TCM Schedule for Thursday, August 13 -- Summer Under the Stars--Gloria Grahame

[Staph]

Today's star of the day is the glamorous Gloria Grahame, a skilled actress with a rather unorthodox life (her fourth husband, Anthony Ray, was her stepson, the son of her second husband Nicholas Ray!). Enjoy!


6:00am -- Blonde Fever (1944)
A woman fights to save her husband from a sluttish waitress.
Cast: Philip Dorn, Mary Astor, Felix Bressart, Gloria Grahame
Dir: Richard Whorf
BW-69 mins, TV-G

Gloria Grahame's first film.


7:15am -- It Happened In Brooklyn (1947)
A returning GI and his friends try to make it in the music business.
Cast: Frank Sinatra, Kathryn Grayson, Peter Lawford, Jimmy Durante
Dir: Richard Whorf
BW-103 mins, TV-G

Piano music was played by unseen 17-year-old André Previn, who had joined MGM's music department not long before this movie was made.


9:00am -- Merton Of The Movies (1947)
A star-struck hick goes to Hollywood to become a star.
Cast: Red Skelton, Virginia O'Brien, Gloria Grahame, Leon Ames
Dir: Robert Alton
BW-82 mins, TV-G

This was Virginia O'Brien's final starring role and the last film she made for MGM. After this she had small roles in two later films but otherwise retired from the screen.


10:30am -- Roughshod (1949)
A rancher tries to save his fellow stagecoach passengers from a murderous enemy.
Cast: Robert Sterling, Gloria Grahame, Claude Jarman Jr., John Ireland
Dir: Mark Robson
BW-88 mins, TV-PG

Fifteen year old Claude Jarman Jr.'s best known role was his first, three years earlier, as the young boy Jody, who wants to keep a deer as a pet in The Yearling (1946).


12:00pm -- Crossfire (1947)
A crusading district attorney investigates the murder of a Jewish man.
Cast: Robert Young, Robert Mitchum, Robert Ryan, Gloria Grahame
Dir: Edward Dmytryk
BW-86 mins, TV-PG

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Robert Ryan, Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Gloria Grahame, Best Director -- Edward Dmytryk, Best Writing, Screenplay -- John Paxton, and Best Picture

Gloria Grahame later said that Ginny in this movie was her favorite role.


1:30pm -- Macao (1952)
A man on the run in the Far East is mistaken for an undercover cop.
Cast: Robert Mitchum, Jane Russell, William Bendix, Thomas Gomez
Dir: Josef von Sternberg
BW-81 mins, TV-PG

Gloria Grahame did not want to be in this movie; Howard Hughes admitted that he never saw her previous performance opposite Humphrey Bogart in the film In a Lonely Place (1950), which is today unanimously considered among her finest performances. When Grahame asked to be loaned out to make George Stevens's A Place in the Sun (1951), Hughes turned down her request and forced her to make this movie (she reportedly dryly told her then-husband and uncredited director Nicholas Ray, who she was in the process of divorcing, that she wouldn't ask for alimony if he could get her out of this movie). Grahame later stated that she intentionally over-acted out of hatred for Hughes.


3:00pm -- The Glass Wall (1953)
A World War II refugee fights to stay in the U.S.
Cast: Vittorio Gassman, Gloria Grahame, Ann Robinson, Douglas Spencer
Dir: Maxwell Shane
BW-80 mins

In 1953, Columbia Pictures distributed this film on a double bill with Jack McCall Desperado (1953) starring George Montgomery.


4:30pm -- A Woman's Secret (1949)
A retired singer takes on a protegee only to be betrayed by her.
Cast: Maureen O'Hara, Melvyn Douglas, Gloria Grahame, Bill Williams
Dir: Nicholas Ray
BW-85 mins, TV-G

Nicholas Ray and Gloria Grahame met while shooting this film. They were married in Las Vegas shortly after completing the film. They chose Las Vegas because Ray loved to gamble and to allow Grahame to get a quickie divorce (after the required six weeks of residency in Nevada) from actor Stanley Clements. The day the divorced was granted, the two married.


