TCM Schedule for Thursday, November 5, 2015 -- TCM Guest Programmer: Greg Proops

[Staph]

In the daylight hours today, TCM is showing "sweet" films and "rain" films. I don't understand either. Anyone have any ideas? And in prime time, comedian / actor / writer Greg Proops is acting as guest programmer, with an interesting selection of films. Enjoy!


6:00 AM -- Sweet Kitty Bellairs (1930)
An 18th-century English flirt wins the heart of a notorious highwayman.
Dir: Alfred E. Green
Cast: Claudia Dell, Ernest Torrence, Walter Pidgeon
C-63 mins,

Previously filmed in 1916, starring Mae Murray, Joe King and Tom Forman.


7:15 AM -- Sweet Music (1935)
A band leader shares a tempestuous romance with his lead singer.
Dir: Alfred E. Green
Cast: Rudy Vallee, Ann Dvorak, Ned Sparks
BW-95 mins, CC,

Based on a story by Jerry Wald, who was later nominated for Oscars for Best Picture, as the producer of Peyton Place (1957), and Sons and Lovers (1960).


9:00 AM -- Sweet November (1968)
A woman refuses to let her romances last longer than one month.
Dir: Robert Ellis Miller
Cast: Anthony Newley, Sandy Dennis, Theodore Bikel
C-113 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Remade in 2001, starring Keanu Reeves, Charlize Theron, and Jason Isaacs.


11:00 AM -- Sweet Bird Of Youth (1962)
A young gigolo returns to his southern hometown in search of the lost love of his youth.
Dir: Richard Brooks
Cast: Paul Newman, Geraldine Page, Shirley Knight
C-120 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Won an Oscar for Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Ed Begley

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Geraldine Page, and Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Shirley Knight

Longtime MGM hair stylist Sydney Guilaroff appears uncredited attending to the hair of Geraldine Page. He was extremely well respected, serving as chief hair stylist at MGM from 1934 until the late 1970s. Although he did not receive onscreen credit, he designed Judy Garland's hair styles for The Wizard of Oz (1939) and made Lucille Ball's hair red for Du Barry Was a Lady (1943), the color she kept it for the rest of her life.


1:15 PM -- Rain (1932)
A missionary tries to reform a streetwalker trapped on a Pacific island.
Dir: Lewis Milestone
Cast: Frederic Howard, Ben Hendricks, William Gargan
BW-94 mins,

Costumer Milo Anderson bought Crawford's checkered dress at a department store, and later recalled that the dress required extensive alteration, being far too large for Crawford everywhere except in the shoulders. Still new to the business, Anderson did not realize that multiple copies would be needed of a costume worn so extensively throughout the film. When it came time for a second copy, Anderson discovered that the dress had sold out and was now not available anywhere. Nor could the checkered fabric be located. Since the dress had already been seen in numerous scenes, the only solution was to have the design laboriously painted onto cloth and then have the dress duplicated. The dress had originally been store-bought to save money--and ultimately, with all the work, it added considerably to the film's budget.


3:00 PM -- The Rainmakers (1935)
A pair of rainmakers takes on a crooked businessman out to cash in on a drought.
Dir: Fred Guiol
Cast: Bert Wheeler, Robert Woolsey, Dorothy Lee
BW-78 mins, CC,

When Mr. Spencer shows Margie the article about a machine that makes rain, the magazine cover shown is a real one, the August 1935 issue of Popular Mechanics Magazine.


4:30 PM -- The Rain People (1969)
A housewife who feels trapped leaves home and takes up with a hitchhiker.
Dir: Francis Ford Coppola
Cast: James Caan, Shirley Knight, Robert Duvall
C-101 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Some of this film was shot in and around Clarksburg, WV. They spent several days in the area. The drive in scene was filmed at the old Skyline Drive In on Rt. 19 south of Clarksburg. I went to the movies there, in the early Pleistocene era.


6:15 PM -- Singin' In The Rain (1952)
A silent-screen swashbuckler finds love while trying to adjust to the coming of sound.
Dir: Gene Kelly
Cast: Gene Kelly, Donald O'Connor, Debbie Reynolds
C-103 mins, CC,

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Jean Hagen, and Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture -- Lennie Hayton

Filming of the Cyd Charisse dance number had to be stopped for several hours after it was discovered that her pubic hair was visible through her costume. When the problem was finally fixed, the film's costume designer Walter Plunkett said, "It's OK, guys, we've finally got Cyd's crotch licked."



