TCM Schedule for Thursday, December 3, 2015 -- What's On Tonight: George Sanders

[Staph]

In the morning, TCM is finishing up Wednesday with Sinatra, and in the afternoon, it's "lucky" films. Then in prime time, it's the elegant George Sanders. Enjoy!


6:15 AM -- Double Dynamite (1951)
A bank teller reaps the rewards of saving a gangster's life, but can't reveal where he got the money.
Dir: Irving Cummings
Cast: Jane Russell, Groucho Marx, Frank Sinatra
BW-81 mins, CC,

Frank Sinatra was originally supposed to receive top billing in the film, but was reduced to third at the insistence of producer Howard Hughes.


7:45 AM -- A Hole in the Head (1959)
A single father's bohemian lifestyle could cost him custody of his son.
Dir: Arthur S. Black Jr.
Cast: Frank Sinatra, Edward G. Robinson, Eleanor Parker
C-120 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Won an Oscar for Best Music, Original Song -- Jimmy Van Heusen (music) and Sammy Cahn (lyrics) for the song "High Hopes"

The original Broadway production of "A Hole in the Head" by Arnold Schulman opened at the Plymouth Theater on February 28, 1957, ran for 156 performances and closed July 13, 1957. The cast included Paul Douglas, David Burns, Lee Grant, Kay Medford and Joyce Van Patten.


10:00 AM -- Assault on a Queen (1966)
Mercenaries salvage a sunken submarine to rob the Queen Mary at sea.
Dir: Jack Donohue
Cast: Frank Sinatra, Virna Lisi, Tony Franciosa
C-106 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

In its entry for this 1966 movie, the 2003 edition of Leonard Maltin's 'Movie and Video Guide' repeats a popular American terminological inexactitude by referring to the ocean liner as "HMS Queen Mary", thus implying that it was a warship at the time of the events depicted in the movie. The truth is that its designation has always been "RMS", traditionally meaning "Royal Mail Steamer" but nowadays sometimes taken to mean "Royal Mail Ship".


12:00 PM -- Dirty Dingus Magee (1970)
A two-bit outlaw's attempts to strike it rich put him in conflict with a bungling sheriff.
Dir: Burt Kennedy
Cast: Frank Sinatra, George Kennedy, Anne Jackson
C-91 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Dingus Billy Magee was written as a 19-year-old, and had to be re-written to accommodate Frank Sinatra's casting.


1:45 PM -- Thank Your Lucky Stars (1943)
An Eddie Cantor look-alike organizes an all-star show to help the war effort.
Dir: David Butler
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Eddie Cantor, Bette Davis
BW-127 mins, CC,

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Music, Original Song -- Arthur Schwartz (music) and Frank Loesser (lyrics) for the song "They're Either Too Young or Too Old"

In the scene where Conrad Wiedell takes Bette Davis and does a "Jitterbug" dance, she felt he was holding back in rehearsals, and told him to treat her like an experienced dance partner. When the cameras rolled, Wiedell - a national jitterbug champion hired specifically for this dance - pulled out all the stops and swung her around and she fell on her knee. As she finishes her song, you see her limping out of the nightclub set and leaning against a post, rubbing her knee. This was a real injury, but she finished the song despite the pain. When director David Butler asked Davis to "try it once more", she replied, "No! No! I said one take, and that was it." She then turned to the press who had shown up to watch her number, telling them "Show's over, gentlemen. Now get the hell out."


4:00 PM -- Mr. Lucky (1943)
A gambling-ship owner is out to fleece a beautiful society woman, but falls in love.
Dir: H. C. Potter
Cast: Cary Grant, Laraine Day, Charles Bickford
BW-100 mins, CC,

The rhyming slang used by Cary Grant's character is a form of slang in which a word is replaced by a rhyming word, typically the second word of a two-word phrase (so stairs becomes "apples and pears&quot . The second word is then often dropped entirely ("I'm going up the apples&quot , meaning that the association of the original word to the rhyming phrase is not obvious to the uninitiated. For example: "Sherman" for an American (Sherman tank = Yank). The exact origin of rhyming slang appears to be unclear, partly because it exists to some extent in many languages. In English, rhyming slang is strongly associated with Cockney speech from the East End of London.


