TCM Schedule for Monday, July 21 -- UNDER THE INFLUENCE

[Longhorn]

3:45am Eagle Has Landed, The (1976)
German paratroopers land covertly in England during World War II.
Cast: Michael Caine, Donald Sutherland, Robert Duvall. Dir: John Sturges. C-136 mins, TV-PG

6:00am Good Humor Man, The (1950)
A good-hearted ice cream man's efforts to help a young woman turn him into a murder suspect.
Cast: Jack Carson, Lola Albright, George Reeves. Dir: Lloyd Bacon. BW-80 mins, TV-G

7:30am Petty Girl, The (1950)
A cheesecake artist tries to get a college professor to pose for him.
Cast: Robert Cummings, Joan Caulfield, Elsa Lanchester. Dir: Henry Levin. C-88 mins, TV-G

9:00am Barefoot Mailman, The (1951)
A 19th-century con artist flees to the wilds of Florida to elude the law.
Cast: Robert Cummings, Terry Moore, Will Geer. Dir: Earl McEvoy. C-83 mins, TV-G

10:30am Her First Romance (1951)
A high school girl steals from her parents to be with the boy she loves.
Cast: Margaret O'Brien, Jimmy Hunt, Elinor Donahue. Dir: Seymour Friedman. C-73 mins, TV-G

11:45am Magic Carpet, The (1951)
A dethroned ruler becomes a masked avenger to win back his throne and his ladylove.
Cast: Lucille Ball, John Agar, Patricia Medina. Dir: Lew Landers. C-83 mins, TV-G

1:15pm Sunny Side of the Street (1951)
A TV station receptionist tries to make her boyfriend a singing star only to lose him to the sponsor's daughter.
Cast: Frankie Laine, Billy Daniels, Terry Moore. Dir: Richard Quine. C-72 mins

2:30pm First Time, The (1952)
New parents find their first child more trouble than expected.
Cast: Robert Cummings, Barbara Hale, Jeff Connell. Dir: Frank Tashlin. BW-89 mins

4:00pm Harem Girl (1952)
A wisecracking secretary saves the ruler of an Arab nation from foreign invaders.
Cast: Joan Davis, Peggie Castle, Arthur Blake. Dir: Edward Bernds. BW-71 mins, TV-G

5:21pm Short Film: One Reel Wonders: Colorful Bombay (1937)
In this "Traveltalk," we learn about the history, people, and landscapes of Bombay.
C-8 mins

5:30pm Last Train From Bombay (1952)
An American diplomat is accused of murder during an Indian civil war.
Cast: Jon Hall, Christine Larsen, Lisa Ferraday. Dir: Fred F. Sears. BW-72 mins

6:45pm Siren of Bagdad (1953)
An Arabian magician takes on a corrupt sultan to help a beautiful princess.
Cast: Paul Henreid, Patricia Medina, Hans Conried. Dir: Richard Quine. C-72 mins, TV-G

8:00pm TCM Presents Elvis Mitchell Under the Influence: Laurence Fishburne (2008)

What's On Tonight: TCM PRIME TIME FEATURE: UNDER THE INFLUENCE

8:30pm Patch Of Blue, A (1965)
A blind white girl falls in love with a black man.
Cast: Sidney Poitier, Shelley Winters, Elizabeth Hartman. Dir: Guy Green. BW-105 mins, TV-PG

10:19pm Short Film: From The Vaults: Cinderella Named Elizabeth, A (1965)
BW-7 mins

10:30pm TCM Presents Elvis Mitchell Under the Influence: Laurence Fishburne (2008)

11:00pm Kiss Me, Stupid (1965)
A small-town songwriter tries to sell his work to a stranded singing star.
Cast: Dean Martin, Kim Novak, Ray Walston. Dir: Billy Wilder. BW-124 mins, TV-PG

1:00am Apocalypse Now (1979)
An Army captain travels to Cambodia during the Vietnam War to terminate a renegade officer.
Cast: Martin Sheen, Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall. Dir: Francis Ford Coppola. C-153 mins, TV-MA

3:45am Bridge At Remagen, The (1969)
During WWII, German troops fight a desperate battle to hold their position.
Cast: George Segal, Ben Gazzara, Robert Vaughn. Dir: John Guillermin. C-116 mins, TV-MA

[Longhorn]

