TCM Schedule for Thursday, April 10: Star of the Month -- Hedy Lamarr

[Staph]

A day of this-and-that, including the best movie about the sinking of the Titanic (at least, the best one made prior to 1997), the best version of The Importance of Being Earnest, and Fred Astaire dancing on the ceiling. And this evening there's more of Star of the Month Hedy Lamarr. Enjoy!


4:45am -- Spy Train (1943)
An innocent couple fights off Nazi agents on a speeding train.
Cast: Richard Travis, Catherine Craig, Chick Chandler.
Dir: Harold Young.
BW-61 mins

Catherine Craig is probably best known as the wife of Robert Preston (The Music Man (1962) among many, many others).


6:00am -- Festival of Shorts #20 (1999)
Animals in movies are the focus of these shorts, which include

Famous Movie Dogs
Well known canine performers of the 1930s vie for a part in an upcoming movie.
Narrator: John Deering.
Dir: Del Frazier.
C-10 mins

Hollywood Scout
One of Pete Smith's assistants auditions animal acts for his short subjects.
Narrator: Pete Smith.
BW-8 mins

The Horse With the Human Mind
We spend the day with Bess, considered by many to be the smartest horse in the movies, as she works with her trainer.
Cast: Bess, Joe Adkinson.
Dir: Harry Loud.
BW-9 mins


6:30am -- A Night to Remember (1958)
The crew and passengers of the Titanic fight to survive when the legendary ship strikes an iceberg.
Cast: Kenneth More, Honor Blackman, Anthony Bushell.
Dir: Roy Ward Baker.
BW-123 mins, TV-PG

Each page of the script was marked with the angle of the ship's deck at that point in its descent. This way, when they shot scenes out of order, they could maintain accuracy and continuity.


8:45am -- The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)
An aging military man looks back on the loves and friends who shaped his life.
Cast: Roger Livesey, Deborah Kerr, Anton Walbrook.
Dir: Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger.
C-163 mins, TV-G

Laurence Olivier was supposed to play Clive Candy but was prevented from leaving the Army by Winston Churchill who didn't want the film to be made.


11:30am -- The Importance Of Being Earnest (1952)
A proper Englishman gets caught leading a double life.
Cast: Michael Redgrave, Edith Evans, Michael Denison.
Dir: Anthony Asquith.
C-96 mins, TV-G

The director, Anthony Asquith, was the son of H.H. Asquith who, as Home Secretary, brought the charges of immorality which led to Wilde's imprisonment.


1:15pm -- The Clock (1945)
A G.I. en route to Europe falls in love during a whirlwind two-day leave in New York City.
Cast: Judy Garland, Robert Walker, James Gleason.
Dir: Vincente Minnelli.
BW-90 mins, TV-PG

This, Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), and A Child Is Waiting (1963) are Judy Garland's only non-singing movies.


2:45pm -- Royal Wedding (1951)
A brother-and-sister musical team find romance when they tour to London for Elizabeth II's wedding.
Cast: Fred Astaire, Jane Powell, Peter Lawford.
Dir: Stanley Donen.
C-93 mins, TV-G

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Music, Original Song -- Burton Lane (music) and Alan Jay Lerner (lyrics) for the song "Too Late Now"

Classic and spectacular dancing sequences in a good-but-far-from-great movie -- among my favorites are "Open Your Eyes", danced on a rolling ship in a storm, "Sunday Jumps" danced by Fred Astaire and a hat rack, and the famous dance on the walls and ceiling of "You're All the World to Me".


4:19pm -- Short Film: From The Vaults: Fred Astaire Bio (1962)
BW-4 mins

The evaluation of Astaire's first screen test: "Can't act. Can't sing. Balding. Can dance a little."

In the numbering system used by IMDB for the names of all of the performers, cast and crew, Fred Astaire is NM0000001.


4:30pm -- Hootenanny Hoot! (1963)
Television producers discover country/western music at a small-town college.
Cast: Peter Breck, Ruta Lee, Johnny Cash.
Dir: Gene Nelson.
BW-92 mins, TV-G

Musical performers include Johnny Cash, Sheb Wooley, George Hamilton IV, and The Brothers Four.


