TCM Schedule for Saturday, October 23, 2021 -- What's On Tonight: Eastwood - Part II

[Staph]

In the daylight hours, TCM has the usual Saturday matinee lineup of films and shorts. Then in primetime, TCM gives us the second night dedicated to Clint Eastwood.

TWO NIGHTS OF CLINT EASTWOOD - 10/16 & 10/23
By Roger Fristoe
September 28, 2021
4 Movies / October 16 and 23

Film historian David Thomson wrote of Clint Eastwood that “he has become an authentically heroic image, a man cast in Gary Cooper’s rock.” As both actor and director, Eastwood has achieved an almost majestic presence that is rare among American filmmakers.

Eastwood is still going strong at age 91, with the recent release of Cry Macho (2021), in which he serves as producer, director, and leading man. In this film he plays a former rodeo star who is hired to reunite a young man with his father.

TCM’s salute to this legend encompasses two evenings and four films, with Eastwood acting in three of them and serving as producer and director on two.

Clint Eastwood was born May 31, 1930, in San Francisco and grew up in nearby Piedmont. After relocating to Los Angeles in the early 1950s, he began working in films by playing uncredited bit parts. His breakthrough role was that of Rowdy in the CBS-TV series Rawhide (1959-65).

Eastwood emerged as a big-screen star in such Italian-made “spaghetti Westerns” as A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966). He made his debut as a director with Play Misty for Me (1971).

His many other hits have included Dirty Harry (1971), High Plains Drifter (1973), Magnum Force (1973), The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), The Enforcer (1976), Escape from Alcatraz (1979), Sudden Impact (1983), Pale Rider (1985), Heartbreak Ridge (1986), In the Line of Fire (1993), and The Bridges of Madison County (1995).

In addition to Unforgiven (1992, see below), films bringing Eastwood Academy Awards and nominations have included:

Mystic River (2003): Nominee, Best Picture and Director.
Million Dollar Baby (2004): Winner, Best Picture, Director, Actress (Hilary Swank), and Supporting Actor (Morgan Freeman); nominee, Eastwood as Best Actor.
Letters from Iwo Jima (2006): Nominee, Best Picture and Director.
American Sniper (2014): Nominee, Best Picture.

In 1995 the Academy presented Eastwood with the Irving G. Thalberg Award for his humanitarian efforts.

Eastwood also composed the musical scores for several of his films, including Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby, and Flags of Our Fathers (2006).

Below are the films in TCM’s tribute.

Where Eagles Dare (1968) is a British war film about Allied agents, including those played by Eastwood and top-billed Richard Burton, who storm a castle where Nazis are holding an American general prisoner. Brian G. Hutton directs from a script adapted by Alistair MacLean from his 1966 novel.

Every Which Way but Loose (1978) is an action comedy about a trucker who roams the American West with a pet orangutan named Clyde. This boisterous film, directed by James Fargo, was a radical change for Eastwood as an actor. It became a surprise hit and inspired a sequel, Any Which Way You Can (1980).

Bird (1988), a biographical film about jazz saxophonist Charlie “Bird” Parker, was produced and directed by Eastwood and reflects his love of jazz and musicians. Joel Oliansky wrote the script, which delves into Parker’s life from his childhood to a premature death at age 34. Forest Whitaker plays the adult Parker, and Diane Venora is his wife, Chan.

Unforgiven, a revisionist Western written by David Webb Peoples that addresses the nature of violence, was a breakthrough for Eastwood. It won him his first Oscar nomination and award as Best Director and established him as a major filmmaker.

Eastwood stars in an Oscar-nominated performance as an aging outlaw who takes on one more assignment to claim a much-needed bounty. The film scored a total of nine Oscar nominations and won in the following categories: Picture, Director, Supporting Actor (Gene Hackman), and Film Editing.

Critic Richard Corliss wrote in Time that The Unforgiven was “Eastwood’s meditation on age, repute, courage, heroism – all those burdens he has been carrying with such grace for decades.”

Enjoy!


6:00 AM -- The Mummy's Shroud (1967)
1h 30m | Horror/Science-Fiction | TV-PG
The words on an Egyptian prince's burial shroud revive a vengeful mummy.
Director: John Gilling
Cast: Andre Morell, John Phillips, David Buck

Christopher Lee's regular stunt double, Eddie Powell, plays the mummy. Indeed, Powell had doubled for Lee in the stunt sequences of "The Mummy (1959)."


8:00 AM -- Bats in the Belfry (1942)
6m | Animation
A trio of musically inclined bats eagerly show why they are associated with being crazy.
Director: Rudolf Ising
Cast: Pinto Colvig

The following wartime public service announcement "fades" into the closing title card, sandwiched between "The End" and the miniature MGM reclining-Leo-the-Lion-and-torches insignia logo: "America needs your money. Buy War Bonds and Stamps in this theater." Apparently MGM attached this PSA to many of its short subjects released during 1942; it also appears at the closing of the cartoon Chips Off the Old Block (1942) and Our Gang's Surprised Parties (1942), among others.


8:09 AM -- Men in Fright (1938)
10m | Comedy | TV-G
In this comedic short, a gang of children visit their friend in the hospital, but chaos ensues.
Director: George Sidney
Cast: Darla Hood, Eugene "Porky" Lee, George "Spanky" McFarland

Title spoofs the MGM feature Men in White (1934).


8:20 AM -- Egypt Speaks (1951)
8m | Short | TV-G
This short film takes the viewer to Alexandria, Egypt.
Director: James A. Fitzpatrick
Cast: James A. Fitzpatrick, Ibrahim Mustafa

First of only two "People on Parade" shorts by James A. FitzPatrick, the other one being Voices of Venice (1951).


8:29 AM -- Men in Exile (1937)
58m | Drama | TV-G
Gun smugglers clash with an island dictator.
Director: John Farrow
Cast: Dick Purcell, June Travis, Victor Varconi

General Alcatraz quotes Feeble in Shakespeare's "The Second Part of King Henry the Fourth", Act 3, Scene 2, "...let it go which way it will, he that dies this year is quit for the next".


9:30 AM -- Batman and Robin: Robin's Wild Ride (1949)
17m | Short | TV-PG
Batman and Robin try to stop a runaway train controlled by a criminal mastermind.
Director: Spencer Bennett.
Cast: Robert Lowery, Johnny Duncan, Jane Adams

Robin's cape is black (or, at least, a dark color) as opposed to the yellow of the comic books.


10:00 AM -- Symphony in Spinach (1948)
6m | Animation | TV-PG
Popeye and Bluto are sitting in the park scanning the employment section of the newspaper when they read that Olive Oyl needs a musician for her band.
Director: Seymour Kneitel
Cast: Jack Mercer, Jackson Beck, Mae Questel

The title of one of the stories on the front page of the newspaper Bluto is reading at the beginning contains an early use of the word "video" in the now obsolete sense of "television set".


10:08 AM -- Torchy Blane, the Adventurous Blonde (1937)
1h 1m | Suspense/Mystery | TV-PG
Reporter Torchy Blane walks out on her own wedding to solve the case of a murdered actor.
Director: Frank MacDonald
Cast: Glenda Farrell, Barton MacLane, Anne Nagel

The $18.90 for the flowers would equate to $313 in 2016.


11:30 AM -- Trial by Trigger (1944)
21m | Short | TV-PG
A logger must save his stand of redwoods from being bought by an unscrupulous logging company.
Director: William McGann
Cast: Robert Shayne, Cheryl Walker, Warner Anderson

Sixth episode in Warner Bros. Santa Fe Trail series of 2-reel Westerns.


12:00 PM -- Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941)
2h 7m | Horror/Science-Fiction | TV-PG
A scientist's investigations into the nature of good and evil turn him into a murderous monster.
Director: Victor Fleming
Cast: Spencer Tracy, Ingrid Bergman, Lana Turner

Nominee for Oscars for Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Joseph Ruttenberg, Best Film Editing -- Harold F. Kress, and Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic Picture -- Franz Waxman

Due to the Hays Code much of the film had to be watered down from the 1931 version. The character of Ivy Peterson had to be changed from a prostitute to a barmaid.


2:00 PM -- Plunder of the Sun (1953)
1h 21m | Adventure | TV-PG
Mexican Aztec ruins hold the secret of a long-buried treasure.
Director: John Farrow
Cast: Glenn Ford, Diana Lynn, Patricia Medina

Glenn Ford turned down the lead role in Hondo (1953) because he had not enjoyed working with director John Farrow on this film.


3:30 PM -- Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964)
2h 3m | Musical | TV-PG
A Chicago gangster stumbles into philanthropic work during a gang war.
Director: Gordon Douglas
Cast: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr.

Nominee for Oscars for Best Music, Original Song -- Jimmy Van Heusen (music) and Sammy Cahn (lyrics) for the song "My Kind of Town", and Best Music, Scoring of Music, Adaptation or Treatment -- Nelson Riddle

Making this film should have been fun. Instead, by more than one account, it was a waking nightmare for all involved. John F. Kennedy was assassinated soon after filming started, casting a pall over the entire set. Not long after that, Frank Sinatra Jr. was kidnapped from his dressing room at Lake Tahoe, Nevada (Upon payment of a large ransom, he was released, unharmed, a few days later). Victor Buono, who played Deputy Sheriff Alvin Potts, later observed that it was a minor miracle that filming was completed at all.


5:45 PM -- There Was a Crooked Man ... (1970)
2h 6m | Western | TV-PG
A Western crook tries to break out of prison.
Director: Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Cast: Kirk Douglas, Henry Fonda, Hume Cronyn

A realistic 1880s territorial prison replica was constructed on four acres in the high-desert country of the Joshua Tree National Monument. Designed by Edward Carrere, Oscar-winning designer of such movies as "The Wild Bunch (1969)," it was one of the most massive location sets ever built. The prison's 20-foot-high, four-feet-thick walls enclosed 14 buildings, including a guards' barracks, warden's quarters, mess hall, kitchen, hospital, blacksmith shop, a mule shed, corral, seven guard towers, a solitary confinement cell and a gallows. Unlike a typical movie set, the buildings had to be roofed because aerial footage of the location would be filmed. Some 80 loads of rocks were trucked in (and later removed) to create the enormous hard-labor rock pile in the movie. Since no indigenous plants could be harmed, thousands of desert plants also had to be trucked to the location.



WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: PRIMETIME THEME -- EASTWOOD PART II



8:00 PM -- Bird (1988)
2h 41m | Drama | TV-MA
Saxophone great Charlie Parker builds a career in jazz while fighting drug addiction.
Director: Clint Eastwood
Cast: Forest Whitaker, Diane Venora, Michael Zelniker

Winner of an Oscar for Best Sound -- Les Fresholtz, Rick Alexander (as Dick Alexander), Vern Poore and Willie D. Burton

Clint Eastwood approached Chan Parker, Charlie "Bird" Parker's common-law wife on whose memoirs the script was based, for input. She gave Eastwood a collection of lost recordings she'd kept in a bank vault.


11:15 PM -- Unforgiven (1992)
2h 10m | Western | TV-MA
A retired gunslinger straps on the six-guns one more time to battle a corrupt town boss.
Director: Clint Eastwood
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman

Winner of Oscars for Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Gene Hackman, Best Director -- Clint Eastwood, Best Film Editing -- Joel Cox, and Best Picture

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Clint Eastwood, Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen -- David Webb Peoples, Best Cinematography -- Jack N. Green, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration -- Henry Bumstead and Janice Blackie-Goodine, and Best Sound -- Les Fresholtz, Vern Poore, Rick Alexander (as Dick Alexander) and Rob Young

This movie laid to rest Clint Eastwood's longstanding statement why he would never win an Oscar. Eastwood reckoned he would never be in the running because "First, I'm not Jewish. Secondly, I make too much money. Thirdly, and most importantly, because I don't give a fuck." Since his double Oscar win for this movie, Eastwood has gone on to win two more Oscars, as well as a Irving Thalberg Memorial Award, and has been nominated an additional six times.


2:00 AM -- La Bestia Debe Morir (1952)
1h 35m | Drama
A man becomes obsessed with avenging the death of his son.
Director: Roman Vinoly Barreto
Cast: Narciso Ibanez Menta, Laura Hidalgo, Guillermo Battaglia

Spanish language title, literally translates to English as The Beast Must Die.


4:00 AM -- Footsteps in the Dark (1941)
1h 36m | Suspense/Mystery | TV-G
An aspiring mystery writer stumbles on to a real murder.
Director: Lloyd Bacon
Cast: Errol Flynn, Brenda Marshall, Ralph Bellamy

Errol Flynn had just made seven period pictures in a row and was lobbying Jack L. Warner hard for a change, so he was cast when this role became available.