TCM Schedule for Thursday, March 26, 2020 -- What's On Tonight: Racism in America

In the daylight hours, TCM is celebrating the birth of Sterling Hayden, born Sterling Relyea Walter, on March 25, 1916, in Upper Montclair, New Jersey. Then in prime time, TCM takes a serious turn with a look at racism in America, with a quartet of films, from 1992's Malcolm X, to 1967's Guess Who's Coming To Dinner. Enjoy!



8:45 AM -- SUDDENLY (1954)
Gunmen take over a suburban home to plot a presidential assassination.
Dir: Lewis Allen
Cast: Frank Sinatra, Sterling Hayden, James Gleason
BW-77 mins, CC,

This is the film that Lee Harvey Oswald supposedly watched just a few days before assassinating President John F. Kennedy.


10:15 AM -- TERROR IN A TEXAS TOWN (1958)
A whaler inherits his father's farm but has to fight off a corrupt town boss.
Dir: Joseph H. Lewis
Cast: Sterling Hayden, Sebastian Cabot, Carol Kelly
BW-81 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Nedrick Young, who plays Johnny Crale, actually wrote much of the script, but because he had been blacklisted as a "subversive" during the McCarthy Red Scare period, he was not credited for it.


11:45 AM -- THE STAR (1953)
A faded film star fights to hold on to her past glamour despite failing finances.
Dir: Stuart Heisler
Cast: Bette Davis, Sterling Hayden, Natalie Wood
BW-90 mins, CC,

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Bette Davis

Bette Davis reported that she modeled her performance as the aging, has been, drunken 'star' actress in the film after Joan Crawford, a real actress who was Bette Davis' contemporary, competition, and a lifelong enemy which she publicly ridiculed throughout both their careers; to what extent this is true could be argued, but there's no question about her wearing the famous Crawford ankle strap shoes when she views her disastrous screen test. Joan Crawford was not impressed with Davis' portrayal commenting, "Of course I had heard she was supposed to be playing me, but I didn't believe it. Did you see the picture? It couldn't possibly be me. Bette looked so old, and so dreadfully overweight."


1:30 PM -- CRIME WAVE (1954)
A reformed parolee is caught in the middle when a wounded former cellmate seeks him out for shelter.
Dir: Andre DeToth
Cast: Sterling Hayden, Gene Nelson, Phyllis Kirk
BW-74 mins, CC,

Sterling Hayden's character has the habit of chewing on toothpicks and at one point explains that he does this because although he loves cigarettes, his doctor say he can't have them. Hayden actually had a pack-a-day smoking habit, but director André De Toth wouldn't allow him to smoke on screen in order to get an extra level grumpiness and hostility from Hayden's performance.


2:45 PM -- THE KILLING (1956)
A team of specialists plots a daring racetrack robbery, but they don't reckon with human frailty.
Dir: Stanley Kubrick
Cast: Sterling Hayden, Coleen Gray, Vince Edwards
BW-84 mins, CC,

Once they had convinced Sterling Hayden to come on board, Stanley Kubrick and his producer James B. Harris were able to approach United Artists about securing the extra financing for the film.


4:15 PM -- THE ASPHALT JUNGLE (1950)
A gang of small time crooks plots an elaborate jewel heist.
Dir: John Huston
Cast: Sterling Hayden, Louis Calhern, Jean Hagen
BW-112 mins, CC,

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Sam Jaffe, Best Director -- John Huston, Best Writing, Screenplay -- Ben Maddow and John Huston, and Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Harold Rosson

John Huston first met Sterling Hayden in Washington, DC, during a protest against the House Un-American Activities Committee investigation of "subversives" in the film industry. When the pair met to discuss the project, Huston said to Hayden, "I've admired you for a long time, Sterling. They don't know what to make of a guy like you in this business." Huston was honest with Hayden about his chance for the lead role. Hayden recounts in his autobiography Huston's pitch: "Now, Sterling, I want you to do this part. The studio does not. They want a top name star. They say you mean nothing when it comes to box-office draw--I told them there aren't five names in this town [that] mean a damn thing at the box office. Fortunately, they're not making this picture. I am. Now let me tell you about Dix Handley . . . Dix is you and me and every other man who can't fit into the groove." Rumored to be fighting severe alcohol and psychiatric problems, Hayden landed the role of Handley, his first major starring role, over the objection of MGM chief Dore Schary. Hayden's gritty performance proved many Hollywood naysayers flat wrong. For instance, Hayden himself was nervous about the climactic scene in the picture, when Dix breaks down in tears in front of Jean Hagen. According to the director, though, Hayden did not have anything to worry about. After the actor delivered the scene beautifully, Huston took Hayden aside and said, "The next time somebody says you can't act, tell them to call Huston."


