TCM Schedule for Saturday, April 28, 2018 -- What's On Tonight: Professor Quatermass

[Staph]

There's another daylight schedule looking like an old-time movie house's Saturday matinee -- cowboy movies, cartoons, and several short documentaries. Then in prime time, we're following the exploits of Professor Bernard Quatermass, head of the British Experimental Rocket Group. From Wikipedia:

Nigel Kneale conceived the character of Quatermass in 1953, when he was assigned in his capacity as a BBC television staff drama writer to create a new six-part serial to run on Saturday nights in July and August. Kneale initially named his leading character Professor Charlton, but during the writing process decided he wanted something more striking and memorable.

A native of the Isle of Man, Kneale was inspired by the fact that surnames beginning with "Qu" were common on the island. The eventual name was picked from a London telephone directory; there was a family of that name who traded as fruiterers in the city's East End. The surname has its origins as a measurement of land assigned in the division of England by the Normans following their conquest of the country under William the Conqueror in 1066. The Professor's first name, Bernard, was in honour of the astronomer Bernard Lovell, founder of the Jodrell Bank observatory.

Enjoy!



6:00 AM -- THIRD FINGER, LEFT HAND (1940)
A man-shy fashion editor pretends to be married until a suitor claims to be her husband.
Dir: Robert Z. Leonard
Cast: Myrna Loy, Melvyn Douglas, Raymond Walburn
BW-97 mins, CC,

The director of the Production Code Administation (PCA) had MGM delete several gags that suggested Margot (Myrna Loy) was pregnant, since, he said, illegitimacy could not be the basis for a comedy.


8:00 AM -- FIGHTING FRONTIER (1943)
A cowboy risks his life to infiltrate an outlaw band.
Dir: Lambert Hillyer
Cast: Tim Holt, Cliff "Ukulele Ike" Edwards, Ann Summers
BW-57 mins, CC,

Based on a story by Bernard McConville.


8:00 AM -- DIAMOND DEMON (1947)
The unusual talents of Johnny Price, a minor league baseball pitcher and trick artist, are showcased in this short film.
Dir: Dave O'Brien
BW-9 mins,

Johnny played a few games in the majors for the Cleveland Indians in 1946. Tragically, later in life, he suffered from depression. One night, he committed suicide by hanging himself in 1967.


8:00 AM -- MGM CARTOONS: EARLY BIRD AND THE WORM (1936)
A young bird tries to get a head start on his worm neighbor by getting up early each morning.
Dir: Hugh Harman
C-9 mins, CC,

This cartoon is included in the special features of the Warner Home Video DVD "After the Thin Man."


8:00 AM -- THE STORY OF ALFRED NOBEL (1939)
This short film tells the story of Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite.
Dir: Joseph Newman
Cast: Eleanor Wesselhoeft, Paul Guilfoyle, Lalo Encinas
BW-11 mins,

Also known as Am I To Blame?, an interesting choice for the inventor of dynamite.


9:30 AM -- THE RED BARRY: DEVIL'S DISGUISE (1938)
The eighth chapter in the Red Barry serial. An undercover detective must uncover the truth and figure out who stole two million dollars in bonds.
BW-19 mins,

"Red Barry" was the 40th sound-era serial produced by Universal Pictures (followed "Flaming Frontiers" and preceded "Scouts To the Rescue" ), and was based in the Will Gould comic strip distributed to newspapers by King Features Syndicated, Inc.


10:00 AM -- POPEYE: LET'S YOU AND HIM FIGHT (1933)
Popeye and Bluto go head to head in a boxing match.
Dir: Dave Fleischer, Willard Bowsky (uncredited)
Cast: William Costello, William Pennell, Bonnie Poe
BW-6 mins, CC,

Did you ever think that for Popeye, spinach is a performance enhancing drug?


10:00 AM -- TARZAN'S DESERT MYSTERY (1943)
The jungle king braves a lost prehistoric world to obtain malaria serum for the Allies.
Dir: William Thiele
Cast: Johnny Weissmuller, Nancy Kelly, Johnny Sheffield
BW-70 mins, CC,

You probably remember Nancy Kelly best from her role as the mother of the truly evil child in The Bad Seed (1956). She won a Tony for that role on Broadway and received an Oscar nomination for the film.


11:30 AM -- SWINGTIME IN THE MOVIES (1938)
In this musical short, a director making a western struggles to find a good lead actress. Vitaphone Release 8960-8961.
Dir: Crane Wilbur
Cast: Katherine Kane, John Carroll, Jerry Colonna
C-20 mins,

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Short Subject, Two-reel

This was John Garfield's only theatrical release in Technicolor.


12:00 PM -- SINBAD THE SAILOR (1947)
The Arabian Nights hero sets off to find the lost treasure of Alexander the Great.
Dir: Richard Wallace
Cast: Douglas Fairbanks, Maureen O'Hara, Walter Slezak
C-117 mins, CC,

RKO had to scuttle its plan to present this film as a 1946 Christmas-season attraction when a strike at the Technicolor processing plant delayed the making of prints. The wide-release date would be moved up to January 13, 1947, with the Manhattan opening at the Palace Theatre following on January 22, 1947. Needing a black-and-white movie for its 1946 yuletide schedule, RKO chose a film destined to become a holiday perennial: Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life (1946).