6:15pm -- The Fastest Guitar Alive (1967)
When the Civil War ends, Confederate spies have to return the fortune they just stole.
Cast: Roy Orbison, Sammy Jackson, Maggie Pierce.
Dir: Michael Moore.
C-87 mins, TV-PG

Roy Orbison, as a Confederate spy, protecting the stolen gold with a guitar that shoots bullets -- you just can't make this stuff up! Watch for Iron Eyes Cody (Espera DeCorti, the crying Indian) and Domingo Samudio (Sam the Sham of Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs) as first Indian and first expressman respectively.


7:44pm -- Short Film: One Reel Wonders: Tanbark And Turf (1955)
This Sportscope series entry shows how standard bred horses are trained to become either harness racers or show horses.
Narrator: Peter Roberts.
BW-8 mins

Tanbark is an American regional word for mulch.


What's On Tonight: STAR OF THE MONTH: HEDY LAMARR


8:00pm -- Come Live With Me (1941)
A Viennese refugee weds a struggling author platonically so she can stay in the U.S.
Cast: James Stewart, Hedy Lamarr, Ian Hunter.
Dir: Clarence Brown.
BW-87 mins, TV-G

The title came from Christopher Marlowe's poem "The Passionate Shepherd". It begins, "Come Live With me, and be my love..."


9:30pm -- Ziegfeld Girl (1941)
Three showgirls in the Ziegfeld Follies face romantic trials on their way to the top.
Cast: James Stewart, Judy Garland, Lana Turner.
Dir: Robert Z. Leonard.
BW-132 mins, TV-G

The final shot of the "You Never Looked So Beautiful Before" number is recycled from "A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody" from The Great Ziegfeld (1936). For the sake of continuity, Judy Garland is costumed and made up to resemble Virginia Bruce, who crowned the "Wedding Cake" set in the earlier film.


11:45pm -- H.M. Pulham, Esq. (1941)
A stuffy businessman livens things up by having a fling.
Cast: Robert Young, Ruth Hussey, Hedy Lamarr.
Dir: King Vidor.
BW-120 mins, TV-PG

Ava Gardner has a small, uncredited role as Young Socialite.


1:49am -- Short Film: One Reel Wonders: Traffic With The Devil (1946)
This "Theater of Life" series short looks at traffic problems in Los Angeles, California.
Narrator: Charles Reineke.
Dir: Gunther von Fritsch.
BW-19 mins

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Documentary, Short Subjects. The winner was Seeds of Destiny (1946) from the U.S. War Department.


2:15am -- Crossroads (1942)
A French diplomat who's recovered from amnesia is blackmailed over crimes he can't remember.
Cast: William Powell, Hedy Lamarr, Basil Rathbone.
Dir: Jack Conway.
BW-83 mins, TV-G

Based on a novel by John Kafka, and previously made as Carrefour (1938) and Dead Man's Shoes (1940). In Ed Wood (1994), a copy of the Crossroads poster can be seen.


3:45am -- I Take This Woman (1940)
A tenement doctor's marriage to a European refugee threatens his practice.
Cast: Spencer Tracy, Hedy Lamarr, Verree Teasdale.
Dir: W.S. Van Dyke II.
BW-98 mins, TV-G

Production of the film started in October 1938 and had a troubled history. Director Josef von Sternberg quit because of artistic differences. Director Frank Borzage took over, but the production was shelved in early January 1939 for more than 10 months, when W.S. Van Dyke took over and practically re-shot the whole film, with many different cast members. One contemporary reviewer quipped the film should have been called "I Re-Take This Woman".


5:30am -- M-G-M Parade Show #4 (1955)
George Murphy tours Lake Metro, where "Mutiny on the Bounty" and "Show Boat" were shot, and introduces a clip from "Good News." These clips feature June Allyson and Peter Lawford.
BW-26 mins, TV-G

Upon his election to the Senate, singer/satirist Tom Lehrer good-naturedly saluted M-G-M Parade host George Murphy in the song "George Murphy" as "a senator who can really sing and dance." Lehrer went on to say that "we can't expect America to win against its foes without someone in the Senate who can really tap his toes." If Murphy had any thoughts on this joking "tribute", they weren't recorded for posterity.