TCM PRIMETIME - WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: TCM GUEST PROGRAMMER: GREG PROOPS



8:00 PM -- Grand Illusion (1937)
French POWs fight to escape their German captors during World War I.
Dir: Jean Renoir
Cast: Erich von Stroheim, Jean Gabin, Pierre Fresnay
BW-113 mins,

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture

Joseph Goebbels made sure that the film's print was one of the first things seized by the Germans when they occupied France. He referred to Jean Renoir as "Cinematic Public Enemy Number 1". For many years it was assumed that the film had been destroyed in an Allied air raid in 1942. However, a German film archivist named Frank Hansel, then a Nazi officer in Paris, had actually smuggled it back to Berlin. Then when the Russians entered Berlin in 1945, the film found its way to an archive in Moscow. When Renoir came to restore his film in the 1960s, he knew nothing of Hansel's acquisition and was working from an old muddy print. Purely by coincidence at the same time, the Russian archive swapped some material with an archive in Toulouse. Included in that exchange was the original negative print. However, because so many prints of the film existed at the time, it would be another 30 years before anyone realised that the version in Toulouse was actually the original negative.


10:01 PM -- Rural Sweden (1938)
This short film takes the viewer to several towns and historical sights of rural Sweden.
C-8 mins,


10:15 PM -- The Three Musketeers (1973)
A country boy joins the famed musketeers and fights to protect the queen's name.
Dir: Richard Lester
Cast: Michael York, Richard Chamberlain, Oliver Reed
C-107 mins, CC,

As a result of the producers splitting the film into two parts, Screen Actors' Guild contracts now often feature what is called a "Salkind Clause," which requires producers to state up front how many films are being shot, and that the actors involved must be paid for each. The latter clause applies even, or even especially, when producers make that decision during or after production.


12:15 AM -- Out of the Past (1947)
A private eye becomes the dupe of a homicidal moll.
Dir: Jacques Tourneur
Cast: Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer, Kirk Douglas
BW-97 mins, CC,

By all accounts, it was obvious that an undeniable tension developed between Kirk Douglas and Robert Mitchum early on during the filming. Certainly the acting styles of the two men could not have been more different. Mitchum's relaxed, laconic manner contrasted with the aggressive, grandstanding Douglas. In the first scenes to be shot with the two actors, Douglas attempted some scene stealing by manipulating distracting props, such as swinging a key chain or flipping a coin, George Raft style. Jacques Tourneur saw through these ploys and put a stop to them. For his part, Mitchum would retaliate by making faces when the camera was behind his head, so as to throw off Douglas' reaction shots. Eventually the one-upmanship faded, and the two let their natural styles compliment each other.


2:00 AM -- Dog Day Afternoon (1975)
A man robs a bank to pay for his lover's operation.
Dir: Sidney Lumet
Cast: Al Pacino, John Cazale, Carol Kane
C-125 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Won an Oscar for Best Writing, Original Screenplay -- Frank Pierson (Frank Pierson was not present at the awards ceremony. Presenter Gore Vidal accepted the award on his behalf.)

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Al Pacino, Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Chris Sarandon, Best Director -- Sidney Lumet, Best Film Editing -- Dede Allen, and Best Picture

The entire film is mostly improvised, though around the script. After rehearsing the script for weeks with his cast, Sidney Lumet took the improvisations that were made while rehearsing and made that the official screenplay.


4:15 AM -- The Petrified Forest (1935)
An escaped convict holds the customers at a remote desert cantina hostage.
Dir: Archie L. Mayo
Cast: Leslie Howard, Bette Davis, Genevieve Tobin
BW-82 mins, CC,

Leslie Howard and Humphrey Bogart had played the same roles in the stage version. Warner Bros. wanted to put Howard in the film but replace Bogart with Edward G. Robinson. Howard insisted on Bogart, and Robinson was happy to step aside from yet another gangster role. Bogart would later name his second child with Lauren Bacall Leslie, in honor of Howard, the man who gave him his first big break.