TCM Schedule for Friday, September 30, 2022 -- What's On Tonight: Starring Fredric March

[Staph]

In the daylight hours today, TCM is continuing last night's look at Star of the Month Humphrey Bogart. Then in prime time, TCM is featuring a trio of films starring Fredric March. Enjoy!


6:00 AM -- Racket Busters (1938)
1h 11m | Drama | TV-G
A mobster tries to take over the trucking business.
Director: Lloyd Bacon
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, George Brent, Gloria Dickson

In France, the title was changed to "Menaces sur la ville", or roughly "Threat Over the City" so the citizens would not be confused, as the country was wild about the sport of tennis at the time.


7:15 AM -- You Can't Get Away with Murder (1939)
1h 18m | Crime | TV-G
A young tough takes the rap for a hardened gangster.
Director: Lewis Seiler
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Gale Page, Billy Halop

In Invisible Stripes (1939), Humphrey Bogart and Lee Patrick are seen leaving a theater showing this movie.


8:45 AM -- King of the Underworld (1939)
1h 9m | Crime | TV-PG
A lady doctor gets mixed up with a criminal gang.
Director: Lewis Seiler
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Kay Francis, James Stephenson

Humphrey Bogart was given top billing, in part, to further humiliate Kay Francis, whose $200,000 annual salary and declining popularity had become a sore spot for Warner boss Jack L. Warner. Aware of the motives, Bogie was unhappy that he was being used as a pawn in order to humiliate Francis in front of the public that had once admired her. After years of struggling as a relatively-unknown actor in B-films, he considered achieving his second top billing this way to be more salt in the wound. (He had been top billed in Black Legion two years earlier.)


10:00 AM -- The Petrified Forest (1936)
1h 23m | Drama | TV-G
An escaped convict holds the customers at a remote desert cantina hostage.
Director: Archie L. Mayo
Cast: Leslie Howard, Humphrey Bogart, Bette Davis

Leslie Howard and Humphrey Bogart had played the same roles in the stage version. Warner Bros. wanted to put Howard in the film but replace Bogart with Edward G. Robinson. Howard insisted on Bogart, sending a telegram to Jack L. Warner which read "Insist Bogart play Mantee; no Bogart, no deal." Bogart would later name his second child with Lauren Bacall Leslie, in honor of Howard, the man who gave him his first big break.


11:30 AM -- San Quentin (1937)
1h 10m | Drama | TV-PG
A convict's sister falls for the captain of the prison guards.
Director: Lloyd Bacon
Cast: Pat O'Brien, Humphrey Bogart, Ann Sheridan

When Druggin was looking at the index cards of the prisoners, a close-up shot on Hansen's card shows an entry for Bertillion (sic) Measurements. The Bertillon System was created in the late 1800s by Alphonse Bertillon, a French police officer and biometrics researcher, who applied the anthropological technique of anthropometry to create a human identification system based on physical measurements. Anthropometry was the first scientific system used by law enforcement to identify criminals. Before that time, criminals could only be identified by name or photograph. The Bertillon System consisted of five measurements: head length, head breadth, length of middle finger, length of the left foot, and length of the cubit. Along with these measurements, Bertillon set a standard for facial photography, now known as the mugshot, to complete this system. Although the system was based on scientific measurements, it was known to have its problems. For example, it did not work accurately with women or children because it was based on the data of men who had reached full physical maturity and had short hair. The Bertillon System was eventually replaced by fingerprinting.


12:45 PM -- Three on a Match (1932)
1h 4m | Drama | TV-PG
A woman's childhood friends try to rescue her from gangsters.
Director: Mervyn Leroy
Cast: Joan Blondell, Ann Dvorak, Bette Davis

First film released where Humphrey Bogart plays a hoodlum.


2:00 PM -- Black Legion (1937)
1h 20m | Suspense/Mystery | TV-G
A disgruntled factory worker is lured into joining a secret society out to terrorize foreigners.
Director: Archie L. Mayo
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Dick Foran, Erin O'Brien-Moore

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Writing, Original Story -- Robert Lord

The film was inspired by a real case involving a racist/nativist organization called The Black Legion in Michigan, in which a WPA worker was murdered.


3:30 PM -- Crime School (1938)
1h 26m | Drama | TV-G
A crusading warden sets out to improve conditions at a reform school.
Director: Lewis Seiler
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Gale Page, The Dead End Kids

The second of seven movies featuring The Dead End Kids.


5:00 PM -- Blonde Inspiration (1941)
1h 12m | Comedy | TV-G
A pulp-fiction writer hires a curvaceous blonde to be his muse.
Director: Busby Berkeley
Cast: John Shelton, Virginia Grey, Albert Dekker

In a curious coincidence, this film has two credited Directors of Photography - both of whom would die young. Oliver T. Marsh, the first to be assigned, was a trailblazer among cameramen, considered so talented M-G-M put him under a long-term exclusive contract. Halfway through production of this film, Marsh unexpectedly died of a heart attack at only 49. He was replaced by Sidney Wagner, who would go on to earn multiple Oscar nominations before also dying young, at the age of only 46 in 1947.


6:30 PM -- Blonde Crazy (1931)
1h 15m | Comedy | TV-G
A con man bellhop and his chambermaid girlfriend set out to fleece hotel guests.
Director: Roy Del Ruth
Cast: James Cagney, Joan Blondell, Louis Calhern

Late in the movie when Jerry (Russell Hopton) shows Cagney his money-making scam of selling "swastika charms" there is an abrupt edit, probably a close-up of what the charm looked like. Swastikas had been considered good-luck charms until the advent of the Nazis two years after this movie was released, and the edit almost certainly took place between then and 1941 when other war-related edits took place in Hollywood (e.g., anything relating to Italy in The Marx Brothers A Night at the Opera (1935).



WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: PRIMETIME THEME -- STARRING FREDRIC MARCH



8:00 PM -- Design for Living (1933)
1h 30m | Comedy | TV-G
An independent woman can't chose between the two men she loves.
Director: Ernst Lubitsch
Cast: Fredric March, Gary Cooper, Miriam Hopkins

Considerable censorship difficulties arose because of sexual discussions and innuendos, although the Hays Office eventually approved the film for release. However, the film was banned by the Legion of Decency and was refused a certificate for re-release by censor Joseph Breen in 1934 when the Production Code was more rigorously enforced.


9:45 PM -- So Ends Our Night (1941)
1h 57m | Drama
An anti-Nazi on the run and a young Jewish couple race across Europe trying to escape Hitler's powerful influence.
Director: John Cromwell
Cast: Fredric March, Margaret Sullavan, Frances Dee

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic Picture -- Louis Gruenberg

Based on the novel Flotsam by Erich Maria Remarque.


12:00 AM -- Inherit the Wind (1960)
2h 7m | Drama | TV-PG
In the twenties, a schoolteacher creates a national furor when he breaks the law against teaching evolution.
Director: Stanley Kramer
Cast: Spencer Tracy, Fredric March, Gene Kelly

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Spencer Tracy, Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium -- Nedrick Young and Harold Jacob Smith, Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Ernest Laszlo, and Best Film Editing -- Frederic Knudtson

The buzz about Fredric March's and Spencer Tracy's performances spread around the studio lot and Hollywood to the point that a lot of extras made their way to the set just to see the action. In one instance, the extras were applauding so much at one of March's dramatic speeches that they ruined the take by not waiting until the end.


2:15 AM -- Always on Sunday (1962)
8m | Comedy | TV-PG
A spoof of Never On Sunday, filmed at an LA gay bar, the Brownstone, during Sunday brunch.
Director: Ray Harrison
Cast: unknown


2:45 AM -- What Really Happened to Baby Jane (1963)
31m | Comedy
An early drag parody of WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE?.
Director: Ray Harrison
Cast: Freida, Roz Berri


3:15 AM -- The Roman Springs on Mrs. Stone (1963)
19m | Comedy
A gay take-off on a certain Warner Bros. / Tennessee Williams movie.
Director: Ray Harrison
Cast: Antonio Vierra


3:30 AM -- Spy on the Fly (1967)
43m | Comedy
An early James Bond drag parody.
Director: Ray Harrison
Cast: Warren Fremming


4:00 AM -- All About Alice (1972)
1h 15m | Comedy
A female impersonator leads a cast of non-professional actors in a spoof of the film "All About Eve."
Director: Ray Harrison
Cast: Warren Fremming, Chuck Bratton, Wallace Fredericks


5:15 AM -- Drug Stories (2019)
1h 20m | Short | TV-14
A compilation of classroom scare films about the dangers of using drugs.
Director: No Director Information Available.
Cast: No Cast Information Available.

[CBHagman]

1. Design for Living

Lubitsch is in the house, and the movie's Pre-Code, baby!

Also, I had no idea people all those parodies that TCM is bringing out in the early hours.