TCM Schedule for Saturday, June 30, 2018 -- What's On Tonight: Mystery Writers

[Staph]

In the daylight hours, TCM has more Saturday matinee programming. Then in prime time, TCM is showing mystery writers involved in mysteries. Enjoy!



6:15 AM -- BOYS' RANCH (1946)
A ball player creates a ranch for troubled kids from the city.
Dir: Roy Rowland
Cast: Jackie "Butch" Jenkins, James Craig, Skippy Homeier
BW-97 mins,

Based on the actual "Boy's Ranch" located in Oldham County, Texas northwest of Amarillo, Texas. The ranch was started in 1939 by ex-wrestler Cal Farley of Amarillo as a home for underprivileged boys when rancher Julian Bivins donated the old Tascosa courthouse and 120 acres of land for Farley's project. It started with Farley and his wife and nine boys, and currently has over 400 boys and fifty buildings on 4000 acres of farm/ranch land and its own post office and school. Now known as Cal Farley's Boy's Ranch.

In December of 2017, several adult men who were once in the care of Cal Farley's Boys Ranch spoke with The Guardian news about the systemic abuse they suffered at the hands of Boys Ranch employees. Such abuse included physical beatings, sexual abuse, murder of pets, and forced extreme labor.


8:00 AM -- MGM CARTOONS: CELLBOUND (1955)
Spike has just finished the 20 year process of digging a tunnel from his prison cell but he picks the wrong place to hide.
Dir: Tex Avery
Cast: Tex Avery, Paul Frees
BW-6 mins, CC,

Last MGM cartoon not filmed in CinemaScope during the 1950s.


8:00 AM -- JUST SUPPOSE (1948)
This short film runs through various scenarios of "just suppose," such as a man having a baby!
Dir: David Barclay
Cast: Dave O'Brien, Dorothy Short, Don Brodie
BW-9 mins,


8:00 AM -- BEYOND THE ROCKIES (1932)
A noted gunman takes a job on a cattle ranch to stop a band of rustlers.
Dir: Fred Allen
Cast: Tom Keene, Rochelle Hudson, Marie Wells
BW-54 mins, CC,

Filmed in part in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California.


8:00 AM -- MENDELSSOHN'S WEDDING MARCH (1939)
This short film provides an account of how Mendelssohn came to write "The Wedding March."
Dir: James A. FitzPatrick
Cast: E Alyn Warren, Vernon Dent, Mary Anderson
C-8 mins,


9:30 AM -- TAILSPIN TOMMY IN THE GREAT AIR MYSTERY: HURLED FROM THE SKIES (1935)
A 12-episode serial in which Tailspin Tommy evades volcanoes, anti-aircraft shells, and time bombs as he foils a plan by corrupt profiteers to steal an island's oil reserves.
Director: Ray Taylor
Stars: Clark Williams, Jean Rogers, Noah Beery Jr.
BW-21 mins,

Part three.


10:00 AM -- TARZAN'S SAVAGE FURY (1952)
The jungle king's cousin tries to get him to help find a diamond treasure.
Dir: Cyril Endfield
Cast: Lex Barker, Dorothy Hart, Patric Knowles
BW-80 mins, CC,

Normally quite hairy-chested, Barker was forced to submit to a full body wax in order to play the buffed version of Tarzan demanded by the producers. It was not until he abandoned the Tarzan role and went to Europe to film that his fans were finally allowed to see him as nature intended, with his chest hair intact.


10:00 AM -- POPEYE: THE TWO-ALARM FIRE (1934)
When rival firefighters Popeye and Bluto respond to Olive Oyl's house fire, they find themselves fighting each other more than the fire.
Dir: Dave Fleischer, Willard Bowsky (uncredited)
Cast: William Costello, William Pennell, Mae Questel
BW-7 mins, CC,


11:30 AM -- THE OLD GREY MAYOR (1935)
In this comedic short, a boy and his fiancé try to break the news of their engagement to her father. Vitaphone Release 1823-1824.
Dir: Lloyd French
Cast: Sam Wren, Lionel Stander, Ruth Hall
BW-20 mins,

Available as an extra on the Warner DVD of 'G' Men (1935).


12:00 PM -- THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE (1951)
A young Union soldier fights to atone for a moment of cowardice during the Civil War.
Dir: John Huston
Cast: Andy Devine, Robert Easton Burke, Douglas Dick
BW-69 mins, CC,

John Huston considered this his best film. After a power struggle at the top of MGM management, the film was cut from a two-hour epic to the 69-minute version released to theaters. It was never released as an "A" feature but was shown as a second-feature "B" picture. Both Huston and star Audie Murphy tried unsuccessfully to purchase the film so that it could be re-edited to its original length. The studio claiming that the cut footage was destroyed. Unless there is an undiscovered copy of the uncut version, this movie will never be viewed as John Huston intended.


