TCM Schedule for Friday, January 23 -- TCM Memorial Tribute to Ricardo Montalban

[Staph]

Today was originally intended as a celebration of the films of the 2009 SAG Lifetime Achievement Honoree, James Earl Jones. But the daytime schedule has been changed to show the films of the late Ricardo Montalban. Unfortunately (from my point of view), they won't be showing my favorite RM role -- Khhhhaaaaaaannnnnnnn! Enjoy!

(A small personal note -- this post is my one thousandth. Thanks to my fellow movie fans and the rest of DU for keeping me sane for the last four years.)


5:45am -- Singin' In The Rain (1952)
A silent-screen swashbuckler finds love while trying to adjust to the coming of sound.
Cast: Gene Kelly, Donald O'Connor, Debbie Reynolds, Jean Hagen
Dir: Gene Kelly
C-103 mins, TV-G

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Jean Hagen, and Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture -- Lennie Hayton

In the "Would You" number, Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds) is dubbing the voice of Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen) because Lina's voice is shrill and screechy. However, it's not Reynolds who is really speaking, it's Jean Hagen herself, who actually had a beautiful deep, rich voice. So you have Jean Hagen dubbing Debbie Reynolds dubbing Jean Hagen. And when Debbie is supposedly dubbing Jean's singing of "Would You", the voice you hear singing actually belongs to Betty Noyes, who had a much richer singing voice than Debbie.


7:30am -- Fiesta (1947)
A Mexican beauty replaces her toreador brother in the bull ring so he can pursue his musical career.
Cast: Esther Williams, Akim Tamiroff, Ricardo Montalban, John Carroll
Dir: Richard Thorpe
C-102 mins, TV-PG

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture -- Johnny Green

Esther Williams, in her autobiography "Million Dollar Mermaid" states that during the shooting of "Fiesta", her husband at the time -- Ben Gage -- got drunk and had a run-in with the Mexican police, causing production to be halted as the authorities had him thrown out of the country.


9:14am -- Short Film: One Reel Wonders: Modern Mexico City (1942)
This "Traveltalk" explores about the history, land, people, and culture of Mexico City.
Cast: James A. FitzPatrick
C-9 mins

Ricardo Montalban was born in Mexico City on November 25, 1920, and lived there until moving to Los Angeles in his teens.


9:30am -- Neptune's Daughter (1949)
Mistaken identity complicates a polo player's romance with a bathing suit designer.
Cast: Esther Williams, Red Skelton, Ricardo Montalban, Betty Garrett
Dir: Edward Buzzell
C-93 mins, TV-G

Won an Oscar for Best Music, Original Song -- Frank Loesser for the song "Baby, It's Cold Outside"

Esther Williams was pregnant during the filming of this movie.


11:15am -- Latin Lovers (1953)
An heiress searches for true love while vacationing in Brazil.
Cast: Lana Turner, Ricardo Montalban, John Lund, Louis Calhern
Dir: Mervyn LeRoy
C-104 mins, TV-PG

Fernando Lamas was originally cast in the role that Ricardo Montalban played. Lamas and Lana Turner were lovers and when they broke up, she insisted he be replaced.


1:00pm -- Border Incident (1949)
Police try to crack down on the illegal immigration racket.
Cast: Ricardo Montalban, George Murphy, Howard Da Silva, James Mitchell
Dir: Anthony Mann
BW-96 mins, TV-PG

Frustrated at Hollywood's portrayal of Mexicans, Montalban helped to found, and gave great support, attention and distinction to, the image-building Nosotros organization, a Los Angeles theatre-based company designed for Latinos working in the industry. Nosotros eventually bought the historic Doolittle Theater in Hollywood and renamed the theatre in his honor in 2004. It became the first major theater facility (1200 seats) in the U.S to carry the name of a Latino performing artist.


