TCM Schedule for Thursday, June 18, 2020 -- What's On Tonight: Jazz in Film

[Staph]

In the daylight hours, TCM is celebrating Jeanette MacDonald, born June 18, 1903, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. We get to see her films both with and without Nelson Eddy.

Then in prime time, there is more of the Thursday night beginning of the spotlight of Jazz in Film. Take it away, Roger!

Both jazz and the movies emerged as American art forms at the end of the 19th Century and flowered in the 1920s. Not for nothing was that era called The Jazz Age! Once sound appeared in movies, the two forms melded; noted by the first major "talkie," The Jazz Singer. Since then, jazz artists - many of them African American - have performed regularly in films. Beginning in the 1950s, complete jazz scores were created for film noir and other genres with urban settings.

TCM revisits the legacy of jazz music and its perfect marriage to film over the decades. First appearing as a special theme in 1999, our programming is expanded in this month's Spotlight to two nights a week to encompass the eclectic sounds, artists and films associated with jazz.

The movies in this Spotlight are arranged by categories. International Jazz includes two dramas made by French directors.

Elevator to the Gallows (1958), directed by Louis Malle, is a film noir starring Jeanne Moreau and Maurice Ronet as illicit lovers who plot a murder. The score was the first created by the American jazz trumpeter/bandleader/composer Miles Davis.

Black Orpheus (1959) was made in Brazil by French filmmaker Marcel Camus as a co-production by France, Brazil and Italy. A modernized version of the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice, it has a score by Antônio Carlos Jobim and Luiz Bonfá. The soundtrack is influenced by bossa nova, a synthesis of jazz and samba.

Also in this category: The Warped Ones (1960) and Pale Flower (1964), both from Japan, and Knife in the Water (1962) from Poland.

. . . .

By Roger Fristoe

Enjoy!



7:00 AM -- WHERE THE BOYS ARE (1960)
College coeds go looking for love during spring break in Fort Lauderdale.
Dir: Henry Levin
Cast: Dolores Hart, Yvette Mimieux, Barbara Nichols
C-99 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Paul Frees, who narrates the opening of the movie, is perhaps best known for his work in Disney theme park attractions like 'Adventure Thru Inner Space,' 'The Haunted Mansion,' and 'Pirates of the Caribbean.'


8:45 AM -- BITTER SWEET (1940)
A voice teacher and his star pupil run away together to a life of love and poverty.
Dir: W. S. Van Dyke II
Cast: Jeanette MacDonald, Nelson Eddy, George Sanders
C-93 mins, CC,

Nominee for Oscars for Best Cinematography, Color -- Oliver T. Marsh and Allen M. Davey, and Best Art Direction, Color -- Cedric Gibbons and John S. Detlie

Except for a few shots where she was doubled by Audrey Scott, Jeanette MacDonald did most of her own horseback riding.


10:30 AM -- NEW MOON (1940)
A revolutionary leader romances a French aristocrat in Louisiana.
Dir: Robert Z. Leonard
Cast: Jeanette MacDonald, Nelson Eddy, Mary Boland
BW-105 mins, CC,

In the film as originally shot, Buster Keaton appears in a comic relief supporting part as the prisoner "Lulu". This would have been his first official appearance in an MGM feature production since Louis B Mayer fired him in February 1933. Several stills survive of Keaton in this role, in a scene with Jeanette MacDonald. Although Keaton's scenes were cut before the film was released, he is still visible in the background during several production numbers - particularly "Stout Hearted Men".


12:30 PM -- THE CAT AND THE FIDDLE (1934)
A struggling composer courts a singing star.
Dir: William K. Howard
Cast: Ramon Novarro, Jeanette MacDonald, Frank Morgan
BW-89 mins, CC,

Jeanette MacDonald's costume in the finale was used earlier by Joan Crawford in Dancing Lady (1933).


2:00 PM -- THE SUN COMES UP (1949)
Lassie helps an embittered woman find happiness with an orphaned boy.
Dir: Richard Thorpe
Cast: Jeanette MacDonald, Lloyd Nolan, Claude Jarman Jr.
C-93 mins, CC,

Jeanette MacDonald's final film.


