TCM Schedule for Friday, January 25, 2019 -- What's On Tonight: SAG Lifetime Achievement Award

Last edited Wed Jan 30, 2019, 09:10 PM - Edit history (1)

In the morning hours, TCM is showing the early films of Patricia Neal. It's just past her birthday (January 20, 1926, in Packard, Kentucky), but that's okay. She's an Oscar and Tony winner and three-time Emmy nominee -- not shabby!

Then in prime time, TCM begins 24 hours of honoring the winners of the Screen Actors Guild Lifetime Achievement Award. From the TCM website:

48 HOUR MARATHON - LIFE ACHIEVEMENT AWARD WINNERS

This month, TCM celebrates the 25th anniversary of the Screen Actors Guild Awards. The 25th annual SAG Awards will air live on our sister channels TBS and TNT at 8 p.m. ET on January 27. In honor of this occasion, from January 25-27 TCM presents a 48-hour marathon of 25 movies featuring SAG Life Achievement Award winners.

Among our films honoring SAG Life Achievement Award winners, here are some that figured importantly in the careers of their respective stars:

Baby Face (1933) features 1966 winner Barbara Stanwyck in a definitive drama of the pre-Code era, when Stanwyck's fearlessness about provocative subjects helped turn her into a superstar. The Cole Porter musical High Society (1956) was 1972 winner Frank Sinatra's only time to perform on film alongside his early inspiration and friendly rival Bing Crosby, and both made the most of it.

White Heat (1949) allowed 1977 winner James Cagney to cap off a decade with one of his most riveting performances as a mother-obsessed gangster, along with one of the most memorable exits (and final lines) in movie history. Holiday (1938) gave writer Philip Barry, director George Cukor and costars Katharine Hepburn (1979 Life Achievement Award Winner) and Cary Grant a romantic-comedy outing that foreshadows the classic 1940 hit on which they all collaborated, The Philadelphia Story.

Rachel, Rachel (1968) was a dream realized for 1985 husband-and-wife winners Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward - the first of five films in which Newman directed Woodward, who won an Oscar nomination for her performance as a late-blooming schoolteacher. The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1975) was an example of another felicitous screen collaboration, that of 1989 winner Jack Lemmon and comedy author Neil Simon, who partnered on a total of three movies.

The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954) marked the beginning of a new maturity in the career of 1997 winner Elizabeth Taylor, who had mostly played ingénues of one type or another before blossoming as a tragic beauty in this romantic drama directed by Richard Brooks. Bye Bye Birdie (1963) gave 2012 winner Dick Van Dyke a chance to recreate his dazzling performance from the Broadway musical on film.

The other SAG Life Achievement Award winners in our tribute are Eddie Cantor (1962), Bob Hope (1965), James Stewart (1968), Gregory Peck (1970), Charlton Heston (1971), Rosalind Russell (1975), Red Skelton (1987), Gene Kelly (1988), Brock Peters (1990), Audrey Hepburn (1992), Angela Lansbury (1996), Kirk Douglas (1998), Sidney Poitier (1999), Ruby Dee (2000), James Garner (2004), Julie Andrews (2006), Debbie Reynolds (2014) and Alan Alda (2018).

Enjoy!



6:30 AM -- WASHINGTON STORY (1952)
A reporter in search of government corruption falls for a congressman.
Dir: Robert Pirosh
Cast: Van Johnson, Patricia Neal, Louis Calhern
BW-82 mins, CC,

Before rehearsals began for the 1952 Broadway revival of "The Children's Hour" starring Neal and Kim Hunter, playwright Lillian Hellman hosted a formal party. There, Neal first met author Roald Dahl, and they were married nine months later.


8:00 AM -- JOHN LOVES MARY (1949)
A World War II veteran's marriage of convenience threatens his real wedding plans.
Dir: David Butler
Cast: Ronald Reagan, Jack Carson, Wayne Morris
BW-96 mins, CC,

Patricia Neal's first theatrical film and Katharine Alexander's last.


9:44 AM -- THE AMAZING MR. NORDILL (1947)
This short film focuses on Everett Nordill, a mastermind behind a counterfeiting ring in the mid-nineteenth century.
Dir: Joseph Newman
Cast: Paul Maxey, Clinton Sundberg, Leon Ames
BW-11 mins,

Nordill and his career were the basis for the feature film Mister 880 (1950), starring Edmund Gwenn as the character based on Mr. Nordill, and Burt Lancaster as the treasury agent after him.


10:00 AM -- THE HASTY HEART (1950)
Doctors try to get a flinty Scots soldier to open up to his comrades before telling him he's dying.
Dir: Vincent Sherman
Cast: Ronald Reagan, Patricia Neal, Richard Todd
BW-102 mins, CC,

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Richard Todd

Director Vincent Sherman had settled on using Gordon Jackson for the role of Lachie, when he spotted Richard Todd in the studio bar and recast the role, which earned Todd an Oscar nomination. Jackson played the part in a later television adaptation.


