TCM Schedule for Friday, March 18, 2016 -- What's On Tonight: Star of the Month - Merle Oberon

In the daylight hours, TCM is celebrating the birth of Edward Everett Horton, born March 18, 1886, in Brooklyn. He has 179 credits in IMDB, and I adore him in all of those wacky roles that he played in the 1930s (including several Astaire/Rogers films), but to those boomers in the crowd, he is best remembered as the Narrator of Fractured Fairy Tales in the Bullwinkle cartoons, and as the Hakawi Indian Roaring Chicken in the F Troop television series (1965-1967). In late afternoon, there's a trio of films featuring Donna Corcoran, one of the seven child actors in the Corcoran family. I'm not quite sure why she is being featured, as it's not her birthday, and it's her sister Noreen who passed away in January 2016 and their brother Kevin who died in October 2015. In prime time, it's the continuation of the films of Star of the Month Merle Oberon. Enjoy!



6:00 AM -- Wide Open (1930)
A meek and clumsy employee of a large firm gets a chance to implement his useful ideas.
Dir: Archie Mayo
Cast: Edward Everett Horton, Patsy Ruth Miller, Louise Fazenda
BW-69 mins,

Based on the novel The Narrow Street by Edwin Bateman Morris. It was previously filmed in 1925 as The Narrow Street.


7:15 AM -- But The Flesh Is Weak (1932)
A widower and his son set out to marry rich widows.
Dir: Jack Conway
Cast: Robert Montgomery, Nora Gregor, Heather Thatcher
BW-77 mins,

Based on a play by Welsh writer/actor/composer Ivor Novello. If you've seen the film Gosford Park (2001), he was portrayed by Jeremy Northam.


8:45 AM -- Lonely Wives (1932)
A lawyer hires someone to impersonate him so he can have an affair.
Dir: Russell Mack
Cast: Edward Everett Horton, Esther Ralston, Laura La Plante
BW-86 mins,

Based on a play by A. H. Woods.


10:15 AM -- Roar of the Dragon (1932)
Bandits menace Americans on a Chinese riverboat.
Dir: Wesley Ruggles
Cast: Richard Dix, Gwili Andre, Edward Everett Horton
BW-69 mins, CC,

No record of the publication of the novel "A Passage to Hong Kong" has been found, though that novel, by muckraking journalist George Kibbe Turner, is credited as the source of the film's story.


11:30 AM -- Sing and Like It (1934)
A gangster tries to turn his tone-deaf girlfriend into a singing star.
Dir: William A. Seiter
Cast: ZaSu Pitts, Pert Kelton, Edward Everett Horton
BW-72 mins,

Although the Catholic Church of Detroit placed this movie on its "to be boycotted" list in July 1934, the Production Code Administration gave it an approval certificate for its re-release in 1935, when the its Code was more rigorously enforced.


12:45 PM -- Smarty (1934)
A squabbling couple can't seem to make it to the divorce court.
Dir: Robert Florey
Cast: Joan Blondell, Warren William, Edward Everett Horton
BW-65 mins,

The play opened first in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA on 1 October 1927. It was retitled "Funny Face" for its New York run off-Broadway beginning 22 November 1927.


2:00 PM -- The Night Is Young (1935)
A European nobleman falls for a ballerina.
Dir: Dudley Murphy
Cast: Ramon Novarro, Evelyn Laye, Charles Butterworth
BW-81 mins, CC,

Because the action of the movie is so completely wedded to the music, the script was mimeographed on special music paper, with the action and dialogue printed between the staves and timed to each measure.


3:30 PM -- Young Man With Ideas (1952)
A country lawyer moves his family to Los Angeles.
Dir: Mitchell Leisen
Cast: Glenn Ford, Ruth Roman, Denise Darcel
BW-85 mins, CC,

Donna Corcoran's third film.


5:00 PM -- Gypsy Colt (1954)
In this trans-species remake of Lassie, Come Home, faithful horse undertakes a perilous journey to return to the family it loves.
Dir: Andrew Marton
Cast: Donna Corcoran, Ward Bond, Frances Dee
C-72 mins,

Goof -- In her quest to return home, Gypsy runs away from the cowboys wearing a lasso. She jumps off the cliff into the river and swims to the other side. Presto, no rope!! What a clever horse.