3:45 PM -- MAYTIME (1937)
An opera star's manager tries to stop her romance with a penniless singer.
Dir: Robert Z. Leonard
Cast: Jeanette MacDonald, Nelson Eddy, John Barrymore
BW-132 mins, CC,

Nominee for Oscars for Best Sound, Recording -- Douglas Shearer (M-G-M SSD), and Best Music, Score -- Nat W. Finston (head of department) with score by Herbert Stothart

When filming began in 1936 (in color), the original opera finale was also recorded, staged and shot. This was to have been Act II of Giacomo Puccini's "Tosca", one of the few operatic works with major roles for baritone (Scarpia) and soprano as equals (Tosca). It also allowed Jeanette MacDonald to sing the famous aria "Vissi D'arte". By the time shooting recommenced in black and white, this idea was scrapped and replaced with an elaborate fake Russian opera "Czaritza" created by Herbert Stothart to music by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, presumably to allow for a big Duet (in "Tosca", she murders Scarpia by stabbing him through the heart!). The rewritten story of "Maytime" presumably demanded it. Sadly, the Technicolor "Tosca" sequence does not appear to have survived, which is a pity as it would have been fascinating to see MacDonald and Nelson Eddy in a major operatic sequence and in color.


6:00 PM -- 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.
Dir: W. S. Van Dyke
Cast: Clark Gable, Jeanette MacDonald, Spencer Tracy
BW-115 mins, CC,

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

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

Jeanette MacDonald brought the screenplay by Anita Loos to the attention of MGM head Irving Thalberg with the express idea that she should headline alongside Clark Gable. Thalberg readily agreed although Gable did not get along with MacDonald during filming. He objected to her singing at him and would eat garlic before their kissing scenes just to annoy her.



TCM PRIMETIME - WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: TCM SPOTLIGHT: JAZZ IN FILM



8:00 PM -- THE WARPED ONES (1960)
A delinquent targets the girlfriend of the journalist who helped send him to jail.
Dir: Koreyoshi Kurahara
Cast: Tamio Kawaji, Noriko Matsumoto, Yuko Chiyo
BW-75 mins, Letterbox Format

Original title - Kyônetsu no kisetsu.


9:30 PM -- ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS (1958)
A businessman kills his boss to cover up his affair with the man's wife.
Dir: Louis Malle
Cast: Jeanne Moreau, Maurice Ronet, Georges Poujouly
BW-92 mins,

Miles Davis recorded the music with a quartet of French and US musicians in a few hours (from 11pm to 5am one night), improvising each number and allegedly sipping champagne with Jeanne Moreau and Louis Malle.


11:15 PM -- KNIFE IN THE WATER (1962)
A young businessman and a hitchhiker develop a deadly rivalry during a boating weekend.
Dir: Roman Polanski
Cast: Leon Niemczyk, Jolanta Umecka, Zygmunt Malanowicz
BW-94 mins,

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film -- Poland

After the movie became known in US, Polanski was given a proposal to remake the film in English with some known Hollywood actors (rumors talk about Spencer Tracy and Elizabeth Taylor), but he turned it down as he didn't want to "repeat himself".


1:00 AM -- PALE FLOWER (1964)
A gangster gets released from prison and has to cope with the recent shifts of power between the gangs.
Dir: Masahiro Shinoda
Cast: Ryo Ikebe, Mariko Kaga, Takashi Fujiki
BW-96 mins, Letterbox Format

Ikebe, the star of this film, had considered his career finished. He had frozen on stage, unable to do his lines and left in public humiliation. When contacted to play the lead he thought it was a cruel joke. The director however felt he could draw on this experience to give the performance of his life, which he did.


3:00 AM -- BLACK ORPHEUS (1959)
A streetcar conductor loses his true love during Brazil's carnival season.
Dir: Marcel Camus
Cast: Breno Mello, Marpessa Dawn, Lourdes Deoliveira
C-108 mins,

Winner of an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film -- France

Barack Obama notes in his memoir Dreams from My Father (1995) that it was his mother's favourite film. Obama, however, didn't share his mother's preferences upon first watching the film during his first years at Columbia University: "I suddenly realized that the depiction of the childlike blacks I was now seeing on the screen, the reverse image of Conrad's dark savages, was what my mother had carried with her to Hawaii all those years before, a reflection of the simple fantasies that had been forbidden to a white, middle-class girl from Kansas, the promise of another life: warm, sensual, exotic, different."


5:00 AM -- ALWAYS FOR PLEASURE (1978)
Cameras explore the life and spirit of New Orleans.
Dir: Les Blank
Cast: Allen Toussaint, Blue Lu Barker, The Neville Brothers
C-57 mins, CC,

[CBHagman]

1. Wait. Jeanette MacDonald made a Lassie film?!

And she was in a movie with Buster Keaton?

I've got to watch more Jeanette MacDonald movies.

[Staph]

2. We tend to think of Jeanette MacDonald

as this goody-two-shoes soprano dressed in fluffy dresses.

From her IMDB biography:

Jeanette soon became known as The Iron Butterfly, for she was one of the most lady-like and beautiful women on the MGM lot, but when it came to her contracts, she was tough and could strike a deal quickly that suited her.