TCM Schedule for Friday, September 25 -- Directed by Phil Karlson

[Staph]

We've got a mixed bag of films today, with a pair directed by Edward Buzell and another pair directed by Frank Borzage. And tonight features a director of film noir, Phil Karlson.

Phil Karlson entered the film industry while a law student at Loyola Marymount University in California. He got a job at Universal Pictures as a prop man, then worked pretty much any job they threw at him, from being an assistant director on several Bud Abbott and Lou Costello films to directing short subjects. He finally got a shot at features in 1944. Although he initially worked for low-budget studios like Monogram (where he shot several Bowery Boys and Charlie Chan entries) and Eagle-Lion, his films even then were marked by his penchant for short, tight scenes and sudden bursts of action. He made his mark in the 1950s with a series of tough, realistic, violent crime films noted for their gritty location shooting and Karlson's almost fanatic attention to detail. As good as those films were, though, Karlson was never able to capitalize on them and raise himself out of the B-picture mire, and he was stuck making things like The Young Doctors (1961), Kid Galahad (1962) and a pair of the Matt Helm films with Dean Martin, until he hit it big with Walking Tall (1973), his biggest commercial success (and which, since he owned a large part of the picture, made him rich).

Enjoy!


6:00am -- Air Hostess (1933)
A plucky stewardess risks her life marrying a daredevil pilot.
Cast: Evalyn Knapp, James Murray, Arthur Pierson, Thelma Todd
Dir: Albert Rogell
BW-68 mins, TV-G

Evalyn Knapp was the younger sister of well-known orchestra leader Orville Knapp (1904-1936) whose big songs were "Indigo" and "Accent on Youth." They initially appeared together in a dancing vaudeville act. Ironically, Orville, who was named after famed aeronautics pioneer 'Orville Wright', died in the crash of his private biplane.


7:15am -- Ann Carver's Profession (1933)
A female lawyer is torn between her career and her husband's ego.
Cast: Fay Wray, Gene Raymond, Claire Dodd, Jessie Ralph
Dir: Edward Buzzell
BW-68 mins, TV-PG

Edward Buzzel was born in Brooklyn and became a musical comedy star on Broadway. He went to Hollywood in 1929 to star in the movie version of the old George M. Cohan stage show "Little Johnny Jones" in 1929. He stared also in Vitaphone shorts, where he also started his career as director. Subsequently he directed shorts for Columbia, before he started directing long features in 1933. Later he came to MGM, where he made his best remembered movies with the Marx Brothers (At the Circus (1939), Go West (1940)), Eleanor Powell (Ship Ahoy (1942), Honolulu (1939)) and Esther Williams (Neptune's Daughter (1949).


8:30am -- Child of Manhattan (1933)
A taxi dancer tries to pick up the pieces when her marriage to a millionaire playboy collapses.
Cast: Nancy Carroll, John Boles, Charles "Buck" Jones, Jessie Ralph
Dir: Edward Buzzell
BW-70 mins, TV-PG

Watch for Betty Grable in a small role as Nancy Carroll's sister.


9:45am -- The Circus Queen Murder (1933)
A vacationing DA gets mixed up in a tangled case involving a touring circus.
Cast: Adolphe Menjou, Greta Nissen, Ruthelma Stevens, Dwight Frye
Dir: Roy William Neill
BW-65 mins

The name of the circus, the John T. Rainey Circus, was specifically chosen so that extensive archive footage from Rain or Shine (1930), also featuring a John T. Rainey Circus, could be used to advantage, as well as the sets and wagons.


11:00am -- A Man's Castle (1933)
An unemployed man turns to crime when he gets his girlfriend pregnant.
Cast: Spencer Tracy, Loretta Young, Marjorie Rambeau, Glenda Farrell
Dir: Frank Borzage
BW-69 mins, TV-PG

Director Frank Borzage was the first to win an Academy Award for Best Director, for 7th Heaven (1927).


12:15pm -- My Woman (1933)
When a vaudeville hoofer hits the big time, he neglects the wife who helped put him there.
Cast: Helen Twelvetrees, Victor Jory, Wallace Ford, Claire Dodd
Dir: Victor Schertzinger
BW-73 mins

Helen Twelvetrees met her first husband, Clark Twelvetrees, while both were enrolled at the American Academy of Dramatic Art. They eloped to Greenwich, Connecticut in 1927. They both worked in New York's theatre town -- she as an actress and he as a stage manager -- but he couldn't get his acting career going and turned to alcohol. They divorced in 1931 and he died seven years later of acute alcoholism following a street brawl.


