TCM Schedule for Thursday, January 8 -- New York vs. L.A.

[Staph]

Happy birthday, Elvis Presley! Today he would have turned 74, so we have a day full of swiveling hips. This evening continues the NY vs LA theme, with two nautically-themed Gene Kelly musicals and a couple of hotel-based Neil Simon films. Enjoy!


5:30am -- Fire Down Below (1957)
Partners in a tramp steamer both fall for a mysterious lady passenger.
Cast: Rita Hayworth, Robert Mitchum, Jack Lemmon
Dir: Robert Parrish
C-115 mins, TV-PG

Inspired by their location shoot in Trinidad/Tobago, Robert Mitchum recorded a calypso album, and Jack Lemmon scored a harmonica theme for the movie.


7:30am -- King Creole (1958)
A singer with a criminal past gets drawn back into the mob.
Cast: Carolyn Jones, Walter Matthau, Elvis Presley
Dir: Michael Curtiz
BW-116 mins, TV-PG

Elvis Presley got a 60-day extension from his draft board to finish filming this movie before he was inducted into the U.S. Army.


9:30am -- G.I. Blues (1960)
An American stationed in Germany bets that he can make an icy entertainer fall for him.
Cast: Robert Ivers, Elvis Presley, Juliet Prowse
Dir: Norman Taurog
C-104 mins, TV-G

All of the main cast scenes were filmed in Hollywood on indoor sets, in front of process screens, and on backlots. Location and exterior shots were filmed in Germany, but they used stand-ins and were intercut with the process-screen shots.


11:15am -- Blue Hawaii (1961)
A Hawaiian playboy defies his possessive mother to take a job with a tourist agency.
Cast: Joan Blackman, Angela Lansbury, Elvis Presley
Dir: Norman Taurog
C-101 mins, TV-PG

Approximately seven minutes before "The End," Maile (Joan Blackman) kicks Chad (Elvis) out of her room on Kauai, then peeks through the blinds. Briefly in her view is a couple paddling a canoe. The woman, blond and seated in front, is Pop singer Patti Page. Patti paddled her way into being an extra because she was then married to Charles O'Curran, a choreographer and music stager for many films produced by Hal B. Wallis, including "Blue Hawaii."


1:00pm -- Girls! Girls! Girls! (1962)
A Hawaiian fisherman is torn between a sexy nightclub singer and a nice girl with a secret.
Cast: Elvis Presley, Jeremy Slate, Stella Stevens
Dir: Norman Taurog
C-99 mins, TV-PG

The only one of Elvis Presley's feature film to be nominated for a Golden Globe award.


2:45pm -- Fun in Acapulco (1963)
A trapeze artist tries to use love to conquer his fear of heights.
Cast: Ursula Andress, Elsa Cardenas, Elvis Presley
Dir: Richard Thorpe
C-97 mins, TV-PG

Teri Garr makes her uncredited movie debut as an extra in this film. She would go on to appear as an uncredited extra in several more Elvis Presley movies before becoming a full-fledged actress.


4:30pm -- Roustabout (1964)
A female carnival owner hires a hot-blooded young singer to save her touring show.
Cast: Joan Freeman, Elvis Presley, Barbara Stanwyck
Dir: John Rich
C-101 mins, TV-PG

Raquel Welch makes an early appearance as one of the college kids at the Tea House.


6:15pm -- Elvis on Tour (1972)
Extensive concert footage highlights this documentary about the King's touring in the early '70s.
C-93 mins, TV-G

There is one sequence in the film where the producers chose to show a segment of Elvis performing live READY TEDDY at a Ed Sullivan Show in 1956. Elvis's manager tried hard to convince them not to use this segment as he didn't want Elvis to appear as a nostalgia act. He explained them that Elvis was a modern performer and they didn't have to show this 1956 performance. The producers left the segment in the film and it was released like this.


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


8:00pm -- On the Town (1949)
Three sailors wreak havoc as they search for love during a whirlwind 24-hour leave in New York City.
Cast: Betty Garrett, Gene Kelly, Ann Miller, Frank Sinatra
Dir: Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly
C-98 mins, TV-G

Won an Oscar® for Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture -- Roger Edens and Lennie Hayton

The crew tried to keep the location filming in New York City as low-key as possible. Many of the scenes were filmed from the back of a station wagon. At the end of "New York, New York", as the camera tilts up at Rockefeller Plaza, you can see the skating rink lined with spectators watching Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly.


9:45pm -- Anchors Aweigh (1945)
A pair of sailors on leave try to help a movie extra become a singing star.
Cast: Kathryn Grayson, Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Dean Stockwell
Dir: George Sidney
C-139 mins, TV-G

Won an Oscar® for Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture -- George E. Stoll (On 10 September 2001 Kevin Spacey purchased Stoll's Oscar statuette at a Butterfields auction in Los Angeles and returned it to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.)

