TCM Schedule for Thursday, October 22 -- Life During the Depression

[Staph]

Two birthday celebrations today -- Constance Bennett, born in 1904 in New York City and the first of the three Bennet sisters to perform in films; and Joan Fontaine, born in 1917 in Tokyo, Japan, and the younger sister of Olivia de Havilland. This evening we continue the month's theme of Life During the Depression with a musical twist. Enjoy!


3:45am -- Tempest (1982)
A successful architect trades society for a remote Greek island.
Cast: John Cassavetes, Gena Rowlands, Susan Sarandon, Vittorio Gassman
Dir: Paul Mazursky
C-142 mins, TV-MA

Susan Sarandon introduces herself to John Cassavetes and Molly Ringwald as "Aretha Tomalin". Tomalin is Sarandon's real last name (Sarandon is her married name from her marriage to Chris Sarandon).


6:30am -- Sin Takes A Holiday (1932)
A stenographer tries to save her boss from his divorcee girlfriend.
Cast: Constance Bennett, Kenneth MacKenna, Basil Rathbone, Rita La Roy
Dir: Paul Stein
BW-80 mins, TV-G

In June 1946, Constance Bennett married her fifth husband, US Air Force Colonel (later Brigadier General) John Theron Coulter (1912-1995). After her marriage, she concentrated her efforts on providing relief entertainment to US troops still stationed in Europe, winning military honors for her services. Bennett and Coulter are buried in Arlington National Cemetery.


8:00am -- Bed Of Roses (1933)
A girl from the wrong side of the tracks is torn between true love and a life of sin .
Cast: Constance Bennett, Joel McCrea, John Halliday, Pert Kelton
Dir: Gregory LaCava
BW-67 mins, TV-G

Bennett's friend and fellow ex-con is played by Pert Kelton, who would reach her best known role thirty years later as Mother Paroo, Marian the Librarian's mother, in The Music Man (1962), both on Broadway and in the film.


9:15am -- Merrily We Live (1938)
A society matron's habit of hiring ex-cons and hobos as servants leads to romance for her daughter.
Cast: Constance Bennett, Brian Aherne, Billie Burke.
Dir: Norman Z. McLeod.
BW-95 mins, TV-G

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Billie Burke, Best Art Direction -- Charles D. Hall. Best Cinematography -- Norbert Brodine, Best Music, Original Song -- Phil Charig (music) and Arthur Quenzer (lyrics) for the song "Merrily We Live", and Best Sound, Recording -- Elmer Raguse (Hal Roach SSD)

Although not credited onscreen or noted by reviewers or the SAB, this film is so similar to What a Man (1930) (same plot and even many of the same character names) that the source of the screenplay must surely be the same for both films.


11:00am -- Blond Cheat (1938)
A millionaire backs his daughter's stage career to keep her from marrying the wrong man.
Cast: Joan Fontaine, Derrick DeMarney, Cecil Cunningham, Lilian Bond
Dir: Joseph Santley
BW-62 mins, TV-G

A rare opportunity to see Fontaine perform a musical number.


12:15pm -- Ivanhoe (1952)
Sir Walter Scott's classic tale of the noble knight torn between his fair lady and a beautiful Jew.
Cast: Robert Taylor, Elizabeth Taylor, Joan Fontaine, George Sanders
Dir: Richard Thorpe
C-107 mins, TV-G

Nominated for Oscars for Best Cinematography, Color -- Freddie Young, Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture -- Miklós Rózsa, and Best Picture

Scriptwriter Marguerite Roberts was a member of the American Communist Party and in 1951 she was ordered to appear before the House of Un-American Activities Committee. Roberts and her husband John Sanford refused to name fellow members of the party and were both blacklisted. M-G-M received permission from the SWG (Screen Writer's Guild) to remove Roberts' name from the film after she refused to testify before HUAC.


