TCM Schedule for Thursday, February 18 -- 31 Days of Oscar

Here are the actor connections from film to film for today's schedule:

• (The Naked City -- Pacific Liner) -- Barry Fitzgerald
  
• (Pacific Liner -- The Lost Patrol) -- Alan Hale
  
• (The Lost Patrol -- Five Star Final) -- Boris Karloff
  
• (Five Star Final -- Svengali) -- Marian Marsh
  
• (Svengali -- Captain Fury) -- Lumsden Hare
  
• (Captain Fury -- Captains Courageous) -- John Carradine
  
• (Captains Courageous -- The Good Earth) -- Charlie Grapewin
  
• (The Good Earth -- San Francisco) -- Harold Huber
  
• (San Francisco -- The Crowd) -- Bert Roach
  
• (The Crowd -- A Free Soul) -- Lucy Beaumont
  
• (A Free Soul -- The Barretts of Wimpole Street) -- Norma Shearer
  
• (The Barretts of Wimpole Street -- The Bad and the Beautiful) -- Leo G. Carroll
  
• (The Bad and the Beautiful -- Johnny Eager) -- Lana Turner
  
• (Johnny Eager -- In Cold Blood) -- Paul Stewart
  

Enjoy!


4:15am -- The Naked City (1948)
A step-by-step look at a murder investigation on the streets of New York.
Cast: Barry Fitzgerald, Howard Duff, Dorothy Hart, Don Taylor
Dir: Jules Dassin
BW-96 mins, TV-14

Won Oscars for Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- William H. Daniels, and Best Film Editing -- Paul Weatherwax

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Writing, Motion Picture Story -- Malvin Wald

Most of the street scenes were shot on location in New York without the public's knowledge. Photographer William H. Daniels and his uncredited assistant Roy Tripp filmed people on the streets using a hidden camera from the back of an old moving van. A juggler was hired to distract the crowds.


6:00am -- Pacific Liner (1939)
A shipboard epidemic triggers mutiny.
Cast: Victor McLaglen, Chester Morris, Wendy Barrie, Alan Hale
Dir: Lew Landers
BW-76 mins, TV-G

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Music, Original Score -- Robert Russell Bennett

RKO built an expensive ship set for this film. In 1943, producer Val Lewton was given instructions to come up with a low budget film that could use the still standing set. The result was The Ghost Ship (1943).


7:19am -- One Reel Wonders: Audioscopiks (1936)
Demonstrations of three-dimensional films are presented.
Narrator: Pete Smith
Dir: Jacob Leventhal, John Norling
BW-8 mins

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Short Subject, Novelty -- Pete Smith

Various objects move towards the camera, including a ladder being shoved out a window, the slide on a trombone, a woman on a swing, and a thrown baseball.


7:30am -- The Lost Patrol (1934)
A British army troop fights off Arab snipers while holed up in an oasis.
Cast: Victor McLaglen, Boris Karloff, Wallace Ford, Reginald Denny
Dir: John Ford
BW-72 mins, TV-PG

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Music, Score -- Max Steiner (head of department), Score by Max Steiner.

Composer Max Steiner re-used the main title music he wrote for this film for the main title music for Casablanca (1942), albeit with a slightly different tempo and instrumentation.


8:45am -- Five Star Final (1931)
An unscrupulous newspaper editor searches for headlines at any cost.
Cast: Edward G. Robinson, Marian Marsh, H. B. Warner, Anthony Bushell
Dir: Mervyn LeRoy
BW-89 mins, TV-PG

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture

The Evening Gazette is based on the real-life New York Evening Graphic, the most sensational of all the Front Page-era tabloid papers. (Critics called it the Porno-Graphic.) The paper, owned by Bernarr Macfadden, published from 1924 to 1932. At the time this film was made, the Graphic had been losing circulation, because its new editor had been trying to make it a more respectable paper, just like in the film. The paper was best known for its "composographs," composite photographs used to create an otherwise unobtainable illustration.