2:45pm -- Battleground (1949)
American soldiers in France fight to survive a Nazi siege just before the Battle of the Bulge.
Cast: Van Johnson, John Hodiak, Ricardo Montalban, George Murphy
Dir: William Wellman
BW-119 mins, TV-PG

Won Oscars for Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Paul Vogel, and Best Writing, Story and Screenplay -- Robert Pirosh

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- James Whitmore, Best Director -- William A. Wellman, Best Film Editing -- John D. Dunning, and Best Picture

Screenwriter Robert Pirosh based this story on his experiences as an infantryman during the Battle of the Bulge. Pirosh did not serve with the 101st Airborne and wanted to create a script that was faithful to their experiences. He used his first hand knowledge of the battle to write the script. This was done with the blessing of General McAuliffe, who was commanding the 101st during Bastogne. Consequently many of the incidents in the film - such as Pvt. Kippton's habit of always losing his false teeth, or the Mexican soldier from Los Angeles who had never seen snow until he got to Belgium - that have always been derided as "typical Hollywood phony baloney" actually happened.


4:45pm -- Across The Wide Missouri (1951)
An explorer leads the way west for 19th-century settlers along the American frontier.
Cast: Clark Gable, Ricardo Montalban, John Hodiak, Adolphe Menjou
Dir: William Wellman
C-78 mins, TV-G

During the filming, Ricardo Montalban received a spinal injury which required a 9-1/2 hour operation and which has left him in constant pain for the rest of his life.


What's On Tonight: TCM MEMORIAL TRIBUTE: RICARDO MONTALBAN


6:15pm -- The Singing Nun (1966)
Fanciful biography of the Belgian nun who briefly made the hit parade.
Cast: Debbie Reynolds, Ricardo Montalban, Greer Garson, Agnes Moorehead
Dir: Henry Koster
C-97 mins, TV-PG

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Music, Scoring of Music, Adaptation or Treatment -- Harry Sukman

Loosely based on the true story of Soeur Sourire, who had a #1 pop hit in America with "Dominique". Unfortunately, the lovable nun was a one-hit wonder whose life did not continue happily after her brief blush of chart success. After leaving the church for a full-time music career, she ran into heavy financial problems and eventually took her own life.


7:53pm -- Short Film: From The Vaults: The Singing Nun (1966)
C-3 mins

Although she was deeply religious, she was also increasingly critical of some of the Roman Catholic Church's doctrine and eventually became an advocate of birth control. In 1967, she recorded a song entitled "Glory Be to God for the Golden Pill" — a paean to contraception — under the name Luc Dominique. It met with commercial failure.


8:00pm -- Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb (1963)
A mad United States General orders an air strike against Russia.
Cast: Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, Keenan Wynn
Dir: Stanley Kubrick
BW-95 mins, TV-PG

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Peter Sellers, Best Director -- Stanley Kubrick, Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium -- Stanley Kubrick, Peter George and Terry Southern, and Best Picture

Film debut for James Earl Jones

Peter Sellers was originally cast in four roles, but experienced problems when trying to develop a Texas accent for Maj. T.J. "King" Kong. After Sellers broke his ankle, Stanley Kubrick was forced to find another actor. Convinced that nobody could have acted the part as well as Sellers, Kubrick decided to cast someone who naturally fit the role. The producers first approached John Wayne, who did not even bother to respond, and "Bonanza" (1959) star Dan Blocker, who declined the role because of the script's progressive political content. Remembering his work on the western One-Eyed Jacks (1961), Kubrick cast Slim Pickens as Kong, the gung-ho hick pilot determined to drop his bombs at any cost. Pickens was never shown the script nor told it was a black comedy; ordered by Kubrick to play it straight, he played the role as if it were a serious drama - with amusing results.


9:39pm -- Short Film: One Reel Wonders: Alert Today - Alive Tomorrow (1956)
This short shows how the city of Reading, Pennsylvania, would implement civil defense procedures to help residents survive a nuclear attack.
Narrator: André Baruch
Dir: Larry O'Reilly
BW-15 mins

Cast includes Val Peterson, then governor of Nebraska and formerly head of the federal Civil Defense Administration during the Eisenhower administration.


