TCM Schedule for Saturday, July 11, 2020 -- What's On Tonight: The Essentials: Cold War Comedies

[Staph]

In the daylight hours, TCM has the usual Saturday matinee lineup of films and shorts. In late afternoon, we get a centennial celebration of Yul Brynner, born Yuli Borisovich Bryner, on July 11, 1920, in Vladivostok, Primorskaya Oblast, Far Eastern Republic, now Primorsky Krai, Russia. I had the great good fortune to see Yul Brynner as the King in the revival of The King And I, on Broadway in June of 1978. He was glorious!

Then in primetime, TCM finally returns to the Essentials. Tonight, Ben Mankiewicz and special co-host Brad Bird give us a pair of cold war era comedies, both starring Peter Sellars. Enjoy!


6:00 AM -- THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD (1938)
The bandit king of Sherwood Forest leads his Merry Men in a battle against the corrupt Prince John.
Dir: Michael Curtiz
Cast: Errol Flynn, Olivia De Havilland, Basil Rathbone
C-102 mins, CC,

Winner of Oscars for Best Art Direction -- Carl Jules Weyl, Best Film Editing -- Ralph Dawson, and Best Music, Original Score -- Erich Wolfgang Korngold

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Picture

According to TCM host Robert Osborne, the film was so successful that a sequel was commissioned. However, the US government wanted to restrict the amount of money invested in filmmaking at that point in anticipation of joining World War II, so it was delayed. By 1945, when the war was over, the project was scrapped because Olivia de Havilland and Claude Rains were no longer employed at Warner Bros.


8:00 AM -- MGM CARTOONS: BUSYBODY BEAR (1952)
Barney gets involved in Good Neighbor Week by helping out the local beaver, help the beaver could do without.
Dir: Dick Lundy
Cast: Paul Frees
BW-6 mins, CC,


8:08 AM -- CANADIAN LANCERS (1956)
This short film shows youngsters training at the Junior Bengal Lancers riding school in Halifax.
Dir: Douglas Sinclair
Cast: Heather Cameron, Mark Facey,
BW-8 mins,


8:17 AM -- COLORFUL ISLANDS MADAGASCAR AND SEYCHELLES (1936)
This short film focuses on the customs and culture of Madagascar and Seychelles.
C-8 mins,


8:26 AM -- CONSPIRACY (1938)
A shipment of poisonous gas is delivered for use in a mythical Central American country.
Dir: Lew Landers
Cast: Allan Lane, Linda Hayes, Robert Barrat
BW-59 mins, CC,

All the public signs in the unnamed country where this takes place are in the international language Esperanto, and some of the country's officials briefly speak Esperanto when talking to each other.


9:30 AM -- TERRY AND THE PIRATES: TOO MANY ENEMIES (1940)
Dr. Herbert Lee, an archaeologist seeking to decipher ancient Mara inscriptions, is aided by his son, Terry, Terry's pal, Pat Ryan, and Normandie Drake.
Dir: James W. Horne
Cast: William Tracy, Jeff York, Joyce Bryant
BW-17 mins, CC,

Episode 10 of 15.


10:00 AM -- POPEYE: NIX ON HYPNOTRICKS (1933)
Prof. I. Stare, hypnotist, is frustrated by not having anyone to practice on.
Dir: Dave Fleischer, Dave Tendlar (uncredited)
Cast: Margie Hines, Jack Mercer
BW-7 mins, CC,

One of a number of Popeye shorts which were sent off to Asia in the 80's to undergo the infamous redraw and colorization process.


10:09 AM -- BOMBA ON PANTHER ISLAND (1949)
Bomba the Jungle Boy must stop a man-eating black panther.
Dir: Ford Beebe
Cast: Johnny Sheffield, Allene Roberts, Lita Baron
BW-76 mins, CC,

Typical of Hollywood B-movie jungle flicks of the era, the version of Africa is vague at best. As Bomba lives "beyone the Rift" this would mean "to the west of the Great Rift Valley, which would put the setting in western Kenya. A former British colony, there was no French spoken there, yet "Losana" is a local French-speaking woman. The French influence would have been from the western side of the continent. Plus, Losana is dressed like a contemporary Polynesian. To top things off, the purportedly African language is just gibberish. This is not a film to be taken any more seriously than a cartoon.


11:30 AM -- INVITATION TO A GUNFIGHTER (1964)
Frontier town enlists half-black gunman to rid them of uncontrollable Confederate veteran.
Dir: Richard Wilson
Cast: Yul Brynner, Janice Rule, Brad Dexter
C-93 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

The Psycho (1960) house set on the Universal back lot was the home for the character Sam Brewster, played by Pat Hingle.