10:15am -- Svengali (1931)
A hypnotist falls in love with a girl using his powers to turn her into a great singer.
Cast: John Barrymore, Marian Marsh, Donald Crisp, Bramwell Fletcher
Dir: Archie Mayo
BW-81 mins, TV-G

Nominated for Oscars for Best Art Direction -- Anton Grot, and Best Cinematography -- Barney McGill

One of many films based on the novel by George Du Maurier, grandfather of novelist Daphne Du Maurier, who wrote the novel Rebecca.


11:45am -- Captain Fury (1939)
An Irish convict escapes an Australian prison to organize a revolution.
Cast: Brian Aherne, Victor McLaglen, Paul Lukas, June Lang
Dir: Hal Roach
BW-92 mins, TV-G

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Art Direction -- Charles D. Hall

Think of it as an Australian version of the Robin Hood story.


1:30pm -- Captains Courageous (1937)
A spoiled rich boy is lost at sea and rescued by a fishing boat, where hard work and responsibility help him become a man.
Cast: Freddie Bartholomew, Spencer Tracy, Lionel Barrymore, Melvyn Douglas
Dir: Victor Fleming
BW-117 mins, TV-G

Won an Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Spencer Tracy

Nominated for Oscars for Best Film Editing -- Elmo Veron, Best Writing, Screenplay -- Marc Connelly, John Lee Mahin and Dale Van Every, and Best Picture

Spencer Tracy was initially reluctant to take on the part of Manuel, mainly because he had to sing in several scenes and get his hair curled. His new curly locks provided a lot of amusement to his friends and fellow actors. Joan Crawford, for instance, referred to him as Harpo (after Harpo Marx, the curly-haired Marx Brother).


3:30pm -- The Good Earth (1937)
Epic adaptation of the Pearl Buck classic about Chinese farmers battling the elements.
Cast: Paul Muni, Luise Rainer, Walter Connolly, Tilly Losch
Dir: Victor Fleming
BW-138 mins, TV-PG

Won Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Luise Rainer, and Best Cinematography -- Karl Freund

Nominated for Oscars for Best Director -- Sidney Franklin, Best Film Editing -- Basil Wrangell, and Best Picture

Chinese actress Anna May Wong desperately wanted the role of O-Lan. Being a close friend of author Pearl S. Buck helped. She tested for the role, but producer Irving Thalberg was unsatisfied with her audition. Also, since Paul Muni, a Caucasian actor, had already been cast in the lead, Thalberg knew he couldn't cast Wong as Muni's wife. The Hays Code prohibited actors of different races from playing husband/wife couples on film. (This was to avoid offending white audiences in the segregated American South, where there were laws against mixed-race marriages.) Thalberg offered her a supporting role, but a distraught Anna May turned it down.


6:00pm -- San Francisco (1936)
A beautiful singer and a battling priest try to reform a Barbary Coast saloon owner in the days before the big earthquake.
Cast: Clark Gable, Jeanette MacDonald, Spencer Tracy, Jack Holt
Dir: W. S. Van Dyke
BW-115 mins, TV-G

Won an Oscar for Best Sound, Recording -- Douglas Shearer (M-G-M SSD)

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Spencer Tracy, Best Assistant Director -- Joseph M. Newman, Best Director -- W.S. Van Dyke, Best Writing, Original Story -- Robert E. Hopkins, and Best Picture

Al Shean (born Adolph Schoenberg), who plays the Professor in the film was once half of one of the most popular teams in vaudeville - Gallagher and Shean. He was also the younger brother of Minnie Marx, the matriarch of the Marx Brothers clan, and was instrumental in writing many of the first sketches that his madcap nephews first performed on the vaudeville circuit before their enormous success on Broadway and in Hollywood.