6:00 PM -- Lucky Me (1954)
When the members of a musical troupe take cleaning jobs, their lead singer falls for a famous songwriter.
Dir: Jack Donohue
Cast: Doris Day, Robert Cummings, Phil Silvers
C-101 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Angie Dickinson's film debut.



TCM PRIMETIME - WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: GEORGE SANDERS



8:00 PM -- Lured (1947)
A woman helps the police catch the serial killer who murdered her best friend.
Dir: Douglas Sirk
Cast: George Sanders, Lucille Ball, Charles Coburn
BW-103 mins,

The title was changed to "Personal Column" midway through the original U.S. theatrical release because staff at the Production Code Administration thought the word "lured" sounded too much like "lurid". Director Douglas Sirk felt the title change confused potential audiences and led to the film's box-office failure.


10:00 PM -- The Gay Falcon (1942)
A society sleuth tries to break up an insurance scam.
Dir: Irving Reis
Cast: George Sanders, Wendy Barrie, Allen Jenkins
BW-67 mins, CC,

The first of sixteen movies for the suave detective nicknamed "The Falcon" starring George Sanders (and later Tom Conway).


11:15 PM -- The Moon and Sixpence (1942)
Loosely inspired by the life of Gauguin man abandons his middle-classed life to start painting.
Dir: Albert Lewin
Cast: George Sanders, Herbert Marshall, Doris Dudley
C-89 mins, CC,

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture -- Dimitri Tiomkin

Herbert Marshall plays the writer Geoffrey Wolfe, a fictional alter ego of author W. Somerset Maugham. Marshall played Somerset Maugham in The Razor's Edge (1946), and appeared in several adaptations of Maugham's works, including The Painted Veil (1934) and both the 1929 and 1940 versions of The Letter (1940).


1:00 AM -- The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945)
A man remains young and handsome while his portrait shows the ravages of age and sin.
Dir: Albert Lewin
Cast: George Sanders, Hurd Hatfield, Donna Reed
BW-110 mins, CC,

Won an Oscar for Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Harry Stradling Sr.

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Angela Lansbury, and Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Black-and-White -- Cedric Gibbons, Hans Peters, Edwin B. Willis, John Bonar and Hugh Hunt

In Oscar Wilde's original novel Sybil (played in the film by Angela Lansbury) was a sophisticated Shakespearean actress, not a vaudeville waif. It is her willingness to give up her career, not her spending the night with Dorian, that causes him to break off with her.


3:00 AM -- Man Hunt (1941)
An Englishman goes behind enemy lines to assassinate Hitler.
Dir: Fritz Lang
Cast: Walter Pidgeon, Joan Bennett, George Sanders
BW-102 mins, CC,

This was one of several films mentioned in the September 1941 Senate subcommittee hearings on Propaganda in Motion Pictures, where isolationist senators Nye, Clark and Wheeler attacked Hollywood for "war-mongering." Senator Nye, who testified before the committee, had not seen most of the films mentioned. The subcommittee did not reconvene after September due to the attack on Pearl Harbor in December. The featurette included on the 2009 DVD release contends that the making of war-mongering films would be a violation of the Neutrality Act, which focused on restricting arms sales to belligerent nations, regardless of their status of aggressor or defender.


4:45 AM -- The Saint Strikes Back (1939)
The Saint helps a young beauty take vengeance on the mobsters who ruined her father.
Dir: John Farrow
Cast: George Sanders, Wendy Barrie, Jerome Cowan
BW-64 mins, CC,

The second of nine classic RKO movies featuring Simon Templar, The Saint - and the first of five features starring George Sanders in the title role.