TCM Schedule for Friday, January 3, 2014 -- Friday Night Spotlight: Science in the Movies

Today is a continuation of Star of the Month Joan Crawford, with a new Friday Night Spotlight in prime time -- Science in the Movies. Enjoy!



7:15 AM -- West Point (1928)
In this silent film, an arrogant cadet finds love and discipline just in time for the big Army-Navy game.
Dir: Edward Sedgwick
Cast: William Haines, Joan Crawford, William Bakewell
95 min, TV-G

Some filming was done at West Point.


9:00 AM -- The Hollywood Revue (1929)
Sketches and songs give MGM's silent stars a chance to show their stuff in talking pictures.
Dir: Charles Reisner
Cast: Conrad Nagel, Jack Benny, John Gilbert
C-118 min, TV-G

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture (No official nominees had been announced this year.)

One of the films cited as contributing to the collapse of John Gilbert's career after audiences heard his high-pitching speaking voice. Apparently, Gilbert's Romeo & Juliet sequence inspired the "talkie disaster" sequence in Singin' in the Rain (1952).


11:00 AM -- Untamed (1929)
An oil heiress raised to be wild falls for a penniless young man.
Dir: Jack Conway
Cast: Joan Crawford, Robert Montgomery, Ernest Torrence
85 min, TV-PG

From the story by Charles E. Scoggins.


12:30 PM -- Montana Moon (1930)
A flapper weds a cowboy and has to adjust to life out West.
Dir: Malcolm St. Clair
Cast: Joan Crawford, John Mack Brown, Dorothy Sebastian
89 min, TV-G

One of the writers was Sylvia Thalberg, sister of mega-producer Irving Thalberg.


2:00 PM -- Paid (1930)
A young innocent plots revenge after being sent to prison unjustly.
Dir: Sam Wood
Cast: Joan Crawford, Robert Armstrong, Marie Prevost
86 min, TV-G

The lead role was commissioned for Norma Shearer but she had to withdraw owing to pregnancy.


3:30 PM -- Dance, Fools, Dance (1931)
A brother and sister risk their lives to expose the gangsters who ruined their family.
Dir: Harry Beaumont
Cast: Joan Crawford, Lester Vail, Cliff Richards
81 min, TV-G

Before this movie Joan Crawford told people not to have affairs with their leading men until they made three movies together. She and Clark Gable had only made two together, but they started to have an affair during this movie. Afterwards Crawford said she had to eat her words, but that they tasted sweet.


5:00 PM -- Laughing Sinners (1931)
A Salvation Army preacher saves a troubled girl from suicide.
Dir: Harry Beaumont
Cast: Joan Crawford, Neil Hamilton, Clark Gable
72 min, TV-PG

Marjorie Rambeau, who played one of Crawford's fellow showgirls would play Crawford's mother 22 years later and receive an Oscar nomination for her role in a musical film called "Torch Song," ironically, the title of the original story "Laughing Sinners" is based on.


6:15 PM -- Possessed (1931)
A factory girl rises to the top as mistress of a tycoon, then falls in love.
Dir: Clarence Brown
Cast: Joan Crawford, Clark Gable, Wallace Ford
76 min, TV-PG

Edgar Selwyn's play, "The Mirage", opened in New York on 30 September 1920.


7:37 PM -- Women In Hiding (1940)
This short film takes a look at illegal hospitals offering cheap service to expecting mothers in troubled circumstances.
Dir: Joseph Newman
Cast: Jane Drummond, C. Henry Gordon, Edward Fielding
22 min, TV-PG

This is about hospitals for unwed mothers, not illegal abortion clinics.



