TCM Schedule for Friday, March 19 -- Life in Boarding School

[Staph]

Daytime is for gamblers, in Vegas and Monte Carlo and Macao, and in a small, nameless Western town. And in the evening we're off to boarding school. If you've never seen A Big Hand For A Little Lady (1966) or Goodbye Mr. Chips (1939), set your DVR. Enjoy!


5:30am -- MGM Parade Show #17 (1955)
Cyd Charisse and Ann Miller perform in a clip from "The Kissing Bandit"; George Murphy introduces a clip from "Diane." Hosted by George Murphy.
BW-26 mins, TV-G

George Murphy was awarded an honorary Oscar in 1951 for "his services in interpreting the film industry to the country at large".


6:00am -- Private Screenings: Mitchum/Russell (1996)
Co-stars and lifelong friends Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell recall their careers with host Robert Osborne.
Cast: Robert Osborne, Robert Mitchum, Jane Russell
BW-31 mins, TV-G

Mitchum and Russell made two films together, His Kind Of Women (1951) and Macao (1952).


6:45am -- The Las Vegas Story (1952)
When newlyweds visit Las Vegas, the wife's shady past comes to the surface.
Cast: Jane Russell, Victor Mature, Vincent Price, Hoagy Carmichael
Dir: Robert Stevenson
BW-88 mins, TV-PG

The night before the Las Vegas premier of "The Las Vegas Story," Jane and her husband, Robert Waterfield, got into a fight in which he slugged her in the face several times. The next morning, Jane's face was swollen and black and blue. RKO executives didn't want to cancel the premier and Jane appeared at the festivities with a severely swollen and bruised face. A story was given to the press that the intense windstorm the night before slammed an open car door into her face. Despite the believable story, a Newsweek magazine blurb hinted at the actual truth.


8:15am -- Meet Me In Las Vegas (1956)
A ballerina becomes a gambler's lucky charm.
Cast: Dan Dailey, Cyd Charisse, Agnes Moorehead, Lili Daryas
Dir: Roy Rowland
C-112 mins, TV-G

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

"You Got Looks" (music by Nicholas Brodszky, lyrics by Sammy Cahn), sung by Lena Horne, was cut from the film. Horne made it a staple of her nightclub act for the rest of the decade.


10:15am -- Any Number Can Play (1949)
The owner of a gambling casino tries to win back his estranged wife and child.
Cast: Clark Gable, Alexis Smith, Wendell Corey, Audrey Totter
Dir: Mervyn LeRoy
BW-103 mins, TV-PG

There were two different (usually uncredited) character actors named William O'Brien - William H. O'Brien and William J. O'Brien - and they both appear in this film (uncredited) as gamblers.


12:15pm -- All Through The Night (1942)
A criminal gang turns patriotic to track down a Nazi spy ring.
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Conrad Veidt, Kaaren Verne, Jane Darwell
Dir: Vincent Sherman
BW-107 mins, TV-PG

George Raft and Olivia de Havilland were originally assigned to the film in 1941, but Raft turned the role down. As with High Sierra (1941) and The Maltese Falcon (1941), Humphrey Bogart benefited from Raft's refusals.


2:15pm -- The Great Sinner (1949)
A young man succumbs to gambling fever.
Cast: Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Melvyn Douglas, Walter Huston
Dir: Robert Siodmak
BW-110 mins, TV-PG

Walter Huston's next to last film.


4:15pm -- 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.


5:45pm -- A Big Hand for the Little Lady (1966)
A pioneer woman replaces her ailing husband in a poker game after he loses most of their money.
Cast: Henry Fonda, Joanne Woodward, Jason Robards Jr., Paul Ford
Dir: Fielder Cook
C-95 mins, TV-G

This film provides the final screen appearance of comedian Chester Conklin, who had appeared in about 300 movies from 1913.


7:30pm -- Now Playing March (2010)
TV-PG


What's On Tonight: TCM PRIME TIME FEATURE: LIFE IN BOARDING SCHOOL


8:00pm -- The Browning Version (1950)
On the eve of retirement, a bitter schoolteacher searches for some hope in his life.
Cast: Michael Redgrave, Jean Kent, Nigel Patrick, Brian Smith
Dir: Anthony Asquith
BW-90 mins, TV-PG

Director Anthony Asquith's father was Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith, who - as Home Secretary - signed the warrant to arrest Oscar Wilde. It was Wilde's trial and subsequent imprisonment that sent a chill over England's gay and creative community for the next sixty years. When playwright/screenwriter Terrence Rattigan met Asquith for the first time, he recalled being profoundly aware of who the director's father was. Rattigan had the misfortune to come of age as a gay man in the 1930s, when homosexual relationships between consenting males in England was still a prosecutable offense with jail sentences of up to two years at hard labor. Even with a great deal of self-censorship, critics and audiences found the hints of homosexuality in Rattigan's first play ("First Episode") shocking. Any homo-erotic reference in a play's subject material was enough to halt its production by the Lord Chamberlain of England. The best Rattigan could do (until well into the 1960s) was to veil his own sensibilities and create dramas critiquing the heterosexual norms of his day. In Crocker-Harris's after-dinner monologue to Hunter, the reference to "two kinds of love" is as close as the playwright ever comes to naming the love that dare not speak it's name, even in 1951 England.