2:15 PM -- COLORADO TERRITORY (1949)
An outlaw just released from prison is sucked back into a life of crime in this remake of High Sierra.
Dir: Raoul Walsh
Cast: Joel McCrea, Virginia Mayo, Dorothy Malone
BW-94 mins, CC,

The first American movie to be banned in West Germany, due to being 'an example of gangster films which glorify anti-social elements'.


4:00 PM -- HOUR OF THE GUN (1967)
Wyatt Earp tracks down the survivors of the Clanton Gang after the gunfight at the O.K. Corral.
Dir: John Sturges
Cast: James Garner, Jason Robards Jr., Robert Ryan
C-101 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Prior to production, United Artists had made it quite clear to Director John Sturges that none of the primary roles were to be filled by the actors who played the same characters in Sturges' previous Wyatt Earp film, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957). Wanting to distinguish this film from the previous one, they demanded different actors be cast in the roles. However, Sturges believed that the roles of Virgil and Morgan Earp from the previous film were small enough that the same actors who played them could do it again without harming the film's uniqueness. The studio agreed and allowed Sturges to cast John Hudson (Virgil Earp) and DeForest Kelley (Morgan Earp). Unfortunately, Hudson had retired from acting in the early 1960s and was unwilling to do the role. Kelley, on the other hand, was currently working on Star Trek (1966) and was unable to break away to play Morgan Earp. Thus, both Earp brothers were re-cast.


6:00 PM -- THE GUMBALL RALLY (1976)
A bored businessman spearheads a madcap race from coast to coast.
Dir: Chuck Bail
Cast: Michael Sarrazin, Norman Burton, Gary Busey
C-107 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

The character of Lapchick a shout out to silent film star, Charlie Chaplin. When ever he appears on screen, silent movie piano music plays, the character has no dialogue (save the final word in the film), the star who plays him, Harvey Jason, bears a resemblance to Chaplin, and if you scramble the letters in Lapchick, you can almost spell Chaplin.



TCM PRIMETIME - WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: PROFESSOR QUATERMASS



8:00 PM -- THE QUATERMASS XPERIMENT (1956)
A space fungus transforms an astronaut into a deadly monster.
Dir: Val Guest
Cast: Brian Donlevy, Jack Warner, Margia Dean
BW-82 mins, CC,

The film achieved a degree of notoriety Stateside when in 1956 the parents of Stewart Cohen attempted to sue the Lake Theater and distributors United Artists for negligence after their nine-year-old son died of a ruptured artery in the cinema lobby at a double-bill of this and The Black Sleep (1956). Cohen entered the Guinness Book of Records as the only known case of someone literally dying of fright at a horror film.


9:45 PM -- FIVE MILLION YEARS TO EARTH (1968)
Subway excavations unearth a deadly force from beyond space and time.
Dir: Roy Ward Baker
Cast: James Donald, Andrew Keir, Barbara Shelley
C-98 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Of the three Hammer "Quatermass" films, this is the only one which "Quatermass" creator Nigel Kneale personally liked. This was largely to the fact that he was much happier with Andrew Keir's performance as the title character than he had been with Brian Donlevy's in The Quatermass Xperiment (1955) and Enemy from Space (1957). He described Donlevy as "a former Hollywood heavy gone to seed" and claimed that he was drunk during much of the shooting of the latter film, a claim which its director Val Guest repudiated.


12:00 AM -- HOLLOW TRIUMPH (1948)
A crook on the lam poses as a psychiatrist.
Dir: Steve Sekely
Cast: Paul Henreid, Joan Bennett, Eduard Franz
BW-82 mins, CC,

Film debuts of Jack Webb and Thomas Browne Henry.


1:45 AM -- MAME (1974)
A wealthy eccentric takes in her orphaned nephew.
Dir: Gene Saks
Cast: Lucille Ball, Bea Arthur, Robert Preston
C-131 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Angela Lansbury recalled her time when she was playing Mame on Broadway and was visited by Lucille Ball who told her she was amazing in the part, deserved all the honors she was receiving and was a shoe in for the film version. Lansbury was very touched by this until she noticed Ball in the wings during her performance, taking notes. It was then that she realized that she was never going to play the part in the film.


4:00 AM -- MEET THE PEOPLE (1944)
A fading stage star tries to revive her career by taking a job in a shipyard.
Dir: Charles Riesner
Cast: Lucille Ball, Dick Powell, Virginia O'Brien
BW-100 mins, CC,

Daws Butler, the voice actor for Hanna Barbera cartoon characters, patterned the voice of the lion Snagglepuss after Bert Lahr, who played the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz. Butler took Snagglepuss's catchphrase "Heavens to Mergatroid" from Bert Lahr's having said it in the movie Meet the People.