TCM Schedule for Saturday, January 6, 2018 -- The Essentials: Keir Dullea

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Last edited Thu Jan 11, 2018, 12:42 AM - Edit history (1)

Tonight's Essentials features the films of Keir Dullea. Though he has spent much more time on stage than in front of the camera, he has had some memorable films roles, including those we will see tonight. Enjoy!



6:00 AM -- The Prisoner of Zenda (1937)
An Englishman who resembles the king of a small European nation gets mixed up in palace intrigue when his look-alike is kidnapped.
Dir: John Cromwell
Cast: Ronald Colman, Madeleine Carroll, C. Aubrey Smith
BW-101 mins,

Nominated for Oscars for Best Art Direction -- Lyle R. Wheeler, and Best Music, Score -- Alfred Newman (musical director)

In his first autobiography "Salad Days", Douglas Fairbanks Jr. said that when Raymond Massey told Sir C. Aubrey Smith, who played Colonel Zapt, that he didn't understand his own part of Black Michael, Smith said, "Ray, in my time, I've played every part in Zenda except Princess Flavia, and I've never understood Black Michael either."


8:00 AM -- Kismet (1944)
In the classic Arabian Nights tale, the king of the beggars enters high society to help his daughter marry a handsome prince.
Dir: William Dieterle
Cast: Ronald Colman, Marlene Dietrich, James Craig
C-100 mins, CC,

Nominated for Oscars for Best Cinematography, Color -- Charles Rosher, Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Color -- Cedric Gibbons, Daniel B. Cathcart, Edwin B. Willis and Richard Pefferle, Best Sound, Recording -- Douglas Shearer (M-G-M SSD), and Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture -- Herbert Stothart

Karinska designed and created Dietrich's Pantaloon costume out of half inch metal rings, wired together to move like chiffon fabric. As Marlene approached the set to film the Jack Cole choreographed dance, the cascading rings created jingling sounds at her every step. When the dance sequence was being filmed, the rings fell apart, falling all over the floor. Marlene decided to have her legs painted gold instead of the Pantaloon metal ring costume. No one knew painting the legs with metallic paint blocked circulation. Completing the film sequence, Marlene pranced around the stage in the gold painted leg look allowing on-looking guests and crew to admire her legs, not bothering to remove the metallic gold paint. She had no idea that by keeping the legs painted, she could have killed herself.


10:00 AM -- Presenting Lily Mars (1943)
A small-town girl fights for her big chance on Broadway.
Dir: Norman Taurog
Cast: Judy Garland, Van Heflin, Fay Bainter
BW-104 mins, CC,

This film was originally purchased by MGM as a dramatic vehicle for Lana Turner. After Turner dropped out due to a scheduling conflict, the film was retooled as a screwball comedy/musical for Judy Garland.


12:00 PM -- Madame Curie (1943)
The famed female scientist fights to keep her marriage together while conducting early experiments with radioactivity.
Dir: Mervyn LeRoy
Cast: Greer Garson, Walter Pidgeon, Henry Travers
BW-124 mins, CC,

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Walter Pidgeon, Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Greer Garson, Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Joseph Ruttenberg, Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Black-and-White -- Cedric Gibbons, Paul Groesse, Edwin B. Willis and Hugh Hunt, Best Sound, Recording -- Douglas Shearer (M-G-M SSD), Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture -- Herbert Stothart, and Best Picture

The film makes no mention of the rather ironic fact that Maria Sklodowska-Curie died of aplastic anemia at the age of 66, most likely because of her handling of radium in her lifetime. Her lab books are kept under lock and key, as they are still irradiated more than 100 years after use. Her daughter Irène Joliot-Curie and son-in-law Frédéric Joliot-Curie, who continued her research, also died of radiation-based illnesses.


2:15 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.) 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.)


4:00 PM -- I'll Take Sweden (1965)
A widower takes a job in Stockholm to get his daughter away from her boyfriend.
Dir: Frederick De Cordova
Cast: Bob Hope, Tuesday Weld, Frankie Avalon
C-97 mins,

As a publicity stunt, the studio offered a role to one of then-US President Lyndon B. Johnson's daughters. She declined.