10:00pm -- Goodbye Mr. Chips (1939)
A cold-hearted teacher becomes the school favorite when he's thawed by a beautiful young woman.
Cast: Robert Donat, Greer Garson, Terry Kilburn, John Mills
Dir: Sam Wood
BW-114 mins, TV-PG

Won an Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Robert Donat

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Greer Garson, Best Director -- Sam Wood, Best Film Editing -- Charles Frend, Best Sound, Recording -- A.W. Watkins (Denham SSD), Best Writing, Screenplay -- Eric Maschwitz, R.C. Sherriff and Claudine West, and Best Picture

34-year-old Robert Donat ages 63 years (1870-1933) over the course of the film. He remarked: "As soon as I put the mustache on, I felt the part, even if I did look like a great Airedale come out of a puddle."


12:00am -- A Yank At Eton (1942)
An American playboy is sent to a British boarding school to learn discipline.
Cast: Mickey Rooney, Edmund Gwenn, Ian Hunter, Freddie Bartholomew
Dir: Norman Taurog
BW-88 mins, TV-G

This is a remake of A Yank At Oxford (1938), starring Robert Taylor.


2:00am -- Kitten With a Whip (1964)
A delinquent escapes from reform school and holds a politician hostage.
Cast: Ann-Margret, John Forsythe, Peter Brown, Patricia Barry
Dir: Douglas Heyes
BW-83 mins

The Tijuana motel sequence at the end actually takes place in the old Bates Motel set from Psycho on the Universal back lot.


3:30am -- Caged (1950)
A young innocent fights to survive the harsh life in a women's prison.
Cast: Eleanor Parker, Agnes Moorehead, Ellen Corby, Hope Emerson
Dir: John Cromwell
BW-97 mins, TV-PG

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Eleanor Parker, Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Hope Emerson, and Best Writing, Story and Screenplay -- Virginia Kellogg and Bernard C. Schoenfeld

In order to do research for the film, Virginia Kellogg pulled some strings to incarcerate herself in a woman's prison. What she wrote once she was out was not so much a screenplay, but a kind of almanac of everything she witnessed while in prison. Warner Bros. then got their screenwriters to make a screenplay out of it.



5:15am -- Short Film: Booked For Safekeeping (1960)
In this short documentary, police officers are trained in the assistance and management of mentally ill and confused persons.
BW-32 mins, TV-14

Produced in New Orleans by filmmaker George C. Stoney using real New Orleans police officers as actors.

[Staph]

1. Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939)

MGM invaded England and conquered the hearts of the world when it transferred one of production chief Irving G. Thalberg's last projects to the studio - recently acquired studios in Denham. Although owning a studio in England must have had a special charm for studio head Louis B. Mayer, a renowned Anglophile, the move was purely economic. England operated under a quota system that required a strict balance between British and imported films. By shooting some films in England, MGM could get more of its pictures into the sceptered isle.

Denham had already given MGM two hits in 1938: A Yank at Oxford, starring Robert Taylor as an American student abroad, and The Citadel, with Robert Donat as a young doctor led astray by riches and social prestige. The latter was such a big hit, that Mayer chose Donat over Brian Aherne and Charles Laughton for Goodbye, Mr. Chips. Donat had appeared in American films, but only sporadically, following his international success in Alfred Hitchcock's 1934 The 39 Steps. But ill health had cost him the lead in Captain Blood (1935) while his devotion to the stage led him to refuse other offers. With Goodbye, Mr. Chips, which allowed him to age from 25 to 83, he had the part for which he would always be remembered. It even made him a surprise Oscar® winner in 1939, the year when Gone With the Wind swept the Academy Awards®, and Clark Gable was considered a major contender for Best Actor.

To play Chips' wife, Kathy, MGM needed an actress with just the right combination of gentility and high spirits. Elizabeth Allan, who had played the mother in David Copperfield (1935) was originally considered for the role. Then Rosalind Russell was assigned the female lead in The Citadel, a role first assigned to Allan. The actress sued for breach of contract, effectively ending her Hollywood career.

With no leading lady in mind, director Sam Wood started looking through old screen tests. Then he spotted the test for a beautiful Irish actress Louis B. Mayer had discovered in London. Greer Garson was already on the lot, but had had nothing to do since signing with MGM. She thought she'd soon be headed back to England a total failure, but instead returned as the star of a major motion picture. The film would establish her as MGM's top female star and win her the first of seven Oscar® nominations (she would win in 1942 for another British story, Mrs. Miniver).

Goodbye, Mr. Chips did location shooting at the Repton School, founded in 1557. This was considered such a great honor for the school that students and teachers gave up their summer vacations to appear in crowd scenes and otherwise help out on the production. Their sacrifice was amply rewarded when the film became the biggest hit yet from the Denham studio.

Director: Sam Wood
Producer: Victor Saville
Screenplay: R.C. Sheriff, Claudine West & Eric Maschwitz
Based on the Novel by James Hilton
Cinematography: Freddie A. Young
Art Direction: Alfred Junge
Music: Richard Addinsell
Principle Cast: Robert Donat (Charles Chipping), Greer Garson (Katherine Ellis), Terry Kilburn (John/Peter Colley), John Mills (Peter Colley as a Young Man), Paul Henreid (Max Staefel), Judith Furse (Flora).
BW-115m. Closed captioning. Descriptive video.

by Frank Miller