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Staph

(6,245 posts)
Tue Jan 30, 2018, 06:06 PM Jan 2018

TCM Schedule for Friday, February 2, 2018 -- 31 Days of Oscar: Best Original Score Winners

Today's Oscar category is Best Original Score. I rather like the idea of beginning the month with the music categories. Enjoy!



6:00 AM -- Our Town (1940)
Small town lovers search for happiness.
Dir: Sam Wood
Cast: Frank Craven, William Holden, Martha Scott
BW-89 mins,

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Martha Scott, Best Art Direction, Black-and-White -- Lewis J. Rachmil, Best Sound, Recording -- Thomas T. Moulton (Samuel Goldwyn SSD), Best Music, Score -- Aaron Copland, Best Music, Original Score -- Aaron Copland, and Best Picture

Thornton Wilder won the Pulitzer Prize for the play the film is based on. The score for the film is by another Pulitzer Prize winner: Aaron Copland.



7:30 AM -- This Is the Army (1943)
A song-and-dance man's son stages a big show starring World War II soldiers.
Dir: Michael Curtiz
Cast: George Murphy, Joan Leslie, George Tobias
C-125 mins, CC,

Won an Oscar for Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture -- Ray Heindorf

Nominated for Oscars for Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Color -- John Hughes, John Koenig and George James Hopkins, and Best Sound, Recording -- Nathan Levinson (Warner Bros. SSD)

When Irving Berlin was filming his rendition of "Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning", one of the stagehands, unaware of who the singer was, supposedly said that if the guy who wrote the song could hear Berlin's singing, he'd roll over in his grave.



9:45 AM -- The Old Man and the Sea (1958)
A Cuban fisherman believes his long dry spell will end when he catches a legendary fish.
Dir: John Sturges
Cast: Felipe Pazos Jr., Harry Bellaver, Spencer Tracy
C-87 mins, CC,

Won an Oscar for Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture -- Dimitri Tiomkin

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Spencer Tracy, and Best Cinematography, Color -- James Wong Howe

Mary Hemingway, who was Ernest Hemingway's fourth wife and widow, plays the blonde tourist at the end of the film. She crosses the street and takes a seat in the café. She has no lines. Ernest Hemingway can be seen sitting in the cafe in the final scene. He his wearing a tan baseball cap is talking to other fishermen. This was his movie debut.



11:15 AM -- A Star Is Born (1954)
A falling star marries the newcomer he's helping reach the top.
Dir: George Cukor
Cast: Judy Garland, James Mason, Jack Carson
C-176 mins, Letterbox Format, CC,

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- James Mason, Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Judy Garland (Judy Garland couldn't attend the ceremony because she was giving birth to her third child and only son, Joey Luft. Even though she did not win the Academy Award she always stated that Joey was the best "Academy Award" she ever received that night.), Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color -- Malcolm C. Bert, Gene Allen, Irene Sharaff and George James Hopkins, Best Costume Design, Color -- Jean Louis, Mary Ann Nyberg and Irene Sharaff, Best Music, Original Song -- Harold Arlen (music) and Ira Gershwin (lyrics) for the song "The Man that Got Away", and Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture -- Ray Heindorf

In 1981, film historian Ronald Haver enlisted the help of writer Fay Kanin, president of the Motion Picture Academy® and a member of the National Committee for Film Preservation. She pitched the restoration project to Warner Bros. chairman Robert Daly, who gave Haver the go-ahead. Haver went through film storage vaults on both coasts and dug up leads about private, illegally obtained footage held by private collectors. He even had to call the police to track down one collector who had a 35mm negative of "Lose That Long Face. Eventually he assembled about 20 minutes of the missing half-hour, including both cut musical numbers and the proposal scene. Along the way, he also found a negative and print of The Animal Kingdom (1932), a film long thought lost; a pristine 35mm print of Of Human Bondage (1934) and the original negatives for A Star Is Born (1937), along with costume and photographic tests for the 1954 version. Other treats he found included newsreel footage and kinescopes of the film's premieres in Hollywood and New York and the first CinemaScope version of "The Man That Got Away."



2:15 PM -- On the Town (1949)
Three sailors wreak havoc as they search for love during a whirlwind 24-hour leave in New York City.
Dir: Gene Kelly
Cast: Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Betty Garrett
C-98 mins, CC,

Won an Oscar for Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture -- Roger Edens and Lennie Hayton

The crew tried to keep the location filming in New York City as low-key as possible. Many of the scenes were filmed from the back of a station wagon. At the end of "New York, New York", as the camera tilts up at Rockefeller Plaza, you can see the skating rink lined with spectators watching Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly.



