TCM Schedule for Thursday, April 15, 2021 -- What's On Tonight: Oscar From A to Z

It's the start of week three of 31 Days of Oscar. Today schedule covers Libel, Lies, Life, Lili(es), Little, Logan and Lolita! Enjoy!


6:00 AM -- Libel (1959)
1h 40m | Drama | TV-PG
A former POW is accused of being an impostor.
Director: Anthony Asquith
Cast: Dirk Bogarde, Olivia De Havilland, Paul Massie

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Sound -- A.W. Watkins (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer London Sound Department)

The original Broadway production of "Libel", produced in 1935, was directed by Otto Preminger, years before he made his Hollywood debut as a movie director.


8:00 AM -- Libeled Lady (1936)
1h 38m | Comedy | TV-G
When an heiress sues a newspaper, the editor hires a reporter to compromise her.
Director: Jack Conway
Cast: Jean Harlow, William Powell, Myrna Loy

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Picture

Jean Harlow and William Powell were a couple at the time the film was made. She desperately wanted the part of Connie Allenbury (Myrna Loy's role) so that she and Powell's character would end up together. The director and MGM execs would not heed her demand, however. They always intended on the film being another Powell/Loy vehicle and knew that audiences wanted Powell and Loy to end up together in their films. Harlow was very disappointed but had already signed on to the film and had no choice but to play the role of Gladys Benton. In the end, she liked the film and agreed that she was more suited to the role of Gladys.


10:00 AM -- Lies My Father Told Me (1975)
1h 43m | Drama | TV-14
An elderly man tries to help his neglected grandson come of age.
Director: Ján Kadár
Cast: Len Birman, Marilyn Lightstone, Yossi Yadin

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Writing, Original Screenplay -- Ted Allan

Zero Mostel was originally scheduled to appear in this movie.


12:00 PM -- The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972)
2h | Comedy | TV-14
A self-appointed judge cleans up a corrupt western town twice.
Director: John Huston
Cast: Paul Newman, Roy Jenson, Gary Combs

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Music, Original Song -- Maurice Jarre (music), Alan Bergman (lyrics) and Marilyn Bergman for the song "Marmalade, Molasses & Honey"

John Huston acknowledged the film's lack of success in his autobiography, "An Open Book" writing that it was not exactly a failure, " . . . but you could hardly call it a roaring success. It didn't take off, as they say. Still, there were some very good things in it." Huston felt that the story was " . . . in the fine old American tradition of the Tall Tale, the Whopper, the yarn peopled with outrageous characters capable of prodigious and highly improbable deeds. At the same time, it said something important about frontier life and the loss of America's innocence." Huston owned up to the scattershot nature of the storytelling, and wrote that "to heighten the effect, I made deliberate use of a technique that has since become much more popular, letting all sorts of events occur without logical justification. Things appear, things happen, funny, sad, comic, dramatic. Ludicrous one minute and sober the next".


2:15 PM -- The Life of Emile Zola (1937)
2h 3m | Drama | TV-G
The famed writer risks his reputation to defend a Jewish army officer accused of treason.
Director: William Dieterle
Cast: Paul Muni, Joseph Schildkraut, Gale Sondergaard

Winner of Oscars for Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Joseph Schildkraut, Best Writing, Screenplay -- Heinz Herald, Geza Herczeg and Norman Reilly Raine, and Best Picture

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Paul Muni, Best Director -- William Dieterle, Best Writing, Original Story -- Heinz Herald and Geza Herczeg, Best Art Direction -- Anton Grot, Best Sound, Recording -- Nathan Levinson (Warner Bros. SSD), Best Assistant Director -- Russell Saunders, and Best Music, Score -- Leo F. Forbstein (head of department) with score by Max Steiner.

Early in the film, Zola burns a few books to warm his drafty apartment. When Cezanne opens the window to let out the smoke, Zola asks him to close the windows to avoid a draft. The real Émile Zola in fact died of carbon monoxide poisoning caused by a stopped chimney. This might have been the writer's attempt to foreshadow Zola's death at the end.


4:15 PM -- Life with Father (1947)
1h 58m | Comedy | TV-G
A straitlaced turn-of-the-century father presides over a family of boys and the mother who really rules the roost.
Director: Michael Curtiz
Cast: William Powell, Irene Dunne, Elizabeth Taylor

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- William Powell, Best Cinematography, Color -- J. Peverell Marley and William V. Skall, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color -- Robert M. Haas and George James Hopkins, and Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture -- Max Steiner

The original play, "Life With Father", is the longest-running Broadway non-musical play ever. It played on Broadway for nearly eight years (3,224 performances), from 1939 to 1947, and held the record for 25 years until "Fiddler on the Roof" surpassed it. In the play, author Howard Lindsay played Father, Dorothy Stickney was Vinnie, and Teresa Wright was Mary. The movie version was released in 1947, the year the Broadway run ended.


