TCM Schedule for Saturday, April 4, 2015 -- The Essentials: Classic Mysteries

Tonight's Essentials topic is classical mysteries, and TCM is showing some goodies, including Witness For the Prosecution (1957), Laura (1944), and Klute (1971). Enjoy!



6:15 AM -- The White Cliffs Of Dover (1944)
An American woman with a British husband fights to keep her family together through two world wars.
Dir: Clarence Brown
Cast: Irene Dunne, Alan Marshal, Roddy McDowall
BW-126 mins, CC,

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- George J. Folsey

Irene Dunne reads a telegram from her Anglophobe father to a group of English people. Her father begs her not to marry an Englishman she is in love with and tells her "You're a Yankee through and through! Think of Paul Revere! Think of the Old North steeple! Remember the Alabama!" The viewer may become confused at this point. "Remember the Alabama"? Shouldn't it be "Remember the Alamo"? However, since the context of the telegram is anti-British any mention of the Alamo would be irrelevant. What Irene Dunne's father is apparently taking about is the C.S.S. Alabama, one of several Confederate warships that were built in British shipyards over United States protest during the Civil War. These ships attacked U.S. shipping in the Atlantic Ocean. Since Irene Dunne arrives in England in April of 1914 and married just before August 4, 1914 when Great Britain declared war on Germany, the telegram was probably sent close to the 50th anniversary of the sinking of the Alabama by the U.S.S. Kearsarge on June 19, 1864 in the English Channel. The United States sued Great Britain in 1869 over the building of the Confederate warships and was awarded $15,500,000.


8:30 AM -- Andy Hardy Gets Spring Fever (1939)
A teenage boy falls in love with his drama teacher.
Dir: W. S. Van Dyke II
Cast: Lewis Stone, Mickey Rooney, Cecilia Parker
BW-85 mins, CC,

The seventh of sixteen Andy Hardy films starring Mickey Rooney.


10:00 AM -- Batman: The Living Corpse (1943)
Batman and Robin go undercover to protect a new plane from Japanese spies.
BW-17 mins,


10:30 AM -- The Party (1968)
An Indian actor turns a swank Hollywood party into a disaster.
Dir: Blake Edwards
Cast: Peter Sellers, Claudine Longet, Marge Champion
C-99 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

This film was improvised from a 56-page outline. Each scene was shot in sequence, and built upon the previous scene. To aid in this experiment, the film's producers had a video-camera tube attached to the Panavision camera and connected to an Ampex studio videotape machine, allowing the actors and crew to review what they had just filmed.


12:15 PM -- The Corsican Brothers (1941)
Siamese twins, separated in infancy, join forces to avenge their parents' murder.
Dir: Gregory Ratoff
Cast: Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Ruth Warrick, Akim Tamiroff
BW-111 mins, CC,

Nominated
Oscar Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture
Dimitri Tiomkin

One of the twelve versions of the Alexandre Dumas novel. The other eleven include The Corsican Brothers (1898 - Short), The Corsican Brothers (1917), The Corsican Brothers (1920), Bandits of Corsica (1953, with Richard Greene as the twins), Os irmãos Corsos (1955) (TV Series), Lions of Corsica (1961), ITV Play of the Week: The Corsican Brothers (1965) (TV Episode), Os irmãos Corsos (1966) (TV Series), Start the Revolution Without Me (1970, with Gene Wilder and Donald Sutherland as mismatched pairs of twins), Cheech & Chong's The Corsican Brothers (1984, with Cheech and Chong as not-Siamese-twin brothers), The Corsican Brothers (1985) (TV Movie, with Trevor Eve as the twins), and The Corsican Brothers (1989).


2:15 PM -- Son Of Lassie (1945)
The beloved collie goes to war to help the resistance in occupied Norway.
Dir: S. Sylvan Simon
Cast: Peter Lawford, Donald Crisp, June Lockhart
C-100 mins, CC,

This film was the first filmed in the Technicolor "monopack" process, where one magazine of film registered all three primary colors, rather than the original three-strip Technicolor process (introduced in 1932), where a separate magazine of film had to be exposed (and processed) for each of the three primary colors.


3:59 PM -- Famous Movie Dogs (1940)
Well known canine performers of the 1930s, including Asta from the Thin Man series, vie for a part in an upcoming movie in this short film. Vitaphone Release 9686.
Dir: Del Frazier
Cast: Henry East,
C-10 mins,


4:15 PM -- Ring Of Fire (1961)
A group of delinquents hold a sheriff hostage in the middle of a forest fire.
Dir: Andrew L. Stone
Cast: David Janssen, Joyce Taylor, Frank Gorshin
C-91 mins, CC,

The wreckage from the train crashing into the river is still there today, decades later! The wreckage is located at N 47°19.785 W 123° 38.595, along the Wynoochee River, near the Olympic National Forest in Washington State.