4:00 PM -- Annie Get Your Gun (1950)
Fanciful musical biography of wild West sharpshooter Annie Oakley.
Dir: George Sidney
Cast: Betty Hutton, Howard Keel, Louis Calhern
C-107 mins, CC,

Won an Oscar for Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture -- Adolph Deutsch and Roger Edens

Nominated for Oscars for Best Cinematography, Color -- Charles Rosher, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color -- Cedric Gibbons, Paul Groesse, Edwin B. Willis and Richard Pefferle, and Best Film Editing -- James E. Newcom

Ginger Rogers wrote in her 1991 autobiography that she told her agent Leland Hayward to aggressively go after this film for her, and that money was no object. She wrote that she would have worked for one dollar, to make it legal. Hayward spoke with Louis B. Mayer, who said: "Tell Ginger to stay in her high-heel shoes and her silk stockings, she could never be as rambunctious as Annie Oakley has to be".



6:00 PM -- Now, Voyager (1942)
A repressed spinster is transformed by psychiatry and her love for a married man.
Dir: Irving Rapper
Cast: Bette Davis, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains
BW-118 mins, CC,

Won an Oscar for Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture -- Max Steiner

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Bette Davis, and Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Gladys Cooper

Bette Davis complained about Max Steiner's Academy Award-winning musical score, saying that it was too intrusive on her performance.




TCM PRIMETIME - WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: 31 DAYS OF OSCAR: BEST ORIGINAL SCORE WINNERS



8:00 PM -- Limelight (1952)
A broken-down comic sacrifices everything to give a young dancer a shot at the big time.
Dir: Charles Chaplin
Cast: Charles Chaplin, Claire Bloom, Nigel Bruce
BW-138 mins, CC,

Won an Oscar for Best Music, Original Dramatic Score -- Charles Chaplin, Ray Rasch and Larry Russell (The film was not released in Los Angeles until 1972. Under the Academy rules at the time being, this permitted it to be eligible despite of being 20 years old.)

Final film of Edna Purviance. She was Charles Chaplin's favorite co-star from the silent era, and remained close to Chaplin throughout her life. She rarely worked in films after the 1920s. Chaplin kept her on his payroll until her death in 1958.



10:30 PM -- Fiddler on the Roof (1971)
In Russia before the revolution, a Jewish milkman tries to marry off his daughters who have plans of their own.
Dir: Norman Jewison
Cast: Topol, Norma Crane, Leonard Frey
C-181 mins, Letterbox Format, CC,

Won Oscars for Best Cinematography -- Oswald Morris, Best Sound -- Gordon K. McCallum and David Hildyard, and Best Music, Scoring Adaptation and Original Song Score -- John Williams

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Topol, Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Leonard Frey, Best Director -- Norman Jewison, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration -- Robert F. Boyle, Michael Stringer and Peter Lamont, and Best Picture

To get the look he wanted for the film, director Norman Jewison told Director of Photography Oswald Morris, who was famous for shooting color films in unusual styles, to shoot the film in an earthy tone. Morris saw a woman wearing brown nylon hosiery, thought, "That's the tone we want," asked the woman for the stockings on the spot and shot the entire film with a stocking over the lens. The weave can be detected in some scenes. Morris also shot the musical number "Tevye's Dream" in full color, which was desaturated in post-production. This was modelled on techniques he had used in filming Moulin Rouge (1952) with a color style made to resemble Toulouse-Lautrec's paintings and Moby Dick (1956) in a color style made to resemble 19th-century engravings of life at sea.



1:45 AM -- Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)
Spirited musical biography of the song-and-dance man who kept America humming through two world wars.
Dir: Michael Curtiz
Cast: James Cagney, Joan Leslie, Walter Huston
BW-126 mins, CC,

Won Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- James Cagney, Best Sound, Recording -- Nathan Levinson (Warner Bros. SSD), and Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture -- Ray Heindorf and Heinz Roemheld

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Walter Huston, Best Director -- Michael Curtiz, Best Writing, Original Story -- Robert Buckner, Best Film Editing -- George Amy, and Best Picture

Many facts were changed or ignored to add to the feel of the movie. For example, the real George M. Cohan was married twice, and although his second wife's middle name was Mary, she went by her first name, Agnes. In fact, the movie deviated so far from the truth that, following the premiere, the real George M. Cohan commented, "It was a good movie. Who was it about?"



4:00 AM -- Cover Girl (1944)
A nightclub dancer makes it big in modeling, leaving her dancer boyfriend behind.
Dir: Charles Vidor
Cast: Rita Hayworth, Gene Kelly, Lee Bowman
C-107 mins, CC,

Won an Oscar for Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture -- Carmen Dragon and Morris Stoloff

Nominated for Oscars for Best Cinematography, Color -- Rudolph Maté and Allen M. Davey, Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Color -- Lionel Banks, Cary Odell and Fay Babcock, Best Sound, Recording -- John P. Livadary (Columbia SSD), and Best Music, Original Song -- Jerome Kern (music) and Ira Gershwin (lyrics) for the song "Long Ago and Far Away"

Columbia Pictures gave Gene Kelly almost complete control over the making of this film, and many of his ideas contributed to its lasting success. He removed several of the sound stage walls so that he, Rita Hayworth, and Phil Silvers could dance along an entire street in one take. He also used trick photography so that he could dance with himself in one sequence.



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