10:00pm -- The Great White Hope (1970)
A black boxer and his white mistress face racial prejudice when he wins the championship.
Cast: James Earl Jones, Jane Alexander, Lou Gilbert, Joel Fluellen
Dir: Martin Ritt
C-103 mins

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- James Earl Jones, and Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Jane Alexander

Inspired by the story of the black boxer Jack Johnson, who was heavyweight champion from 1908 to 1915.


12:00am -- Cry, The Beloved Country (1995)
Cast: Richard Harris, James Earl Jones, Charles Dutton, Vusi Kunene
Dir: Darrell Roodt

Based on the novel by Alan Paton. Previously filmed in 1951.


2:00am -- The Swinger (1966)
A woman who writes steamy novels has to live out her heroine's adventures to sell books.
Cast: Ann-Margret, Tony Franciosa, Robert Coote, Yvonne Romain
Dir: George Sidney
C-81 mins, TV-14

Ann-Margret rides a 500cc Triumph T100C Tiger motorcycle in the film. Later, she herself featured in Triumph Motorcycles's official advertisements in the USA.


3:22am -- Short Film: One Reel Wonders: Romantic Nevada (1943)
A James FitzPatrick Traveltalk on the natural wonders and big cities of Nevada.
Narrator: James FitzPatrick
C-9 mins

Strange view of romance -- the second half of this short focuses on Reno, Nevada ("The Biggest Little City In the World"), made famous as the city where people get divorced.


3:30am -- Viva Las Vegas (1964)
A race-car driver falls for a pretty swimming instructor who wants him to slow down his career.
Cast: Elvis Presley, Ann-Margret, Cesare Danova, William Demarest
Dir: George Sidney
C-85 mins, TV-14

When the wedding scene was filmed, many tabloid magazines at time published photos of the "wedding" and suggested that Elvis Presley and Ann-Margret really had gotten married.


5:00am -- Hollywood Without Make-Up (1966)
In this special, Ken Murray hosts his own behind-the-scenes home movies of some of Hollywood's greatest stars.
Cast: Ken Murray
BW-50 mins, TV-G

More than one hundred stars are featured, from Greta Garbo and Clark Gable to Tom Mix and Tony the Wonder Horse.

[Staph]

1. Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb (1963)

SYNOPSIS

Convinced the Russians have invented water fluoridation as a means of sapping the "precious bodily fluids" of America's men, the mad General Jack D. Ripper launches a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union from his command post at Burpelson Air Force Base. As worldwide destruction looms, Stanley Kubrick's landmark black comedy cuts back and forth between the base, where British liaison officer Captain Mandrake tries in vain to learn Ripper's secret attack code and turn the bombers back; the War Room in Washington, D.C., where President Muffley works to head off disaster by convincing the Soviet premier it was all a mistake, and the cockpit of a B-52 commanded by Major "King" Kong, a gung-ho patriot determined to reach his target at all costs.

Director: Stanley Kubrick
Producer: Victor Lyndon, Stanley Kubrick
Screenplay: Stanley Kubrick, Terry Southern, Peter George (based on his novel, Red Alert)
Cinematography: Gilbert Taylor
Editor: Anthony Harvey
Production Design: Ken Adam
Art Direction: Peter Murton
Music: Laurie Johnson
Cast: Peter Sellers (Capt. Lionel Mandrake/President Merkin Muffley/Dr. Strangelove), Sterling Hayden (Gen. Jack D. Ripper), Keenan Wynn (Col. "Bat" Guano), Slim Pickens (Major T. J. "King" Kong), James Earl Jones (Lt. Lothar Zogg).
BW-149m. Letterboxed. Close captioning.