6:00 PM -- Trapeze (1956)
An aging trapeze star and his protigi fall for the same woman.
Dir: Carol Reed
Cast: Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis, Gina Lollobrigida
C-106 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Burt Lancaster performed all of the trapeze stunts himself, having worked in a circus before entering films, all except for one. He insisted on doing the climactic triple somersault, but technical adviser Eddie Ward initially was hesitant on Lancaster performing the stunt, so Ward doubled for Lancaster during the first weeks of shooting. Director Carol Reed eventually hired Lancaster's longtime friend, stuntman Nick Cravat to perform the stunt.



TCM PRIMETIME - WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: THE ESSENTIALS: CLASSIC MYSTERIES



8:00 PM -- Witness For The Prosecution (1958)
A British lawyer gets caught up in a couple's tangled marital affairs when he defends the husband for murder.
Dir: Billy Wilder
Cast: Tyrone Power, Marlene Dietrich, Charles Laughton
BW-116 mins, CC,

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Charles Laughton, Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Elsa Lanchester, Best Director -- Billy Wilder, Best Sound, Recording -- Gordon Sawyer (Samuel Goldwyn SSD), Best Film Editing -- Daniel Mandell, and Best Picture

The plot deals with Charles Laughton's character recovering from a severe heart attack while defending Tyrone Power's character. In reality, this would be Tyrone Power's last complete film - he would die of a heart attack while on the set of his next film less than one year after release of this one.


10:15 PM -- Laura (1944)
A police detective falls in love with the woman whose murder he's investigating.
Dir: Otto Preminger
Cast: Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Clifton Webb
BW-88 mins, CC,

Won an Oscar for Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Joseph LaShelle

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Clifton Webb, Best Director -- Otto Preminger, Best Writing, Screenplay -- Jay Dratler, Samuel Hoffenstein and Elizabeth Reinhardt, and Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Black-and-White -- Lyle R. Wheeler, Leland Fuller and Thomas Little

Darryl F. Zanuck was opposed to casting Clifton Webb because of Webb's well-known (in Hollywood) homosexuality, but producer/director Otto Preminger prevailed and the 54-year-old Webb, making his first screen appearance since 1925, was nominated for an Oscar.


12:00 AM -- Klute (1971)
A small-town detective searches for a missing man linked to a high-priced prostitute.
Dir: Alan J. Pakula
Cast: Jane Fonda, Donald Sutherland, Charles Cioffi
C-114 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Won an Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Jane Fonda

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay Based on Factual Material or Material Not Previously Published or Produced -- Andy Lewis and David E. Lewis

Bree's apartment was built on a sound stage at a New York film studio where Jane Fonda could spend the night. The director even had a working toilet installed in the bathroom of the set. Jane contributed to decorating the apartment by deciding Bree would be a romance reader and have a cat. Jane remembered an actress from Lee Strasberg's private class that occasionally serviced John F. Kennedy, so she decided Bree had done this as well. A signed photo of Kennedy appears on the fridge in Bree's apartment.


2:15 AM -- The Hunger (1983)
A centuries-old female vampire falls for a beautiful young research doctor.
Dir: Tony Scott
Cast: Cliff De Young, David Bowie, Susan Sarandon
C-96 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

In The Celluloid Closet (1995), the 1995 documentary about the history of homosexuality in film, actress Susan Sarandon said that the screenplay for The Hunger (1983) originally called for her to be demonstrably drunk in the lead-up to her sex scene with Catherine Deneuve, but Sarandon asked for it to be changed so that her character had only a single sip of wine and then spilled the rest of the glass. She said she wanted to make it clear that her character was choosing to have sex with Miriam instead of doing it because of the alcohol, and also because "you wouldn't have to get drunk to bed Catherine Deneuve, I don't care what your sexual history to that point had been".


4:00 AM -- The Vampire Bat (1933)
Villagers suspect the town simpleton of being a vampire.
Dir: Frank Strayer
Cast: Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray, Melvyn Douglas
BW-61 mins,

Majestic Pictures cashed in on the success of Lionel Atwill and Fay Wray, who had been a sensation in the Technicolor thriller Doctor X (1932) and had already completed Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933), which was also being heavily promoted at the time. Majestic was able to get this film into theaters over a month before the release of the latter one.


5:02 AM -- Czechoslovakia On Parade (1938)
This short film focuses on the landmarks, people and customs of Czechoslovakia.
C-9 mins,


5:15 AM -- Godspell: A Musical Based on the Gospel According to St. Matthew (1973)
Contemporary hippies relive the story of Christ's ministry and crucifixion.
Dir: David Greene
Cast: Victor Garber, David Haskell, Lynne Thigpen
C-102 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

The fountain that everyone (except Jesus) jumps into during the song "Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord" is "The Angel of the Waters" (also known as the Bethesda Fountain) in New York City's Central Park. The name "Bethesda" is a reference to description in the Gospel of John of a pool that is supposed to have healing properties.