TCM Schedule for Thursday, June 25, 2020 -- What's On Tonight: Jazz in Film

[Staph]

In the morning, TCM is going to the beach. In the afternoon, we're visiting St. Mary Mead and its most famous resident, Miss Marple. 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. Billie Holiday gets a double feature with a musical biography built around Lady Day herself and the other her life and career.

New Orleans (1947) casts Holiday as a singing maid who falls for a bandleader played by Louis Armstrong. The musical romance from United Artists stars Arturo de Córdova and Dorothy Patrick, with a lineup of jazz greats as members of Armstrong's band, including pianist Charlie Beal, bassist George "Red" Callender, guitarist Bud Scott, trombonist Kid Ory and drummer Zutty Singleton. Woody Herman also appears with his orchestra. This was the only time Holiday performed in a movie, where her songs include "Farewell to Storyville" and "The Blues Are Brewin'."

Lady Sings the Blues (1972) brought Diana Ross an Oscar nomination for playing Holiday in a film that recounts her problems with men, substance abuse and racial prejudice as she struggles to succeed as a singer. Songs include more than a dozen Holiday standards including "Strange Fruit," "Them There Eyes," "What a Little Moonlight Can Do" and "Fine and Mellow." The soundtrack album was a hit for Ross, rising to No. 1 on the Billboard charts.

After both films, the Spotlight wraps up with Blues in the Night, featuring Blues in the Night (1941), Rhapsody in Blue (1945) and Pete Kelly's Blues (1955).

. . . .

By Roger Fristoe

Enjoy!



7:00 AM -- MUSCLE BEACH PARTY (1963)
The beach gang goes head-to-head with the bodybuilders of a new gym that's interfering with their strip on the sand.
Dir: William Asher
Cast: Frankie Avalon, Annette Funicello, Luciana Paluzzi
C-95 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Features six songs co-written by Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys.


8:45 AM -- BIKINI BEACH (1964)
A millionaire tries to prove that his pet chimp is as smart as the local teens.
Dir: William Asher
Cast: Frankie Avalon, Annette Funicello, Martha Hyer
C-100 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Boris Karloff stepped in to replace his late friend Peter Lorre, who had passed away in March 1964, with production wrapped up in May for July release.


10:30 AM -- BEACH BLANKET BINGO (1965)
The surfing gang rescues a beautiful singer from evil bikers.
Dir: William Asher
Cast: Frankie Avalon, Annette Funicello, Deborah Walley
C-97 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

One of the few times Buster Keaton speaks on film.


12:15 PM -- HOW TO STUFF A WILD BIKINI (1965)
When he's stationed in Tahiti, a sailor hires a witch doctor to keep an eye on his girlfriend.
Dir: William Asher
Cast: Annette Funicello, Dwayne Hickman, Brian Donlevy
C-93 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

The last "Beach Party" film to feature Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello. Because Avalon asked producers Samuel Z. Arkoff and James H. Nicholson for more money, his role was cut down to what amounts to a small cameo of about six minutes of screen time.


2:00 PM -- MURDER, SHE SAID (1961)
When nobody will believe she witnessed a murder, elderly sleuth Miss Marple takes a job as a maid to ferret out clues.
Dir: George Pollock
Cast: Margaret Rutherford, Arthur Kennedy, Muriel Pavlow
BW-86 mins, CC,

Despite privately remaining unimpressed by this movie, Dame Agatha Christie dedicated her 1962 book "The Mirror Crack'd From Side to Side" to Dame Margaret Rutherford, "in admiration".


3:30 PM -- MURDER AT THE GALLOP (1963)
Elderly sleuth Miss Marple suspects foul play when an old friend is supposedly scared to death by a cat.
Dir: George Pollock
Cast: Margaret Rutherford, Robert Morley, Flora Robson
BW-81 mins, CC,

At the scene of the second murder, while Miss Milchrest (Dame Flora Robson) is being interviewed by Miss Jane Marple (Dame Margaret Rutherford) and Inspector Craddock (Charles "Bud" Tingwell), you can see several figurines behind Miss Milchrest. Some are in a cabinet and some on a shelf along the wall to the left of the cabinet. Some of the figurines on the shelf depict The Wizard of Oz (1939). It starts with the Tin Man, Dorothy, possibly the Scarecrow, and then the Witch (working right to left along the shelf to the corner and continuing along the wall). It's possible the Cowardly Lion is placed behind Miss Millcrest's head.


