TCM Schedule for Friday, September 24, 2021 -- What's On Tonight: Mellencamp

In the daylight hours, we're having a Wild Weekend! Then in prime time, it's the second of two nights of John Mellancamp as the guest programmer. Enjoy!


6:00 AM -- Get Yourself a College Girl (1964)
1h 26m | Musical | TV-PG
A music publisher courts a student songwriter at a ski resort.
Director: Sidney Miller
Cast: Mary Ann Mobley, Chad Everett, Joan O'Brien

Debut of actresses Mary Ann Mobley and Chanin Hale.


7:30 AM -- When the Boys Meet the Girls (1965)
1h 50m | Musical | TV-PG
A wealthy playboy gives up partying to help a Nevada farm girl make her ranch a success.
Director: Alvin Ganzer
Cast: Connie Francis, Harve Presnell, Herman's Hermits

About an hour and fifteen minutes into the film, Liberace performs his own composition, the hilariously suggestive "Aruba Liberace," in which he and the boys in the band repeatedly interrupt the melody to do sexual-sounding grunts in unison. A mere description cannot do the song justice - it must truly be seen to be disbelieved!


9:30 AM -- The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967)
2h 4m | Musical | TV-G
Twin sisters who each want to find romance befriend a couple of visiting carnival workers.
Director: Jacques Demy
Cast: Catherine Deneuve, George Chakiris, Françoise Dorléac

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Music, Score of a Musical Picture (Original or Adaptation) -- Michel Legrand and Jacques Demy

The scene where George Chakiris, Grover Dale, and company dance on a bridge was shot on the Rochefort-Martrou Transporter Bridge, one of less than 24 transporter bridges ever built. A transporter bridge (also ferry bridge or aerial transfer bridge) is a type of movable bridge that carries a segment of roadway across a river. It is one of only 12 that continue to be used as of 2014.


11:45 AM -- Having a Wild Weekend (1965)
1h 31m | Musical | TV-PG
Advertising executives turn a model's romance with a stunt man into a publicity stunt.
Director: John Boorman
Cast: Dave Clark, Barbara Ferris, Lenny Davidson

One of countless mid-sixties British "rock-and-roll band" movies hoping to replicate the smashing success of the Beatles' 1964 screen debut A Hard Day's Night (1964). This one comes closer to the mark than most.


1:30 PM -- The Cool Ones (1967)
1h 38m | Musical | TV-PG
A rock promoter creates a popular singing duo and tries to run their lives.
Director: Gene Nelson
Cast: Roddy McDowall, Debbie Watson, Gil Peterson

The egotistical tycoon was allegedly based on Phil Spector.


3:15 PM -- Catalina Caper (1967)
1h 7m | Comedy | TV-PG
A group of teens try to foil a group of crooks searching for a stolen scroll.
Director: Lee Sholem
Cast: Tommy Kirk, Del Moore, Peter Duryea

When filming began on this movie in late summer of 1965, Tommy Kirk was on probation with Walt Disney Studios due to an arrest on a marijuana possession charge from Christmas Eve of 1964. Although later cleared by the District Attorney's office, he was immediately replaced after the arrest by Michael Anderson Jr. for the role of the youngest son in the John Wayne movie, The Sons of Katie Elder (1965), for which principal shooting was to begin January 4, 1965. Newspapers of March 20, 1965, reported that Kirk had signed a five-year contract with American-International Pictures and on June 3, although details were not given, newspapers reports about Kirk stated that "His recent bout with the police in a mid-west city didn't do his clean cut kid image any good and his career with the Disney films seems over."


4:45 PM -- Hold On! (1966)
1h 25m | Musical | TV-PG
Rocket scientists consider naming a space ship after Herman's Hermits.
Director: Arthur Lubin
Cast: Peter Noone, Karl Green, Keith Hopwood

Written by Robert E. Kent, who wrote two other films of today's theme, Get Yourself A College Girl (1964), and When The Boys Meet The Girls (1965).