Why Dr. Strangelove is Essential

On the surface, the plot of Dr. Strangelove sounds like a suspense film designed to hold viewers on the edge of their seats. But even a quick glance at the absurd character names alerts us to the fact that Kubrick and company are up to something else. That Dr. Strangelove manages to be frightening while also delivering one of the most savagely funny satires ever put on film is what makes this Cold War-era classic still so powerful and enjoyable today. Stanley Kubrick creates a pile-up of insane incongruities that propel the story toward its horrifying conclusion. Ripper is motivated not only by anti-Communist zealotry but by a sexual dysfunction for which he needs a scapegoat. Armed Services Commander General Buck Turgidson isn't merely an enthusiastic hawk but a rampant hedonist who equates war with sexual conquest. Colonel Bat Guano is a first-rate soldier on a mission to storm Ripper's office and head off disaster. Not only does he hold a strong contempt for commie "preverts," but also an overwhelming concern for corporate property, even as the world races toward destruction. And the German scientist and advisor to the president, Dr. Strangelove, is a wheelchair-bound fanatic with a mechanical hand that keeps threatening to break into a Nazi salute. Strangelove's mad plan to save humanity is to install society's male elite and a proportionately larger contingent of beautiful women in underground hideouts until the radioactivity is low level......almost 80 years later!

Much has been made of the sexual imagery and jokes in the film. The opening credits roll to the romantic strains of "Try a Little Tenderness" as a B-52 bomber emerges from the clouds to refuel with an airborne tanker in a mechanical evocation of human coupling. And one of the last human images places the H-bomb like a swollen phallus between Kong's legs. From beginning to end, Kubrick equates the warring impulse to male sexual drive, much of it bound up in the sexual obsessions of the two most militant characters, Ripper (who denies his "essence" to women and hoards his "precious bodily fluids") and Turgidson (first seen in a sexual romp with his secretary, who is also the Playboy centerfold ogled by the bomber crew). Even the names of the characters resonate with sexual in-jokes: Mandrake (a medicinal root believed to increase potency), Turgidson (from "turgid," meaning swollen), Merkin Muffley (combining two terms referring to the female pubic area) and, perhaps stretching it a bit, Strangelove. Anyone familiar with the work of the writer Terry Southern - The Loved One (1965), Barbarella (1968), and the novels Candy (1968) and The Magic Christian (1969), will recognize his hand in these elements of the screenplay.

But it would be a mistake to view Dr. Strangelove as just one long sex joke. What really captured audiences of its day was its depiction, however comic it may have been, of what many considered an entirely plausible scenario. When the film was released early in 1964, the Cold War was very much "in progress" and the Soviet Union was still regarded as a major threat to world peace and national security. The hawk like attitude of military officers like Turgidson and Ripper wasn't that far removed from the rhetoric surrounding our excursions into Laos and, soon after, Vietnam and the Dominican Republican. Most of all, it had only been 15 months since the Cuban Missile Crisis brought the world closer to nuclear war than it had been before or since. The same year Kubrick's film came out, another picture on the same theme, Fail Safe, was released. That movie took a more melodramatic approach, depicting honorable people battling a system out of their control. Kubrick's absurdist humor, on the other hand, put human folly firmly at the root of global disaster and drove the point home by letting audiences in on the joke; some situations are so horrendous you simply have to laugh in disbelief.

To add to the irony and incongruity fueling the film's humor, Kubrick for the first time effectively juxtaposes music and image in ways he would explore even more deeply in later work. Of course, there's that sensual bomber scene at the beginning played out against a tender love song. Then, in the film's final moments, the director places stock footage of nuclear explosions over Vera Lynn's popular World War II ballad "We'll Meet Again" - a sweet and comforting voice singing

"Will you please say hello to the folks that I know
Tell them I won't be long
They'll be happy to know that as you saw me go
I was singing this song"

while the world is blown to bits. Kubrick carried this music-versus-image technique into his later films, notably in the lilting strains of "The Blue Danube" underscoring the coldly mechanical but somehow lyrical motions of spacecraft in orbit in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). And for any viewer of A Clockwork Orange (1971), neither "Singing in the Rain" nor Beethoven's Ninth Symphony will ever sound the same again.

By Rob Nixon