TCM PRIMETIME - WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: FRIDAY NIGHT SPOTLIGHT: SCIENCE IN THE MOVIES



8:00 PM -- Madame Curie (1943)
The famed female scientist fights to keep her marriage together while conducting early experiments with radioactivity.
Dir: Mervyn LeRoy
Cast: Greer Garson, Walter Pidgeon, Henry Travers
124 min, TV-PG

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Walter Pidgeon, Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Greer Garson, Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Joseph Ruttenberg, Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Black-and-White -- Cedric Gibbons, Paul Groesse, Edwin B. Willis and Hugh Hunt, Best Sound, Recording -- Douglas Shearer (M-G-M SSD), Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture -- Herbert Stothart, and Best Picture

In her final years at MGM, Joan Crawford was handed weak scripts in the hopes that she'd break her contract. Two films she hungered to appear in were Random Harvest (1942) and Madame Curie (1943). Both films went to bright new star Greer Garson instead, and Crawford left the studio soon after.


10:15 PM -- A Beautiful Mind (2001)
A mathematics genius fights schizophrenia.
Dir: Ron Howard
Cast: Russell Crowe, Ed Harris, Jennifer Connelly
C-135 min, TV-MA

Won Oscars for Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Jennifer Connelly, Best Director -- Ron Howard, Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published -- Akiva Goldsman, and Best Picture

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Russell Crowe, Best Film Editing -- Mike Hill and Daniel P. Hanley, Best Makeup -- Greg Cannom and Colleen Callaghan, and Best Music, Original Score -- James Horner

The scene towards the end of the film where John Nash contemplates drinking tea is based on a true event when Russell Crowe met the real John Nash. He spent 15 minutes contemplating whether to drink tea or coffee.


12:45 AM -- For All Mankind (1989)
Documentary footage traces the progress of the Apollo missions.
Dir: Al Reinert
Cast: Michael Collins, Charles Duke,
C-80 min, TV-PG

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Documentary, Features -- Al Reinert and Betsy Broyles Breier

The staging footage was captured because NASA wanted to document the flight process of an unmanned Saturn flight for feedback in case there was a failure for engineers to look at footage to see what went wrong. Cameras were mounted in strategic locations, kicking on at critical moments to document the staging process for less than half a minute. After completion, the light-tight canisters containing the exposed film were jettisoned, dropping to earth with homing beacons and parachutes inside protective heat shields. Air Force C-130 transport planes, towing gigantic nets, recovered the canisters in the southern Atlantic Ocean.


2:15 AM -- Countdown (1968)
An astronaut takes a one-way voyage to the moon.
Dir: Robert Altman
Cast: James Caan, Joanna Moore, Robert Duvall
C-101 min, TV-PG

This film centers on a flight to the moon in a Gemini spacecraft modified for a lunar landing. In fact, there were several proposals in the mid-'60s to use modified Gemini craft for lunar orbital and even lunar landings, in lieu of or complementing the Apollo flights. They were rejected for various technical, budgetary and political reasons.


4:03 AM -- Vienna: The Years Remembered (1968)
This documentary short provides a behind-the-scenes look at the making of "Mayerling" (1968), as well as the actual history that inspired the film.
Cast: Catherine Deneuve, Ava Gardner, James Robertson Justice
C-9 min,

Mayerling is based on the novel Mayerling by Claude Anet and the novel The Archduke by Michel Arnold.


4:15 AM -- Marooned (1969)
Three U.S. astronauts face a slow death when their rockets fail during a space voyage.
Dir: John Sturges
Cast: Gregory Peck, Richard Crenna, David Janssen
C-129 min, TV-PG

Won an Oscar for Best Effects, Special Visual Effects -- Robie Robinson

Nominated for Oscars for Best Cinematography -- Daniel L. Fapp, and Best Sound -- Les Fresholtz and Arthur Piantadosi

There is no musical score for this film. Instead, each spacecraft has its own ambient soundtrack when it is shown in space. The Apollo shots feature a low hum; the XRV, a hollow ringing; the Nimbus Weather Satellite, a rapid series of beeps ascending in pitch; and the Russian Voshkhod, a constant pitch series of beeps. The only exceptions to this is are a very slight, muted bit of music played under the Apollo ambient soundtrack during Pruett's final EVA, and a single tone (with some ambient effects that could be called music) during the opening credits.