1:15 PM -- THE JOURNEY (1959)
A Communist officer falls hard for a married woman trying to escape from Hungary.
Dir: Anatole Litvak
Cast: Deborah Kerr, Yul Brynner, Jason Robards Jr.
C-126 mins, CC,

While a guest on the interview podcast "WTF with Marc Maron" in 2016, Ron Howard told Maron that as a child on the set of this movie, Yul Brynner made a vivid impression on him. Howard was especially transfixed while watching Brynner shoot a scene in which his character was supposed to bite into a drinking glass, and to the astonishment of the then-five-year-old Howard, Brynner actually did it. After the shot was over, however, Brynner (who had noticed how impressed the little boy was with the scene) called Howard over to explain to him that the "glass" was actually an edible prop made out of sugar, and to warn the child that he should never actually bite a real glass.


3:30 PM -- THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV (1958)
In this adaptation of the Dostoevsky classic, four brothers fight to adjust to the death of their domineering father.
Dir: Richard Brooks
Cast: Yul Brynner, Maria Schell, Claire Bloom
C-146 mins, CC,

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Lee J. Cobb

1950's blonde bombshell Gloria Pall has a small part in the beginning of the movie playing a peasant girl being held down on the couch as the Karamazov tickles her feet with a feather. She was cast after a audition that consisted entirely of being tickled on her feet by a assistant, and beating out 11 other actresses who were tested the same way because she was the most ticklish.


6:15 PM -- WESTWORLD (1973)
A future fantasy park turns deadly when robot workers go on a killing spree.
Dir: Michael Crichton
Cast: Richard Benjamin, Yul Brynner, James Brolin
C-89 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

The robot that Yul Brynner portrays is an homage/spoof of his character Chris from The Magnificent Seven (1960) and wears the same costume.



TCM PRIMETIME - WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: THE ESSENTIALS: COLD WAR COMEDIES



8:00 PM -- DR. STRANGELOVE OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB (1964)
A mad United States General orders an air strike against Russia.
Dir: Stanley Kubrick
Cast: Peter Sellers, George C Scott, Sterling Hayden
BW-95 mins, CC,

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Peter Sellers, Best Director -- Stanley Kubrick, Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium -- Stanley Kubrick, Peter George and Terry Southern, and Best Picture

Gen. Ripper's paranoia about water fluoridation being a Communist plot is based on a conspiracy theory circulated by the extreme-right-wing John Birch Society in the 1950s and 1960s. The organization, which was founded in 1958, was quite influential in conservative politics at the time, and the "fluoridation is a Communist plot" theory took hold in many rural areas of the US, with some small towns going so far as to not only ban fluoridation of water but to pass ordinances requiring the arrest and jailing of anyone who advocated it.


10:00 PM -- THE MOUSE THAT ROARED (1959)
An impoverished nation declares war on the U.S. hoping to lose and score foreign aid.
Dir: Jack Arnold
Cast: Peter Sellers, Jean Seberg, William Hartnell
C-83 mins, CC,

Grand Fenwick is ruled by Duchess Gloriana XII, said to be still in mourning for her consort "Count Leopold of Bosnia Herzegovina". The country of Bosnia and Herzegovina was at that time absorbed within the Republic of Yugoslavia, then under Communist rule. It is likely that many viewers thought "Bosnia Herzegovina" was as fictitious as Grand Fenwick. Bosnia and Herzegovina only became a sovereign nation again in 1992, after the Balkans conflict had resulted in the break-up of Yugoslavia.


12:00 AM -- BODYGUARD (1948)
A cop on suspension is framed for murder.
Dir: Richard O. Fleischer
Cast: Lawrence Tierney, Priscilla Lane, Philip Reed
BW-63 mins, CC,

Final film of Priscilla Lane.


1:30 AM -- AMERICA AMERICA (1963)
A young Greek stops at nothing to secure a passage to America.
Dir: Elia Kazan
Cast: Stathis Giallelis, Frank Wolff, Harry Davis
BW-168 mins, CC,

Winner of an Oscar for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White -- Gene Callahan

Nominee for Oscars for Best Director -- Elia Kazan, Best Writing, Story and Screenplay - Written Directly for the Screen -- Elia Kazan, and Best Picture

Kazan began shooting in Istanbul, but was concerned that Turkish officials would object to some of the material content and moved his base of production to Greece.


4:30 AM -- LITTLE NELLIE KELLY (1940)
The daughter of Irish immigrants patches up differences between her father and grandfather and rises to the top on Broadway.
Dir: Norman Taurog
Cast: Judy Garland, George Murphy, Charles Winninger
BW-99 mins, CC,

This movie has Judy Garland performing "Singin' in the Rain" more than 10 years before Gene Kelly most famously sang it in Singin' in the Rain (1952). The song was first heard on screen in The Hollywood Revue of 1929 (1929).