6:15 PM -- Moonfleet (1955)
A British buccaneer is torn between three seductive women.
Dir: Fritz Lang
Cast: Stewart Granger, George Sanders, Joan Greenwood
C-87 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Stewart Granger wanted the film to be made in Cornwall. He was dismayed that it did not follow the book.


7:51 PM -- Stars On Horseback (1943)
In this short film master blacksmith makes house calls to Hollywood stars' homes to pamper their horse's hooves. Vitaphone Release 1107A.
Dir: Myron J. Swartz
BW-7 mins,



TCM PRIMETIME - WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: STAR OF THE MONTH: MERLE OBERON



8:00 PM -- First Comes Courage (1943)
A Norwegian resistance fighter seduces a Nazi officer to learn enemy secrets during World War II.
Dir: Dorothy Arzner
Cast: Merle Oberon, Brian Aherne, Carl Esmond
BW-86 mins,

Final film of director Dorothy Arzner.


9:35 PM -- Where Time Stands Still (1945)
This short film provides the viewer with a tour of Guatemala.
C-9 mins,


9:45 PM -- A Song to Remember (1945)
The famed composer Chopin sacrifices everything, even love, for his native Poland.
Dir: Charles Vidor
Cast: Paul Muni, Merle Oberon, Cornel Wilde
C-112 mins, CC,

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Cornel Wilde, Best Writing, Original Story -- Ernst Marischka, Best Cinematography, Color -- Tony Gaudio and Allen M. Davey, Best Sound, Recording -- John P. Livadary (Columbia SSD), Best Film Editing -- Charles Nelson, and Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture -- Miklós Rózsa and Morris Stoloff

Liberace, who was in 1945 performing as "Walter 'Buster' Keys," stated that he got the idea of having an ornate candelabra on his piano from the scene in this film when Merle Oberon carries a candelabra into the darkened salon and places it on the piano to reveal Chopin as the pianist rather than Franz Liszt.


11:45 PM -- That Uncertain Feeling (1941)
A happily married woman sees a psychoanalyst and develops doubts about her husband.
Dir: Ernst Lubitsch
Cast: Merle Oberon, Melvyn Douglas, Burgess Meredith
BW-83 mins, CC,

Nominated
Oscar Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic Picture
Werner R. Heymann

Despite the indifferent reception That Uncertain Feeling received, the cast treasured its experience with the master director and the atmosphere he created on set. Meredith enjoyed working on the production and years later recalled, "I don't know when I had a better time in my whole career than during that period." Of Lubitsch, Meredith said, "He was very psychic. I'd fall down laughing because right away he'd improvise, in the middle of a scene he was doing for me, some very personal thing about my life, with his big cigar in his mouth, and he knew I'd come over and say, 'How did you know about that?' and he'd say, 'I have ways of knowing.' "


1:15 AM -- Lydia (1941)
An unmarried woman stages a reunion with former suitors to recapture the romance of her past.
Dir: Julien Duvivier
Cast: Merle Oberon, Edna May Oliver, Alan Marshal
BW-99 mins, CC,

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic Picture -- Miklós Rózsa

The poem Lydia and Bob quote at the ball is "The Night has a Thousand Eyes" by Francis William Bourdillon, a late Victorian English poet (1852-1921). The text is
"The night has a thousand eyes,
And the day but one;
Yet the light of the bright world dies
With the dying sun.
The mind has a thousand eyes,
And the heart but one:
Yet the light of a whole life dies.
When love is done."


3:00 AM -- 'Til We Meet Again (1940)
A dying woman shares a shipboard romance with a criminal on his way to the gallows.
Dir: Edmund Goulding
Cast: Merle Oberon, George Brent, Pat O'Brien
BW-100 mins, CC,

Remake of the 1932 Kay Francis & William Powell film, One Way Passage.


4:45 AM -- Over the Moon (1940)
A surprise inheritance breaks up a once-impoverished noblewoman and a doctor.
Dir: Thornton Freeland
Cast: Merle Oberon, Rex Harrison, Ursula Jeans
BW-79 mins,

Production began in 1937; by the time the final retakes were completed in 1939, the appearance of Merle Oberon, both in terms of make-up and hairstyle, had changed considerably, and are quite apparent in the finished film.