6:00 PM -- The Thrill Of It All (1963)
A doctor tries to cope with his wife's newfound stardom as an advertising pitch woman.
Dir: Norman Jewison
Cast: Doris Day, James Garner, Arlene Francis
C-108 mins, CC,

Carl Reiner had intended the role of Beverly Boyer for Judy Holliday, but, whose ill health prevented her from making the film. This is the second time, Doris Day would step in on a film project which was originally intended for someone else, the first being Move Over Darling (1963), which was originally being shot as as Something's Got To Give (1962), starring Marilyn Monroe, but her tragic death lead to that film being recast, and re-filmed with Day.



TCM PRIMETIME - WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: THE ESSENTIALS: KEIR DULLEA



8:00 PM -- 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Classic sci-fi epic about a mysterious monolith that seems to play a key role in human evolution.
Dir: Stanley Kubrick
Cast: Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, William Sylvester
C-149 mins, Letterbox, CC,

Won an Oscar for Best Effects, Special Visual Effects -- Stanley Kubrick (Stanley Kubrick was not present at the awards ceremony. Presenters Diahann Carroll and Burt Lancaster accepted the award on his behalf.)

Nominated for Oscars for Best Director -- Stanley Kubrick, Best Writing, Story and Screenplay - Written Directly for the Screen --
Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, and Best Art Direction-Set Decoration -- Anthony Masters, Harry Lange and Ernest Archer

Frank Miller, who plays the mission control voice, was a member of the U.S. Air Force in reality, and a real mission controller. He was hired because his voice was the most authentic the producers could find for the role. Inexperienced and nervous, he could not keep from tapping his foot during recording sessions, and the tapping sound repeatedly came through on the audio tracks; Stanley Kubrick folded up a towel, put it under Miller's feet, and told him to tap to his heart's content.


10:45 PM -- David and Lisa (1962)
A troubled boy begins to deal with his problems when he befriends a young schizophrenic.
Dir: Frank Perry
Cast: Keir Dullea, Janet Margolin, Howard Da Silva
BW-93 mins, CC,

Nominated for Oscars for Best Director -- Frank Perry, and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium -- Eleanor Perry

This film was done on location in a building which has since been converted to St. Sahag & St. Mesrob Armenian Apostolic Church in Wynnewood, PA. Other scenes are at the Wynnewood train station and at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. At the end when Keir Dullea runs up the steps it's the same steps Sylvester Stallone runs up in Rocky.


12:30 AM -- The Hoodlum Priest (1961)
A priest tries to straighten out juvenile delinquents.
Dir: Irvin Kershner
Cast: Don Murray, Larry Gates, Cindi Wood
BW-102 mins, Letterbox, CC,

Concerned that the critics would not be kind to an actor appearing in a film he wrote, Don Murray penned the screenplay under the pseudonym "Don Deer", his nickname as a track and field athlete in High school (Rockaway, NY).


2:30 AM -- Never Too Young to Die (1986)
A top secret agent is killed, so his son the gymnast teams up to kill the pyschopathic hermaphrodite gang leader who killed him.
Dir: Gil Bettman
Cast: John Stamos, Vanity, Gene Simmons
BW-97 mins, CC,

The movie was intended as the starting point for a "Son of Bond"-type franchise. It not only flopped at the box-office, but was shunned by its own co-star, Gene Simmons; years later, when a fan recognized him as "Velvet Von Ragnar", Simmons exclaimed "Don't tell me you SAW that thing!"


4:15 AM -- Gymkata (1985)
A champion gymnast competes to win the U.S. a strategic missile site.
Dir: Robert Clouse
Cast: Kurt Thomas, Tetchie Agbayani, Richard Norton
C-90 mins, CC,

The film's source material ("The Terrible Game" by Dan Tyler Moore) was originally published in 1957. A film version of the book was originally planned in the early-1960s as a Rock Hudson vehicle, but never got off the ground.