TCM Schedule for Thursday, April 1, 2021 -- What's On Tonight: Oscar From A to Z

It's the beginning of that most glorious month of Oscars, delayed slightly due to the pandemic, of course. This year, TCM is featuring their usual wide range of Oscar-nominated and Oscar-winning films, but in alphabetical order. Today begins with Tracy and Hepburn in 1949's Adam's Rib, and concludes in the early hours of tomorrow with Greta Garbo as Anna Christie (1930).
Enjoy!


6:00 AM -- Adam's Rib (1949)
1h 41m | Comedy | TV-G
A happily-married, middle-aged husband and wife strain their marriage while serving on opposite sides of a criminal case.
Director: George Cukor
Cast: Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Judy Holliday

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay -- Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin

The script called for Kip Lurie to write a song about his devotion to Amanda. Garson Kanin wrote a song for the moment, but nobody liked it. When he dared Katharine Hepburn to find a better song, she asked Cole Porter to do it. At the time, the leading lady's name was "Madeleine." Porter turned Hepburn down, saying it was impossible to do a song about a woman with that name. Then he suggested changing her name to Amanda. Eight days later, he presented them with a new song, "Farewell, Amanda." It was actually a re-working of "So Long, Samoa," a song he had written in 1940 and never used. Rather than charge MGM for his services, he asked that they make a large donation to the Red Cross.


8:00 AM -- The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
1h 42m | Action | TV-G
The bandit king of Sherwood Forest leads his Merry Men in a battle against the corrupt Prince John.
Director: Michael Curtiz
Cast: Errol Flynn, Olivia De Havilland, Basil Rathbone

Winner of Oscars for Best Art Direction -- Carl Jules Weyl, Best Film Editing -- Ralph Dawson, and Best Music, Original Score -- Erich Wolfgang Korngold

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Picture

The ending that exists now in the film is not the one that was originally written. In the original ending, King Richard and his forces help battle Prince John's and Guy of Gisburne's forces outside the castle--this ending was scrapped because it was too expensive to film. In the back-up ending, Prince John and Guy of Gisbourne's forces chased Robin Hood's and King Richard's forces into Sherwood Forest and the climax took place there. This second ending was really never satisfactory, and was also scrapped. Finally, a third ending was written, in which the climactic battle takes place inside the Castle of Nottingham. Now King Richard's forces could be pared down to a handful of faithful retainers, and the new ending proved to be less expensive to shoot. To prepare the audience for the new ending, the abbot's scenes were given to the Bishop of the Black Canons.


10:00 AM -- After the Thin Man (1936)
1h 50m | Comedy | TV-G
Married sleuths Nick and Nora Charles try to clear Nora's cousin of a murder charge.
Director: W. S. Van Dyke
Cast: William Powell, Myrna Loy, James Stewart

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Writing, Screenplay -- Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett

Aunt Katherine's old butler has a doddering walk. Greeting Nick, he says, "Walk this way, sir," and Nick follows by copying his walk comedically. This gag is more familiar in Monty Python and Young Frankenstein (1974), the latter inspiring Aerosmith's hit single "Walk This Way", but Powell did it first in this 1936 film.


12:00 PM -- Agnes Of God (1985)
1h 38m | Drama | TV-14
A psychiatrist tries to unravel the case of a young nun discovered with a dead baby.
Director: Norman Jewison
Cast: Jane Fonda, Anne Bancroft, Meg Tilly

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Anne Bancroft, Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Meg Tilly, and Best Music, Original Score -- Georges Delerue

Built prior to shooting, the graveyard, crypt, gazebo and vegetable gardens all became part of cinematographer Sven Nykvist's vast visual resources. The director of photography said he approached 'Agnes of God' as if it were shot in black and white. This was necessary, he said, no, only because of the lack of color in the nuns' costumes, but because of the lack of color in the Canadian landscape, which very much reminded him of Sweden.


2:00 PM -- Air Force (1943)
2h 4m | Drama | TV-G
A bomber crew sees World War II action over the Pacific.
Director: Howard Hawks
Cast: John Ridgely, Gig Young, Arthur Kennedy

Winner of an Oscar for Best Film Editing -- George Amy

Nominee for Oscars for Best Writing, Original Screenplay -- Dudley Nichols, Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- James Wong Howe, Elmer Dyer and Charles A. Marshall, and Best Effects, Special Effects -- Hans F. Koenekamp (photographic), Rex Wimpy (photographic) and Nathan Levinson (sound)

John Garfield plays aerial gunner Joe Winocki of the crew of the Mary-Ann, which stops at doomed Wake Island early in the film before flying on to the Philippines. In "Pulp Fiction", when Christopher Walken is telling Butch Coolidge about how his father's watch was passed on from previous generations of Coolidge men, he tells Butch about how his grandfather was a Marine at Wake Island who asked an aerial gunner named Winocki on a plane passing through to take the watch with him to give to the Coolidge family.


4:15 PM -- Algiers (1938)
1h 35m | Drama | TV-PG
A thief on the run from the law risks his life for love.
Director: John Cromwell
Cast: Sigrid Gurie, Charles Boyer, Hedy Lamarr

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Charles Boyer, Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Gene Lockhart, Best Cinematography -- James Wong Howe, and Best Art Direction -- Alexander Toluboff

Charles Boyer's often repeated, and parodied, line "Come with me to the Casbah" was in the trailers but was never actually said in the film. According to an article in "Smithsonian Magazine" (July 2007), the line came from an impersonation of Boyer by the cartoon character Pepé Le Pew in The Cats Bah (1954), Warner Bros. cartoon.


