TCM Schedule for Friday, December 31 -- TCM Prime Time Feature: The Marx Brothers

What a wonderful day! A day full of Cary Grant comedies (and two other Grant films -- the dramatic Penny Serenade (1941) and the suspenseful North By Northwest (1959), and a night with the six best films of the Marx Brothers. Enjoy, and have a safe and happy New Year!



6:00am -- Bringing Up Baby (1938)
A madcap heiress upsets the staid existence of a straitlaced scientist.
Cast: Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Charlie Ruggles, Walter Catlett
Dir: Howard Hawks
BW-102 mins, TV-G

This movie fared so badly at the box office that Howard Hawks was fired from his next production at RKO and Katharine Hepburn bought out her contract to avoid being cast in the film Mother Carey's Chickens (1938). Coincidentally, Hepburn was labeled "box office poison" on the same day her contract was dissolved.

The film was later voted the 24th Greatest Film of all time by Entertainment Weekly.


8:00am -- My Favorite Wife (1940)
A shipwrecked woman is rescued just in time for her husband's re-marriage.
Cast: Irene Dunne, Cary Grant, Randolph Scott, Gail Patrick
Dir: Garson Kanin
BW-88 mins, TV-G

Nominated for Oscars for Best Art Direction, Black-and-White -- Van Nest Polglase and Mark-Lee Kirk, Best Music, Original Score -- Roy Webb, and Best Writing, Original Story -- Leo McCarey, Bella Spewack and Sam Spewack

Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem, "Enoch Arden," about a fisherman presumed lost at sea who returns to find his wife remarried, was the basis of five prior films: Enoch Arden (1914), Die Toten kehren wieder - Enoch Arden (1919), and D.W. Griffith's Enoch Arden: Part I (1911), Enoch Arden: Part II (1911), and Enoch Arden (1915). Those films adhered to Tennyson's poem. But in My Favorite Wife, Something's Got to Give (1962), and Move Over, Darling (1963), only the basic idea of a spouse who returns is kept, with the spouse presumed lost now being the wife. However, in all of these films, the surname of the couple in question remains "Arden."


9:30am -- The Philadelphia Story (1940)
Tabloid reporters crash a society marriage.
Cast: Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, James Stewart, Ruth Hussey
Dir: George Cukor
BW-112 mins, TV-G

Won Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- James Stewart, and Best Writing, Screenplay -- Donald Ogden Stewart

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Katharine Hepburn, Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Ruth Hussey, Best Director -- George Cukor, and Best Picture

During the scene where James Stewart hiccups when drunk, you can see Cary Grant looking down and grinning. Since the hiccup wasn't scripted, Grant was on the verge of breaking out laughing and had to compose himself quickly. James Stewart thought of hiccuping in the drunk scene himself, without telling Cary Grant. When he began hiccuping, Grant turned to Stewart saying, "Excuse me." The scene required only one take.


11:30am -- Penny Serenade (1941)
A woman on the verge of divorce recalls her heartbreaking attempts to adopt a child.
Cast: Irene Dunne, Cary Grant, Beulah Bondi, Edgar Buchanan
Dir: George Stevens
BW-119 mins, TV-G

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Cary Grant

Irene Dunne often said that this was her favorite film because it reminded her of her own adopted daughter.


1:30pm -- One Reel Wonders: Will Rogers Memorial Hospital (1940)
Cary Grant asking moviegoers to donate to the Will Rogers Memorial Hospital, a hospital and recovery center for tuberculosis patients.
Cast: Cary Grant
BW-2 mins

Filmed at Will Rogers Memorial Hospital, Saranac Lake, New York.


1:45pm -- Arsenic And Old Lace (1944)
A young man about to be married discovers the two aunts who raised him have been poisoning lonely old men.
Cast: Cary Grant, Priscilla Lane, Raymond Massey, Jack Carson
Dir: Frank Capra
BW-118 mins, TV-G

The film was shot between October 20 and December 16, 1941. During 1943, the film was shown to the Armed Forces overseas. but went unissued domestically until its Manhattan debut at the Strand Theatre on September 1, 1944, followed by the nationwide release on September 23. Warner Bros. had been contractually required to wait for the Broadway play to finish its run, which finally occurred on June 17, 1944. By the time the movie opened, Priscilla Lane and Warner Bros. had ended their association.


3:45pm -- The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer (1947)
A teenage girl's crush on a playboy spells trouble, particularly when he falls for her older sister.
Cast: Cary Grant, Myrna Loy, Shirley Temple, Rudy Vallee
Dir: Irving Reis
BW-95 mins, TV-G

Won an Oscar for Best Writing, Original Screenplay -- Sidney Sheldon

Myrna Loy was almost twenty-three years older than her on-screen sister Shirley Temple.


5:30pm -- North By Northwest (1959)
An advertising man is mistaken for a spy, triggering a deadly cross-country chase.
Cast: Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason, Jessie Royce Landis
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock
C-136 mins, TV-PG

Nominated for Oscars for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color -- William A. Horning, Robert F. Boyle, Merrill Pye, Henry Grace and Frank R. McKelvy, Best Film Editing -- George Tomasini, and Best Writing, Story and Screenplay - Written Directly for the Screen -- Ernest Lehman

While filming Vertigo (1958), Alfred Hitchcock described some of the plot of this project to frequent Hitchcock leading man and "Vertigo" star James Stewart, who naturally assumed that Hitchcock meant to cast him in the Roger Thornhill role, and was eager to play it. Actually, Hitchcock wanted Cary Grant to play the role. By the time Hitchcock realized the misunderstanding, Stewart was so anxious to play Thornhill that rejecting him would have caused a great deal of disappointment. So Hitchcock delayed production on this film until Stewart was already safely committed to filming Otto Preminger's Anatomy of a Murder (1959) before "officially" offering him the "North by Northwest" role. Stewart had no choice; he had to turn down the offer, allowing Hitchcock to cast Grant, the actor he had wanted all along.