6:00pm -- The Bad and the Beautiful (1952)
An unscrupulous movie producer uses everyone around him in his climb to the top.
Cast: Elaine Stewart, Sammy White, Leo G. Carroll, Ivan Triesault
Dir: Vincente Minnelli
BW-118 mins, TV-PG

Won Oscars for Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Gloria Grahame, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White -- Cedric Gibbons, Edward C. Carfagno, Edwin B. Willis and F. Keogh Gleason, Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Robert Surtees, Best Costume Design, Black-and-White -- Helen Rose, and Best Writing, Screenplay -- Charles Schnee

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Kirk Douglas

Kirk Douglas stands no more than 5'9" and wears super high lifts that almost distort his walking. If you look closely at him in long shots you can spot the lifts (it's really apparent in Seven Days in May (1964)).


What's On Tonight: SUMMER UNDER THE STARS: GLORIA GRAHAME


8:00pm -- In a Lonely Place (1950)
An aspiring actress begins to suspect that her temperamental boyfriend is a murderer.
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Gloria Grahame, Frank Lovejoy, Carl Benton Reid
Dir: Nicholas Ray
BW-93 mins, TV-PG

Gloria Grahame and husband/director Nicholas Ray quietly separated during filming, keeping it a secret for fear that one of them would be replaced. Ray slept on the studio set, saying that he needed to work late on preparation for the remainder of the film. It worked and nobody suspected that their marriage was on the rocks.


9:45pm -- The Big Heat (1953)
A police detective whose wife was killed by the mob teams with a scarred gangster's moll to bring down a powerful gangster.
Cast: Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame, Jocelyn Brando, Alexander Scourby
Dir: Fritz Lang
BW-90 mins, TV-14

Bannion's (Glenn Ford's character) wife Katie is played by Jocelyn Brando, older sister of Marlon.


11:19pm -- Short Film: Vincent Lopez And His Orchestra With Betty Hutton (1939)
Musical short showcasing the talent of Vincent Lopez, his orchestra and Betty Hutton. Instead of playing their usual theme, the band insists on playing new material.
Cast: Betty Hutton, Vincent Lopez and His Orchestra
Dir: Joseph Henabery
BW-10 mins

Song performed include "Nola", "Crazy Rhythm" with Betty Hutton, "Listen to the Mockingbird", "The Song of the Marines", "Ride, Tenderfoot, Ride", "Swinging with the Goons", and "Old Man Mose" with Betty Hutton.


11:30pm -- The Greatest Show on Earth (1952)
A circus ringmaster and an egotistical trapeze artist vie for the love of a pretty acrobat.
Cast: Betty Hutton, Cornel Wilde, Charlton Heston, Dorothy Lamour
Dir: Cecil B. DeMille
C-152 mins, TV-PG

Won Oscars for Best Writing, Motion Picture Story -- Fredric M. Frank, Theodore St. John and Frank Cavett, and Best Picture

Nominated for Oscars for Best Costume Design, Color -- Edith Head, Dorothy Jeakins and Miles White, Best Director -- Cecil B. DeMille, and Best Film Editing -- Anne Bauchens

Lucille Ball was Cecil B. DeMille's first choice for "Angel", but she became pregnant and was replaced by Gloria Grahame. Paulette Goddard also campaigned strongly for the role but was turned down owing to her reluctance to perform stunt scenes.


2:15am -- The Cobweb (1955)
Inmates and staff at a posh asylum clash over love and lunacy.
Cast: Richard Widmark, Lauren Bacall, Charles Boyer, Gloria Grahame
Dir: Vincente Minnelli
C-124 mins, TV-PG

This film marks the return of Lillian Gish to MGM after a 22 year absence from MGM studios.


4:30am -- Chandler (1971)
A former private eye lands in hot water when he agrees to protect a government witness.
Cast: Warren Oates, Leslie Caron, Alex Dreier, Mitchell Ryan
Dir: Paul Magwood
C-86 mins, TV-14

The one and only directorial effort by Leslie Caron's husband Paul Magwood. Though I've not seen this film, I've read that there are very good reasons why Paul Magwood never directed again.

