TCM Schedule for Saturday, January 4, 2020 -- The Essentials: Louisiana Coming of Age

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Last edited Mon Mar 23, 2020, 07:49 PM - Edit history (1)

In the daylight hours, TCM has the usual Saturday matinee lineup of films and shorts, along with a pair of original films and their remakes (Five Came Back (1939) and Back From Eternity (1956); The Champ (1931 and 1979). Then in primetime, The Essentials is back! (or should that be The Essentials are back?), with trailblazing producer, director and screenwriter Ava DuVernay, who will join primetime host Ben Mankiewicz to discuss the films she has chosen. Tonight's theme covers films about coming of age in Louisiana, including Sounder (1972). Enjoy!


6:00 AM -- The Shop Around the Corner (1940)
Feuding co-workers don't realize they're secret romantic pen pals.
Dir: Ernst Lubitsch
Cast: Margaret Sullavan, James Stewart, Frank Morgan
BW-99 mins, CC

While directing this movie, Ernst Lubitsch drew upon his extensive experiences working in his father's Berlin shop as a young lad. At the film's January 25, 1940 premiere at Radio City Music Hall, Lubitsch remarked, "I have known just such a little shop in Budapest...The feeling between the boss and those who work for him is pretty much the same the world over, it seems to me. Everyone is afraid of losing his job and everyone knows how little human worries can affect his job. If the boss has a touch of dyspepsia, better be careful not to step on his toes; when things have gone well with him, the whole staff reflects his good humor."


8:00 AM -- MGM Cartoons: To Spring (1936)
Dwarfs greet the coming of spring by manufacturing various bright colors.
Dir: Hugh Harman, William Hanna, Paul Fennell (all uncredited)
Cast: Delos Jewkes, Elmore Vincent
BW-9 mins

This is the directorial debut of animator William Hanna.


8:11 AM -- The Boss Didn't Say Good Morning (1937)
In this short film, an office worker fears for his job after his boss fails to respond to his "good morning."
Dir: Jacques Tourneur
Cast: Roger Moore, Donald Haines, Jack Mulhall
BW-10 mins

When the narrator states that John Jones is "almost as contented as a certain famous brand of cows", the reference is to the Carnation company and it's long-running advertising line "Carnation Condensed Milk, the milk from contented cows".


8:22 AM -- A Word for the Greeks (1951)
This travel short focuses on the history, culture, and people of Greece.
Dir: James A. FitzPatrick
C-8 mins


8:31 AM -- Go Down Death (1944)
Gangsters try to frame a minister out to clean up their Southern town.
Dir: Spencer Williams
Cast: Myra D. Hemmings, Samuel H. James, Eddye L. Houston
BW-54 mins

This film was the third in a trilogy of religious films directed by noted African-American filmmaker Spencer Williams. He previously directed The Blood of Jesus (1941) and the now-lost Brother Martin (1942).


9:30 AM -- The Mysterious Mr. M: Flood of Flames (1946)
An evil scientist known as "Mr. M." uses a drug he has developed called "hypnotreme" to help steal submarine equipment.
Dir: Lewis D. Collins, Vernon Keays
Cast: Dennis Moore, Pamela Blake, Richard Martin
BW-0 mins

Third of thirteen episodes.


10:00 AM -- Popeye: Wimmin Is a Myskery (1940)
When Popeye tells Olive Oyl that he will propose to her the next morning, she has a dream that their four boys will run roughshod over their house.
Dir: Dave Fleischer, Willard Bowsky (uncredited)
Cast: Margie Hines, Jack Mercer
BW-7 mins, CC

This is the first appearance of the characters which will later be introduced as Popeye's nephews, here "poopeye" is replaced with "pepeye".


10:07 AM -- Fighting Trouble (1956)
The Bowery Boys try to make their name as crime photographers.
Dir: George Blair
Cast: Huntz Hall, Stanley Clements, Adele Jergens
BW-61 mins, CC

Leo Gorcey was fired from the last film, crashing Las Vegas for being intoxicated. The boys contract had seven more films to make. Hall assumed that the series would end, but the basic idea was reworked. Louie (Leo's Dad) had passed away. Leo walked out on negotiations with the studio. The usual faces are gone. Stanley Clements replaced Leo in the sense that he was teamed with Hall and the film's were under the banner of the Bowery Boys, but that's where it ends. Clements played a suited adult and Hall was now a man. These last seven films were like detective films or who done its. This film makers the first Bowery Boys film without Leo Gorcey, and the first with the new format. Fans regard these last seven films as not being true Bowery Boys movies.


11:30 AM -- King for a Day (1934)
A talented tap dancer who can't get an audition uses his prowess at playing craps to gain ownership of a musical show.
Dir: Roy Mack
Cast: Bill Robinson, Ernest Whitman, Dusty Fletcher
BW-21 mins

"A Broadway Brevity"


12:00 PM -- King Solomon's Mines (1937)
African explorers enlist an exiled native chief to help them find a legendary treasure.
Dir: Robert Stevenson
Cast: Paul Robeson, Cedric Hardwicke, Roland Young
BW-80 mins, CC

The film was thought lost for years. It was believed the negative was ceded to MGM when the studio acquired remake rights in 1950. When MGM denied it, it was believed to have been assigned to Pinewood Lake on the studio's property, a watery grave that contains cans and reels of unstable nitrate films. When it did turn up, it was in Rank's Pinewood vaults.