7:56pm -- One Reel Wonders: Marx Brothers Biography (1962)
BW-4 mins

In the 1950s Groucho was invited to take a tour of the New York Stock Exchange. While in the observation booth, he grabbed the public address system handset and began singing "Lydia the Tattooed Lady". Upon hearing silence coming from the trading floor, he walked into view, was given a loud cheer by the traders, and shouted, "Gentlemen, in 1929 I lost eight hundred thousand dollars on this floor, and I intend to get my money's worth!" For fifteen minutes, he sang, danced, told jokes, and all this time, the Wall Street stock ticker was running blank.


8:00pm -- Animal Crackers (1930)
Three zanies try to recover a stolen painting during a madcap house party.
Cast: Groucho Marx, Harpo Marx, Chico Marx, Zeppo Marx
Dir: Victor Heerman
BW-97 mins, TV-G

The movie's line "One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas, I don't know." was voted as the #53 movie quote by the American Film Institute (out of 100).


9:45pm -- Monkey Business (1931)
Four stowaways get mixed up with gangsters while running riot on an ocean liner.
Cast: Groucho Marx, Harpo Marx, Chico Marx, Zeppo Marx
Dir: Norman McLeod
BW-78 mins, TV-G

In the movie, Groucho Marx tells Thelma Todd, "You're a woman who's been getting nothing but dirty breaks. Well, we can clean and tighten your brakes, but you'll have to stay in the garage all night." Four years after making this movie, Thelma Todd died under mysterious circumstances. She was found dead in her car inside her backyard garage with the engine running. It is not known if her death from carbon monoxide poisoning was accidental, a murder, or suicide.


11:15pm -- Horse Feathers (1932)
In an effort to beef up his school's football team, a college president mistakenly recruits two loonies.
Cast: Groucho Marx, Harpo Marx, Chico Marx, Zeppo Marx
Dir: Norman McLeod
BW-67 mins, TV-G

"Darwin" & "Huxley," the two opposing college football team, are named after the originator of the theory of evolution, 19th century naturalist Charles Darwin, and his leading advocate, biologist Thomas H. Huxley.


12:30am -- Duck Soup (1933)
When he's named dictator of Freedonia, a con artist declares war on the neighboring kingdom.
Cast: Groucho Marx, Harpo Marx, Chico Marx, Zeppo Marx
Dir: Leo McCarey
BW-69 mins, TV-G

Groucho Marx offered the following explanation for the movie's title: "Take two turkeys, one goose, four cabbages, but no duck, and mix them together. After one taste, you'll duck soup the rest of your life."


1:45am -- A Night at the Opera (1935)
Three zanies turn an operatic performance into chaos in their efforts to promote their protege's romance with the leading lady.
Cast: Groucho Marx, Chico Marx, Harpo Marx, Kitty Carlisle
Dir: Sam Wood
BW-91 mins, TV-G

Producer Irving Thalberg would often call people in for meetings, and then keep them waiting in his office for hours while he attended other meetings on the MGM lot. One day, during pre-production for A Night at the Opera (1935), Thalberg kept The Marx Brothers waiting for several hours in his secretary's office, while he was in his own office making phone calls. When Thalberg's secretary went home for the day, the brothers decided they'd had enough. They pushed the office file cabinets against Thalberg's door, trapping the producer in his office. Afterwards, Thalberg kept his appointments with the Marx Brothers, but would often interrupt his meetings with them and step out to attend other meetings - again keeping the brothers waiting for hours. One day, Thalberg came back from another meeting to find Groucho Marx, Chico Marx, and Harpo Marx sitting in his office completely naked, and roasting potatoes on sticks in his office fireplace. Thalberg sat down with them, had a potato, and never missed or interrupted another meeting with the Marx Brothers.


3:26am -- One Reel Wonders: Marx Brothers Biography (1962)
BW-4 mins

Unmade-up and out of costume, the resemblance between Chico and his brother Harpo Marx was extraordinary. On the TV game show "I've Got a Secret" (1952), Chico once appeared in Harpo's wig and costume, with the "secret" "I'm Pretending To Be Harpo Marx (I'm Chico)" and fooled all the panelists - including Groucho Marx.


3:30am -- A Day At The Races (1937)
A group of zanies tries to save a pretty girl's sanitarium.
Cast: Groucho Marx, Chico Marx, Harpo Marx, Allan Jones
Dir: Sam Wood
BW-109 mins, TV-G

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Dance Direction -- Dave Gould for "All God's Children Got Rhythm"

The "Grand Steeplechase" sequence at the end had to be shot twice. Both times a crew member persuaded Chico Marx to gamble on it and not only to bet on the outcome of a rigged non-race, but to bet on a horse other than the one scripted to win. Chico, all his life an avid gambler, could offer as excuse only, "The odds were 20 to one."

If you have/are, you'll have a great time this New Year's Eve!



Happy 2011 to all DUers! :hi: