TCM Schedule for Thursday, January 6 -- Star of the Month -- Peter Sellers

[Staph]

Happy birthday to Loretta Young, born on this day in 1913. We have a day of her films, followed by our first evening with January's Star of the Month Peter Sellers. Enjoy!



4:49am -- One Reel Wonders: Moments In Music (1949)
This short shows that no matter what type of music a person likes, he will find it at the movies.
Cast: Bing Crosby, Xavier Cugat, Nelson Eddy
BW-10 mins

Features snippets from New Moon (1940), Ziegfeld Girl (1941), Up in Arms (1944), Two Girls and a Sailor (1944), The Stork Club (1945), Holiday in Mexico (1946), Carnegie Hall (1947), Road to Rio (1947), and Neptune's Daughter (1949).


5:00am -- Let's Make Music (1941)
A spinster schoolteacher becomes a national sensation when she writes a big-band hit.
Cast: Bob Crosby, Jean Rogers, Elizabeth Risdon, Joseph Buloff
Dir: Leslie Goodwins
BW-84 mins, TV-G

Songs include "Fight on for Newton High" (written by Roy Webb, Dave Dreyer and Herman Ruby), "You Forgot About Me" (music by James F. Hanley, lyrics by Richard Robertson and Sammy Mysels), "Three Little Words" (lyrics by Bert Kalmar and music by Harry Ruby), "The Big Noise from Winnetka" (written by Gil Rodin, Bob Haggart, Ray Bauduc and Bob Crosby), and "Central Park" (lyrics by Johnny Mercer and music by Matty Malneck).


6:30am -- Now Playing January (2011)


7:00am -- The Unguarded Hour (1936)
A blackmailer tries to stop a woman from revealing evidence that could save a condemned man.
Cast: Loretta Young, Franchot Tone, Lewis Stone, Roland Young
Dir: Sam Wood
BW-87 mins, TV-G

Bernard Merivale's adapted play opened in London, England, UK on 31 July 1935.


8:30am -- The Doctor Takes a Wife (1940)
A man-hating author and a woman-hating doctor have to pretend they're married.
Cast: Loretta Young, Ray Milland, Reginald Gardiner, Gail Patrick
Dir: Alexander Hall
BW-88 mins, TV-G

Loretta Young passed away on August 12, 2000 from ovarian cancer at the home of her sister Georgiana and Georgiana's husband, Ricardo Montalban.


10:00am -- Men in Her Life (1941)
A circus performer marries a man who promises to turn her into a ballerina.
Cast: Loretta Young, Conrad Veidt, Dean Jagger, Eugenie Leontovich
Dir: Gregory Ratoff
BW-76 mins, TV-G

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Sound, Recording -- John P. Livadary (Columbia SSD)

Based on the novel Ballerina by Eleanor Smith.


11:30am -- A Night to Remember (1942)
A mystery writer and his wife stumble on a murder in their new apartment.
Cast: Loretta Young, Brian Aherne, Jeff Donnell, William Wright
Dir: Richard Wallace
BW-92 mins, TV-G

In one scene, Brian Aherne takes a burning roast out of an oven. The music Werner R. Heymann composed for this scene was used many years later for "You Bet Your Life" (1950) as the theme played whenever the wheel of fortune is being spun by a contestant.


1:15pm -- Along Came Jones (1945)
A mild-mannered cowboy is mistaken for a notorious outlaw.
Cast: Gary Cooper, Loretta Young, William Demarest, Dan Duryea
Dir: Stuart Heisler
BW-90 mins, TV-G

Loretta Young was pregnant with her son Christopher Lewis during shooting and was told by her doctor to take it easy because of all the horseback riding she had to do during filming.


3:00pm -- The Bishop's Wife (1947)
An angel helps set an ambitious bishop on the right track.
Cast: Cary Grant, Loretta Young, David Niven, Monty Woolley
Dir: Henry Koster
BW-109 mins, TV-G

Won an Oscar for Best Sound, Recording -- Gordon Sawyer (Samuel Goldwyn SSD)

Nominated for Oscars for Best Director -- Henry Koster, Best Film Editing -- Monica Collingwood, Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture -- Hugo Friedhofer, and Best Picture

Originally Cary Grant played the bishop and David Niven the angel. When original director William A. Seiter left the film, Henry Koster replaced him and viewed what had been shot so far. He realized that the two were in the wrong roles. It took some convincing because Grant wanted the title role of the Bishop. He soon accepted the change and his role as the angel was one of the most widely praised of his career.


5:00pm -- Cause For Alarm (1951)
A woman fights to intercept a letter in which her husband tries to prove her guilty of murder.
Cast: Loretta Young, Barry Sullivan, Bruce Cowling, Margalo Gillmore
Dir: Tay Garnett
BW-74 mins, TV-PG

Producer Tom Lewis wanted Judy Garland for the part, but his wife Loretta Young wanted the part also. She retained a lawyer who told him that he was discriminating against her because she was his wife. She got the part. (Their marriage continued another 18 years, until August of 1969!)


