TCM Schedule for Thursday, April 26, 2018 -- TCM Spotlight: Victorian Era in Film

[Staph]

In the daylight hours, TCM is showing films about all sorts of athletes in love, from baseball pitchers to swimmers to polo players to boxers to race car drivers to football halfbacks. Then in prime time, TCM is finishing up this month's films about the Victorian era. One more time, Roger!

The subject of Victorian Society and Manners would not be complete without The Importance of Being Earnest (1952), director Anthony Asquith's scintillating film version of Oscar Wilde's comedy of manners, with a delightful cast topped by Edith Evans' definitive Lady Bracknell. Another film of unusual interest is the TCM premiere of The Mudlark (1950), Jean Negulesco's treatment of Theodore Bonnet's novel about a street urchin (Andrew Ray) who visits Queen Victoria (Irene Dunne). Also in the mix: The Katharine Hepburn feminist drama A Woman Rebels (1936), the Shirley Temple vehicle The Little Princess (1939) and the British comedy The Wrong Box (1966).

by Roger Fristoe

Enjoy!



6:00 AM -- LADIES DAY (1943)
To save their team, baseball players try to get their star pitcher married to the right woman.
Dir: Leslie Goodwins
Cast: Lupe Velez, Eddie Albert, Patsy Kelly
BW-62 mins,

Based on a play by Robert Considine, Edward Clark Lilley and Bertrand Robinson.


7:05 AM -- HIGH DIVE KIDS (1956)
In this short film, children from preschool age through age 14 are shown diving from various heights into a swimming pool.
BW-8 mins,


7:15 AM -- MILLION DOLLAR MERMAID (1952)
True story of Annette Kellerman, the world's first great swimming star.
Dir: Mervyn LeRoy
Cast: Esther Williams, Victor Mature, Walter Pidgeon
C-110 mins, CC,

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Cinematography, Color -- George J. Folsey

Esther Williams broke her neck diving off a 50-foot tower during the sequence in which she wears a golden swimming costume. She spent six months in a body cast before recovering to complete the film.


9:15 AM -- POLO JOE (1936)
A young man has to learn polo fast to impress his girlfriend.
Dir: William McGann
Cast: Joe E. Brown, Carol Hughes, Richard "Skeets" Gallagher
BW-64 mins, CC,

The novelty value of POLO JOE (1936) is found chiefly in two scenes in which star Joe E. Brown sings songs in Chinese. He also frequently resorts to using Chinese phrases in the course of his frenetic activities throughout the film, even talking to a horse that way in one bit. This is all a result of his character having worked in China for the previous decade in a job that's never defined. The first song is heard in the very first scene as he sits in a train car on his way to his Aunt Minnie's home, where he will be staying. Later, at a dinner party welcoming Joe, Aunt Minnie (Fay Holden) reveals that she's hired three Chinese musicians, performing traditional instruments, to accompany Joe as he sings. One of the musicians, played by Dong Yuen Jung, even sings a duet with Joe, who has wisely made sure, before his performance, that the musicians speak the same Chinese dialect that he does, a rare acknowledgment of China's multiple languages in a Hollywood film referencing China.


10:30 AM -- HUDDLE (1932)
A steelworker's son becomes a college football hero.
Dir: Sam Wood
Cast: Ramon Novarro, Madge Evans, Una Merkel
BW-103 mins,

Real college students were recruited for larger scenes, each getting paid $5 a day. While this helped provide appropriate atmosphere for the college setting of this film, the students were hired at a rate that was below the standard $7.50-a-day paid daily to professional extras in Los Angeles.


12:17 PM -- ALL AMERICAN DRAWBACK (1935)
In this comedic short, a "student" must raise his grades or else no more football. Vitaphone Release 1877.
Dir: Lloyd French
Cast: Edgar Bergen, Charlie McCarthy, Gerrie Worthing
BW-11 mins,

Second entry in the 1935-1936 Pepper Pot one-reel comedy series.


12:30 PM -- THE HALF-BACK OF NOTRE DAME (1924)
Romance hits a football player when he falls for an aviatrix in this short silent comedy.
Dir: Del Lord
Cast: Hazel Williams, Si Jenks, Harry Gribbon
BW-16 mins,

The title is a play on words; Hunchback of Notre Dame, The (1923), was one of 1923's biggest hits.


12:50 PM -- THROTTLE PUSHERS (1933)
This short film highlights the fast-paced and dangerous world of professional auto racing.
Dir: Jules White
Cast: Pete Smith, Fred Frame, Wild Bill Cummings
BW-9 mins,

Filmed at Legion Ascot Speedway, Los Angeles.


1:00 PM -- TO PLEASE A LADY (1950)
A ruthless race-car driver falls for a crusading journalist out to clean up the sport.
Dir: Clarence Brown
Cast: Clark Gable, Barbara Stanwyck, Adolphe Menjou
BW-92 mins, CC,

The finale of the film takes place at the Indianapolis 500. The actual 1950 running of the 500 was used for these scenes. The actual driver of the 17 car for the 1950 Indy 500 was the real Joie Chitwood, featured earlier in the film as the owner of the Thrill Show Brannan was working in.


2:45 PM -- WHIPLASH (1948)
An artist becomes a boxer but finds that it may not have been the best career choice.
Dir: Lew Seiler
Cast: Dane Clark, Alexis Smith, Zachary Scott
BW-90 mins, CC,

Nitrate prints of this film are held by the UCLA Film and Television Archives. Presumably held very carefully !