6:15 PM -- A Hard Day's Night (1964)
1h 32m | Musical | TV-PG
A rock and roll mockumentary that follows "a day in the life" of those four lads from Liverpool.
Director: Richard Lester
Cast: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison

Nominee for Oscars for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay - Written Directly for the Screen -- Alun Owen, and Best Music, Scoring of Music, Adaptation or Treatment -- George Martin

During the opening sequence of the group running, George stumbles and falls, with Ringo falling over him in turn. This wasn't intended and George ripped the suit he was wearing, but he quickly recovered, laughed, and continued running, it was decided to retain the shot in the movie.



WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: PRIMETIME THEME -- MELLENCAMP



8:00 PM -- The Fugitive Kind (1960)
2h 15m | Drama | TV-14
A drifter ignites passions among the women of a Mississippi town.
Director: Sidney Lumet
Cast: Marlon Brando, Anna Magnani, Joanne Woodward

This was the first mainstream American film to feature the word "sonofabitch." This occurs at 56 minutes into the movie, with Joanne Woodward using the now-ubiquitous word.


10:15 PM -- On the Waterfront (1954)
1h 48m | Drama | TV-PG
A young stevedore takes on the mobster who rules the docks.
Director: Elia Kazan
Cast: Marlon Brando, Karl Malden, Lee J. Cobb

Winner of Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Marlon Brando, Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Eva Marie Saint, Best Director -- Elia Kazan, Best Writing, Story and Screenplay -- Budd Schulberg, Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Boris Kaufman, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White -- Richard Day, Best Film Editing -- Gene Milford, and Best Picture

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Lee J. Cobb, Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Karl Malden, Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Rod Steiger, and Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture -- Leonard Bernstein

In the scene where Terry (Marlon Brando) and Edie (Eva Marie Saint) are talking on the rooftop of Terry's apartment building, Terry looks off to his left, with the next shot (showing what he's looking at) of the Hudson River and Manhattan in the distance. In that shot, a large ocean liner is seen moving down the Hudson on its way out to sea. The ship is the then new Italian liner Andrea Doria, a little more than two years before it was sunk in a collision with the Swedish liner Stockholm off Martha's Vineyard.


12:15 AM -- East of Eden (1955)
1h 55m | Drama | TV-PG
Two brothers compete for their father's approval and a woman's love.
Director: Elia Kazan
Cast: James Dean, Julie Harris, Raymond Massey

Winner of an Oscar for Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Jo Van Fleet

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- James Dean (This was the first posthumous acting nomination in Academy Awards history, although Jeanne Eagels was retroactively credited with a posthumous nomination for the 2nd Academy Awards in 1930, when no nominees were announced prior to the ceremony.), Best Director -- Elia Kazan, and Best Writing, Screenplay -- Paul Osborn

"East of Eden" (1955) offers a striking example of the Actors' Studio's 'method,' which had reached its zenith around the time of this release, with many of its actors -- and its director -- living proponents of the style. This explains the overwrought quality that often pervades the film, with frequent interrupting, sketchily memorized dialogue and extreme physical responses when actors are entering or exiting scenes. This is particularly evident when Julie Harris shares the screen, as she was one of few stage actors during that time who eschewed the Method, choosing to rely on her own instincts instead.


2:30 AM -- The Stepfather (1987)
1h 38m | Horror | TV-14
A seemingly average man, after murdering his entire family, remarries a widow with a teenaged daughter and prepares to do it again.
Director: Joseph Ruben
Cast: Terry O'Quinn, Shelley Hack, Gillian Barber

At the backyard party, one of the attendees wonders off-camera what it took for the man to turn his family into "Gaines-Burgers". This is a reference to the shelf-stable, moisturized dog food that was formed to look like hamburger patties and individually wrapped. Introduced in 1961 by General Foods, they stopped production in the 1990s. Being a best-selling brand at the time, audiences would have been familiar with this product.


4:00 AM -- Wicked Stepmother (1989)
1h 32m | Comedy | TV-14
A couple comes home from vacation to find that their grandfather has re-married.
Director: Larry Cohen
Cast: Bette Davis, Barbara Carrera, Colleen Camp

The last film of Bette Davis.