11:49 AM -- THE HORSE WITH THE HUMAN MIND (1946)
This short film focuses on Bess, considered to be the smartest horse in the movies, as she works with her trainer.
Dir: Harry Loud
Cast: Bess, Joe Adkinson, Frank Whitbeck
BW-8 mins,


12:00 PM -- THE BREAKING POINT (1950)
A desperate fishing boat captain rents his ship to some gunmen on the lam.
Dir: Michael Curtiz
Cast: John Garfield, Patricia Neal, Phyllis Thaxter
BW-97 mins, CC,

In April 1967, director Sam Peckinpah told a Los Angeles Times interviewer "This may surprise you, but I admire Michael Curtiz. Especially THE BREAKING POINT, with Phyllis Thaxter and John Garfield."


1:45 PM -- A FACE IN THE CROWD (1957)
A female television executive turns a folk-singing drifter into a powerful media star.
Dir: Elia Kazan
Cast: Andy Griffith, Patricia Neal, Anthony Franciosa
BW-126 mins, CC,

This was Patricia Neal's return to the screen after a four-year absence from Hollywood, an absence that was precipitated by a much-publicized affair with Gary Cooper (who was married at the time) and a subsequent nervous breakdown.


4:00 PM -- BRIGHT LEAF (1950)
Two tobacco growers battle for control of the cigarette market.
Dir: Michael Curtiz
Cast: Gary Cooper, Lauren Bacall, Patricia Neal
BW-110 mins, CC,

To add authenticity to the film, an authentic, turn-of-the- century cigarette maker was purchased as a prop.


6:00 PM -- THE FOUNTAINHEAD (1949)
An idealistic architect battles corrupt business interests and his love for a married woman.
Dir: King Vidor
Cast: Gary Cooper, Patricia Neal, Raymond Massey
BW-113 mins, CC,

Patricia Neal said in an autobiography that the sudden unavailability of a stunt woman meant that she had to learn to ride a horse for the riding scenes, including the frenetic cross-country gallop to the quarry. Since she only needed to be seen close-up in the saddle during the brief angry confrontation with Roark and her character was only seen when actually riding in silhouette and in distance-shots, someone with real riding skills could have stood in for Neal at any time during production for this 'second unit' footage; there would have been no sense in risking injury to the star.



TCM PRIMETIME - WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: SAG LIFE ACHIEVEMENT AWARD



8:00 PM -- STRIKE ME PINK (1936)
An assertiveness course gets a shy guy mixed up with racketeers at an amusement park.
Dir: Norman Taurog
Cast: Eddie Cantor, Ethel Merman, Sally Eilers
BW-100 mins, CC,

Clarence Budington Kelland wrote this story as a vehicle for Harold Lloyd.


9:49 PM -- BEAUTIFUL BALI (1940)
This short film takes the viewer on a tour of Bali, India.
Narrator: James A. FitzPatrick
C-8 mins,

One in the "TravelTalks" series.


10:00 PM -- ROAD TO BALI (1953)
Two song-and-dance men on the run dive for treasure while competing for a beautiful princess.
Dir: Hal Walker
Cast: Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Dorothy Lamour
C-91 mins, CC,

This was the only "Road" picture of the seven to be photographed in Technicolor. Ten years later, the British-made The Road to Hong Kong (1962) would revert to black and white.


11:45 PM -- BABY FACE (1933)
A beautiful schemer sleeps her way to the top of a banking empire.
Dir: Alfred E. Green
Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, George Brent, Donald Cook
BW-76 mins, CC,

In spring of 1933 this film was submitted to the New York State Board of Censors, who rejected it, demanding a number of cuts and changes. Warner Brothers made these changes prior to the film's release in July 1933. In 2004, a "dupe negative" copy of the film as it existed prior to being censored was located at the Library of Congress. This uncensored version received its public premiere at the London Film Festival in November 2004, more than 70 years after it was made. I don't know which version that TCM will be showing.


1:15 AM -- BROKEN ARROW (1950)
A former soldier sets out to create peace between white settlers and the Apache.
Dir: Delmer Daves
Cast: James Stewart, Jeff Chandler, Debra Paget
C-93 mins, CC,

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Jeff Chandler, Best Writing, Screenplay -- Albert Maltz (Originally Michael Blankfort had been listed for this nomination. Blankfort fronted for Maltz, who was a blacklisted writer at the time. Following research by the Writers Guild of America West in July 1991, the Academy officially attributed the nomination to Maltz and removed Blankford.), and Best Cinematography, Color -- Ernest Palmer

The film was considered groundbreaking at the time because it was one of the first sound films to portray Native American Indians in a humane light. Years later, the film was criticized because white actors played Indians, but the role of Geronimo in fact was played by Native Canadian Mohawk actor Jay Silverheels.


3:00 AM -- BROTHER ORCHID (1940)
After a failed hit, a mob chief recuperates in a monastery.
Dir: Lloyd Bacon
Cast: Edward G. Robinson, Ann Sothern, Humphrey Bogart
BW-88 mins, CC,

Of the five films that Edward G. Robinson and Humphrey Bogart made together, this is the only one in which neither is killed.


4:30 AM -- CAPTAIN HORATIO HORNBLOWER (1951)
The famed 19th century hero defeats enemy fleets and courts an admiral's widow.
Dir: Raoul Walsh
Cast: Gregory Peck, Virginia Mayo, Robert Beatty
C-117 mins, CC,

Once the flogging of Seaman Hommel (Peter Morton) was complete, salt should have been spread over his back as a (painful, but necessary) antiseptic, hence the saying "rubbing salt in the wound" whenever one trauma follows another.