4:18 PM -- SPORT SLANTS #218 (1931)
This short entry in Ted Husing's "Sport Slants" series covers wrestling, hockey, gymnastics, and basketball. Vitaphone Release 1218.
BW-10 mins,


4:30 PM -- ONE ON ONE (1977)
A talented basketball player has difficulties adjusting to college life.
Dir: Lamont Johnson
Cast: Robby Benson, Annette O'Toole, Gail Strickland
C-98 mins, CC,

The campus scenes were filmed at Colorado State University, mostly at Moby Arena and in the Charles A. Lory Student Center. Many of the CSU basketball players and even assistant coaches were extras in the film.


6:15 PM -- STEALING HOME (1988)
An aging baseball player returns to his hometown after the suicide of a childhood friend.
Dir: Steven Kampmann
Cast: Mark Harmon, Blair Brown, Jodie Foster
C-98 mins, CC,

This movie was reportedly based on the real-life experiences of its writers, former Second City troupe members and WKRP in Cincinnati writers Steven Kampmann and William Porter.



TCM PRIMETIME - WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: TCM SPECIAL THEME: VICTORIAN ERA IN FILM



8:00 PM -- THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST (1952)
A proper Englishman gets caught leading a double life.
Dir: Anthony Asquith
Cast: Edith Evans, Michael Redgrave, Joan Greenwood
C-96 mins, CC,

The director, Anthony Asquith, was the son of H.H. Asquith who, as Home Secretary, brought the charges of immorality which led to Oscar Wilde's imprisonment. In keeping with the film's theatrical origins, Asquith shot it mostly in sequence and used long takes to let the actors develop the rhythms of Wilde's dialogue.


9:45 PM -- THE MUDLARK (1950)
A young scavenger finds a cameo of Queen Victoria and risks his life to save it.
Dir: Jean Negulesco
Cast: Irene Dunne, Alec Guinness, Andrew Ray
BW-99 mins, CC,

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Costume Design, Black-and-White -- Edward Stevenson and Margaret Furse

Alec Guinness' speech to Parliament - in the role of Benjamin Disraeli - is delivered in an unbroken, single take of nearly seven minutes of impassioned dialogue.


11:32 PM -- THE INCREDIBLE STRANGER (1942)
This short film, set in 1893, focuses on a stranger that arrives in a small town and keeps a promise he made to his wife.
Dir: Jacques Tourneur
Cast: Henry Sylvester, Connie Leon, Paul Guilfoyle
BW-11 mins,


11:45 PM -- A WOMAN REBELS (1936)
A Victorian feminist has an illegitimate baby.
Dir: Mark Sandrich
Cast: Katharine Hepburn, Herbert Marshall, Elizabeth Allen
BW-88 mins, CC,

The film lost $222,000 at the box office and was Katharine Hepburn's 3rd flop in a row, contributing to exhibitors declaring her "box office poison".


1:30 AM -- THE WRONG BOX (1966)
Two elderly brothers plot to kill each other for a fortune.
Dir: Bryan Forbes
Cast: John Mills, Ralph Richardson, Michael Caine
C-106 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

The film makes reference to a "tontine". This is defined as, according to Wikipedia, "an investment plan for raising capital, devised in the 17th century and relatively widespread in the 18th and 19th centuries. It combines features of a group annuity and a lottery. Each subscriber pays an agreed sum into the fund, and thereafter receives an annuity. As members die, their shares devolve to the other participants, and so the value of each annuity increases. On the death of the last member, the scheme is wound up. In a variant, which has provided the plot device for most fictional versions, upon the death of the penultimate member the capital passes to the last survivor". Historically, most tontines (though not the one described in the film) expired after a fixed time period, upon which the principal was disbursed to those subscribers who had not died.


3:30 AM -- THE LITTLE PRINCESS (1939)
When her father is reported dead in war, his daughter fights harsh conditions at her boarding school.
Dir: Walter Lang
Cast: Shirley Temple, Richard Greene, Anita Louise
C-93 mins, CC,

The reason Shirley Temple hadn't made a movie in Technicolor until this one was that the Technicolor company insisted that 1,000 foot-candle lights be used to get proper exposure on its film. These incredibly bright lights produced so much heat that the studio thought a child Temple's age would be hurt working under such conditions. So, with the cooperation of the Technicolor company, cinematographer Arthur C. Miller worked on a series of tests using lower levels of light, and finally discovered that 400 to 500 foot-candle lights would produce a satisfactory Technicolor image without generating the kind of heat that could injure Temple and the other children in the cast.


5:09 AM -- MR. BLABBERMOUTH! (1942)
This short film, part of the U.S. pro-war movement, suggests citizens avoid listening to rumors during wartime.
Dir: Basil Wrangell
Cast: Ben Hall, May McAvoy, Stanley Andrews
BW-19 mins,

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Documentary

The following public service announcement is shown at the end of the film (following the "The End" title card), with a statue of a soldier surrounded by various battle scenes: "America needs your money. Buy War Bonds and Stamps at this theater."


5:30 AM -- MGM PARADE SHOW #7 (1955)
Ray Bolger performs in a clip from "The Great Ziegfeld"; Debbie Reynolds introduces a clip from "The Tender Trap." Hosted by George Murphy.
BW-26 mins,