TCM Schedule for Thursday, June 23, 2016 -- What's On Tonight - TCM Spotlight: Stage to Screen

[Staph]

Grab your bug spray! This afternoon TCM is showing a selection of films that take place in and around Rio de Janeiro. And in prime time on Wednesdays and Thursdays this month, TCM is showing films that began on the stage. Tonight's selection includes another selection of musicals from the 1960s, all Oscar-nominated or Oscar-winning. Enjoy!



6:45 AM -- The Bad Seed (1956)
A woman suspects that her perfect little girl is a ruthless killer.
Dir: Mervyn LeRoy
Cast: Gage Clarke, Jesse White, Joan Croyden
C-129 mins, CC,

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Nancy Kelly, Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Eileen Heckart, Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Patty McCormack, and Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Harold Rosson

The original Broadway production of "The Bad Seed" by Maxwell Anderson opened on December 8, 1954 and ran for 334 performances. Nancy Kelly won the 1955 Tony Award for Actress in a Drama for "The Bad Seed" and recreated her role in the movie. Patty McCormack, Eileen Heckart, Evelyn Varden, Henry Jones and Joan Croydon also recreated their stage roles in the movie version.


9:00 AM -- Wait Until Dark (1967)
A blind woman fights against drug smugglers who've invaded her home.
Dir: Terence Young
Cast: Audrey Hepburn, Alan Arkin, Richard Crenna
C-108 mins, CC,

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Audrey Hepburn

During World War II, 16-year-old Audrey Hepburn was a volunteer nurse in a Dutch hospital. During the battle of Arnhem, Hepburn's hospital received many wounded Allied soldiers. One of the injured soldiers young Audrey helped nurse back to health was a young British paratrooper - and future director - named Terence Young who more than 20 years later directed Hepburn in Wait Until Dark (1967).


11:00 AM -- Romance on the High Seas (1948)
A singer on a Caribbean cruise gets mixed up in a series of romantic problems.
Dir: Michael Curtiz
Cast: Jack Carson, Janis Paige, Don DeFore
C-99 mins, CC,

Nominated for Oscars for Best Music, Original Song -- Jule Styne (music) and Sammy Cahn (lyrics) for the song "It's Magic", and Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture -- Ray Heindorf

This was Doris Day's first ever acting role, and she was extremely naive about how films were made. She wrote in her autobiography that the first scenes to be filmed would be aboard the cruise ship, and the first day she walked onto the sound stage and asked when they would be leaving for the boat? The crew broke up laughing.


12:45 PM -- Flying Down To Rio (1933)
A dance-band leader finds love and success in Brazil.
Dir: Thornton Freeland
Cast: Dolores Del Rio, Gene Raymond, Raul Roulien
BW-89 mins, CC,

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Music, Original Song -- Vincent Youmans (music), Edward Eliscu (lyrics) and Gus Kahn (lyrics) for the song "Carioca"

Originally conceived by RKO as a vehicle for Dolores del Rio, this film is most notable for its star-making pairing of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. The two relative unknowns smoked up the screen in a dance number called "The Carioca" that generated such a positive response form critics and fans that they were eventually reunited in nine subsequent films.


2:15 PM -- Nancy Goes To Rio (1950)
Mother-and-daughter singers compete for the same role and the same man.
Dir: Robert Z. Leonard
Cast: Ann Sothern, Jane Powell, Barry Sullivan
C-100 mins, CC,

This is a remake of the Deanna Durbin film It's a Date (1940). Both films were produced by Joe Pasternak, and in both the young star sings "Musetta's Waltz Song" from Puccini's opera "La Boheme".


4:00 PM -- Black Orpheus (1959)
A streetcar conductor loses his true love during Brazil's carnival season.
Dir: Marcel Camus
Cast: Breno Mello, Marpessa Dawn, Adhemar Dasilva
C-108 mins,

Won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film -- France

Barack Obama notes in his memoir Dreams from My Father (1995) that it was his mother's favourite film. Obama, however, didn't share his mother's preferences upon first watching the film during his first years at Columbia University: "I suddenly realized that the depiction of the childlike blacks I was now seeing on the screen, the reverse image of Conrad's dark savages, was what my mother had carried with her to Hawaii all those years before, a reflection of the simple fantasies that had been forbidden to a white, middle-class girl from Kansas, the promise of another life: warm, sensual, exotic, different."


6:00 PM -- Latin Lovers (1953)
An heiress searches for true love while vacationing in Brazil.
Dir: Mervyn LeRoy
Cast: Lana Turner, Ricardo Montalban, John Lund
C-104 mins, CC,

Fernando Lamas was originally cast in the role that Ricardo Montalban played. Lamas and Lana Turner were lovers and when they broke up, she insisted he be replaced.


