TCM Schedule for Thursday, November 20, 2014 -- What's On Tonight - Rod Taylor

[Staph]

During the morning, TCM is featuring director Curtis Bernhardt. If Curtis Bernhardt is a relative unknown, it's because he didn't direct his first Hollywood feature until 1940 at the age of 41. Bernhardt worked for years in Germany until his Jewish heritage made living there impossible by 1933 -- he was arrested by the Gestapo and made a harrowing underground escape to France. With Europe plunging into war, he left for America in 1939. In prime time it's the devilishly handsome Rod Taylor. Enjoy!


7:00 AM -- My Love Came Back (1940)
A millionaire helps a pretty lady violinist with her career.
Dir: Kurt Bernhardt
Cast: Olivia de Havilland, Jeffrey Lynn, Eddie Albert
BW-85 mins, CC,

Although Jane Wyman had no trouble faking the fingering of a dummy violin, Olivia de Havilland had to have someone do it for her. In all her close-ups, the arm doing the fingering belonged to a professional hidden from view, or the fingers were hidden from view. She controlled only the bow.


8:30 AM -- Million Dollar Baby (1941)
A young innocent's surprise inheritance causes problems with her poor but proud boyfriend.
Dir: Curtis Bernhardt
Cast: Priscilla Lane, Jeffrey Lynn, Ronald Reagan
BW-101 mins, CC,

May Robson (about 82 in this film) was in fact over a decade older than Richard Carle (about 69), who plays George, the butler who grew up with Cornelia Wheelwright's (Robson's) father.


10:18 AM -- Return From Nowhere (1944)
In this short film, a man recovers his lost memories when he is forced to relive events in his dreams.
Dir: Paul Burnford
Cast: Robert Emmett O'Connor, Don DeFore, Kay Medford
BW-10 mins,


10:30 AM -- Devotion (1946)
The Bronte sisters and their brother fight personal demons to realize their artistic ambitions.
Dir: Curtis Bernhardt
Cast: Ida Lupino, Paul Henreid, Olivia de Havilland
BW-107 mins, CC,

Warners initially tried to borrow Joan Fontaine for Emily Bronte so she could play opposite her real life sister, Olivia de Havilland, but when an agreement couldn't be reached, the part was played by Warner contractee Ida Lupino.


12:30 PM -- My Reputation (1946)
A widow generates small-town gossip when she falls in love too soon after her husband's death.
Dir: Curtis Bernhardt
Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, George Brent, Warner Anderson
BW-94 mins, CC,

First film since the inception of the Production code in the 1930s to show a double bed in a married couple's bedroom.


2:15 PM -- A Stolen Life (1946)
A twin takes her deceased sister's place as wife of the man they both love.
Dir: Curtis Bernhardt
Cast: Bette Davis, Glenn Ford, Dane Clark
BW-107 mins, CC,

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Effects, Special Effects -- William C. McGann (visual) and Nathan Levinson (audible)

Because of her constant insistence for better productions to work on, and an overall better atmosphere on set, Jack L. Warner asked Bette Davis to produce the film. It would be the first and only time she would be able to do this. Reportedly, she was so overworked and also intrigued by this job that she started a relationship with the director of this film to iron out her mind.


4:15 PM -- Possessed (1947)
A married woman's passion for a former love drives her mad.
Dir: Curtis Bernhardt
Cast: Joan Crawford, Van Heflin, Raymond Massey
BW-108 mins, CC,

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Joan Crawford

Star Joan Crawford and director Curtis Bernhardt spent time in real psychiatric wards in Santa Monica, Santa Barbara and Pasadena, observing mental patients as research for the film. On one of these visits, Crawford and Bernhardt witnessed, without asking permission, a woman undergoing electro convulsive shock therapy. Warner Bros. was later forced to pay substantial damages to the woman, who claimed their presence was an invasion of privacy.


