TCM Schedule for Thursday, April 16, 2020 -- TCM Classic Film Festival -- The Home Version

In the daylight hours, we'll wandering the islands of the south Pacific. Then in prime time, TCM begins the home edition of the TCM Classic Film Festival.

TCM CLASSIC FILM FESTIVAL 2020: SPECIAL HOME EDITION

The 11th TCM Classic Film Festival, originally scheduled for this month, was canceled due to growing concerns around public health that is currently affecting the world. But the Festival spirit continues, and the show must go on! This month, we invite you to celebrate at home with four days of film screenings and special coverage from previous years of our Festival, along with some that had been scheduled to screen at this year's 2020 event. Below are a few highlights.

April 16:
A Star Is Born (1954) was the opening night film at the first TCM Classic Film Festival in 2010. Judy Garland, in a performance many thought to be Oscar-worthy, stars in this musical drama about a performer who rises to glory in the movie world as the career of her film-star husband (James Mason) fades. George Cukor directed from a script by Moss Hart, and the songs include the Garland classic "The Man That Got Away" by Harold Arlen and Ira Gershwin.

Luise Rainer: Live from the TCM Classic Film Festival (2011) is an interview by Robert Osborne taped live at the first TCM Classic Film Festival in 2010, when Rainer was 100 years old. She was the only back-to-back Oscar winner as Best Actress, having won for The Great Ziegfeld (1936) and The Good Earth (1937). TCM is showing the latter film, an adaptation of the Pearl S. Buck novel in which Rainer plays the Chinese peasant O-Lan.

Neptune's Daughter (1949), one of Esther Williams' most enjoyable swim-musicals, became the first poolside movie at a TCM Festival, with Williams and costar Betty Garrett in attendance for the screening. Red Skelton and Ricardo Montalban also costarred in the film, which introduced the classic holiday song "Baby, It's Cold Outside."

. . .

by Roger Fristoe

Enjoy!



6:00 AM -- DON'T GO NEAR THE WATER (1957)
Navy office workers scheme to build a recreation hall on a remote Pacific island.
Dir: Charles Walters
Cast: Glenn Ford, Gia Scala, Earl Holliman
C-107 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Three years earlier Russ Tamblyn and Jeff Richards played two of the Pontipee brothers in "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers".


8:00 AM -- THE NARROW CORNER (1933)
A man on the run for murder tries to escape fate in the Pacific islands.
Dir: Alfred E. Green
Cast: Douglas Fairbanks, Patricia Ellis, Ralph Bellamy
BW-69 mins,

Both after the opening and before the ending credits, the following quotation of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus - (121-180), Meditations. iii. 10 - is depicted on-screen: "Short, therefore, is man's life; and narrow is the corner of the earth wherein he dwells."


9:15 AM -- THE LITTLE HUT (1957)
A neglected wife is shipwrecked on a desert island with her husband and her would-be lover.
Dir: Mark Robson
Cast: Ava Gardner, Stewart Granger, David Niven
C-90 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Ava Gardner says in her biography that she did not like the film. But she had to play in it because of her contract with MGM.


11:00 AM -- THE LOST CONTINENT (1968)
When a tramp steamer is attacked by a mass of living seaweed, the occupants are forced to take refuge on a strange island.
Dir: Michael Carreras
Cast: Eric Porter, Hildegard Knef, Suzanna Leigh
C-83 mins, CC,

In the first interior boat scene, the Doctor is reading "Uncharted Seas" by Dennis Wheatley, the book on which the film is based.


12:45 PM -- MISS ROBIN CRUSOE (1953)
A shipwrecked woman fights to survive on a desert island.
Dir: Eugene Frenke
Cast: Amanda Blake, George Nader, Rosalind Hayes
C-74 mins, CC,

Legendary German director Ewald Andre Dupont (aka E.A. Dupont) was originally hired to direct the film but was fired for drunkenness.


2:15 PM -- LAST OF THE PAGANS (1935)
Two South Sea islanders fight a series of natural disasters to be together.
Dir: Richard Thorpe
Cast: Mala, Lotus, Telo A. Tematua
BW-70 mins, CC,

50,000 feet of underwater footage was shot for this film, with a final total of 60 reels shot during the 22 weeks of production. It was eventually released as an 8-reel feature.


3:30 PM -- FROM HELL IT CAME (1957)
After he's framed for murder and executed, a South Seas prince returns as a vengeful tree spirit.
Dir: Johnny Greenwald
Cast: Tod Andrews, Tina Carver, Linda Watkins
BW-71 mins, CC,

Stan Lee got the idea for Groot from this movie.


5:00 PM -- ISLE OF THE DEAD (1945)
The inhabitants of a Balkans island under quarantine fear that one of their number is a vampire.
Dir: Mark Robson
Cast: Boris Karloff, Ellen Drew, Marc Cramer
BW-72 mins, CC,

A vorvolakas (also vrykolakas) occurs in Greek folklore as an undead creature capable of causing harm to the living. Its characteristics are similar to many other characters of legend, but it is most closely associated with vampires. In Hollywood movies such as Dracula (1931), the word vampire is often translated to Greek as vrykolakas. However, traditional vorvolakas are not noted for blood-drinking.