6:15 PM -- DR. STRANGELOVE OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB (1964)
A mad United States General orders an air strike against Russia.
Dir: Stanley Kubrick
Cast: Peter Sellers, George C Scott, Sterling Hayden
BW-95 mins, CC,

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Peter Sellers, Best Director -- Stanley Kubrick, Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium -- Stanley Kubrick, Peter George and Terry Southern, and Best Picture

The character of Gen. Buck Turgidson (George C. Scott) was patterned after the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, Gen. Curtis LeMay, who was renowned for his extreme anti-Communist views and who once stated that he would not be afraid to start a nuclear war with the Soviet Union if he was elected president. Similarly, Brig. Gen. Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) was patterned after Gen. Thomas S. Power, LeMay's protégé and successor as Chief of the Strategic Air Command. When briefed on a RAND proposal to limit U.S. nuclear strikes on Soviet cities at the beginning of a war, Power responded, "Restraint! Why are you so concerned with saving their lives? The whole idea is to kill the bastards! . . . At the end of the war, if there are two Americans and one Russian, we win!"



TCM PRIMETIME - WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: RACISM IN AMERICA



8:00 PM -- MALCOLM X (1992)
Biographical epic of the controversial and influential Black Nationalist leader, from his early life and career as a small-time gangster, to his ministry as a member of the Nation of Islam.
Dir: Spike Lee
Cast: Denzel Washington, William E Kilson, Phyllis Yvonne Stickney
BW-202 mins, CC,

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Denzel Washington, and Best Costume Design -- Ruth E. Carter

Initially, Spike Lee requested $33 million for this film, a reasonable sum considering its size and scope, but much more than his previous budgets. Because Lee's five previous films combined had grossed less than $100 million domestically, Warner Bros. offered $20 million for a two-hour fifteen-minute film, plus $8 million from Largo Entertainment for the foreign rights. When the film went $5 million over budget, Lee kicked in most of his salary, but the financiers shut down post-production. Lee went public with his battles, and raised funds from celebrity friends, including Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jordan and Bill Cosby, to regain control of the project. After a positive screening of a rough cut, Warner Bros. kicked in more funds.


11:30 PM -- NOTHING BUT A MAN (1964)
A black man and his school-teacher wife face discriminatory challenges in 1960s America.
Dir: Michael Roemer
Cast: Ivan Dixon, Abbey Lincoln, Gloria Foster
BW-91 mins,

Sidney Poitier turned down the role of Duff Anderson, eventually played by Ivan Dixon.


1:30 AM -- ONE POTATO, TWO POTATO (1964)
A white divorcee's marriage to a black man could cost her custody of her daughter.
Dir: Larry Peerce
Cast: Barbara Barrie, Bernie Hamilton, Richard Mulligan
BW-77 mins,

Nominee for Oscars for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay - Written Directly for the Screen -- Orville H. Hampton (screenplay/story) and Raphael Hayes (screenplay)

Intermarriage between African-Americans and Caucasians was illegal in 14 states until the US Supreme Court decision Loving v. Virginia was handed down on June 12, 1967. The court unanimously ruled that anti-miscegenation marriage laws were unconstitutional. In his opinion, Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote, "The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men. Marriage is one of the 'basic civil rights of man, fundamental to our very existence and survival. To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State." Interestingly, many anti-miscegenation marriage laws were enacted in the wake of African-American heavyweight champion Jack Johnson's marriages to two Caucasian women, as pointed out in Ken Burns' documentary Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson (2004). Johnson married his white mistress Etta Duryea in late 1910 or early 1911, then married another white woman, Lucille Cameron, soon after his first wife's September 1911 suicide. The two marriages outraged white America, and Johnson and Cameron fled America for Canada and then Europe under threat of lynching. Their relationship was fictionalized in the stage play, and subsequent movie, The Great White Hope (1970), for which the Caucasian playwright Howard Sackler won the Pulitzer Prize. The 1913 Massachusetts anti-miscegenation marriage law, which did not recognize any marriage made in a state forbidding the marriage of different classifications of people (the law left unspoken the racial issue of black and white; in Virginia, blacks were allowed to marry other, non-white "races" ), was considered inoperative after Loving v. Virginia until in 2005, then-governor Mitt Romney used it as the basis to deny out-of-state couples the right to wed in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts after the Bay State's Supreme Court legalized gay marriage.


3:30 AM -- GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER (1967)
An aging couple's liberal principles are tested when their daughter announces her engagement to a black doctor.
Dir: Stanley Kramer
Cast: Spencer Tracy, Sidney Poitier, Katharine Hepburn
C-108 mins, CC,

Winner of Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Katharine Hepburn (Katharine Hepburn was not present at the awards ceremony. George Cukor accepted the award on her behalf.), and Best Writing, Story and Screenplay - Written Directly for the Screen -- William Rose

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Spencer Tracy (Posthumously), Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Cecil Kellaway, Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Beah Richards, Best Director -- Stanley Kramer, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration -- Robert Clatworthy and Frank Tuttle, Best Film Editing -- Robert C. Jones, Best Music, Scoring of Music, Adaptation or Treatment -- Frank De Vol, and Best Picture

In the scene near the end where Spencer Tracy gives his memorable soliloquy, Katharine Hepburn can be seen crying in the background. This was not acting: she knew how gravely ill her longtime lover was and was moved by his remarks about how true love endures through the years.


5:30 AM -- MGM PARADE SHOW #30 (1955)
Walter Pidgeon discusses Greta Garbo's early career; Irene Papas introduces behind-the-scenes footage from "Tribute to a Badman."
BW-25 mins,