1. Eagle Has Landed, The (1976)

The Eagle Has Landed (1976) was the last film directed by John Sturges, for many years one of Hollywood’s most successful directors of action films (Bad Day at Black Rock, 1955; Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, 1957; The Magnificent Seven, 1960; The Great Escape, 1963). At this point in his career, with more than 40 pictures under his belt, Sturges was no longer very enthusiastic about directing, a fact that was hammered home to leading actor Michael Caine during the production. At first Caine was thrilled to be working with an American director of Sturges’s stature and with his reputation for no-nonsense professionalism. “He’s inclined to think ‘Take One,” which I like,” Caine told an interviewer at the time. In his autobiography, however, the actor revealed that Sturges admitted to him on the set that he only worked to earn enough money to go fishing.

“The moment the picture finished he took the money and went,” Caine wrote in What’s It All About (Random House, 1995), published shortly after Sturges’s death. “ Jack Wiener later told me never came back for the editing nor for any of the other good post-production sessions that are where a director does some of his most important work. The picture wasn’t bad, but I still get angry when I think of what it could have been with the right director. We had committed the old European sin of being impressed by someone just because he came from Hollywood.”

The production was happier for Caine in other ways, however. After being away from home for considerable lengths of time for location shooting on his last two pictures, The Man Who Would Be King (1975) and Harry and Walter Go to New York (1976), he was delighted to be on location in Mapledurham, (doubling for World War II era Norfolk, England), just 15 minutes along the Thames from his own country home. And it was one of England’s most beautiful summers to boot.

The storyline of The Eagle Has Landed follows Caine as Colonel Kurt Steiner, the commander of a group of German soldiers under orders from Himmler (Donald Pleasence, doing his stock Teutonic villain role). Col. Steiner is ordered to parachute into England with the intention of assassinating Winston Churchill. Like the similar The Day of the Jackal (1973), which followed a plot to murder French President Charles DeGaulle, the story had the disadvantage of trying to maintain suspense when the audience knew full well that Churchill was never killed by Germans or anyone else. Jackal got around the problem by following the intricacies of the plot with almost excruciating detail. Eagle’s ace in the hole was provided by Sturges’s handling of the action sequences, a quality he brought to the historically foregone conclusions of Gunfight at the O.K. Corral and The Great Escape.

Caine had other upsides to making The Eagle Has Landed. He was happy to be working with both his old friend Donald Sutherland (a replacement for Richard Harris, as a Brit-hating Irishman who helps the Nazis) and an actor he didn’t know well but admired, Robert Duvall. Caine found Duvall easy to work with, although he had heard stories about his short fuse, a trait he saw first hand when the production briefly moved to Cornwall, a coastal area of England famous for its seafood. The main cast was served fresh lobsters at lunch one day, but the one earmarked for Duvall was mistakenly given to someone else. “That’s okay,” Duvall said calmly, then walked over to the pub door and punched out the glass panel with his fist.

The Eagle Has Landed marked the fourth screen appearance for actor Treat Williams who would jump to starring role status in his next movie, Milos Forman's film adaptation of the stage musical Hair (1979). Also in the cast of The Eagle Has Landed is Larry Hagman, after his stint on the sitcom I Dream of Jeannie and shortly before achieving television immortality as J.R. Ewing on Dallas.

More than two decades later, Peter Murton, the production designer on The Eagle Has Landed returned to the quaint little location village for a documentary about the making of the picture and its effect on the lives of the villagers, The Eagle Has Landed Revisited: Invading Mapledurham (2007).

Director: John Sturges
Producers: David Niven, Jr., Jack Wiener
Screenplay: Tom Mankiewicz, based on the novel by Jack Higgins
Cinematography: Anthony Richmond
Editing: Anne V. Coates
Art Direction: Charles Bishop
Original Music: Lalo Schifrin
Cast: Michael Caine (Col. Kurt Steiner), Donald Sutherland (Liam Devlin), Robert Duvall (Col. Max Radl), Jenny Agutter (Molly Prior), Donald Pleasence (Heinrich Himmler), Anthony Quayle (Adm. Canaris), Judy Geeson (Pamela), Treat Williams (Capt. Clark), Larry Hagman (Col. Pitts).
C-135m. Letterboxed.

by Rob Nixon

[grasswire]

2. Kiss Me Stupid was hilarious!!

Ray Bradbury should have won an Oscar for that role. TCM says the film was a flop because it attacked the conventional morals of society. But today, it was sooo funny!