2:15pm -- The Bigamist (1953)
A woman discovers her husband has another family in another city.
Cast: Joan Fontaine, Ida Lupino, Edmund Gwenn, Edmond O'Brien
Dir: Ida Lupino
BW-79 mins, TV-PG

During the tour of the Hollywood stars, the driver points out the home of Edmund Gwenn, the star of Miracle on 34th Street (1947). Gwenn is in fact also in the film, playing Mr Jordan.


3:45pm -- South Pacific (1958)
A Navy nurse must choose between love and prejudice during World War II.
Cast: Rossano Brazzi, Mitzi Gaynor, John Kerr, Ray Walston
Dir: Joshua Logan
C-157 mins, TV-G

Won an Oscar for Best Sound -- Fred Hynes (Todd-AO SSD)

Nominated for Oscars for Best Cinematography, Color -- Leon Shamroy, and Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture -- Alfred Newman and Ken Darby

Concerned that the film's lush tropical settings would appear unnatural in Technicolor, and partially to cover up the fluctuations in weather during the shoot, director Joshua Logan hoped to soften the effect by filming several scenes through the newly available colored filters. He later indicated he considered this to be the biggest mistake he had made in his filming career. He wanted the filters to be subtler, but he says that the film processing lab had made them more extreme than he liked. There was no time to re-shoot without them or replace them because the film was a roadshow and tickets had been booked months in advance.


6:30pm -- 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.


What's On Tonight: TCM SPOTLIGHT: LIFE DURING THE DEPRESSION


8:00pm -- Gold Diggers Of 1933 (1933)
Three chorus girls fight to keep their show going and find rich husbands.
Cast: Warren William, Joan Blondell, Aline MacMahon, Ruby Keeler
Dir: Mervyn LeRoy
BW-98 mins, TV-G

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Sound, Recording -- Nathan Levinson (sound director)

At 5:55 PM PST on March 10, 1933, the Long Beach earthquake hit southern California, measuring 6.4 on the Richter scale. When the earthquake hit, Busby Berkeley was filming the "Shadow Waltz" dance sequence on a sound stage on the Warner Brothers lot in Burbank. The earthquake caused a blackout on the sound stage and short-circuited some of the neon-tubed violins. Berkeley was almost thrown from a camera boom, and dangled by one hand until he could pull himself back up. Since many of the chorus girls in the dance number were on a 30-foot-high scaffold, Berkeley yelled for them to sit down and wait until the stage hands and technicians could open the sound stage doors and let in some light. (Personal note -- my dad was a child in 1933, and told stories of surviving this earthquake. He said that there was a great fear of tidal waves, and that he and his family would go up into the hills to spend the night for several nights after the initial quake. As an adult, he could not figure out why his parents and their neighbors believed that a tidal wave was only a danger at night!)


10:00pm -- The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985)
A movie character steps off the screen and into the life of his biggest fan.
Cast: Mia Farrow, Jeff Daniels, Danny Aiello, Dianne Wiest
Dir: Woody Allen
BW-82 mins, TV-14

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen -- Woody Allen

Michael Keaton was originally cast in the lead role, and footage was shot. Director Woody Allen decided it wasn't working, and replaced Keaton with Jeff Daniels.


11:30pm -- Annie (1982)
An orphan attracts the attention of a Wall Street tycoon and a con artist.
Cast: Albert Finney, Carol Burnett, Aileen Quinn, Ann Reinking
Dir: Gary Martin
C-127 mins, TV-PG

Nominated for Oscars for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration -- Dale Hennesy and Marvin March, and Best Music, Original Song Score and Its Adaptation or Best Adaptation Score -- Ralph Burns

Kristin Chenoweth auditioned for Annie and got to the final stages of the audition process but was turned down because her Southern accent was too thick. She later went on to play Lilly St. Regis in the TV movie remake of the film.


2:00am -- Gabriel Over The White House (1933)
A crooked president reforms mysteriously.
Cast: Walter Huston, Karen Morley, Franchot Tone, Arthur Byron
Dir: Gregory LaCava
BW-86 mins, TV-G

The protest march of the "army of the unemployed" in the story was no doubt a reference to the protest march of the "Bonus Army" in 1932, where veterans of WWI marched on Congress to demand payment of promised bonuses. They were attacked with tanks and tear gas by the U.S. Army led by Gen. Douglas MacArthur on orders of President Herbert Hoover. William Randolph Hearst, who railed against that action in his newpapers, saw to it that the President in this film helped the people. Meanwhile, Louis B. Mayer, a staunch Republican, delayed the movie until Hoover was out of office.