[Staph]

1. Gloria Grahame Profile

* Films in Bold Type Air on 8/13

Gloria Grahame was a Hollywood original, a native of the Land of Make Believe. She was born in Pasadena, California, on November 28, 1923, as Gloria Hallward, the second and youngest daughter of British immigrants Reginald Michael Bloxam Hallward (an architect, known as Michael) and Jean MacDougall (a Scottish actress who performed under her mother’s maiden name Grahame). The Hallwards had emigrated to Southern California by way of Canada, where their first child, Joy, had been born. Settled ultimately in Pasadena, ten miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles, Michael found work as a designer for a silent film studio and Jean developed a professional relationship with actor-manager Gilmor Brown, founder of the Pasadena Playhouse. While the Hallward household was initially a happy one, full of music and good company, the Depression bankrupted the family and drove Michael and Jean to divorce. While Jean retained custody of the girls, Michael moved east, eventually remarrying and fathering a second family. Those close to the Hallwards remarked in later years that Michael’s absence had an adverse effect on Gloria’s relationships with men. Her marriages were invariably to dominant, controlling partners, and heartache the price she paid for the illusion of stability and permanence.

A chubby, moon-faced Gloria made her stage debut as a fairy in Jean’s Playhouse production of The Blue Bird. Forced to sell the family home on Madeline Drive, Jean rented an apartment in Hollywood and enrolled Gloria in Hollywood High School. A sixteen year-old Gloria played the doomed courtesan Violetta in a 1940 radio dramatization of La Traviata, an apt indicator of her later career. For a year at the Grand Playhouse she acted in the hillbilly farce Maid in the Ozarks, alongside a young Robert Mitchum. Making a go of New York, she understudied Miriam Hopkins in the 1942 Broadway production of The Skin of Our Teeth and was discovered by MGM president Louis B. Mayer, who offered her a studio contract. She made her film debut as Gloria Grahame in Blonde Fever (1944) but her days on the Metro lot were consumed by nothing so grand as posing for cheesecake photos as an MGM starlet. To alleviate her boredom, she signed on for war bond drives. On a USO tour of Texas, she met her first husband, Stanley Clements.

Gloria Grahame’s three year marriage to Clements, a jobbing actor who resented her blossoming success, was plagued by violent arguments that left the actress bruised and battered. On loan-out to RKO, Gloria made a big impression as a small town floozy in Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life (1946). Although MGM had doubled her weekly salary, she left the studio after playing a murder victim in Song of the Thin Man (1947), the last of the popular “Nick and Nora” whodunits starring William Powell and Myrna Loy. That same year she worked for two days on RKO’s Crossfire (alongside her old Maid in the Ozarks trouper Robert Mitchum) and walked away with an Academy Award® nomination for her sadly sensual turn as a ginmill doxy. By now, Gloria Grahame had been branded as an archetypal fallen woman, alluring but tragic. Her marriage to Clements disintegrated while shooting Mark Robson’s Roughshod (1949). A divorce was granted in June of 1948, by which time Gloria had taken up with Nicholas Ray, her director on A Woman’s Secret (1949). For this flashback-driven attempted murder mystery, Gloria was third-billed beneath Maureen O’Hara and Melvyn Douglas but she would soon find herself paired on the screen with one of Hollywood’s biggest stars.

Humphrey Bogart had wanted wife Lauren Bacall to appear alongside him in In a Lonely Place (1950), an adaptation of the pulp novel by Dorothy B. Hughes made for his Santana Pictures Corporation. When Warner Brothers (who held Bacall’s contract) refused the loan-out, Grahame got the part of a failed actress who falls for a Hollywood screenwriter when he is implicated in a murder case. Given the director’s chair was Nicholas Ray, who helmed Santana’s maiden voyage, Knock on Any Door (1949), the previous year. The film is considered to be among Gloria Grahame’s finest but reflected all too transparently her troubled marriage to Ray, whose gambling, bisexual infidelities and sundry cruelties drove her into the arms of his teenage son from a prior marriage. The four-year union produced one child, conceived out of wedlock during production of A Woman’s Secret, with the birth explained as premature to deflect scandal. Gloria would later marry Ray’s adult son, Tony, following a short-lived coupling with writer Cy Howard. Despite her personal woes, Gloria enjoyed high profile roles in Sudden Fear (1952) with Joan Crawford and Jack Palance, in Vincente Minnelli’s The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) and in Fritz Lang’s The Big Heat (1953) and Human Desire (1954) at Columbia.