What's On Tonight: 31 DAYS OF OSCAR: Prime Time Lineup


8:00pm -- The Crowd (1928)
In this silent film, an office worker deals with the simple joys and tragedies of married life.
Cast: Eleanor Boardman, James Murray, Bert Roach, Estelle Clark
Dir: King Vidor
BW-93 mins, TV-G

Nominated for Oscars for Best Director, Dramatic Picture -- King Vidor, and Best Picture, Unique and Artistic Production

King Vidor filmed many scenes in New York City streets using real crowds instead of extras, real buses and trains, and even real traffic cops. In one scene, a police officer is looking toward the camera, admonishing someone to "move along". In fact, he was actually addressing Vidor and his disguised film crew. Vidor cleverly incorporated it into the scene.


9:45pm -- A Free Soul (1931)
A hard-drinking lawyer's daughter falls for one of his underworld clients.
Cast: Norma Shearer, Leslie Howard, Lionel Barrymore, Clark Gable
Dir: Clarence Brown
BW-94 mins, TV-G

Won an Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Lionel Barrymore

Nominated for an Oscar -- Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Norma Shearer, and Best Director -- Clarence Brown

When the final version of the movie went before Hollywood censors, they demanded that MGM cut the scene where Norma Shearer lays on the bed and suggestively asks Clark Gable to put his arms around her. The studio ignored the demand and released the film uncut.


11:30pm -- The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934)
An invalid poetess defies her father's wishes to marry a dashing young poet.
Cast: Norma Shearer, Fredric March, Charles Laughton, Maureen O'Sullivan
Dir: Sidney Franklin
BW-109 mins, TV-G

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Norma Shearer, and Best Picture

Remade literally word-for-word and scene-for-scene by the very same director, Sidney Franklin, and by the same studio, MGM, in 1957, with Jennifer Jones, Bill Travers, and John Gielgud in the Shearer/March/Laughton roles.


1:30am -- The Bad and the Beautiful (1952)
An unscrupulous movie producer uses everyone around him in his climb to the top.
Cast: Elaine Stewart, Sammy White, Leo G. Carroll, Ivan Triesault
Dir: Vincente Minnelli
BW-118 mins, TV-PG

Won Oscars for Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Gloria Grahame, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White -- Cedric Gibbons, Edward C. Carfagno, Edwin B. Willis and F. Keogh Gleason, Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Robert Surtees, Best Costume Design, Black-and-White -- Helen Rose, and Best Writing, Screenplay -- Charles Schnee

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Kirk Douglas

Leo G. Carroll's brief appearance as a "demanding" director is a thinly veiled reference to Alfred Hitchcock. When he first came to Hollywood, Hitchcock was under contract to producer David O. Selznick for years. Carroll had roles in many Hitchcock films of this era.


3:30am -- Johnny Eager (1942)
A handsome racketeer seduces the DA's daughter for revenge, then falls in love.
Cast: Robert Taylor, Lana Turner, Edward Arnold, Van Heflin
Dir: Mervyn LeRoy
BW-107 mins, TV-G

Won an Oscar for Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Van Heflin

In one of the bedrooms in Johnny's apartment at the track is a large painting, done in the art deco style, of a reclining blonde woman. Coincidentally, this same painting is featured briefly but prominently in Eyes in the Night (1942), released the same year and also starring Edward Arnold, referred to in that film by Marty as "a blonde tomato."

Director Woodbridge Strong (W.S.) Van Dyke II's most ambitious film, San Francisco rocked everyone's local bijou and bank accounts when it premiered in 1936. It hit theater epicenters shortly after the death of MGM producer extraordinaire, Irving Thalberg, who was its behind-the-scenes benefactor. The film was a qualifying success with audiences and with the Academy Awards. The film earned several Oscar® nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Writing, and others. Spencer Tracy was nominated Best Actor, his first of nine Oscar nominations, still quite a record among male performers. (Beat that, Tom Hanks!) The epic won for Best Sound. The film's startling earthquake sequence surely would have garnered an Oscar for Best Special Effects, if only such a category existed at the time. The Best Special Effects category was created in 1939.

