TCM Schedule for Thursday, October 27, 2022 -- What's On: 75th Anniversary of Hollywood Blacklist

In the daylight hours, watch out for Bad Blackmailers. Then in prime time, it's Night Three of the 75th Anniversary of the Hollywood Blacklist, with films about the blacklist. Enjoy!


6:00 AM -- Murder Is My Beat (1955)
1h 17m | Crime | TV-PG
After a businessman is found dead, two detectives scramble to find the killer.
Director: Edgar G. Ulmer
Cast: Paul Langton, Barbara Payton, Robert Shayne

The car Ray borrows from the motel owner is a 1954 Nash Rambler station wagon. MSRP was $2,050 ($19,650 in 2020). The average sale price for this car in 2020 is $32,800.


7:30 AM -- Murder by an Aristocrat (1936)
59m | Suspense/Mystery | TV-G
A blackmailer's murder tears apart a well-off family.
Director: Frank Mcdonald
Cast: Lyle Talbot, Marguerite Churchill, Claire Dodd

Warner Bros. created the advertising marketing ploy "Clue Club" to increase audiences attending its crime mystery/drama movies. Twelve titles showing the Warner Bros. "Clue Club" promo footage were released from 1935 to 1938.
Clue Club #1: The White Cockatoo (1935)
Clue Club #2: While the Patient Slept (1935)
Clue Club #3: The Florentine Dagger (1935)
Clue Club #4: The Case of the Curious Bride (1935)
Clue Club #5: The Case of the Lucky Legs (1935)
Clue Club #6: The Murder of Dr. Harrigan (1936)
Clue Club #7: Murder by an Aristocrat (1936)
Clue Club #8: The Case of the Velvet Claws (1936)
Clue Club #9: The Case of the Black Cat (1936)
Clue Club #10: The Case of the Stuttering Bishop (1937)
Clue Club #11: The Patient in Room 18 (1938)
Clue Club #12: Mystery House (1938)


8:30 AM -- The Murder of Dr. Harrigan (1936)
1h 6m | Suspense/Mystery | TV-PG
A doctor investigates the murder of a colleague involved in experimental surgery.
Director: Frank Mcdonald
Cast: Ricardo Cortez, Kay Linaker, John Eldredge

Film debut of Kay Linaker. The part of Nurse Sally Keating was originally intended to be played by Mary Astor. When Astor refused it, Warner Bros. signed Broadway actress Linaker to play it. As punishment, the studio forced Astor to play a supporting part in the film.


9:45 AM -- I Was Framed (1942)
1h 1m | Crime | TV-G
A news man's political investigations land him in prison.
Director: D. Ross Lederman
Cast: Michael Ames, Julie Bishop, Regis Toomey

The premise of this film, a reporter framed by corrupt officials and convicted in manslaughter, is identical to that of Each Dawn I Die (1939) starring James Cagney. In fact, the car crash scene is the same film. Additionally, the dialogue immediately after the crash and in the courtroom is exactly the same.


11:00 AM -- The Phantom of Crestwood (1933)
1h 16m | Suspense/Mystery | TV-G
Five men have to prove their innocence when a blackmailer is murdered.
Director: J. Walter Ruben
Cast: Ricardo Cortez, Karen Morley, Anita Louise

The film was originally presented as a radio serial on the NBC Radio Nework's "Hollywood on the Air" program from August 26 to September 30, 1932 with the final episode left out! If the listener wanted to know the ending, they had to watch the film. A contest accompanied the broadcast where listeners were encouraged to submit their ending to NBC and RKO. The best endings were chosen to win one of 100 prizes totaling $6,000 and were announced on November 24, 1932. The ending of the film was not based on any ending submitted for the contest.


12:30 PM -- Washington Melodrama (1941)
1h 18m | Suspense/Mystery | TV-G
A philanthropic businessman is framed for murder during a lobbying trip to Washington.
Director: S. Sylvan Simon
Cast: Frank Morgan, Ann Rutherford, Kent Taylor

Frank Morgan and Sara Haden also worked together in The Shop Around the Corner (1940).


2:00 PM -- Crossroads (1942)
1h 24m | Suspense/Mystery | TV-G
A French diplomat who's recovering from amnesia is blackmailed over crimes he can't remember.
Director: Jack Conway
Cast: William Powell, Hedy Lamarr, Claire Trevor

This film was a hit at the box office, earning MGM a profit of $739,000 according to studio records.