Nominated for Oscars® for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Gene Kelly, Best Cinematography, Color -- Robert H. Planck and Charles P. Boyle, Best Music, Original Song -- Jule Styne (music) and Sammy Cahn (lyrics) for the song "I Fall in Love Too Easily", and Best Picture

For the most famous sequence in the film, Mickey Mouse was originally meant to be the dance partner of Gene Kelly. However, when Walt Disney refused to have his most famous character appear in an MGM film. Kelly turned to MGM's own animation studio and used Jerry Mouse of Tom and Jerry fame. When that dance sequence was screened for MGM executives, someone noticed that although Kelly's reflection shone on the floor during his dancing, Jerry's did not. So all the animators who worked on the sequence had to be rehired to go back in and draw Jerry's reflection on the floor as he was dancing.


12:15am -- The Out-of-Towners (1969)
A man's New York job interview turns into a non-stop nightmare.
Cast: Sandy Baron, Sandy Dennis, Jack Lemmon
Dir: Arthur Hiller
C-97 mins, TV-14

Unlike many Neil Simon efforts, which were written as plays and then adapted into a film, Simon wrote this directly for the screen when he realized that a play would have difficulty portraying the many different locations involved.


2:00am -- California Suite (1978)
Four sets of guests at a posh hotel face personal crises.
Cast: Alan Alda, Michael Caine, Jane Fonda, Maggie Smith
Dir: Herbert Ross
C-102 mins, TV-14

Won an Oscar® for Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Maggie Smith

Nominated for Oscars® for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration -- Albert Brenner and Marvin March, and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium -- Neil Simon

Diana Barrie (Maggie Smith) says that she wishes David Niven could accept her award for her because he would be witty and charming. In the play on which the movie is based, she says Michael Caine, but it was changed when Caine was cast as her husband.


4:00am -- Where's Poppa? (1970)
New York lawyer deals with an unhinged mother, a peculiar love life and other big city troubles.
Cast: Ruth Gordon, Ron Leibman, George Segal, Trish Van Devere
Dir: Carl Reiner
C-84 mins, TV-MA

The first American film to use the word "cocksucker". Such a distinction!

[Staph]

1. On The Town (1949)

Gabey, Chip and Ozzie have exactly 24 hours' shore leave in New York and are determined to see all the sights and find some romance along the way. Chip is pursued by Brunhilde, an aggressive taxi-driver. Ozzie hits it off with Claire, an anthropologist, while visiting the Museum of Natural History. Gabey, on the other hand, has his hopes pinned on a seemingly impossible dream: "Miss Turnstiles," whose poster he sees on the subway. However, this is New York and a lot can happen in one day.

On the Town (1949) is undoubtedly one of the key works in the development of the Hollywood musical. Up to that time, musicals were entirely studio-bound, with rare exceptions such as the Brooklyn Bridge sequence in It Happened in Brooklyn (1947). Directors Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly wanted to use extensive locations, but the studio allowed only one week of shooting in New York. It proceeded at a breathless pace, often using hidden cameras to avoid crowd problems. Another innovative feature, also part of the Broadway stage production, is their use of modern dance to advance the plot in sequences such as "Miss Turnstiles" and "A Day in New York." Kelly's interest in using modern dance would develop further in the climactic ballet of An American in Paris (1951) and Invitation to the Dance (1956).

In fact, the two aforementioned dance numbers, along with the songs "New York, New York" and "Come Up to My Place," were the only musical numbers retained for Bernstein's original score. Betty Comden and Adolph Green, who wrote the book and played Claire and Ozzie in the Broadway production, were hired by MGM to write new lyrics. Roger Edens composed six new songs, receiving an Academy Award (along with Musical Director Lennie Hayton) in the process. The Breen office forbade the use of "helluva" in the song "New York, New York," which MGM eventually changed to "wonderful." Alice Pearce was the sole holdover from the Broadway cast. Produced for $2,100,00, On the Town grossed over $4,400,000, reflecting the continuing profitability of the musical genre at that time.

Sinatra, who was 34, resented having to wear hairpieces and special padding in the buttocks to fill out the sailor outfit. After playing a sailor previously in Anchors Aweigh (1945), also starring Gene Kelly, he is said to have vowed never to wear such an outfit again; we should be thankful that he changed his mind. It's Always Fair Weather (1955), a later Kelly/Donen effort, was intended as a sequel to On the Town, but Sinatra and Munshin weren't available for the production.

For the record, Sinatra gets to sing on five numbers in On the Town and they include the two previously mentioned songs - "New York, New York" and "Come Up to My Place" - as well as "You're Awful," "Count on Me," and the title song.

Director: Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen
Producer: Arthur Freed
Screenplay: Betty Comden and Adolph Green
Cinematography: Harold Rosson
Editing: Ralph E. Winters
Music: Roger Edens and Leonard Bernstein
Principle Cast: Gene Kelly (Gabey), Frank Sinatra (Chip), Jules Munshin (Ozzie), Vera-Ellen (Ivy Smith), Betty Garrett (Brunhilde Esterhazy), Ann Miller (Claire Huddesen), Alice Pearce (Lucy Schmeeler).
C-98m. Close captioning. Descriptive video.

by James Steffen