San Francisco may have won for its sound recording, but its ties to the silent era were particularly significant. W.S. Van Dyke had been an assistant to silent film pioneer D.W. Griffith, and openly admitted that he learned everything he knew about filmmaking from the master. It was rumored that Griffith directed a scene for San Francisco, but which scene is in dispute to this day. One report had him directing one of Jeanette MacDonald's operetta scenes, while another had him responsible for some mob scenes at a nightclub. Some claimed it was the incredible 20-minute earthquake climax. Griffith's own experience directing grandiose scenes in The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916) gives this theory some merit. Griffith was not the only silent film figure to benefit from Van Dyke's affection and loyalty to the silent period. Long forgotten silent film performers who had fallen on hard times during the Great Depression were give! n small, bit parts in the picture: Early slapstick comedienne Flora Finch; one-time Vitagraph star Naomi Childer; Rudolph Valentino's first wife, Jean Acker (a star in her own right during the silent days); and King Baggott and Rhea Mitchell, whom Van Dyke had directed in The Hawk's Lair (1918). Van Dyke even used silent film director Erich von Stroheim to write additional dialogue for the Anita Loos/Robert Hopkins script.

And speaking of Anita Loos, San Francisco was really her and fellow writer Robert "Hoppy" Hopkins's picture in spirit. The two long-time friends and co-workers were both from San Francisco and were only too eager to write about their native city. The script was actually based on a story by Hopkins, a writer best known for his witty dialogue and almost exclusively used by the studios as a "gag" writer. This was a good living for a talented writer, one who would be called in to supply a much-needed bit of humor in a quip for a specific character type.

Meanwhile, Loos was well known in Hollywood for her scripts that were frothy and full of puns and gags, after several decades in the film biz that started, ironically enough, with D.W. Griffith. Loos worked mostly at MGM as a scenarist, script doctor, title writer, and dialogist. Her best written characters were those like herself: worldly, cynical, sharp-tongued. And more often than not, she created characters based on people she knew personally. In fact, the character of Blackie Norton, played by Clark Gable, is based on Wilson Mizner, a real-life adventurer that both writers actually knew in old San Francisco. Mizner, a dapper man-about-town in every outward appearance, was a rascal who led a notoriously scandalous life in San Francisco, New York, and Hollywood. Having met in 1927, Mizner became a close friend to Loos, so close that Loos thereafter insisted their relationship would have been closer if she were not already married. Mizner died in 1933, leaving Loos and Hopkins an opportunity to pay homage to him in San Francisco three years later.

The film's true star is, of course, the earthquake. It is believed that an uncredited James Basevi, one of MGM's resident special effects artist, did the major work in engineering the massive sequence in San Francisco, even though another special effects expert named Arnold Gillespie is actually credited. The following year Basevi moved to Fox Studios, where he created the horrendous storm that marks the climax of director John Ford's The Hurricane (1937). In 1939, Basevi returned to his original craft of art direction, subsequently working for Ford's later productions, including My Darling Clementine (1946), Fort Apache (1948), and Three Godfathers (1949). Basevi won an Academy Award for the art direction of The Song of Bernadette in 1943.

Producer: John Emerson, Bernard H. Hyman
Director: W.S. Van Dyke
Screenplay: Anita Loos, Robert Hopkins (story)
Cinematography: Oliver T. Marsh
Costume Design: Adrian
Film Editing: Tom Held
Original Music: Edward Ward
Principal Cast: Clark Gable (Blackie Norton), Jeanette MacDonald (Mary Blake), Spencer Tracy (Father Tim Mullin), Jack Holt (Jack Burley), Jessie Ralph (Mrs. Maisie Burley)
BW-116m. Closed captioning.

by Scott McGee