TCM Schedule for Thursday, April 25, 2024: Director Gregory La Cava / 30 Years of TCM (comedies)

[Auggie]

Gregory La Cava (March 10, 1892 – March 1, 1952) was an American film director best known for his films of the 1930s, including My Man Godfrey (1936) and Stage Door (1937), which earned him nominations for Academy Award for Best Director. Stage Door airs today at 3:00 PM Eastern.

LaCava began his career in animation at Barré Studio following studies at the Art Institute of Chicago. Barré Studio was one of the first film studios, if not the first, dedicated solely to producing animation. Toward the end of 1915 William Randolph Hearst established an animation studio to promote comic strips printed in his newspapers. He called the new company International Film Service and hired La Cava to run it. The endeavor was short-lived—by 1918 the company was out of business.

La Cava migrated to Hollywood and by 1922 had become a live-action director of two-reel comedies, two of which starred W. C. Fields -- So's Your Old Man (1926) and Running Wild (1927) -- leading to a life-long friendship (fueled with alcohol) with Fields. La Cava eventually found his way to feature films.

TCM begins the day airing La Cava's pre-code films, shown in order of production year -- a good way to see how La Cava's directorial style evolved.

Full bio: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_La_Cava



Gregory La Cava, Katharine Hepburn, and Adolphe Menjou on the set of Stage Door


----------- MORNING & AFTERNOON (EST) -----------

6:15 AM | Laugh and Get Rich (1931)
A man drives his family wild with get-rich-quick schemes.
Dir: Gregory La Cava | Cast: Edna May Oliver, Hugh Herbert, Dorothy Lee

7:30 AM | Smart Woman (1931)
A woman plots to make her cheating husband jealous.
Dir: Gregory La Cava | Cast: Mary Astor, Robert Ames, John Halliday

9:00 AM | Symphony of Six Million (1932)
A doctor fights his way from the slums to Park Avenue.
Dir: Gregory La Cava | Cast: Ricardo Cortez, Irene Dunne, Anna Appel

10:45 AM | The Age of Consent (1932)
College co-eds learn to handle the responsibilities of romance.
Dir: Gregory La Cava | Cast: Dorothy Wilson, Arline Judge, Richard Cromwell

12:00 PM | The Half Naked Truth (1933)
A carnival pitch man turns a sideshow dancer into an overnight sensation.
Dir: Gregory La Cava | Cast: Lupe Velez, Lee Tracy, Eugene Pallette

1:30 PM | Bed of Roses (1933)
A girl from the wrong side of the tracks is torn between true love and a life of sin.
Dir: Gregory La Cava | Cast: Constance Bennett, Joel McCrea, John Halliday

3:00 PM | Stage Door (1937)
Women at a theatrical boarding house try to make their big break happen.
Dir: Gregory La Cava | Cast: Katharine Hepburn, Ginger Rogers, Adolphe Menjou

4:45 PM | Fifth Avenue Girl (1939)
To annoy his family, a millionaire hires an out-of-work girl to pose as a gold digger.
Dir: Gregory La Cava | Cast: Ginger Rogers, Walter Connolly, Verree Teasdale

6:15 PM | Primrose Path (1940)
The youngest child in a family of prostitutes tries to go straight with a working man.
Dir: Gregory La Cava | Cast: Ginger Rogers, Joel Mccrea, Marjorie Rambeau

----------- PRIME TIME & LATE NIGHT -----------

8:00 PM | Woman of the Year (1942)
Rival reporters get married only to find their relationship strained when one resents the other's hectic lifestyle.
Dir: George Stevens | Cast: Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Fay Bainter

10:00 PM | The In-Laws (1979)
The father of the groom drags the bride's father into a series of madcap adventures.
Dir: Arthur Hiller | Cast: Peter Falk, Alan Arkin, Richard Libertini

12:00 AM | Christmas in Connecticut (1945)
A "food writer" who can't cook attempts to cover the deception during a festive Christmas celebration.
Dir: Peter Godfrey | Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, Dennis Morgan, Sydney Greenstreet

2:00 AM | Breakfast for Two (1937)
A Texas heiress competes with a gold digger for the love of a playboy.
Dir: Alfred Santell | Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, Herbert Marshall, Glenda Farrell

3:15 AM | The Bride Walks Out (1936)
A model weds a struggling engineer then has her own struggles with domesticity.
Dir: Leigh Jason Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, Gene Raymond, Robert Young

4:45 AM | Gambling Lady (1934)
Two gamblers fall in love but one is already married to a possible murderer.
Dir: Archie Mayo | Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, Joel Mccrea, Pat O'Brien

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My Man Godfrey, which is not airing tonight, is a La Cava masterpiece. It's a good example of 1930s screw-ball comedy -- the sharp screenplay is filled with crackling dialogue and just enough slapstick, and the featured performances of William Powell, Carole Lombard, Alice Brady, Mischa Auer and Eugene Pallette are outstanding. It's a film worth looking for if you've never seen it.