TCM Schedule for Saturday, October 24, 2020 -- The Essentials

[Staph]

In the daylight hours, TCM has the usual Saturday matinee lineup of films and shorts. Then in primetime, TCM finally returns to the Essentials. Tonight, Ben Mankiewicz and special co-host Brad Bird are showing a pair of Jan Sterling films. Enjoy!


6:00 AM -- Please Don't Eat the Daisies (1960)
1h 51m | Comedy | TV-G
A drama critic and his family try to adjust to life in the country.
Director: Charles Walters
Cast: Doris Day, David Niven, Janis Paige

Based on the best-selling autobiographical book of the same name, written by Jean Kerr, wife of powerful New York theatre critic Walter Kerr. For this film adaptation, characters' names were changed, but the bulk of the comic incidents seen here are from Kerr's memoir.


8:00 AM -- One Cab's Family (1938)
7m | Comedy | TV-G
Taxicab parents welcome junior into their lives; but as he grows older he has other occupations in mind.
Director: Tex Avery
Cast: Daws Butler, June Foray

According to IMDB, there are references to this short in the Pixar film Cars (2006).


8:09 AM -- Black Cats and Broomsticks (1955)
8m | Documentary | TV-G
Superstitions are examined in the context of mid-20th century America.
Director: Larry O'Reilly
Cast: Peter Roberts


8:18 AM -- Wandering Here and There (1944)
8m | Documentary | TV-G
This takes the viewer to various places around the United States.
Director: James A. Fitzpatrick
Cast: James A. Fitzpatrick


8:28 AM -- King of the Lumberjacks (1940)
58m | Romance | TV-G
A northwoods lumberjack unwittingly marries his best friend's girl.
Director: William Clemens
Cast: John Payne, Gloria Dickson, Stanley Fields

Jimmy Conlin was an accomplished pianist--that's actually him playing.


9:30 AM -- Wild West Days: The Leap for Life (1937)
21m | Action | TV-G
Retired lawman Kentucky Wade and his three buddies come to Brimstone and help their friends.
Director: Ford Beebe, Clifford Smith
Cast: John Mack Brown, George Shelley, Lynn Gilbert

Episode five of thirteen.


10:00 AM -- Cartoons Ain't Human (1943)
7m | Comedy | TV-PG
Popeye creates his own cartoon idea and casts himself as the hero and Olive as the heroine in a spoof of an old-fashioned melodrama.
Director: Seymour Kneitel, Orestes Calpini (uncredited)
Cast: Margie Hines, Jack Mercer

This was the last black & white Popeye cartoon.


10:09 AM -- Tarzan and the Amazons (1945)
1h 16m | Adventure | TV-PG
Archaeologists trick Boy into helping them find a hidden valley ruled by women.
Director: Kurt Neumann
Cast: Johnny Weissmuller, Brenda Joyce, Johnny Sheffield

This is the first movie of the Tarzan series reintroducing Jane, after Maureen O'Sullivan's final run with Tarzan's New York Adventure (1942), which came out 3 years prior . Jane is now played by actress Brenda Joyce, who looks quite different from Maureen O'Sullivan. She is even blonde! However no mention whatsoever is made of her different appearance and radical change in personality. It is unclear why her hair wasn't dyed black to make the transition smoother on the audiences. Joyce would go on to play Jane a total of five times.


11:30 AM -- The Flame Song (1934)
21m | Romance | TV-PG
A prince is such a playboy that his subjects revolt and place his cousin (who is worse) on the throne, forcing the former prince to find a way to overthrow the dictator.
Director: Joseph Henabery
Cast: J. Harold Murray, Bernice Claire, Mildred Van Dorn

Based on the feature film The Song of the Flame (1930) which was in turn based on the Broadway play of the same title that opened at the 44th Street Theatre, 216 West 44th Street, on December 30, 1925 and ran for 219 performances until July 10, 1926. Bernice Claire also appeared in the feature film in the same role.


12:00 PM -- Harper (1966)
2h 1m | Drama | TV-14
A broken-down private eye sets out to find a rich woman's missing husband.
Director: Jack Smight
Cast: Paul Newman, Lauren Bacall, Julie Harris

The opening credits sequence: William Goldman later said he knew he'd succeed as a screenwriter as soon as he wrote the opening scene in Harper (1966) in which Harper is forced to recycle used coffee grounds from the trash for his morning cup of coffee. Harper's dismay at the result, as realized by Paul Newman on screen, immediately created empathy between the character and the audience. Ironically, that opening sequence was the last thing he wrote for that script.


2:15 PM -- Brainstorm (1983)
1h 46m | Drama | TV-14
A scientist battles the military for control of a machine that records sensory experiences, including death.
Director: Douglas Trumbull
Cast: Christopher Walken, Natalie Wood, Louise Fletcher

When Natalie Wood died near the end of principal photography, studio executives tried to kill the film and claim the insurance, saying that director Douglas Trumbull could not complete the film. However, Trumbull's contract gave that decision to him, and he insisted on completing it, using a stand-in and changing camera angles for the few remaining shots of Wood's character. The resulting hostility between Trumbull and the studio executives meant that this would be Trumbull's last Hollywood film. He has since devoted his efforts to effects work for IMAX films, theme park rides and the like.