6:30pm -- Paula (1952)
A woman harbors a deadly secret when her husband brings home a child she injured in a hit-and-run accident.
Cast: Loretta Young, Kent Smith, Alexander Knox, Tommy Rettig
Dir: Rudolph Maté
BW-80 mins, TV-PG

Loretta Young's oldest child, Judy, was presented to the public as her adopted daughter. Judy was actually Young's daughter by Clark Gable, who was married to Maria Franklin Gable at the time.


8:00pm -- I'm All Right Jack (1960)
A veteran starting out in business gets caught between management and labor.
Cast: Ian Carmichael, Peter Sellers, Richard Attenborough, Terry-Thomas
Dir: John Boulting
BW-105 mins, TV-14

Ian Carmichael's character is called Stanley Windrush. MV Empire Windrush was the name of ship that bought the first group of West Indian immigrants to Britain in 1948.


10:00pm -- Heavens Above! (1963)
A priest who always speaks the truth shocks his conservative parishioners.
Cast: Peter Sellers, Cecil Parker, Isabel Jeans, Eric Sykes
Dir: John Boulting
BW-118 mins, TV-G

At one point when Rev. Smallwood (Sellers) is preaching from the pulpit, a young boy is seen in the foreground reading a copy of Nabokov's "Lolita". Sellers played Quilty in Stanley Kubrick's film version of that book.


12:15am -- Two-Way Stretch (1960)
A convict plots to commit the perfect crime while still behind bars.
Cast: Peter Sellers, Wilfrid Hyde-White, David Lodge, Bernard Cribbins
Dir: Robert Day
BW-87 mins, TV-PG

Liz Fraser (Ethel) was still learning to drive at the time the film was made. In the scene where Ethel follows the army convoy in an Aston Martin, she kept stalling as she set off on cue, so ropes were attached to the front of the car, out of shot, and it was towed.


2:00am -- The Ladykillers (1955)
An eccentric bandit gang moves into a little old lady's boardinghouse to plot a major heist.
Cast: Alec Guinness, Cecil Parker, Herbert Lom, Peter Sellers
Dir: Alexander Mackendrick
BW-91 mins, TV-G

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Writing, Best Screenplay - Original -- William Rose

The producers originally rejected director Alexander Mackendrick's choice of Katie Johnson for the role of Mrs. Wilberforce on the grounds that she might be too frail for the project, and so they cast a younger actress - who died before filming began.


3:45am -- Your Past Is Showing (1957)
Bumbling blackmail subjects join forces to do in their tormentor.
Cast: Peter Sellers, Peggy Mount, Shirley Eaton, Terry-Thomas
Dir: Mario Zampi
BW-93 mins, TV-PG

Originally called The Naked Truth.

[Staph]

1. Peter Sellers Profile

Peter Sellers often claimed that, like an empty pitcher waiting to be filled, he had no particular personality until he was asked to slip into one of his characters. That he did with such uncanny ease that Bette Davis once remarked of him, "He isn't an actor -- he's a chameleon." Especially adroit at satirical comedy, Sellers had his greatest commercial successes with his deadpan drollery as Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther (1963) and its sequels. But his best film performance was probably in his Oscar®-nominated role in Being There (1979) as Chance, the simple-minded gardener who is mistakenly believed to be a profound thinker.

Sellers (1925-1980) was born in Southsea, England, and entered show business at a tender age in his parents' music-hall comedy act. As a young adult, after seeing service in World War II, he showed off his skills as a mimic in comedy reviews and appearances on BBC Radio's "The Goon Show," with popular British comic Spike Milligan. Sellers made his film debut in Penny Points to Paradise (1951) and gained prominence as one of the criminals in The Ladykillers (1955). He had secondary roles in Your Past is Showing (1957), in which he plays a smarmy TV personality; and Tom Thumb (1958), in which he is a villainous "heavy" who threatens Russ Tamblyn in the title role.

Sellers' breakthrough to international stardom came with I'm All Right Jack (1959), a working-class social comedy in which he plays a union leader. He reinforced his reputation as a top-flight comic actor in such films as The Mouse That Roared (1959) and Lolita (1962). Then it was on to superstardom in such showcases as Dr. Strangelove (1964), another Oscar®-nominated turn in which Sellers plays three diverse (and hilarious) characters; The World of Henry Orient (1964) as an egotistical concert pianist pursued by teen fans; What's New, Pussycat (1965), a Woody Allen script in which Sellers plays a womanizing psychiatrist; After the Fox (1966), in which he's an Italian thief posing as a film director; and The Party (1968) in which he is an inept movie extra who inadvertently destroys a film producer's mansion in Blake Edward's hilarious sight gag comedy.

Sellers is one of several James Bonds in the spoof Casino Royale (1967); a Jewish attorney caught up in the "hippie culture" of the 1960s in I Love You, Alice B. Toklas! (1968); and a Charlie Chan clone in Murder by Death (1976), a send-up of film detectives. His last outing as Inspector Clouseau, Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978), contains some of the character's funniest routines. Sellers' four wives included actress Britt Ekland.

by Roger Fristoe

Films in Bold Type Air in January