TCM Schedule for Thursday, October 14, 2021 -- What's On Tonight: Star of the Month Lucille Ball

In the daylight hours, TCM is all about Madmen. Hmmmm. Advertising specialists from the 1950s or Republicans?

Then in prime time, it's week two of the salute to Star of the Month Lucille Ball. Enjoy!


6:00 AM -- Dial 1119 (1950)
1h 15m | Suspense/Mystery | TV-G
A killer holds the customers at a bar hostage.
Director: Gerald Mayer
Cast: Marshall Thompson, Virginia Field, Andrea King

Four of the stars in this movie became familiar names for regulars in TV series later. Marshall Thompson (Daktari), William Conrad (Cannon), Barbara Billingsley (Leave It to Beaver) and Frank Cady (Petticoat Junction).


7:30 AM -- Cast a Dark Shadow (1955)
1h 25m | Suspense/Mystery | TV-PG
A wife-killer marries an innocent barmaid and plots her death.
Director: Lewis Gilbert
Cast: Margaret Lockwood, Dirk Bogarde, Kay Walsh

Margaret Lockwood's once-considerable popularity as a leading lady was waning noticeably when she appeared in this movie. She hoped it would revive her movie career, and she won outstanding personal reviews. However, it was a box-office flop, and she made only one more movie in her life, The Slipper and the Rose: The Story of Cinderella (1976).


9:00 AM -- Night Must Fall (1937)
1h 57m | Suspense/Mystery | TV-PG
A charming young man worms his way into a wealthy woman's household, then reveals a deadly secret.
Director: Richard Thorpe
Cast: Merle Tottenham, Kathleen Harrison, Dame May Whitty

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Robert Montgomery, and Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- May Whitty

MGM didn't want Robert Montgomery to do the film, and at its premiere at Grauman's Chinese screened a trailer disclaiming the film and warning the audience about the film's "spurious content." Despite this, the film was well-received by audiences and critics.


11:00 AM -- M (1931)
1h 28m | Suspense/Mystery | TV-PG
The mob sets out to catch a child killer whose crimes are attracting too much police attention.
Director: Fritz Lang
Cast: Theo Lingen, Peter Lorre, Otto Wernicke

Contrary to popular belief, Fritz Lang did not change the title from "The Murderers are Among Us" to "M" due to fear of persecution by the Nazis. He changed the title during filming, influenced by the scene where one of the criminals writes the letter on his hand. Lang thought "M" was a more interesting title.


1:00 PM -- Obsession (1949)
1h 36m | Crime | TV-14
A jealous husband plots to dispose of his wife's lover in an acid bath.
Director: Edward Dmytryk
Cast: Robert Newton, Phil Brown, Naunton Wayne

Phil Brown (Bill) is best known to Star Wars fans as Luke Skywalker's Uncle Owen.


2:45 PM -- Seance on a Wet Afternoon (1964)
1h 56m | Drama | TV-PG
A medium kidnaps a child so she can help the police solve the crime.
Director: Bryan Forbes
Cast: Kim Stanley, Richard Attenborough, Mark Eden

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Kim Stanley

Director Bryan Forbes looked for the house with the turret as a film location. When he went to the owner for permission, she asked who was in the movie. When told that an American actress named Kim Stanley, the woman blanched, stepped back, and said that Stanley was one of her oldest friends whom she had not seen in seventeen years.


4:45 PM -- Eyes Without a Face (1959)
1h 28m | Horror/Science-Fiction | TV-14
A surgeon steals young women's faces hoping to heal his daughter's scars.
Director: Georges Franju
Cast: Pierre Brasseur, Alida Valli, Edith Scob

Director John Carpenter once suggested that selecting the mask that Michael Myers wore in Halloween (1978) was influenced by Edith Scob's mask in this film.


6:30 PM -- House of Wax (1953)
1h 28m | Horror/Science-Fiction | TV-PG
A scarred sculptor re-populates his ravaged wax museum with human corpses.
Director: Andre Detoth
Cast: Vincent Price, Frank Lovejoy, Phyllis Kirk

It must have been easy for Vincent Price to act alarmed in the sequence in which his museum burns down. Right before the shoot, André De Toth's crew set three "spot fires" in strategic locations. Then the cameras started rolling and everything went downhill. The team quickly lost control of their fires, which merged into a massive inferno that put a hole in the sound stage roof and singed Price's eyebrows. But because the rapidly melting wax mannequins would've been very hard to replace, de Toth kept on filming, even as firemen arrived to help extinguish the flames.



WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: PRIMETIME THEME -- LUCILLE BALL



8:00 PM -- Too Many Girls (1940)
1h 25m | Musical | TV-G
Four college football stars are hired to chaperon a reckless heiress to a Wild West college.
Director: George Abbott
Cast: Lucille Ball, Richard Carlson, Ann Miller

Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz first met on the set of this movie. They married six months later.


10:00 PM -- The Long, Long Trailer (1954)
1h 36m | Comedy | TV-G
A newlywed couple encounter many difficulties during their honeymoon trip aboard a trailer.
Director: Vincente Minnelli
Cast: Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Marjorie Main

After filming, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz kept the trailer used in the movie at their home. In an interview, daughter Lucie Arnaz recalls using it as the children's playhouse and how much fun they had opening and closing the door to hear the chimes.


12:00 AM -- Forever, Darling (1956)
1h 36m | Comedy | TV-G
A madcap woman's guardian angel tries to save her marriage.
Director: Alexander Hall
Cast: Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, James Mason

The script had been around for years at MGM. It was originally going to be a movie for William Powell and Myrna Loy. A couple of years later it was planned for Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. However, both projects fell through and the script was forgotten about. Years later Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz showed interest in making another movie and they picked this script.


2:00 AM -- Easy to Wed (1946)
1h 50m | Musical | TV-G
In this remake of Libeled Lady, a tough newspaper editor hires a gigolo to compromise a woman suing his paper for libel.
Director: Edward Buzzell
Cast: Van Johnson, Esther Williams, Lucille Ball

Cameo of Fidel Castro: Early in this film, on the lower left of the screen, Castro (without the beard) is seen as a poolside spectator with a drink in front of him. Young Fidel did "extra" work for MGM, while a student at UCLA, before becoming fully active in politics.


4:00 AM -- Seven Days' Leave (1942)
1h 27m | Comedy | TV-G
A serviceman has one week to wed an heiress and inherit $100,000.
Director: Tim Whelan
Cast: Victor Mature, Lucille Ball, Harold Peary

The $100,000 inheritance would equate to over $1.63M in 2019.