TCM Schedule for Friday, August 18, 2017 -- Summer Under the Stars - Rod Taylor

[Staph]

From the TCM website:
REAL NAME: Rodney Sturt Taylor
LIFE SPAN: Born January 11, 1930, Lidcombe, New South Wales, Australia; died January 7, 2015, Los Angeles, CA
DISTINGUISHING FEATURES: Down-Under vigor, rich speaking voice
NOTABLE ROLES: Mitch Brenner, The Birds (1963); John Cassidy, Young Cassidy (1965); Bruce Templeton, The Glass Bottom Boat (1966)
HOLLYWOOD BEST FRIENDS: Tippi Hedren, actor/director John Saul

Enjoy!


6:00 AM -- 36 HOURS (1964)
Nazis kidnap a key American intelligence officer and try to convince him that World War II is over.
Dir: George Seaton
Cast: James Garner, Rod Taylor, Eva Marie Saint
BW-115 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

The phony 1950 newspapers given to Major Pike depict "President Wallace". Henry Wallace was Vice President of the United States in 1944, when the film actually takes place. He was not slated on the Democratic ticket later that year and was succeeded as Vice President by Harry S. Truman.


8:00 AM -- THE LIQUIDATOR (1966)
A killer-for-hire gets mixed up with a plot to assassinate England's Prince Phillip.
Dir: Jack Cardiff
Cast: Rod Taylor, Trevor Howard, Jill St. John
C-104 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Director Jack Cardiff has said that censors mandated deletion of Rod Taylor's line that said "... it smells like a Turkish wrestler's jockstrap".


10:00 AM -- THE GLASS BOTTOM BOAT (1966)
A woman writing a scientist's biography is mistaken for a spy.
Dir: Frank Tashlin
Cast: Doris Day, Rod Taylor, Arthur Godfrey
C-110 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

The set that appears in this film as NASA scientist Rod Taylor's home was later recycled as the bad guys' headquarters in the The Man from U.N.C.L.E.: The Concrete Overcoat Affair: Part I (1966) and The Man from U.N.C.L.E.: The Concrete Overcoat Affair: Part II (1966). Not only does Robert Vaughn (who played "Napoleon Solo" on the TV series The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964)) appear in a cameo at the party, but there is a snatch of "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." theme heard on the soundtrack when Paul Lynde goes undercover in drag.


12:00 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

When the Time Traveler stops in 1966, in the front window of Filby's Department store there is a very brief shot of a display featuring "the latest tubeless TV". It looks remarkably like a modern flat panel computer monitor.


2:00 PM -- SEVEN SEAS TO CALAIS (1962)
Sir Francis Drake fights to take over Spain's treasure routes for Queen Elizabeth I.
Dir: Rudolph Maté
Cast: Rod Taylor, Keith Michell, Irene Worth
C-102 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

During filming in Rome, Rod Taylor began dating Anita Ekberg and it was also announced that they would be married in San Francisco. They never married.


3:45 PM -- 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,

In an odd twist of fate that could not be appreciated for at least 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!"


6:00 PM -- 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.



TCM PRIMETIME - WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: SUMMER UNDER THE STARS: 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,

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

Rod Taylor claims that the seagulls were fed a mixture of wheat and whiskey. It was the only way to get them to stand around so much.


10:15 PM -- 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, CC, Letterbox Format

Showbusiness 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 in the Carribean as it could not be shot on the dark continent due to political unrest. Ironically, around the same, another picture from MGM, Graham Greene's The Comedians (1967), was set in the Carribean, but filmed in Benin, West Africa.


12:15 AM -- MAN WHO HAD POWER OVER WOMEN (1970)
A disenchanted talent agent falls for his best friend¿s wife.
Dir: John Krish
Cast: Rod Taylor, Carol White, James Booth
C-90 mins,

Based on a novel by Gordon Williams, who also wrote the novel The Siege of Trencher's Farm, filmed several times using the title Straw Dogs (in 1971 and 2011).


2:00 AM -- YOUNG CASSIDY (1965)
True story of playwright Sean O'Casey's involvement with the Irish rebellion of 1910.
Dir: Jack Cardiff
Cast: Rod Taylor, Flora Robson, Jack MacGowran
C-110 mins, CC,

The character of "John Cassidy" is allegedly based on the playwright Sean O'Casey (his name is an Anglicization of O'Casey's), but Rod Taylor, playing the part, bears no resemblance to the famous writer. The real O'Casey was a diminutive man with poor eyesight who always wore thick glasses and kept out of violent encounters; he was a working-class man of strong intellectual gifts and fierce political views, and in reality was, at the time of the events depicted, about fifteen or twenty years older than "Cassidy" is supposed to be.


4:00 AM -- THE DEADLY TRACKERS (1973)
A pacifist sheriff joins forces with a Mexican lawman to track a deadly bandit.
Dir: Barry Shear
Cast: Rod Taylor, Richard Harris, Al Lettieri
C-105 mins, CC,

This originally started life as a Samuel Fuller film with Richard Harris and Bo Hopkins. Filming had begun but Warner Brothers were so unimpressed with the first rushes that they shut down the production and retooled it completely.


5:51 AM -- THE HARD GUY (1930)
An unemployed man puts a pistol in his pocket and walks out of his apartment, leaving his wife in fear in this short film. Vitaphone Release 1036.
Dir: Arthur Hurley
Cast: Spencer Tracy, Pat Kearney, Arch Hendricks
BW-6 mins,