TCM Schedule for Friday, March 11 -- Lewis Milestone War Classics

[Staph]

The primetime theme today is the classic war films of director Lewis Milestone -- WWI (All Quiet on the Western Front), WWII (A Walk in the Sun) and the Korean War (Pork Chop Hill). Enjoy!



4:15am -- Stella Dallas (1937)
After divorcing a society man, a small-town woman tries to build a better life for their daughter.
Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, John Boles, Anne Shirley, Barbara O'Neil
Dir: King Vidor
BW-106 mins, TV-G

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Barbara Stanwyck, and Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Anne Shirley

The movie was so popular it became a radio serial on 25 October 1937, dramatizing the later lives of characters in the movie. The serial lasted for eighteen years.


6:15am -- Ten Cents A Dance (1931)
A taxi dancer with a jealous husband finds herself falling for a wealthy client.
Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, Ricardo Cortez, Monroe Owsley, Sally Blane
Dir: Lionel Barrymore
BW-77 mins, TV-G

Lionel Barrymore's last official turn as a director.


7:45am -- Shopworn (1932)
A waitress falls for a wealthy young man but has to fight his mother to find happiness.
Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, Regis Toomey, ZaSu Pitts, Lucien Littlefield
Dir: Nicholas Grinde
BW-66 mins, TV-G

The print shown on Turner Classic Movies, from Sony's archives, displays title credits which were modernized and re-designed in 1938 for a re-release that took place only after several minutes worth of deletions were made to meet the standards of the Production Code, which was more rigorously enforced starting in 1934.


9:00am -- And So They Were Married (1936)
The children of a divorcee and a widower try to keep their parents apart.
Cast: Melvyn Douglas, Mary Astor, Edith Fellows, Jackie Moran
Dir: Elliott Nugent
BW-74 mins, TV-G

Some of the exteriors were filmed at Donner Pass, California.


10:30am -- Good Girls Go to Paris (1939)
An English professor helps a waitress take a dream vacation in Paris.
Cast: Melvyn Douglas, Joan Blondell, Walter Connolly, Alan Curtis
Dir: Alexander Hall
BW-77 mins, TV-G

Originally titled "Good Girls Go To Paris, Too," but the censors objected.


12:00pm -- Start Cheering (1938)
Fed up with Hollywood, a movie star enrolls in a small-town college.
Cast: Jimmy Durante, Walter Connolly, Joan Perry, Charles Starrett
Dir: Albert S. Rogell
BW-78 mins, TV-G

The print Turner Classic Movies (TCM) has been showing since 1994 is probably a print shown in the UK, since an opening frame states "Grand National Pictures Ltd. presents Start Cheering". That company is a UK company which probably handled the UK distribution.


1:30pm -- Sweetheart of the Campus (1941)
A college dean tries to keep a nightclub from opening too close to his campus.
Cast: Ruby Keeler, Ozzie Nelson, Harriet Hilliard, Gordon Oliver
Dir: Edward Dmytryk
BW-67 mins, TV-G

Final film of Ruby Keeler (though she did make rare television appearances in later years).


2:45pm -- The Mating of Millie (1948)
A businesswoman who wants to adopt a child must find a husbband.
Cast: Glenn Ford, Evelyn Keyes, Ron Randell, Willard Parker
Dir: Henry Levin
BW-87 mins, TV-G

"Lux Radio Theater" broadcast a 60 minute radio adaptation of the movie on January 3, 1949 with Glenn Ford reprising his film role.


4:15pm -- Father Is a Bachelor (1950)
Five orphans 'adopt' a loner and set out to find him a wife.
Cast: William Holden, Coleen Gray, Mary Jane Saunders, Charles Winninger
Dir: Abby Berlin
BW-85 mins, TV-G

Father Is A Bachelor marked the end of what William Holden termed his 'Smiling Jim' roles. His next film would be Paramount's Sunset Boulevard, which forever changed his screen image.


5:45pm -- Full of Life (1956)
A married couple has to deal with pregnancy and the husband's meddling father.
Cast: Judy Holliday, Richard Conte, Salvatore Baccaloni, Esther Minciotti
Dir: Richard Quine
C-91 mins, TV-G

Operatic bass Salvatore Baccaloni's American film debut.


7:30pm -- Now Playing March (2011)


8:00pm -- All Quiet On The Western Front (1930)
Young German soldiers try to adjust to the horrors of World War I.
Cast: Louis Wolheim, Lew Ayres, John Wray, Arnold Lucy
Dir: Lewis Milestone
BW-134 mins, TV-PG

Won Oscars for Best Director -- Lewis Milestone, and Best Picture

Nominated for Oscars for Best Cinematography -- Arthur Edeson, and Best Writing, Achievement -- George Abbott, Maxwell Anderson and Del Andrews

To ensure authenticity, director Lewis Milestone instructed the studio to try to find out if there were any German Army veterans living in the Los Angeles area, so he could have them authenticate German uniforms, equipment, etc. So many of them were found that Milestone cast a lot of them as German officers in the film, and had them drill the extras playing German troops. (The scene where they are laying communication wire in the forward trenches was led by a former German soldier whose job during the war was to do exactly that.)


10:30pm -- A Walk in the Sun (1946)
A platoon of American soldiers captures an Italian farmhouse.
Cast: Dana Andrews, Richard Conte, George Tyne, John Ireland
Dir: Lewis Milestone
BW-117 mins, TV-14

Other than rank insignia, none of the soldiers' uniforms bear any markings whatsoever. It was standard practice to mark soldiers' helmets with chalk numbers so that they would know which landing craft they were assigned to board for the invasion. It was also standard practice to wear insignia to denote the soldiers' units for identification purposes, although sometimes the shoulder sleeve insignia were removed to impede enemy intelligence gathering. Also, the soldiers' helmets are shown buckled at all times. It was common for soldiers to leave their helmets unbuckled, as there was a belief that, in the event of a nearby explosion, the helmet would break the soldier's neck when it reacted to the concussion.


12:30am -- Pork Chop Hill (1959)
Americans take a vital hill in Korea but have trouble holding it.
Cast: Gregory Peck, Harry Guardino, Rip Torn, George Peppard
Dir: Lewis Milestone
BW-98 mins, TV-PG

Gregory Peck personally chose Lewis Milestone to direct because Milestone's All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) had made a deep impression on him.


2:15am -- Repo Man (1984)
A young punk gives up stealing cars for a job repossessing them.
Cast: Jorge Martinez, Harry Dean Stanton, Emilio Estevez, Olivia Barash
Dir: Alex Cox
C-92 mins, TV-MA

The Repo Man's code is based on an amalgamation of wisdom given to director Alex Cox when he was serving in real life as a repo man.


4:00am -- Alex In Wonderland (1970)
A hot young film director can't decide on his next project.
Cast: Donald Sutherland, Ellen Burstyn, Meg Mazursky, Glenna Sergent
Dir: Paul Mazursky
C-112 mins, TV-MA

Director/writer Mazursky was in much the same situation as his title character; Mazursky had just completed his directorial debut -- Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice (1969) (he was also nominated for an Oscar for writing for that film).