1:30pm -- Seven Sweethearts (1942)
A father insists that his seven daughters marry in order, from eldest to youngest.
Cast: Kathryn Grayson, Marsha Hunt, Cecilia Parker, Peggy Moran
Dir: Frank Borzage
BW-98 mins, TV-G

Although the onscreen credits say "original screenplay", a $200,000 lawsuit was filed against the screenwiters, MGM and producer Joe Pasternak by playwright Ferenc Herczeg in 1949, claiming they took the idea from his 1903 play. Herczeg was in a Nazi concentration camp in 1942 when the film was released, and didn't hear about it until 1948. The case was settled out of court for a substantial amount.


3:30pm -- Good News (1947)
A football hero falls in love with his French tutor.
Cast: June Allyson, Peter Lawford, Patricia Marshall, Joan McCracken
Dir: Charles Walters
C-93 mins, TV-G

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Music, Original Song -- Ralph Blane, Hugh Martin and Roger Edens for the song "Pass That Peace Pipe".

Since Peter Lawford spoke French fluently and June Allyson did not, Lawford had to teach Allyson how to teach him to speak French in the French Lesson scene.


5:30pm -- The King and I (1956)
The king of Siam clashes with the British governess hired to teach his children.
Cast: Deborah Kerr, Yul Brynner, Rita Moreno, Martin Benson
Dir: Walter Lang
C-133 mins, TV-G

Won Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Yul Brynner, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color -- Lyle R. Wheeler, John DeCuir, Walter M. Scott and Paul S. Fox, Best Costume Design, Color -- Irene Sharaff, Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture -- Alfred Newman and Ken Darby, and Best Sound, Recording -- Carlton W. Faulkner (20th Century-Fox SSD)

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Deborah Kerr, Best Cinematography, Color -- Leon Shamroy, Best Director -- Walter Lang, and Best Picture

Dorothy Dandridge was the original choice for the role of Tuptim. It has been reported that Miss Dandridge, who had just made history as the first African American woman to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress in Carmen Jones (1954), was strongly advised to refuse the role because Tuptim was a slave. The role went to Rita Moreno, who was of Puerto Rican descent.


What's On Tonight: TCM PRIME TIME FEATURE: DIRECTED BY PHIL KARLSON


8:00pm -- Scandal Sheet (1952)
A tabloid editor assigns a young reporter to solve a murder the editor committed himself.
Cast: Broderick Crawford, Donna Reed, John Derek, Rosemary DeCamp
Dir: Phil Karlson
BW-82 mins, TV-PG

On July 7, 1946, Rosemary DeCamp and her husband were in their house in Beverly Hills, California, when an aircraft crashed into the roof of the house next door, and its wing cut through the roof of her house and landed in the bedroom, where she and her husband were. The plane, an experimental model called the XF-11, had experienced mechanical problems after taking off from the airport at nearby Culver City. It was piloted by Howard Hughes, and finally came to rest after crashing through the wall of the house of another of DeCamp's neighbors and exploding. Hughes was rescued from the cockpit by a bystander and, although receiving several broken bones, burns and gashes, was not severely injured and eventually made a full recovery. He paid for the damage to the houses in the neighborhood out of his own pocket.


9:30pm -- The Phenix City Story (1955)
A crusading lawyer takes on the corrupt machine running a Southern town.
Cast: John McIntire, Richard Kiley, Kathryn Grant, Edward Andrews
Dir: Phil Karlson
BW-100 mins, TV-14

Such was director Phil Karlson's attention to detail, he had some of his actors wear the actual clothes of their screen counterparts. The film was in production so quickly, some of the criminals it was portraying where standing trial while filming was taking place.


11:30pm -- The Brothers Rico (1957)
A reformed mob accountant tries to get to his gangster brother before the criminals can.
Cast: Richard Conte, Dianne Foster, Kathryn Grant, Larry Gates
Dir: Phil Karlson
BW-92 mins, TV-PG

Last film of Italian actress Mimi Aguglia, who was literally born on stage, while her mother was playing Desdemona in Othello in Palermo, Sicily.


1:15am -- Ladies of the Chorus (1949)
A one-time burlesque star tries to shield her daughter so she can marry a nice young man.
Cast: Marilyn Monroe, Adele Jergens, Rand Brooks, Nana Bryant
Dir: Phil Karlson
BW-60 mins, TV-G

Marilyn Monroe's first starring film role.


2:15am -- Willie Dynamite (1974)
A social worker tries to reform a pimp.
Cast: Roscoe Orman, Diana Sands, Thalmus Rasulala, Joyce Walker
Dir: Gilbert Moses
C-102 mins, TV-MA

Roscoe Orman, who plays the pimp Willie Dynamite, went on to play Gordon on Sesame Street!


4:00am -- Sugar Hill (1974)
When gangsters kill her boyfriend, a woman enlists a Voodoo queen to raise an army of the dead.
Cast: Marki Bey, Robert Quarry, Don Pedro Colley, Richard Lawson
Dir: Paul Maslansky
C-91 mins, TV-14

The "Voodoo Museum and Research History" building is in fact, the Heights Branch of the Houston Public Library - the building was constructed in 1925. In real life, the building is a registered historical landmark in the State of Texas.