3:30 PM -- Blackmail (1929)
1h 39m | Suspense/Mystery | TV-PG
A shopkeeper's daughter fights off blackmail after she kills a young artist who had tried to rape her.
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Cast: Anny Ondra, Sara Allgood, Charles Paton

Much of this movie was originally shot silently. When sound became available during the course of shooting, director Alfred Hitchcock re-shot certain scenes with sound, thus making it his first talkie. There was one complication with this change, however. Leading lady Anny Ondra had a thick Czech accent which was inappropriate to her character, Alice White. Joan Barry was chosen to provide a different voice for her, but post-production dubbing technology did not exist then. The solution was for Barry to stand just out of shot and read Alice's lines into a microphone as Ondra mouthed them in front of the camera. This is generally acknowledged as the first instance of one actress' voice being dubbed by another, even though the word "dub" is technologically inappropriate in this case.


5:00 PM -- London by Night (1937)
1h 9m | Suspense/Mystery | TV-PG
A blackmailer holds the key to several murders.
Director: William Thiele
Cast: George Murphy, Rita Johnson, Virginia Field

Will Scott's play, "The Umbrella," was unpublished and possibly never performed.


6:15 PM -- The Secret Partner (1961)
1h 31m | Crime | TV-PG
A shipping tycoon with a record becomes a suspect when money goes missing from the company.
Director: Basil Dearden
Cast: Stewart Granger, Haya Harareet, Bernard Lee

The IV anesthetic at causes one to taste garlic (or onions) is sodium thiopental (aka by its trade name Sodium Pentothal).



WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: PRIMETIME THEME -- 75th ANNIVERSARY OF THE HOLLYWOOD BLACKLIST



8:00 PM -- The Way We Were (1973)
1h 58m | Romance | TV-14
A fiery liberal fights to make her marriage to a successful writer work despite ideological differences.
Director: Sydney Pollack
Cast: Barbra Streisand, Robert Redford, George Gaynes

Winner of Oscars for Best Music, Original Song -- Marvin Hamlisch (music), Alan Bergman (lyrics) and Marilyn Bergman (lyrics) for the song "The Way We Were", and Best Music, Original Dramatic Score -- Marvin Hamlisch

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Barbra Streisand, Best Cinematography -- Harry Stradling Jr., Best Art Direction-Set Decoration -- Stephen B. Grimes and William Kiernan, and Best Costume Design -- Dorothy Jeakins and Moss Mabry

Robert Redford was unhappy with cuts made to the film following a preview. He said, "I think we'd both have preferred a more political Dalton Trumbo -type script, but finally Sydney came down on the side of the love story. He said, 'This is first and foremost a love affair,' and we conceded that. We trusted his instincts, and he was right."


10:15 PM -- The Front (1976)
1h 36m | Comedy | TV-MA
A bookie agrees to put his name on scripts by blacklisted writers.
Director: Martin Ritt
Cast: Woody Allen, Zero Mostel, Herschel Bernardi

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen -- Walter Bernstein

Woody Allen once said of this film: "From the beginning, I had enormous reservations about doing a film which I had not written and over which I would have no directorial control. The reason I did The Front (1976) was that the subject was worthwhile. Martin Ritt and Walter Bernstein lived through the blacklist and survived it with dignity, so I didn't mind deferring to their judgment."


12:00 AM -- The Majestic (2001)
2h 32m | Drama
In 1951, a blacklisted Hollywood writer gets into a car accident, loses his memory and settles down in a small town where he is mistaken for a long-lost son.
Director: Frank Darabont
Cast: Jim Carrey, Martin Landau, Bob Balaban

Several names in the movie are connected to real-life persons involved in Senator Joseph McCarthy's "witch hunt" investigations. The town of Lawson is named for screenwriter John Howard Lawson who stood up to HUAC and ended the Red Scare. Another writer, Lester Cole, gives his surname to the mayor. Luke Trimble is named for blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo. Appleton is named for Senator McCarthy's Wisconsin home town.


2:45 AM -- Going Attractions: The Definitive Story of the Movie Palace (2019)
Documentary | TV-PG
The evolution of the movie business over the past century.
Director: April Wright
Cast: Leonard Maltin, Richard L. Fosbrink, Matt Lambros

The narrative takes an unexplained leap from the depression years of the early 1930s to the post-WWII era of the consent decree and the arrival of television thus completely omitting and ignoring the games and giveaways which helped theatres survive from the mid-1930s to the early-1940s, and the huge increase in patronage during the WWII years, when downtown theatres ran 18 hours a day, and movie attendance peaked at an all time record of close to 100 million tickets per week.


4:15 AM -- The Spirit of the Beehive (1973)
1h 38m | Drama | TV-PG
After seeing the classic Frankenstein, two naive young girls go searching for the mad doctor.
Director: Victor Erice
Cast: Ana Torrent, Isabel Telleria, Teresa Gimpera

Cinematographer Luis Cuadrado was going blind at the time this film was made. An assistant would take Polaroids of the scenes and Cuadrado would direct the lighting by looking through a magnifying glass at these pictures. In 1980 Cuadrado committed suicide after he went completely blind and the tumor in his brain became too painful to face.