5:01 PM -- THE MAN IN THE BARN (1937)
This short film examines several stories revolving around John Wilkes Bookes.
Dir: Jacques Tourneur
Cast: Erville Alderson, Virginia Brissac, Douglas Wood
BW-10 mins, CC,

The "facts" presented here had been widely disproven even before this film was produced.


5:15 PM -- MURDER MOST FOUL (1964)
Elderly sleuth Miss Marple joins a small-town theatre to investigate a murder.
Dir: George Pollock
Cast: Margaret Rutherford, Ron Moody, Charles Tingwell
BW-91 mins, CC,

Miss Jane Marple's audition piece for the Cosgood Players is her dramatic rendering of "The Shooting of Dan McGrew", a 1907 poem by Robert W. Service. Dame Margaret Rutherford was especially fond of the piece, and reportedly once intended to give a reading of it at a women's prison to cheer up the inmates.


7:00 PM -- HOLLYWOOD MY HOMETOWN (1965)
In this special, Ken Murray hosts his own behind-the-scenes home movies of some of Hollywood's greatest stars.
Dir: William Martin
Cast: Ken Murray, Ben Alexander, Richard Arlen
BW-53 mins, CC,

Footage of Jayne Mansfield shows her with her husband, Mickey Hargitay, and the youngest of their three children, Mariska Hargitay.



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



8:00 PM -- NEW ORLEANS (1947)
A gambling-hall owner goes straight when he discovers the market for Chicago jazz.
Dir: Arthur Lubin
Cast: Arturo de Córdova, Dorothy Patrick, Marjorie Lord
BW-90 mins,

One & only time Billie Holliday performs in a film.


9:45 PM -- LADY SINGS THE BLUES (1972)
Billie Holliday fights drug addiction to make a name for herself as a jazz singer.
Dir: Sidney J. Furie
Cast: Diana Ross, Billy Dee Williams, Richard Pryor
C-144 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Diana Ross, Best Writing, Story and Screenplay Based on Factual Material or Material Not Previously Published or Produced -- Terence McCloy, Chris Clark and Suzanne De Passe, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration -- Carl Anderson and Reg Allen, Best Costume Design -- Bob Mackie, Ray Aghayan and Norma Koch, and Best Music, Scoring Original Song Score and/or Adaptation -- Gil Askey

According to Diana Ross, Richard Pryor instructed her on how to behave during the scenes of drug use.


12:30 AM -- PETE KELLY'S BLUES (1955)
The jazz band's leader gets mixed up with gangster in '20s Kansas City.
Dir: Jack Webb
Cast: Jack Webb, Janet Leigh, Edmond O'Brien
C-95 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Peggy Lee

Jack Webb actually knew how to play the cornet. He loved jazz music and, as a boy, was given a cornet by a musician who lived near his home. While he never truly mastered the instrument he knew it well enough that his handling and fingering of the cornet in this movie is accurate.


2:15 AM -- BLUES IN THE NIGHT (1941)
The members of a traveling jazz band try to keep their leader from drinking himself to death.
Dir: Anatole Litvak
Cast: Priscilla Lane, Betty Field, Richard Whorf
BW-88 mins, CC,

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Music, Original Song -- Harold Arlen (music) and Johnny Mercer (lyrics) for the song "Blues in the Night"

The melody of "The Man That Got Away" was actually written for this film as an up-tempo song called "I Can't Believe My Eyes". Harold Arlen disliked the Johnny Mercer lyric and put it in his trunk unused, only to pull it out years later to give to Ira Gershwin, who wrote a masterful new lyric for A Star Is Born (1954).


3:47 AM -- RHUMBA RHYTHM AT THE HOLLYWOOD LA CONGA (1939)
In this short film, two small town girls sneak into a Hollywood club hoping for some star sightings but they get much more when they enter a conga line contest.
Dir: Sammy Lee
Cast: Sally Payne, Mary Treen,
BW-11 mins,


4:00 AM -- RHAPSODY IN BLUE (1945)
Fictionalized biography of George Gershwin and his fight to bring serious music to Broadway.
Dir: Irving Rapper
Cast: Robert Alda, Joan Leslie, Alexis Smith
BW-141 mins, CC,

Nominee for Oscars for Best Sound, Recording -- Nathan Levinson (Warner Bros. SSD), and Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture -- Ray Heindorf and Max Steiner

Oscar Levant had three functions in this film: he provided George Gershwin's piano playing as Robert Alda's double, he portrayed himself on screen and he was heard playing piano on the soundtrack as himself, Oscar Levant, in the commemorative performance of "Rhapsody in Blue" which ends the film.