5:45am -- Day in the Death of Donny B (1969)
A heroin addict desperately tries to raise the money for a fix.
Dir: Carl Fick.
BW-14 mins, TV-14

An anti-drug film made for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

[Staph]

1. Good News (1947)

"A youthful, tuneful, joyous shot in the arm in the form of the gayest, fastest-paced film ever brightened by Technicolor's magic!" Collier's Magazine, on Good News

Good News (1947) is not a movie which is often written about or even remembered today, which makes it a total delight to discover for the first time. It's an unpretentious, colorful, simple little musical which thankfully never tries to be grand or overblown; the subject matter - a frothy college campus story - just wouldn't support that kind of weight. In fact, the story is flat-out ridiculous. Peter Lawford is a football hero who can't make his grades, so June Allyson, who's working her way through college as a librarian, tutors him in French and falls for him in the process. Patricia Marshall, meanwhile, plays the college sexpot who wants Lawford for herself. Can Lawford pass French, win the big game and wind up with the right girl? The answers may be obvious, but the story is completely serviceable as an excuse for some charming song-and-dance numbers.

College musicals were extremely popular in the early studio era, and Good News was one of the best. It began as a 1927 stage hit and was first filmed in 1930, starring Bessie Love. For the 1947 version, MGM's "Freed Unit" took the reigns. Arthur Freed had recently racked up some pretty impressive producing credits, including Babes in Arms (1939), For Me and My Gal (1942), Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), and The Harvey Girls (1946). (Still in the future lay On the Town (1949), The Band Wagon (1953) and other hits). For this remake Freed hired Betty Comden and Adolph Green to update the script - their first screen credit of a career that would soon include Singin' in the Rain (1952). The property already had some good songs, including "The Best Things in Life Are Free," but Freed brought on Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane to add a couple of new ones: "The French Lesson" and "Pass That Peace Pipe," the latter of which featured a sensational Joan McCracken dance routine and went on to earn an Oscar nomination. (It lost to "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah," from Disney's Song of the South, a film which is sadly unavailable in today's politically correct climate.)

Making his directorial debut was Charles Walters, who had entered the movies as a choreographer and had earned this big break. He acquitted himself nicely: Good News was a huge hit. Freed was happy ("It made nothing but money!" he said of the film) and rewarded Walters with the reigns to Easter Parade (1948), a serious step up in terms of stars and prestige.

Good News also cemented husky-voiced June Allyson as a star. (The huskiness was caused by chronic bronchitis and enlarged vocal chords.) Born Ella Geisman, Allyson had started her Hollywood career in the middle of WWII, a time in which her image of wholesomeness was something the public wanted to see, especially when she was paired with that bobby-soxers' delight, Van Johnson. Louis B. Mayer wanted the pair to date, in fact, because it would create good publicity for the MGM machine, and they did go out on a few arranged dates. But June and Van were already extremely close friends - like a brother and sister - and they just laughed at the absurdity of it all. To Mayer's dismay, Allyson fell in love with Dick Powell (or as she called him, Richard), who was going through a divorce. Eventually, not only did Allyson and Powell marry, in 1945, but Louis B. Mayer gave away the bride. They divorced in 1961, reunited a few months later, and then Powell died of cancer in 1963.

Regarding Good News, "Everything about the movie was unbelievable," Allyson wrote in her memoirs. "No one made any effort to change Peter Lawford's British accent to American. For that matter, my French accent was atrocious and his was superb - he spent hours teaching me how to teach him French. Working with Peter Lawford was like going to a party. He made a game of whatever he did." But according to Lawford biographer James Spada, the young actor was extremely nervous about this role - his biggest to date - and he worked tremendously hard to pull off the required singing and dancing. This prompted amazement from his old dance teacher back East, who had tried in vain to teach him proper rhythm. She said, "Anybody who could teach that boy to sing and dance in time has got to be a genius."

Allyson and Lawford made a good team. They had already worked together on Two Sisters from Boston (1946) and would appear together in two later films: Little Women (1949) and They Only Kill Their Masters (1972).

Producer: Arthur Freed
Director: Charles Walters
Screenplay: Betty Comden, Adolph Green, Buddy G. DeSylva (play), Ray Henderson (play), Frank Mandel (play), Laurence Schwab (play)
Cinematography: Charles E. Schoenbaum
Film Editing: Albert Akst
Art Direction: Edward C. Carfagno, Cedric Gibbons
Music: Ralph Blane, Buddy G. DeSylva, Roger Edens, Ray Henderson, Hugh Martin
Cast: June Allyson (Connie Lane), Peter Lawford (Tommy Marlowe), Patricia Marshall (Pat McClellan), Joan McCracken (Babe Doolittle), Ray McDonald (Bobby Turner), Mel Tormé (Danny).
C-94m. Closed captioning.

by Jeremy Arnold