1:30 PM -- The Gunfighter (1950)
The fastest gun in the West tries to escape his reputation.
Dir: Henry King
Cast: Gregory Peck, Helen Westcott, Millard Mitchell
BW-85 mins, CC

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Writing, Motion Picture Story -- William Bowers and André De Toth

The studio hated Gregory Peck's authentic period mustache. In fact, the head of production at Fox, Spyros P. Skouras, was out of town when production began. By the time he got back, so much of the film had been shot that it was too late to order Peck to shave it off and re-shoot. After the film did not do well at the box office, Skouras ran into Peck and he reportedly said, "That mustache cost us millions".


3:00 PM -- The Great Escape (1963)
Thrown together by the Germans, a group of captive Allied troublemakers plot a daring escape.
Dir: John Sturges
Cast: Robert Graf, Nigel Stock, Angus Lennie
C-172 mins, CC, Letterbox

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Film Editing -- Ferris Webster

During the climactic motorcycle chase, director John Sturges allowed Steve McQueen to ride (in disguise) as one of the pursuing German soldiers, so that in the final sequence, through the magic of editing, he's actually chasing himself. McQueen played the German motorcyclist who hits the wire.


6:00 PM -- Every Which Way but Loose (1978)
A trucker and fist-fighter roams the valley with his pet orangutan.
Dir: James Fargo
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Sondra Locke, Geoffrey Lewis
C-115 mins, CC

The movie's title is derived from Zora Neale Hurston's 1937 novel, "Their Eyes Were Watching God". Tea Cake, the second husband of the book's central character Janie, tells his wife about a fight he had with a man with a knife. Tea Cake boasts that he "turned him every way but loose", fighting him not without allowing the man to stab him.



TCM PRIMETIME - WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: THE ESSENTIALS: LOUISIANA COMING OF AGE



8:00 PM -- Sounder (1972)
Black sharecroppers during the Depression fight to get their children a decent education.
Dir: Martin Ritt
Cast: Cicely Tyson, Paul Winfield, Kevin Hooks
C-105 mins, CC, Letterbox

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Paul Winfield, Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Cicely Tyson, Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium -- Lonne Elder III, and Best Picture

Cicely Tyson commented in a TCM interview that director Martin Ritt's cinematographer (principal cameraman), while shooting the famous "homecoming sequence" with Tyson and co-star Paul Winfield, was so moved by their performances that he was certain he missed framing the action properly in the shots and respectfully asked them to do the difficult scene again. They obliged, but a later examination of daily rushes revealed that they got shot and acting perfect the first time, and take 1 was a print.


10:00 PM -- Louisiana Story (1948)
A Louisiana boy gets involved with an oil company drilling in the bayou.
Dir: Robert Flaherty
Cast: Joseph Boudreaux, Lionel LeBlanc, Mrs. E. Bienvenu
BW-81 mins

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Writing, Motion Picture Story -- Frances H. Flaherty and Robert J. Flaherty

After a screen test had been shot of Joseph Boudreaux, but before he had been chosen for the role of The Boy, his uncle gave him a "G.I."--i.e., very short--haircut. The production had to delay shooting until his hair grew back.


11:30 PM -- Romance of Louisiana (1937)
This short film tells the story of the Louisiana Purchase.
Dir: Crane Wilbur
Cast: Ted Osborn, Erville Alderson, Jack Mower
C-18 mins


12:00 AM -- The Big Sleep (1946)
Private eye Philip Marlowe investigates a society girl's involvement in the murder of a pornographer.
Dir: Howard Hawks
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, John Ridgely
BW-114 mins, CC

Rumors that Andy Williams dubbed Lauren Bacall's singing voice are untrue. Both director Howard Hawks and Bacall confirm that she did her own singing. The same rumors persist regarding her singing voice in To Have and Have Not (1944), and are equally untrue.


2:15 AM -- The Kiss of Death (1947)
An ex-con trying to go straight must face a crazed criminal out for revenge.
Dir: Henry Hathaway
Cast: Victor Mature, Brian Donlevy, Coleen Gray
BW-99 mins, CC

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Richard Widmark, and Best Writing, Original Story -- Eleazar Lipsky

Originally, Patricia Morison played Victor Mature's wife, who is attacked and raped by a gangster who is supposed to be watching out for her while Mature is in prison, and afterwards commits suicide by sticking her head in the kitchen oven and turning on the gas. Both scenes were cut from the original print at the insistence of the censors, who wanted no depiction of either a rape or a suicide, so she does not appear in the film at all. Mention is made later in the film about Mature's wife's suicide and a now obscure reference is made by Nettie that the unseen gangster Rizzo contributed to the wife's downfall.


4:00 AM -- Touch of Evil (1958)
A narcotics agent risks his wife's life to investigate a crooked cop.
Dir: Orson Welles
Cast: Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh, Orson Welles
BW-111 mins, CC

Orson Welles said that this was the most fun he'd ever had filming a picture, unlike most of his Hollywood films, because he wasn't troubled by studio interference (until after he completed the picture, anyway). He was given a healthy budget, and he was working with some of his favorite actors on a script that didn't involve as much symbolism and all-out cinematic trickery as something like Citizen Kane (1941).