4:15 PM -- Men of the Fighting Lady (1954)
1h 20m | Drama | TV-PG
Men on a U.S. aircraft carrier fight to survive the Korean War.
Director: Andrew Marton
Cast: Van Johnson, Walter Pidgeon, Louis Calhern

The scene where one of the characters is killed in a crash landing on the carrier, the footage is the actual accident of a F9F during one of its early test flights. On June 23, 1951, pilot George Duncan hit an air pocket just before landing on the USS Midway. The pocket dropped the plane but he managed to keep the nose up at the time of impact, severing the plane and expelling the plane's cockpit onto the carrier deck as a fireball erupted behind him. Except for burning his ears, Duncan survived the crash.


5:45 PM -- Citizen Kane (1941)
1h 59m | Drama | TV-PG
The investigation of a publishing tycoon's dying words reveals conflicting stories about his scandalous life.
Director: Orson Welles
Cast: Joseph Cotten, Dorothy Comingore, Agnes Moorehead

Winner of an Oscar for Best Writing, Original Screenplay -- Herman J. Mankiewicz (grandfather of TCM host Ben Mankiewicz) and Orson Welles (On Friday, July 19th, 2003, Orson Welles' Oscar statuette went on sale at an auction at Christie's, New York, but was voluntarily withdrawn so the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences could buy it back for just 1 dollar. The statuette, included in a large selection of Welles-related material, was going to be sold by Beatrice Welles, the youngest of the filmmaker's three daughters and the sole heir of his estate and was expected to sell at over 300,000 dollars.)

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Orson Welles, Best Director -- Orson Welles, Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Gregg Toland, Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Black-and-White -- Perry Ferguson, Van Nest Polglase, A. Roland Fields and Darrell Silvera, Best Sound, Recording -- John Aalberg (RKO Radio SSD), Best Film Editing -- Robert Wise, Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic Picture -- Bernard Herrmann, and Best Picture

In the original script, Kane's son survives into adulthood and joins a radical group attempting to overthrow the government. 33 years after the film's release Patricia Hearst - granddaughter of Willam Randolph Hearst - was kidnapped by and brainwashed into joining the radical Symbionese Liberation Army.



WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: THE ESSENTIALS



8:00 PM -- Ace in the Hole (1951)
1h 59m | Drama | TV-14
A small-town reporter milks a local disaster to get back into the big time.
Director: Billy Wilder
Cast: Kirk Douglas, Jan Sterling, Bob Arthur

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay -- Billy Wilder, Lesser Samuels and Walter Newman

Indian copy boy in the newspaper office (uncredited) is Iron Eyes Cody...an American actor of Sicilian heritage who portrayed Native Americans in Hollywood films. He is perhaps best known as the individual shedding a tear over litter in the "Keep America Beautiful" TV ad campaign of the early 70's.


10:15 PM -- Flesh and Fury (1952)
1h 23m | Drama | TV-G
Deaf boxer Paul Callan captures the interest of gold-digging blonde Sonya Bartow and retired fight manager 'Pop' Richardson.
Director: Joseph Pevney
Cast: Tony Curtis, Jan Sterling, Mona Freeman

In the climactic boxing match, Tony Curtis's weight is announced as 146 and a half pounds, his opponent's as 147 pounds.


12:00 AM -- Macao (1952)
1h 20m | Adventure | TV-PG
A man on the run in the Far East is mistaken for an undercover cop.
Director: Josef Von Sternberg
Cast: Robert Mitchum, Jane Russell, William Bendix

Gloria Grahame did not want to be in this movie; Howard Hughes admitted that he never saw her previous performance opposite Humphrey Bogart in the film In a Lonely Place (1950), which is today unanimously considered among her finest performances. When Grahame asked to be loaned out to make George Stevens's A Place in the Sun (1951), Hughes turned down her request and forced her to make this movie (she reportedly dryly told her then-husband and uncredited director Nicholas Ray, who she was in the process of divorcing, that she wouldn't ask for alimony if he could get her out of this movie). Grahame later stated that she intentionally over-acted out of hatred for Hughes.


1:45 AM -- The Werewolf (1956)
1h 23m | Horror | TV-PG
A scientific experiment turns an innocent man into a bloodthirsty monster.
Director: Fred F. Sears
Cast: Don Megowan, Joyce Holden, Eleanore Tanin

The werewolf in this film was the screen's first science-fictional, non-supernatural lycanthrope. While possessed of incredible strength and ferocity, he could be killed by ordinary bullets and didn't require a full moon to cause transformation.



3:15 AM -- The Howling (1981)
1h 30m | Horror | TV-14
After taking part in a risky police operation intended to trap a serial murderer, Karen White witnesses something horrrifying enough to trigger selective amnesia.
Director: No Director: Available
Cast: Dee Wallace Stone, Patrick Macnee, Slim Pickens

Besides the many 'wolf' sight gags, character names and in-joke references, the book Bill Neill is reading in bed after being bitten is "You Can Never Go Home Again" by Thomas Wolfe. The author's name is an in-joke, and the name of the book is a double in-joke, referencing the fact that now that Bill is forever changed, he "can never go home again".


5:00 AM -- The Mummy (1932)
1h 12m | Horror | TV-14
An Egyptian mummy returns to life to stalk the reincarnation of his lost love.
Director: Karl Freund
Cast: Boris Karloff, Zita Johann, David Manners

The character name "Imhotep" was taken from an actual ancient Egyptian, but the real Imhotep was the architect who designed the pyramids and--far from being executed in disgrace--was the only Egyptian, other than the pharaohs, who was made a god after his death.