6:15 PM -- Payment On Demand (1951)
A bitter divorcee thinks back on the mistakes that destroyed her marriage.
Dir: Curtis Bernhardt
Cast: Bette Davis, Barry Sullivan, Jane Cowl
BW-90 mins, CC,

Davis' three-year-old daughter Barbara (always called "B.D.&quot makes her debut in the first of her two film roles as Joyce's daughter as a young girl. (The other was the neighbor's daughter in "Whatever Happened To Baby Jane.&quot


7:46 PM -- Bargain Madness (1951)
This short film is a humorous look at women battling for bargains in a department store.
Dir: Dave O'Brien
Cast: Dorothy Short, Jack Rice, Maxine Gates
BW-10 mins,



TCM PRIMETIME - WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: ROD TAYLOR



8:00 PM -- The Birds (1963)
In a California coastal area, flocks of birds unaccountably make deadly attacks on humans.
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock
Cast: Rod Taylor, Tippi Hedren, Jessica Tandy
C-119 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Effects, Special Visual Effects -- Ub Iwerks

Alfred Hitchcock saw Tippi Hedren in a 1962 commercial aired during the Today (1952) show and put her under contract. In the commercial for a diet drink, she is seen walking down a street and a man whistles at her slim, attractive figure, and she turns her head with an acknowledging smile. In the opening scene of the film, the same thing happens as she walks toward the bird shop. This was an inside joke by Hitchcock.


10:15 PM -- The Time Machine (1960)
A turn-of-the-century inventor sends himself into the future to save humanity.
Dir: George Pal
Cast: Rod Taylor, Alan Young, Yvette Mimieux
C-103 mins, CC,

Won an Oscar for Best Effects, Special Effects -- Gene Warren and Tim Baar

In the DVD special feature entitled Time Machine: The Journey Continues, FX designers Wah Chang, Tim Baar, and Gene Warren state that the scene of the limb with several apples and leaves growing on it at an accelerated rate while George moves forward in time was actually a painting done by artist Bill Brace. The canvas was photographed with a locked-off camera, one frame at a time, as Brace rendered the progressive growth of the leaves and apples in great detail.


12:06 AM -- The Man Who Makes The Difference (1968)
A behind-the-scenes promotional short for the action film "Ice Station Zebra" (1968).
C-7 mins,


12:15 AM -- Dark Of The Sun (1968)
A mercenary band fights to get refugees and a fortune in diamonds out of the Congo.
Dir: Jack Cardiff
Cast: Rod Taylor, Yvette Mimieux, Peter Carsten
C-101 mins, Letterbox Format

Show business trade paper Variety erroneously reported in its review that this Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer movie was shot in Africa but in fact this movie was filmed out of Africa. The picture's exteriors were lensed in Jamaica, as it could not be shot on the dark continent due to political unrest. Ironically, around the same time, another picture from MGM, Graham Greene's The Comedians (1967), was set in the Carribean, but filmed in Benin, West Africa.


2:06 AM -- Pat Neal Is Back (1968)
This promotional short focuses on Patricia Neal's return to motion pictures with "The Subject Was Roses" (1968) after her near-fatal stroke.
Dir: Edward Beyer
C-8 mins,


2:15 AM -- Sunday in New York (1963)
A philandering pilot gets real moral, real fast when his sister contemplates a premarital fling.
Dir: Peter Tewksbury
Cast: Rod Taylor, Jane Fonda, Cliff Robertson
C-105 mins, CC,

Jane Fonda has been quoted as stating that this film was the first time she enjoyed making a movie or thought she was any good at acting.


4:15 AM -- Hotel (1967)
A New Orleans hotel owner fights off a corporate raider while his guests struggle through a variety of personal problems.
Dir: Richard Quine
Cast: Rod Taylor, Catherine Spaak, Karl Malden
C-125 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

In an odd twist of fate that could not be appreciated for at a decade, Karl Malden plays a hotel thief who breaks into guest rooms and steals wallets; following one lowly heist that nets him him only a few dollars in actual cash, he bemoans that his livelihood is being snuffed out by rampant popularity of credit cards - which ironically later became his real-life late-career claim to fame as spokesman for American Express credit cards: "Don't leave home without it!"