three cinematographers blend O'Brien's stop-motion-animated sequences with real actors to create a realistic beast. O'Brien, of course, had built his reputation as Hollywood's top motion-control animator with his first feature-length film, The Lost World (1925), starring Wallace Beery.

As wildly popular and profitable as King Kong was on its first release in 1933, the censors sharpened their scissors on the big gorilla for its 1938 re-release and demanded that 29 scenes from the original version be cut before the film could be granted a seal of approval. For example, the bloody carcasses of five men dying in the jaws of the Brontosaurus were edited so that the beast only claimed three victims. Three lives were more acceptable to the Hays Office. The scene in which Kong holds an unconscious Ann Darrow (Fay Wray) captive in his massive palm while gently peeling off her dress like a linen banana was completely unacceptable to the new morality. This scene was completely eliminated for the 1938 release. Other scenes that were deleted included Kong chomping down on a New Yorker and dropping a woman from the Empire State Building. Despite these crucial cuts, most of the edited scenes were eventually restored to King Kong and seem rather tame by today's standards. However, O'Brien's title creation is still impressive, particularly in his first appearance, and Fay Wray still has the best scream in Hollywood history; it's one that has chilled audiences in such classic horror flicks as Doctor X (1932) and The Vampire Bat (1933).

Director: Merian C. Cooper/Ernest B. Schoedsack
Producer: Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack, David O. Selznick
Screenplay: Merian C. Cooper, Edgar Wallace (story), James Ashmore Creelman, Ruth Rose
Cinematography: Edward Linden, Kenneth Peach, J. O. Taylor, Vernon L. Walker
Music: Max Steiner
Art Direction: Carroll Clark, Alfred Herman, Van Nest Polglase
Special Effects: Willis O'Brien, Harry Redmond Jr.
Cast: Robert Armstrong (Carl Denham), Fay Wray (Ann Darrow), Bruce Cabot (Jack Driscoll), Frank Reicher (Captain Englehorn), Sam Hardy (Charles Weston), Noble Johnson (Native chief), James Flavin (Briggs).
BW-105m. Closed captioning. Descriptive Video.

by Vicky Lee, Mike Tandecki, & Jeremy Geltzer

[Hidden Stillness]

2. Holiday Movies, ("Bringing Up Baby" today, etc.)

Just finished watching "Bringing Up Baby" a little while ago; what a wonderful movie and cast. It now really feels like a holiday, complete. So many holidays are tied up with certain old movies, and the new "hysterically-visual" movies don't have the heart and soul (and writing) to do it. "It's a Wonderful Life" and the 1938 and 1951 versions of "A Christmas Carol" and Christmas, etc.; and one of the best Thanksgivings I ever spent was during the '70s when a local TV channel, (back when they still had local TV), spent the whole holiday running great W.C. Fields movies like "It's a Gift" and "The Bank Dick." It was just the right atmosphere. Also, the Charlie Brown specials, for Christmas and for Halloween, that bring you the real sense of things, along with the lights, trick-or-treaters, etc. Sometimes, these things get so associated with the holiday, that it becomes one of the most-real parts of it, like the tree or cards, etc. It wouldn't feel so much like the holiday, if you didn't have these great movies (and Charlie Brown specials) bringing you just a certain presentation of the world, always there, familiar. Happy New Year to all DU old movie lovers.

Also, a note: "Speedy" with Harold Lloyd was a great movie, (on TCM very late tonight).

[Staph]

3. Certain movies really go with the holidays.

My family knows me so well -- they gave me Holiday Inn (1942, with Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire, Marjorie Reynolds and Virginia Dale) and White Christmas (1954, with Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney, and Vera-Ellen). The Holiday Inn set included a CD soundtrack, which became the soundtrack for the opening of the rest of the presents on Christmas morning.

[Longhorn]

4. That's so true!

For me, I have to see White Christmas, It's A Wonderful Life, Meet Me in St. Louis, and Holiday Inn. In more recent years, I've added A Christmas Story, Christmas in Connecticut, and Holiday Affair. Then this year I saw Remember the Night with Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck so now I have added another movie to the list. Thank goodness for TCM! :hi:

These movies do more to put me in the mood than decorations or Christmas music! :)