6:30 PM -- Lili (1953)
1h 21m | Romance | TV-G
A French orphan gets a job with a carnival puppet show.
Director: Charles Walters
Cast: Leslie Caron, Mel Ferrer, Jean Pierre Aumont

Winner of an Oscar for Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture -- Bronislau Kaper

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Leslie Caron, Best Director -- Charles Walters, Best Writing, Screenplay -- Helen Deutsch, Best Cinematography, Color -- Robert H. Planck, and Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color -- Cedric Gibbons, Paul Groesse, Edwin B. Willis and Arthur Krams

The earliest known appearance of the "smiley" emoticon, : - ), was in an ad for this film in the New York Herald Tribune on 10 March 1953, page 20, columns 4-6. The film opened nationwide, and this ad possibly ran in many newspapers. It read: Today You'll laugh : - ) You'll cry : - ( You'll love < 3 'Lili'" This should not be confused with the graphical yellow "smiley face", which was first drawn by Harvey Ball some 10 years later.



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



8:00 PM -- Lilies of the Field (1963)
1h 34m | Drama | TV-PG
An itinerant handyman in the Southwest gets a new outlook on life when he helps a group of nuns build a new chapel.
Director: Ralph Nelson
Cast: Sidney Poitier, Lilia Skala, Lisa Mann

Winner of an Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Sidney Poitier (Sidney Poitier became the first African American to win the Best Actor Oscar and the only one until Denzel Washington for Training Day (2001), 38 years later. By a strange coincidence, Washington won the Best Actor award on the same night when Poitier received an Honorary Oscar.)

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Lilia Skala, Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium -- James Poe, Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Ernest Haller, and Best Picture

The film was shot on Linda Ronstadt's father's small ranch. There was no art director, but the Property Master, Robert Eaton, actually supervised the construction of the chapel, adjacent to existing ranch buildings. The interiors of the Nun's abode were filmed in these buildings. Eaton rented a prop organ, furniture, and other set dressing and hand props from the Hollywood Cinema Mercantile Property House, located on Santa Monica Blvd near Paramount Studios. Eaton drove a rental truck carrying all the props to Arizona for the shoot, returning all the props after the film's completion. Watching the main Nun's interior abode, the prop organ stands against one wall, with a painting hanging on an adjacent wall. There is absolutely no continuity in where the prop table and chairs, related organ and hanging picture belong. The props are choreographed to the actors' motivation or movement in each scene.


10:00 PM -- Little Caesar (1930)
1h 20m | Drama | TV-PG
A small-time hood shoots his way to the top, but how long can he stay there?
Director: Mervyn Leroy
Cast: Edward G. Robinson, Douglas Fairbanks, Glenda Farrell

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Writing, Adaptation -- Francis Edward Faragoh and Robert N. Lee

There were two versions of Rico's final words filmed, "Mother of God, is this the end of Rico?" and "Mother of mercy, is this the end of Rico?" Although "Mother of God" was taken directly from W.R. Burnett's novel, it was decided the line was potentially blasphemous coming from a murderous gangster and "mother of mercy" was used instead.


11:30 PM -- A Little Romance (1979)
1h 48m | Comedy | TV-14
Teenagers elope with the help of an aging pickpocket.
Director: George Roy Hill
Cast: Laurence Olivier, Diane Lane, John Pepper

Winner of an Oscar for Best Music, Original Score -- Georges Delerue

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium -- Allan Burns

Sir Laurence Olivier wanted to do his own stunts despite his age and recent health problems. Director George Roy Hill had a specially designed bicycle built for him, which had a motor that drove it, making the cyclist appear to be pedaling, but Olivier wouldn't stand for this, and when Hill was away, he got on the real bike and rode down a hill on his own, proving his cycling competency.


1:30 AM -- Logan's Run (1975)
1h 58m | Drama | TV-MA
A police officer in the future uncovers the deadly secret behind a society that worships youth.
Director: Michael Anderson
Cast: Michael York, Richard Jordan, Jenny Agutter

Winner of an Oscar Special Achievement Award for L.B. Abbott, Glen Robinson and Matthew Yuricich for visual effects

Nominee for Oscars for Best Cinematography -- Ernest Laszlo, and Best Art Direction-Set Decoration -- Dale Hennesy and Robert De Vestel

As this movie was made during the "sexual revolution" of the late 1960s and 1970s, slight nods to new sexual freedom can be seen. When Logan returns home, just after he and Francis have killed a runner, he seeks "companionship" on the circuit. The first companion offered is male, and it is clearly not an accident. Logan politely smiles at the young man, shakes his head, and tries again. When Jessica arrives from the circuit, and isn't immediately interested in coupling, Logan asks whether she prefers women. It was quite unusual for big studio movies at the time to depict homosexuality as normal or even common, especially since it had only been demoted as a mental disorder three years before.


3:45 AM -- Lolita (1962)
2h 33m | Romance | TV-14
A professor finds himself in a struggle of temptation of desire for a young teen nymphet.
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Cast: James Mason, Sue Lyon, Shelley Winters

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium -- Vladimir Nabokov

For the party scene Stanley Kubrick gave James Mason an interesting acting exercise. He said to Mason "I want you to wear a white suit in this scene and, as Humbert, you shall be charming witty and urbane to everyone. But if anyone gets near or touches that jacket, I want you to look at them as if you're going to tear their arms off."