By the way, when the Bonus Army returned to Washington in the spring on 1933, FDR didn't send tanks -- he sent Eleanor -- a perfect example of the difference between Republicans and Democrats.


3:30am -- Of Mice and Men (1939)
A drifter and his slow-witted pal try to make their way in the West.
Cast: Burgess Meredith, Betty Field, Lon Chaney Jr., Charles Bickford
Dir: Lewis Milestone
BW-106 mins, TV-14

Nominated for Oscars for Best Music, Original Score -- Aaron Copland, Best Music, Scoring -- Aaron Copland, Best Sound, Recording -- Elmer Raguse (Hal Roach SSD), and Best Picture

The very first screen adaptation of a John Steinbeck novel.


5:30am -- MGM Parade Show #21 (1955)
Wallace Beery and Jackie Cooper perform in a clip from "The Champ"; Russ Tamblyn introduces a clip from "The Last Hunt." Hosted by George Murphy.
BW-26 mins, TV-G

The Last Hunt (1956) is the story of one of the last great buffalo hunts in the 1880s.

[Staph]

1. Gold Diggers of 1933

Robert Lord won his first producing credit for Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933), an all-singing, all-dancing follow-up to Warner Bros.' 1932 smash Forty-Second Street, the film that sparked the trend in screen musicals during the thirties. Warners knew they had a hit before the earlier film had even opened, so they had this production in the works while the rest of Hollywood was scrambling to catch up.

For their new musical extravaganza they turned to Avery Hopwood's hit Broadway play Gold Diggers of Broadway, which they had filmed twice before -- as a silent in 1923 and with sound and songs in 1929. Lord had even worked on the script for the 1929 tale of chorus girls mixed up with society types when a young blue-blood tries to break into show business. For the third version, they pulled out all the stops, with new star Ruby Keeler joining studio stalwarts Joan Blondell and Aline MacMahon as a trio of chorus girls on the make for stardom. And Busby Berkeley, who had scored a hit with the lavish numbers for Forty-Second Street, was given more money and more control for this feature.

Berkeley staged four big numbers this time around, each with his trademark geometric arrangements of dancers and dream-like story elements. The film opened with "We're in the Money," a gift to Depression-weary Americans as Ginger Rogers and chorus girls dressed in gold coins cavorted. Rogers even delivered a chorus in pig Latin, a fad of the time added at the last minute when Berkeley and director Mervyn LeRoy (and anybody else who's tried to take credit for the decision over the years) caught her singing the song that way; she was just kidding around after a hard day of rehearsals.

For "Petting in the Park," Dick Powell led the male chorus in a risque come-on to the female chorus on an elaborate Central Park set. The number takes a risque turn when the women get caught in a rainstorm and retreat behind a flimsy screen to remove their wet clothes (these were the days before Hollywood censored itself). They re-emerge in metal costumes designed to hold the men at bay -- until a lecherous baby (played by midget actor Billy Barty) hands Powell a can-opener. The number was cut from the film when it was re-issued after the arrival of strict Production Code enforcement in 1935 and was also deleted from the first prints available for television.

Berkeley had gotten the idea for "The Shadow Waltz" years earlier when he saw a vaudeville act in which a beautiful woman danced while playing the violin. He filed the idea away for later use, bringing it back for Gold Diggers of 1933 on a grand scale. In The Busby Berkeley Book, the director recalled that "I had no less than sixty girls at my disposal, so I ordered sixty white violins and a huge curving staircase for them to dance on. Once I had them go through the dance, it occurred to me that the number would be even more spectacular if the violins were all neon-lighted. The electricians fixed up each girl with wires and batteries and we were able to get some effective footage with the girls waltzing in the dark." During filming, Los Angeles was hit by an earthquake that caused a blackout and short-circuited some of the dancing violins. Berkeley was almost thrown from the camera boom, dangling by one hand until he could pull himself back up. He yelled for the girls, many of whom were on a 30-foot-high platform, to sit down until technicians could get the soundstage doors open and let in some light.