7:50 PM -- Exotic Mexico (1942)
This travel short focuses on Mexico and presents a bullfight, as well as the Mexican branch of MGM Studios.
Dir: James A. FitzPatrick
C-9 mins,



TCM PRIMETIME - WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: TCM SPOTLIGHT: STAGE TO SCREEN



8:00 PM -- West Side Story (1961)
A young couple from dueling street gangs falls in love.
Dir: Robert Wise
Cast: Natalie Wood, Richard Beymer, Russ Tamblyn
C-153 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Won Oscars for Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- George Chakiris, Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Rita Moreno, Best Director -- Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins (For the first time a directing award is being shared.), Best Cinematography, Color -- Daniel L. Fapp, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color -- Boris Leven and Victor A. Gangelin, Best Costume Design, Color -- Irene Sharaff, Best Sound -- Fred Hynes (Todd-AO SSD) and Gordon Sawyer (Samuel Goldwyn SSD), Best Film Editing -- Thomas Stanford, Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture -- Saul Chaplin, Johnny Green, Sid Ramin and Irwin Kostal, and Best Picture

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium -- Ernest Lehman

During the entire production, the actors wore out 200 pairs of shoes, applied more than 100lbs of make-up, split 27 pairs of pants and performed in 30 different recording sessions. The boys' jeans were dyed, re-dyed and "distressed," using special elastic thread to allow for the severity of the choreography.


10:45 PM -- The Music Man (1962)
A con artist hawks musical instruments and band uniforms to small-town America.
Dir: Morton DaCosta
Cast: Robert Preston, Shirley Jones, Buddy Hackett
C-151 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Won an Oscar for Best Music, Scoring of Music, Adaptation or Treatment -- Ray Heindorf

Nominated for Oscars for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color -- Paul Groesse and George James Hopkins, Best Costume Design, Color -- Dorothy Jeakins, Best Sound -- George Groves (Warner Bros. SSD), Best Film Editing -- William H. Ziegler, and Best Picture

Shirley Jones learned she was pregnant with her son Patrick once the filming of had begun. She met with director Morton DaCosta over lunch to inform him of the situation. Her concern was that she would begin "showing" during its filming. He assured her that they could work through it with costumes and also by filming her from the waist up, if necessary. He did have one request, that she tell no one about it. Robert Preston did figure it out before filming had concluded, when Shirley's character, Marion, and his character, Professor Hill, kissed for the first time in the romantic footbridge scene. He leaned in for the kiss and jumped back, asking her, "What was that?" to which she replied, "That is Patrick Cassidy! Say, 'Hello!' " Years later, her son Patrick had the opportunity to meet Preston. He walked up and introduced himself saying, "Hello. I'm Patrick Cassidy." Preston replied, "Yes, I know. We've already met."


1:30 AM -- Bye Bye Birdie (1963)
A rock star's personal appearance turns a small town into a disaster area.
Dir: George Sidney
Cast: Janet Leigh, Dick Van Dyke, Ann-Margret
C-112 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Nominated for Oscars for Best Sound -- Charles Rice (Columbia SSD), and Best Music, Scoring of Music, Adaptation or Treatment -- Johnny Green

Supposedly at a dinner party celebrating the completion of the film, either Maureen Stapleton or Paul Lynde (the story would make sense featuring either of them) stood up and said, "Ann-Margret, I want you to know that I'm the only person who worked on this film who doesn't want to [have carnal relations with] you.


3:30 AM -- Bells Are Ringing (1960)
An answering service operator gets mixed up in her clients' lives.
Dir: Vincente Minnelli
Cast: Judy Holliday, Dean Martin, Fred Clark
C-126 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture -- André Previn

Ella sings about going back to the Bonjour Tristesse Brassiere Company. The novel "Bonjour Tristesse" (French: "Hello Sadness&quot by Françoise Sagan was published in 1954 and translated to English in 1955. It was considered to be quite racy, sort of a "Fifty Shades Of Gray", for the time. Because of this the phrase took on a sensual meaning in the US.


5:45 AM -- Finian's Rainbow (1968)
A leprechaun follows the Irishman who stole his pot of gold to the U.S. South.
Dir: Francis Ford Coppola
Cast: Fred Astaire, Petula Clark, Tommy Steele
C-145 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Nominated for Oscars for Best Sound, and Best Music, Score of a Musical Picture (Original or Adaptation) -- Ray Heindorf

Because of its satire on racism, this popular 1947 Broadway musical was considered such a hot potato in Hollywood that studios would not touch it unless they were allowed to change the story. Its original creators, E.Y. Harburg, Burton Lane and Fred Saidy, held out and by 1968 it was able to be filmed with very few changes.

[longship]

1. Yee gods! Absolutely love "The Music Man"

I am not a big musical fan, but Music Man is something special.