6:00 PM -- Alice Adams (1935)
1h 40m | Drama | TV-G
A small-town girl with social ambitions falls in love with a local playboy.
Director: George Stevens
Cast: Katharine Hepburn, Fred Macmurray, Fred Stone

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Katharine Hepburn, and Best Picture

There was a disagreement among Katharine Hepburn and George Stevens about the post-party scene. The script called for Hepburn to fall onto the bed and break into sobs, but Stevens wanted her to walk to the window and cry, with the rain falling outside. Hepburn could not produce the tears required, so she asked Stevens if she could do the scene as scripted. Stevens yelled furiously at Hepburn, which did the trick and the scene was filmed Stevens' way, and Hepburn's tears are real.



WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: DAYTIME & PRIMETIME THEME -- OSCARS FROM A TO Z



8:00 PM -- All the King's Men (1949)
1h 49m | Drama | TV-PG
A backwoods politician rises to the top only to become corrupted.
Director: Robert Rossen
Cast: Broderick Crawford, John Ireland, Joanne Dru

Winner of Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Broderick Crawford, Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Mercedes McCambridge, and Best Picture

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- John Ireland, Best Director -- Robert Rossen, Best Writing, Screenplay -- Robert Rossen, and Best Film Editing -- Robert Parrish and Al Clark

Al Clark did the original cut but had trouble putting all the footage that Robert Rossen had shot into a coherent narrative. Robert Parrish was brought onboard by Rossen and Harry Cohn, to see what he could do. Since Rossen had a hard time cutting anything he shot, after several weeks of tinkering and cutting, the movie was still over 250 minutes long. Cohn was prepared to release it in this version after one more preview, but this threw Rossen into a panic, so Rossen came up with a novel solution. Rossen told Parrish to "[s]elect what you consider to be the centre of each scene, put the film in the synch machine and wind down a hundred feet before and a hundred feet after, and chop it off, regardless of what's going on. Cut through dialogue, music, anything. Then, when you're finished, we'll run the picture and see what we've got". When Parrish was done with what Rossen had suggested, they were left with a 109-minute movie that was more compelling to watch. After the film won its Academy Award for Best Picture, Cohn repeatedly gave Parrish credit for saving the film, even though Parrish only did what Rossen told him to do.


10:00 PM -- Almost Famous (2000)
2h 2m | Comedy | TV-MA
A high-school boy gets the chance to report on a rising rock band's tour.
Director: Cameron Crowe
Cast: Cameron Crowe, Kate Hudson, Billy Crudup

Winner of an Oscar for Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen -- Cameron Crowe

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Kate Hudson, Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Frances McDormand, and Best Film Editing -- Joe Hutshing and Saar Klein

Dennis Hope warns the band "If you think Mick Jagger is going to be touring when he's 50..." As of 2020, at age 77, he's still active and touring.


12:15 AM -- An American in Paris (1951)
1h 53m | Romance | TV-PG
An American artist finds love in Paris but almost loses it to conflicting loyalties.
Director: Vincente Minnelli
Cast: Gene Kelly, Leslie Caron, Oscar Levant

Winner of Oscars for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay -- Alan Jay Lerner, Best Cinematography, Color -- Alfred Gilks and John Alton, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color -- Cedric Gibbons, E. Preston Ames, Edwin B. Willis and F. Keogh Gleason, Best Costume Design, Color -- Orry-Kelly, Walter Plunkett and Irene Sharaff, Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture -- Johnny Green and Saul Chaplin, and Best Picture

Nominee for Oscars for Best Director -- Vincente Minnelli, and Best Film Editing -- Adrienne Fazan

George Gershwin wrote his jazz-influenced orchestral piece "An American in Paris" while visiting the latter city in the 1920s during the raucous period known as the Jazz Age. Gershwin stated in interviews that the piece was intended to embody the hedonism and gaiety of the 1920s era which the French called "les Années folles" (the crazy years). However, for the 1951 film, screenwriter Alan Jay Lerner set the film in the culturally conservative 1940s, over twenty years later. Several critics lamented this change.


2:15 AM -- Anatomy of a Murder (1959)
2h 40m | Drama | TV-PG
A small-town lawyer gets the case of a lifetime when a military man avenges an attack on his wife.
Director: Otto Preminger
Cast: James Stewart, Lee Remick, Ben Gazzara

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- James Stewart, Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Arthur O'Connell, Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- George C. Scott, Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium -- Wendell Mayes, Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Sam Leavitt, Best Film Editing -- Louis R. Loeffler, and Best Picture

This film features the first and only acting performance by Joseph N. Welch. Welch (October 22, 1890 – October 6, 1960) was an American lawyer who served as the chief counsel for the United States Army while it was under investigation for Communist activities by Senator Joseph McCarthy's Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, an investigation known as the Army–McCarthy hearings. His confrontation with McCarthy during the hearings, in which he famously asked McCarthy "At long last, have you left no sense of decency?" is seen as a turning point in the history of McCarthyism.


5:15 AM -- Anna Christie (1930)
1h 14m | Drama | TV-PG
Eugene O'Neill's classic about a romantic prostitute trying to run away from her past.
Director: Clarence Brown
Cast: Greta Garbo, Charles Bickford, George F. Marion

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Greta Garbo, Best Director -- Clarence Brown, and Best Cinematography -- William H. Daniels

Greta Garbo's first sound film, publicized with the slogan "Garbo Talks!"