Inspired by the war veterans' march on Washington in May 1932, Berkeley developed the idea for "Remember My Forgotten Man," in which Joan Blondell (dressed as a streetwalker), addresses the forgotten veterans who have been forced from the front lines to the breadlines. Ending with Blondell backed by the silhouettes of men in uniform while the unemployed reach for her, it was a powerful number. But studio head Jack Warner and production chief Darryl F. Zanuck were so impressed with the song they decided to make it the film's finale, replacing "Petting in the Park," which was moved to earlier in the film. If you look closely at the scenes just before the film's finale, you'll see Keeler and other chorus girls in the dresses they wore at the start of the earlier number. You'll also catch Berkeley, in a rare screen appearance, as the callboy shouting "Everybody on stage for the 'Forgotten Man' number." He filmed the line the day before the studio was due to close for inventory. Rather than hire any actors, Warner had ordered him to shoot some pick-up lines with the secretaries and technicians already on the lot. Berkeley's was the only one of those lines that stayed in the film, to the surprised delight of the cast, who didn't know about it until they saw the picture's premiere.

Gold Diggers of 1933 gave prominent spots to two women destined for bigger things. Ginger Rogers, who had scored a small hit in Forty-Second Street, was still free-lancing in Hollywood when her boyfriend, director Mervyn LeRoy, got her cast in this film and prominently featured her in the opening number. The relationship didn't last the production shoot, and her other song, "I've Got to Sing a Torch Song," was largely cut. But her appearance was still enough to get her noticed at other studios and lead to her casting in RKO's Flying Down to Rio (1933), the first film to team her with Fred Astaire.

Doing the real singing during the "Remember My Forgotten Man" was Etta Moten (the number is often mistakenly credited to Marion Anderson), a black actress-singer who would make her greatest achievements off-screen. In 1933, she became the first African-American entertainer invited to sing for a U.S. president (Franklin Roosevelt) at the White House. In 1942, she was cast as Bess in the hit tour of George Gershwin's opera Porgy and Bess. When she objected to the libretto's racist language, Ira Gershwin even re-wrote her lyrics for her. Years later, she would distinguish herself as a radio interviewer and journalist at WMAQ Chicago, reporting on the birth of the civil rights movement in the '50s. By the time of her death in 2004, at the age of 102, she had been honored with a Living Legend Award from the National Black Arts Festival and a place in the Black Film-Makers Hall of Fame, the latter on the basis of this one film.

With all of the excellent musical talent on display in Gold Diggers of 1933, it's surprising that the movie didn't garner any Oscar® nominations in that category; the only recognition it received was an Academy Award® nomination for Best Sound.

Producer: Robert Lord
Director: Mervyn LeRoy
Screenplay: Erwin S. Gelsey, James Seymour, David Boehm, Ben Markson
Based on the Play Gold Diggers of Broadway by Avery Hopwood
Cinematography: Sol Polito
Art Direction: Anton Grot
Music: Leo F. Forbstein, Harry Warren
Principal Cast: Warren William (J. Lawrence Bradford), Joan Blondell (Carol King), Aline MacMahon (Trixie Lorraine), Ruby Keeler (Polly Parker), Dick Powell (Brad Roberts/Robert Treat Bradford), Guy Kibbee (Faneuil H. Peabody), Ned Sparks (Barney Hopkins), Ginger Rogers (Fay Fortune), Sterling Holloway (Messenger Boy), Ferdinand Gottschalk (Clubman), Billy Barty (Baby), Hobart Cavanaugh (Dog Salesman), Dennis O'Keefe (Extra), Busby Berkeley (Call Boy), Etta Moten ("Forgotten Man" Singer).
BW-98m. Closed captioning.

by Frank Miller