6:30 PM -- THE DEVIL-DOLL (1936)
A Devil's Island escapee shrinks murderous slaves and sells them to his victims as dolls.
Dir: Tod Browning
Cast: Lionel Barrymore, Maureen O'Sullivan, Frank Lawton
BW-78 mins, CC,

Madame Mandilip's special dolls are costumed as members of vicious street gangs known as the Apache (pronounced ah-PAHSH), who were involved in theft, prostitution, and the occasional murder in pre-World War I Paris. The dolls even perform the Apache dance popularized by the gangs, in which extremely close steps alternate with seemingly brutal punches, kicks, hair-pulling, spins, and throws; it was usually danced to the Valse des rayons (aka Valse chaloupée) composed by Jacques Offenbach. In the 1930s and 1940s, this dance was still performed by professional dancers and can be seen in several films and even cartoons of the period.



TCM PRIMETIME - WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: THE TCM CLASSIC FILM FESTIVAL--THE HOME VERSION



8:00 PM -- A STAR IS BORN (1954)
A falling star marries the newcomer he's helping reach the top.
Dir: George Cukor
Cast: Judy Garland, James Mason, Jack Carson
C-176 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- James Mason, Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Judy Garland (Judy Garland couldn't attend the ceremony because she was giving birth to her third child and only son, Joey Luft. Even though she did not win the Academy Award she always stated that Joey was the best "Academy Award" she ever received that night.), Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color -- Malcolm C. Bert, Gene Allen, Irene Sharaff and George James Hopkins, Best Costume Design, Color -- Jean Louis, Mary Ann Nyberg and Irene Sharaff, Best Music, Original Song -- Harold Arlen (music) and Ira Gershwin (lyrics) for the song "The Man that Got Away", and Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture -- Ray Heindorf

Groucho Marx called Judy Garland's not winning an Oscar for A Star Is Born (1954) "the biggest robbery since Brink's." Hedda Hopper later reported that her loss to Grace Kelly for The Country Girl (1954) was the result of the closest Oscar vote up till that time that didn't end in a tie, with just six votes separating the two. In any event, it was a heartbreak from which she never really recovered and which has remained a matter of some controversy ever since.


11:00 PM -- METROPOLIS (1926)
In this silent film, a city of the future is threatened with destruction when a wealthy corporate leader enlists a mad scientist to put down labor reformers.
Dir: Fritz Lang
Cast: Brigitte Helm, Gustav Fröhlich, Alfred Abel
BW-148 mins,

Much to Fritz Lang's dismay, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels were big fans of the film. Goebbels met with Lang and told him that he could be made an honorary Aryan despite his Jewish background. Goebbels told him "Mr. Lang, we decide who is Jewish and who is not." Lang left for Paris that very night.


1:45 AM -- LUISE RAINER - LIVE FROM THE TCM CLASSIC FILM FESTIVAL (2011)
The legendary actress talks with TCM host Robert Osborne during the TCM Classic Film Festival.
Dir: Sean Cameron
C-29 mins, CC,

Features clips from The Great Ziegfeld (1936), The Good Earth (1937), The Emperor's Candlesticks (1937), Big City (1937), The Great Waltz (1938), and Dramatic School (1938).


2:30 AM -- THE GOOD EARTH (1937)
Epic adaptation of the Pearl Buck classic about Chinese farmers battling the elements.
Dir: Sidney Franklin
Cast: Paul Muni, Luise Rainer, Walter Connolly
BW-138 mins, CC,

Winner of Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Luise Rainer (Luise Rainer became the first actress and first performer to win consecutive awards for lead roles.), and Best Cinematography -- Karl Freund

Nominee for Oscars for Best Director -- Sidney Franklin, Best Film Editing -- Basil Wrangell, and Best Picture

American-born Chinese actress Anna May Wong desperately wanted the role of O-Lan. Being a close friend of author Pearl S. Buck helped. She tested for the role, but producer Irving Thalberg was unsatisfied. Also, since Paul Muni, a Caucasian actor, had already been cast in the lead, Thalberg knew he couldn't cast Wong as Muni's wife. The Hays Code prohibited actors of different races from playing husband/wife couples on film (this was to avoid offending white audiences in the strictly segregated American South, where there were stringent laws against mixed-race marriages). Thalberg offered her the "vamp" role of Lotus, but a distraught Anna May turned it down.


5:00 AM -- NEPTUNE'S DAUGHTER (1949)
Mistaken identity complicates a polo player's romance with a bathing suit designer.
Dir: Edward Buzzell
Cast: Esther Williams, Red Skelton, Ricardo Montalban
C-93 mins, CC,

Winner of an Oscar for Best Music, Original Song -- Frank Loesser for the song "Baby, It's Cold Outside"

A specially built, one-of-a-kind piano had been used during the early filming, but halfway through production it mysteriously disappeared from the set. Metro boss Louis B. Mayer was very upset at the lack of security and the increased production costs this would mean. Red Skelton told the studio head that he had an identical piano at home and would be willing to rent it to the studio. Mayer didn't believe him until Skelton drove him to his apartment to see it. An ecstatic Mayer offered $50 per diem for its use, but Red held out for $1000 a day. Faced with the prospect of keeping production waiting while a new one was built to order or reshooting the earlier scenes, Mayer capitulated. It never occurred to him that Skelton had stolen it with the aid of stagehands with whom he split the money.