TCM Schedule for Friday, March 13, 2015 -- Friday Night Spotlight - Roadshow Musicals

It's unlucky Friday the 13th, and I'm running late! Tonight's films continue this month's Friday theme of recreations of Broadway musicals. Enjoy!



6:08 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: Lionel Stander, George Watts, Sam Wren
BW-20 mins,


6:30 AM -- Rhodes of Africa (1935)
A British explorer opens up Africa for European exploitation.
Dir: Berthold Viertel
Cast: Walter Huston, Oscar Homolka, Basil Sydney
BW-92 mins,

IMDB has minimal information about this film, other than it was filmed entirely in the studio in London. I strongly suspect that it's a complete whitewash of Rhodes' life, pun intended.


8:15 AM -- Prisoner Of War (1954)
American GIs fight to survive inhuman treatment in a Korean POW camp.
Dir: Andrew Marton
Cast: Ronald Reagan, Steve Forrest, Dewey Martin
BW-81 mins,

While the Pentagon cooperated in the making of this movie, it subsequently declined to promote it. In 1954 the Pentagon was prosecuting some GIs for "collaborating" with the enemy during the Korean War, and it may have feared that the character Dewey Martin played in the film could cast doubt on these cases. Martin played a GI who seems to "go over" to the Communists but is eventually revealed to be an American secret agent only pretending to be a collaborator.


9:45 AM -- Assignment To Kill (1968)
A private eye gets too involved in his investigation of a crooked shipping magnate.
Dir: Sheldon Reynolds
Cast: Patrick O'Neal, Joan Hackett, John Gielgud
C-99 mins, Letterbox Format

This American film seems to have been released in Europe far earlier than in the US. In Great Britain, it was released in the Spring of 1968, and was shown as the lower half of a double-bill with "Reflections In A Golden Eye". However, it was savagely cut to a length of only 73 minutes.


11:30 AM -- I Remember Mama (1948)
Norwegian immigrants face the trials of family life in turn-of-the-century San Francisco.
Dir: George Stevens
Cast: Irene Dunne, Barbara Bel Geddes, Oscar Homolka
BW-134 mins, CC,

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Irene Dunne, Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Oskar Homolka, Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Barbara Bel Geddes, Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Ellen Corby, and Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Nicholas Musuraca

Greta Garbo turned down the role of Martha around the same time she also rejected the lead in Alfred Hitchcock's The Paradine Case (1947). She is reputed to have commented, "No murderesses, no mamas."


2:00 PM -- Saintly Sinners (1962)
An aging priest reforms the felons in his parish.
Dir: Jean Yarbrough
Cast: Don Beddoe, Paul Bryar, Stanley Clements
BW-78 mins,

Donald Theophilus Beddoe plays Father Dan. Fittingly, Theophilus means god-loving!


3:30 PM -- The Bowery Boys Meet The Monsters (1954)
The Bowery Boys battle a family of mad scientists.
Dir: Edward Bernds
Cast: Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Bernard Gorcey
BW-65 mins,

The thirty-fourth of forty-eight Bowery Boys movies.


4:45 PM -- A Lion Is In The Streets (1953)
A peddler from the bayou becomes a major force in local politics.
Dir: Raoul Walsh
Cast: James Cagney, Barbara Hale, Anne Francis
C-88 mins, CC,

The film was based on a 1945 novel which was a fictionalized account of assassinated Louisiana politician Huey Long by Adria Locke Langley. A film based on a similar roman a clef by Robert Penn Warren, "All the King's Men," won an Oscar as Best Picture in 1949. That b/w film shot on location with non-professional extras had a gritty realism that the studio-bound "A Lion Is in the Streets" did not have, and the later film suffered by comparison.


6:15 PM -- Monsoon (1953)
In a remote Indian outpost, a man falls for his fiancee's sister.
Dir: Rodney Amateau
Cast: Ursula Thiess, George Nader, Diana Douglas
C-82 mins,

Based on a play by Jean Anouilh and filmed on location in India.


7:38 PM -- The Future Is Now (1955)
This short film goes inside government research laboratories to showcase some of the products that will be used in the near future.
Dir: Larry O'Reilly
BW-15 mins,



TCM PRIMETIME - WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: FRIDAY NIGHT SPOTLIGHT: ROADSHOW FILMS



8:00 PM -- Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968)
An eccentric inventor uses his flying car to free a kingdom of children from oppression.
Dir: Ken Hughes
Cast: Dick Van Dyke, Sally Ann Howes, Lionel Jeffries
BW-145 mins, CC,

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Music, Original Song -- Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman for the song "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang"

Let me strongly recommend that you read the review by fashion bloggers Tom and Lorenzo. You'll never see this movie in quite the same way again.

http://tomandlorenzo.com/2014/12/musical-monday-chitty-chitty-bang-bang/


10:36 PM -- The Moviemakers - Oliver! Featurette (1968)
This promotional short film presents a behind-the-scenes look at Carol Reed's "Oliver!" (1968).
Dir: Ronald Saland
C-7 mins,


10:45 PM -- Oliver! (1968)
Musical version of the Dickens classic about an orphan taken in by a band of boy thieves.
Dir: Carol Reed
Cast: Ron Moody, Shani Wallis, Oliver Reed
C-154 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Won an Honorary Oscar Award for Onna White for her outstanding choreography achievement for Oliver!.

Won Oscars for Best Director -- Carol Reed, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration -- John Box, Terence Marsh, Vernon Dixon and Ken Muggleston, Best Sound, Best Music, Score of a Musical Picture (Original or Adaptation) -- Johnny Green, and Best Picture

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Ron Moody, Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Jack Wild, Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium -- Vernon Harris, Best Cinematography -- Oswald Morris, Best Costume Design -- Phyllis Dalton, and Best Film Editing -- Ralph Kemplen

While filming the scene where Oliver gets a peek at Fagin's treasure, director Carol Reed was not satisfied with the reaction on Mark Lester's face. Later, while re-shooting the scene, he hid a small white rabbit in his pocket and stood behind the camera. As Ron Moody opened the box of treasures, Reed pulled the rabbit out of his pocket. Lester's reaction to the sight of the rabbit was then used in the final film.


1:30 AM -- Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969)
In this musical remake, a conservative boys' school teacher falls in love with an actress.
Dir: Herbert Ross
Cast: Peter O'Toole, Petula Clark, Michael Redgrave
C-155 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Peter O'Toole, and Best Music, Score of a Musical Picture (Original or Adaptation) -- Leslie Bricusse and John Williams

When the character of Ursula gushed over Chips, asking Katherine to let her have him when she was done with him, there was some truth in the line. Ursula, played by Siân Phillips, was in real life Mrs. Peter O'Toole.


4:15 AM -- Home Before Dark (1958)
A woman struggles to adjust to her unhappy marriage after time in a mental institution.
Dir: Mervyn LeRoy
Cast: Jean Simmons, Dan O'Herlihy, Rhonda Fleming
BW-137 mins, CC,

Since this was a film by Warner Brothers, much of the soundtrack was stock and is the same as used in their 1942 movie Now Voyager.