TCM Schedule for Friday, May 17, 2024: Spies / George Stevens Jr. (PREMIERES)

Joan Crawford, Men from U.N.C.L.E., funny spies, scary spies, Sergeant Shultz (kind of), TCM Premieres, Sidney Poitier, Jack Lemon, and Civil Rights.

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George Stevens Jr. (born April 3, 1932) is an American writer, playwright, director, and producer. He is the founder of the American Film Institute, creator of the AFI Life Achievement Award, and co-creator of the Kennedy Center Honors. He has also served as Co-Chairman of the President's Committee on the Arts and Humanities.

His father was the film director George Stevens. He began his career in Hollywood as a production assistant on several of his father's movies, including A Place in the Sun, Shane, and Giant.He was also an associate producer and director of location scenes on his father's drama The Diary of Anne Frank.

Stevens wrote and directed the 1991 television movie Separate but Equal, starring Sidney Poitier as Thurgood Marshall, premiering tonight on TCM.

The movie, which aired over two nights on ABC, depicts Marshall and a team of NAACP staffers arguing and winning the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case in the United States Supreme Court. It was nominated for a Best Television Motion Picture Golden Globe and won the 1991 Emmy for Outstanding Drama/Comedy Special and Miniseries.

Also debuting tonight is Steven's Peabody award-winning production of The Murder of Mary Phagan (1988), originally broadcast over two evenings by NBC.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Stevens_Jr.

Freedom on My Mind, airing early Saturday morning, is a 1994 feature documentary film of the Mississippi voter registration movement of 1961 to 1964, characterized by violence against the people involved, including multiple instances of murder. It was produced and directed by noted filmmaker Connie Field.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connie_Field


------------------ DIRECTOR FRANK BORZAGE -------------------

6:15 AM | The Shining Hour (1938)
A nightclub dancer marries into society and has to contend with her jealous sister-in-law.
Dir: Frank Borzage | Cast: Joan Crawford, Margaret Sullavan, Melvyn Douglas

------------- MORNING & AFTERNOON: SPIES (EST) -------------

7:45 AM | One of Our Spies Is Missing (1966)
U.N.C.L.E. is sent to Europe where an age-reversing machine is in danger of being seized by T.H.R.U.S.H. spies.
Dir: E. Darrell Hallenbeck | Cast: Robert Vaughn, David McCallum, Maurice Evans

9:30 AM | Where the Spies Are (1965)
A local doctor is recruited as a cold war spy to fulfill a very important secret mission in the Middle East.
Dir: Val Guest | Cast: David Niven, Françoise Dorléac, John Le Mesurier

11:30 AM | The Prize (1963)
An American Nobel Prize-winner gets mixed up with spies when he travels to Stockholm to collect his award.
Dir: Mark Robson | Cast: Paul Newman, Edward G. Robinson, Elke Sommer

2:00 PM | The Venetian Affair (1967)
Ex CIA man and current reporter investigates an American diplomat's murder in Venice.
Dir: Jerry Thorpe | Cast: Robert Vaughn, Elke Sommer, Boris Karloff

3:45 PM | How to Steal the World (1968)
U.N.C.L.E. must stop a mad general, as well as THRUSH agents, from taking over the world.
Dir: Sutton Role | Cast: Robert Vaughn, David McCallum, Barry Sullivan

5:15 PM | 36 Hours (1964)
Nazis kidnap a key American intelligence officer and try to convince him that World War II is over.
Dir: George Seaton | Cast: James Garner, Rod Taylor, Eva Marie Saint, John Banner

IMO: Banner's performance in this film was probably responsible for his casting in TV's Hogan's Heroes.



7:15 PM | MGM Parade Show #11 (1955)
Judy Garland and Gene Kelly perform in a clip from For Me and My Gal. Susan Hayward introduces a clip from I'll Cry Tomorrow.
Cast: Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Susan Hayward


---------------- PRIME TIME: GEORGE STEVENS JR. ----------------

8:00 PM | Separate But Equal (1991) TCM PREMIERE
Dramatization of "Brown vs. Board of Education" that destroyed the legal validity of racial segregation.
Dir: George Stevens Jr. | Cast: Sidney Poitier, Burt Lancaster, Richard Kiley



11:30 PM | The Murder of Mary Phagan (1988) TCM PREMIERE
The fact-based events surrounding the murder of a young woman at the National Pencil Factory in Atlanta in 1913.
Dir: William Hale | Cast: Richard Jordan, Peter Gallagher, William H. Macy, Jack Lemmon



---------------- EARLY MORNING: DOCUMENTARY ----------------

4:00 AM | Freedom on My Mind (1994)
The dramatic story of the Mississippi Voter Registration project (1961-64) is told through the eyewitness accounts.
Dir: Connie Field | Cast: Endesha Ida Mae Holland, Pam Chude Allen, Marshall Ganz