[Staph]

1. The Importance of Being Earnest

Several of Oscar Wilde's plays and stories - notably Salome, The Canterville Ghost, and The Picture of Dorian Gray - have been adapted to both TV and feature film many times. The Importance of Being Earnest is certainly among the most produced, if not the record holder: four times on the big screen, including a 1937 German-language version, a little-known all-black 1992 version featuring Brock Peters, and the big-budget 2002 remake starring Colin Firth, Rupert Everett, Reese Witherspoon, and Judi Dench; and countless TV versions in Spain, Germany, Sweden, and two credited to the BBC in 1937 and 1938.

The 1952 version of The Importance of Being Earnest, however, is considered the most faithful and the definitive take on the comic classic. Much of that can be attributed to the fact that director Anthony Asquith decided not to follow the usual approach to stage hits. Instead of opening it up for the screen, he stayed close to the theater version and came up with little more than a filmed play (which Oliver Parker may have been reacting to in his 2002 version, which adds dream sequences, flashbacks and character back stories in an attempt at a more cinematic approach). Asquith, however, emphasizes the stage-bound nature of the production by having it begin with people taking their seats in a Victorian-era theater and opening up their programs (revealing the film's credits). As one audience member peers through glasses at the stage, we are drawn into the story, shot both in locations and on sets.

What follows is the familiar comedy of social mores and mistaken identities as two single London men go about their clandestine activities under the pseudonym "Ernest," wooing two eligible young country ladies and uncovering a labyrinth of secrets about the past. The play on which it is based was the last of Wilde's works for the stage, premiering on Valentine's Day 1895, before his swift and scandalous fall from grace on morals charges. Asquith's faithfulness to the original may have been motivated in part by a curious circumstance concerning the play's aborted run. The man who brought the immorality charges against the homosexual playwright was then British Home Secretary (and later Prime Minister) Herbert Asquith, father of director Anthony. Ironically, the younger Asquith, who died in 1968, was himself gay.

One of Great Britain's most successful directors after World War II (along with Carol Reed and David Lean), Asquith had a penchant for bringing theater works to the big screen, including a long association with playwright Terence Rattigan. Two of Asquith's most famous pictures, The Winslow Boy (1948) and The Browning Version (1951), were adapted from Rattigan's work.

He also achieved international success (and several Academy Award nominations) with his film version of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion (1938), starring Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller. Asquith's devotion to the theatrical, however, brought him increasing criticism for what was seen as his failure to achieve truly cinematic art. Nevertheless, he was famed for getting top performances out of his actors, and the ensemble work here is indicative of that skill.

Despite being too old for the role of the 28-year old Jack Worthing, 44-year-old Michael Redgrave gives one of his most memorable performances as the "Bunburying" gentlemen with a secret. Father of actors Vanessa, Lynn and Corin and grandfather of Joely and Natasha Richardson, Redgrave had his most notable roles in Mourning Becomes Electra (1947), Asquith's The Browning Version, Joseph L. Mankiewicz's The Quiet American (1958, in the role taken by Michael Caine in the 2002 remake), and countless classic stage roles.

The Importance of Being Earnest also features the British comic great Margaret Rutherford, best known for her work as Madame Arcati in Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit (1945), a role she originated on stage in 1941, and as Agatha Christie's sleuth Miss Jane Marple in such films as Murder She Said (1961) and Murder at the Gallop (1963).

The performances in The Importance of Being Earnest -- particularly Dame Edith Evans's Lady Bracknell - have come to be considered so definitive that it's hard to find one of the many community theater productions done every year across the globe that stray very far from this approach.

Director: Anthony Asquith
Producers: Earl St. John, Teddy Baird
Screenplay: Anthony Asquith, based on the play by Oscar Wilde
Cinematography: Desmond Dickinson
Editing: John D. Guthridge
Art Direction: Carmen Dillon
Original Music: Benjamin Frankel
Cast: Michael Redgrave (Jack Worthing), Michael Denison (Algernon Moncrieff), Edith Evans (Lady Bracknell), Margaret Rutherford (Miss Prism), Joan Greenwood (Gwendolyn), Dorothy Tutin (Cecily).
C-95m.

by Rob Nixon