1:15 PM -- RUN SILENT, RUN DEEP (1958)
Officers on a WWII submarine clash during a perilous Pacific tour.
Dir: Robert Wise
Cast: Clark Gable, Burt Lancaster, Jack Warden
BW-93 mins, CC,

Clark Gable and Burt Lancaster did not get along during filming, partly due to Lancaster making jokes about Gable's age. There was one major argument when Gable refused to allow the crucial plot development of Lancaster's character to take control of the submarine, because he felt this went against the image he had built up for more than twenty years at MGM. After refusing to work for two days, Gable eventually agreed to return to the studio when it was decided that his character would fall ill, necessitating Lancaster taking command.


3:00 PM -- CHEYENNE AUTUMN (1964)
A reluctant Calvary Captain must track a defiant tribe of migrating Cheyennes.
Dir: John Ford
Cast: Richard Widmark, Carroll Baker, Karl Malden
C-155 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Cinematography, Color -- William H. Clothier

Little Wolf was a chief of the Cheyenne tribe in 1878. He and another chief led the Cheyenne off their Oklahoma reservation and took them back to their homeland in Montana, despite hundreds of US cavalry troops trying to stop them. This was called the "Cheyenne Autumn Trail" and is the basis for this film. Years before the film Richard Widmark had the historical subject matter researched at Yale. He brought the material to John Ford, who didn't want to make it. Years later Ford, who had kept the research, changed his mind and asked Widmark to star.


5:45 PM -- HARPER (1966)
A broken-down private eye sets out to find a rich woman's missing husband.
Dir: Jack Smight
Cast: Paul Newman, Lauren Bacall, Julie Harris
C-121 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

The opening credits sequence: William Goldman later said he knew he'd succeed as a screenwriter as soon as he wrote the opening scene in Harper (1966) in which Harper is forced to recycle used coffee grounds from the trash for his morning cup of coffee. Harper's dismay at the result, as realized by Paul Newman on screen, immediately created empathy between the character and the audience. Ironically, that opening sequence was the last thing he wrote for that script.



TCM PRIMETIME - WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: MYSTERY WRITERS



8:00 PM -- THE MASK OF DIMITRIOS (1944)
A meek novelist investigates the mysterious death of a notorious scoundrel.
Dir: Jean Negulesco
Cast: Sydney Greenstreet, Zachary Scott, Faye Emerson
BW-96 mins, CC,

First film of Zachary Scott.


10:00 PM -- FOOTSTEPS IN THE DARK (1941)
An aspiring mystery writer stumbles on to a real murder.
Dir: Lloyd Bacon
Cast: Errol Flynn, Brenda Marshall, Ralph Bellamy
BW-96 mins, CC,

"The Maltese Falcon" statuette from the 1931 version of the Dashiell Hammett mystery can be seen in Alan Hale's office. Both the statue and co-star Lee Patrick would soon appear in the classic second remake later than year.


12:00 AM -- ARMORED CAR ROBBERY (1950)
A police officer tries to find half a million dollars stolen by gangsters.
Dir: Richard Fleischer
Cast: Charles McGraw, Adele Jergens, William Talman
BW-68 mins, CC,

William Talman--who plays murderous gang leader Dave Purvis--later played District Attorney Hamilton Burger in the long-running Perry Mason (1957) TV series.


1:30 AM -- MIDNIGHT EXPRESS (1978)
A young man arrested for drug smuggling fights to survive the horrors of a Turkish prison.
Dir: Alan Parker
Cast: Brad Davis, Randy Quaid, John Hurt
C-121 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Winner of Oscars for Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium -- Oliver Stone, and Best Music, Original Score -- Giorgio Moroder

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- John Hurt, Best Director -- Alan Parker, Best Film Editing -- Gerry Hambling, and Best Picture

Oliver Stone was a new, largely untested screenwriter at the time, so when he was commissioned by Alan Parker and Producers Alan Marshall and David Puttnam, they fully expected his first draft to be just a starting point. Parker, indeed, expected to take over and write the screenplay after Stone had completed his first attempt. The screenplay that Stone duly delivered blew all three away. They all had to admit that it was a superb first draft.


3:45 AM -- THE ARRANGEMENT (1969)
A car crash causes a rich man to reconsider the life he leads.
Dir: Elia Kazan
Cast: Kirk Douglas, Faye Dunaway, Deborah Kerr
C-126 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Critics were overwhelmingly negative when the film came out, and it was the consensus that Elia Kazan should never have filmed his own best-selling novel, which was panned by most literary critics as trash when it was published in 1967. It was widely known that the lead role had been turned down by Marlon Brando, who had won three Academy Award nominations and one Oscar under Kazan's direction at the beginning of his film career and was the heart and soul of some of Kazan's best work as a movie director. By the late 1960s, after a string of flops, most critics felt Brando was through as a movie star and that he desperately needed Kazan to turn his career around, both as an artist and as a box-office star. When the film came out, Kirk Douglas' lead performance was roundly panned, and most critics felt that even Brando at his best couldn't save what was, in essence, a melodramatic potboiler. The failure of "The Arrangement" was the end of Kazan's own career as an A-list director.