Gloria Grahame’s most dynamic period was tempered by bitter career disappointments. She tested for Columbia’s Born Yesterday (1950) but the role of Billie Dawn was returned to Judy Holliday, who had created it on Broadway. Gloria was desperate to play the doomed wife of Montgomery Clift in A Place in the Sun (1951) but RKO president Howard Hughes plugged her instead into Macao (1952), which was begun by Josef von Sternberg but finished by Gloria’s now-estranged husband Nicholas Ray. (Fifth-billed beneath Robert Mitchum, Jane Russell, William Bendix and Thomas Gomez, Gloria reportedly told Ray that she would forfeit alimony if he could just get her off the picture.) After only a few years, Gloria’s residency at RKO was beginning to mirror her unhappy time with MGM. Risking suspension for refusing parts, she also began to experiment with altering her looks. To give her mouth a “bee stung” appearance, she wadded tissue paper beneath her upper lip, which often fell out during love scenes. Insisting on doing her own makeup, she was frequently late to the set and held up shooting. These eccentricities, combined with a disinclination to stick to blocking, got Gloria labeled “difficult” and “unprofessional” within the industry.

Despite winning the Oscar® for Best Supporting Actress in The Bad and the Beautiful and appearing in the 1953 Best Picture winner The Greatest Show on Earth, Gloria Grahame’s Hollywood stock took a downturn. After stealing the show as “a girl who can’t say no” in Fred Zinnemann’s 1955 film adaptation of the Broadway smash Oklahoma! (in which she sang in her own imperfect voice after years of being dubbed by vocal artists), good scripts were few and far between. Between her divorce from Cy Howard in 1957 and her 1960 marriage to Tony Ray (a union that lasted fourteen years and produced two children), she was reteamed with her old Crossfire costar Robert Ryan for the incendiary Odds Against Tomorrow (1959). Nevertheless, she vanished from the big screen for seven years. As she aged, she traded on her reputation as a femme fatale for low budget fare such as Blood and Lace (1971) and Mama’s Dirty Girls (1974). She had one scene apiece in Chandler (1971) with Warren Oates and the made-for-TV The Girl on the Late, Late Show (1974), which repurposed clips from her old films in the service of a modern day Hollywood mystery.

Diagnosed with cancer in 1974 (in the midst of her divorce from Tony Ray and a battle for the custody of their children), Gloria Grahame embraced holistic medicines and Christian Science, going so far as to foreswear painkillers following a ovariectomy, which left her in agony. She returned to live theatre during this time, touring as Lady Macbeth and playing Sadie Thompson in a London production of Somerset Maugham’s Rain. She had better roles in the American independent features Head Over Heels (1979) and Melvin and Howard (1980) and was preparing for a London revival of Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie when her cancer progressed to the terminal stage. She was cared for in England by a friend and former lover (Peter Turner chronicled these last days in Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool), until her children could bring her back to the United States. Gloria Grahame died in New York City on October 5, 1981, at the age of 57.

“The movie gods played a mean trick on Grahame,” wrote LA Times critic Chuck Wilson at the time of a two-week Gloria Grahame retrospective at UCLA in April of 2002. “The instinct-driven unpredictability that made her such a scene-stealer onscreen is the very quality that led her to upend her life over and over again.” In support of the same festival, Wilson’s colleague Susan King found that the late actress concealed “vulnerability beneath her cynicism – a pathos that made her sympathetic to audiences.” Perhaps the best eulogy for Gloria Grahame came during her lifetime, from her Greatest Show on Earth director Cecil B. DeMille: “She has the manner of a school girl and the eyes of a sorceress.”

by Richard Harland Smith

Sources:
Suicide Blonde: The Life of Gloria Grahame by Vincent Curcio
Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool by Peter Turner
“Gloria Grahame: The Tart with a Heart,” by Dean Goodman, Films of the Golden Age 1996
Bogart by A.M. Sperber and Eric Lax
Robert Mitchum: “Baby, I Don’t Care by Lee Server
Joan Crawford: The Essential Biography by Lawrence J. Quirk and William Schoell
Joan Crawford: Hollywood Martyr by David Bret
’Tis Herself: An Autobiography by Maureen O’Hara and John Nicoletti
Fred Zinnemann: Interviews
Internet Movie Database
Internet Broadway Database