TCM Schedule for Saturday, March 25, 2017 -- TCM Spotlight - March Malice

[Staph]

It's the final day of March Malice, with EVIL AGAINST TYPE -- AFTER THE THIN MAN and SUDDENLY, ADVENTURE VILLAINS -- THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD and MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY (1962), HOME INVASION -- DIAL M FOR MURDER and WAIT UNTIL DARK, JEWEL THIEVES -- THE PINK PANTHER and ARSENE LUPIN, and SUPERNATURAL FORCES -- THE HAUNTING (1963) and HOUSE (HAUSU). Enjoy!


6:15 AM -- AFTER THE THIN MAN (1936)
Married sleuths Nick and Nora Charles try to clear Nora's cousin of a murder charge.
Dir: W. S. Van Dyke
Cast: William Powell, Myrna Loy, James Stewart
BW-112 mins, CC,

Nominated for Oscars for Best Writing, Screenplay -- Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett

Though William Powell and Myrna Loy were very close friends off-screen, their only romantic moments together occurred on-screen. The public, however, was determined to have them married in private life as well. When the two stars showed up in San Francisco (where most of this film was shot) at the St. Francis, the hotel management proudly showed "Mr. and Mrs. Powell" to their deluxe suite. This was an especially uncomfortable moment as Jean Harlow, who was engaged to Powell, was with them, and the couple had not made a public statement about their relationship. Harlow saved the day by insisting on sharing the suite with Loy: "That mix-up brought me one of my most cherished friendships," Loy said in "Being and Becoming", her autobiography. "You would have thought Jean and I were in boarding school we had so much fun. We'd stay up half the night talking and sipping gin, sometimes laughing, sometimes discussing more serious things." Meanwhile, Powell got the hotel's one remaining room - a far humbler accommodation downstairs.


8:30 AM -- SUDDENLY (1954)
Gunmen take over a suburban home to plot a presidential assassination.
Dir: Lewis Allen
Cast: Frank Sinatra, Sterling Hayden, James Gleason
BW-77 mins, CC,

This is the film that Lee Harvey Oswald supposedly watched just a few days before assassinating President John F. Kennedy.


10:15 AM -- THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD (1938)
The bandit king of Sherwood Forest leads his Merry Men in a battle against the corrupt Prince John.
Dir: Michael Curtiz
Cast: Errol Flynn, Olivia De Havilland, Basil Rathbone
C-102 mins, CC,

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

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture

During one fight sequence, Errol Flynn was jabbed by an actor who was using an unprotected sword--he asked him why he didn't have a guard on the point. The other player apologized and explained that director Michael Curtiz had instructed him to remove the safety feature in order to make the action "more exciting". Flynn reportedly climbed up a gantry where Curtiz was standing next to the camera, took him by the throat and asked him if he found that "exciting enough".


12:15 PM -- MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY (1962)
Lavish remake of the classic tale of the villainous Captain Bligh who drives his crew to revolt during a South Seas expedition.
Dir: Lewis Milestone
Cast: Marlon Brando, Trevor Howard, Richard Harris
C-185 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Won an Oscar for Best Picture

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Clark Gable, Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Charles Laughton, Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Franchot Tone, Best Director -- Frank Lloyd, Best Writing, Screenplay -- Jules Furthman, Talbot Jennings and Carey Wilson, Best Film Editing -- Margaret Booth, and Best Music, Score -- Nat W. Finston (head of department) with score by Herbert Stothart

The Bounty and Pandora were actual life-size ships that were built from two old wooden schooners. The builders added outer ribs and frames to the hulls to get the correct width and, after replanking them, added concrete inside as ballast. Then they were given three masts and rigged in authentic 18th-century style. A 27-foot-long model was burned at the end of the film. It was an exact replica of the life-size Bounty, but one-fifth of its actual size.


3:45 PM -- DIAL M FOR MURDER (1954)
A straying husband frames his wife for the murder of the man he'd hired to kill her.
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock
Cast: Ray Milland, Grace Kelly, Robert Cummings
C-105 mins, CC,

Alfred Hitchcock had chosen a very expensive robe for Grace Kelly to wear when she answered the phone. The actress balked and said that no woman would put on such a robe, just to answer the ringing telephone while she was asleep alone, but would answer it in her nightgown. Hitchcock agreed to do it her way and liked the way the rushes turned out. The director agreed to allow the actress to make all costume decisions for herself in their subsequent films together, afterwards.


5:45 PM -- WAIT UNTIL DARK (1967)
A blind woman fights against drug smugglers who've invaded her home.
Dir: Terence Young
Cast: Audrey Hepburn, Alan Arkin, Richard Crenna
C-108 mins, CC,

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Audrey Hepburn

In an interview, Alan Arkin talked about the Oscar nominations he received for his early major film roles (The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! (1966) and The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1968)). When asked if he was surprised that he was overlooked for "Wait Until Dark", his second movie, he replied: "You don't get nominated for being mean to Audrey Hepburn!"



TCM PRIMETIME - WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: TCM SPOTLIGHT: MARCH MALICE



8:00 PM -- THE PINK PANTHER (1964)
In the first Inspector Clouseau film, the bumbling French police detective tries to stop a notorious jewel thief from nabbing a princess' diamond.
Dir: Blake Edwards
Cast: David Niven, Peter Sellers, Capucine
C-115 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Music, Substantially Original Score -- Henry Mancini

Blake Edwards and Peter Sellers enjoyed working together to develop Clouseau down to every move and nuance of voice and expression. "For years I'd been getting bits of what I wanted into films, as writer or director...but I had never had an area in which to exploit my ideas to the full," Edwards said. "Then along came Peter, a walking storehouse of madness, a ham with an almost surrealist approach to the insanity of things, and we found an immediate affinity."


10:15 PM -- ARSENE LUPIN (1932)
A gentleman thief risks his life in an attempt to steal the Mona Lisa.
Dir: Jack Conway
Cast: John Barrymore, Lionel Barrymore, Karen Morley
BW-84 mins, CC,

Arsène Lupin is a fictional gentleman thief and master of disguise created by French writer Maurice Leblanc, and featured in 17 novels and 39 novellas, beginning in 1905. Leblanc introduced Sherlock Holmes to Lupin in the short story "Sherlock Holmes Arrives Too Late" in Je sais tout No. 17, 15 June 1906. In it, an aged Holmes meets a young Lupin for the first time. After legal objections from Conan Doyle, the name was changed to "Herlock Sholmes" when the story was collected in book form in Volume 1.


12:00 AM -- THE HAUNTING (1963)
A team of psychic investigators moves into a haunted house that destroys all who live there.
Dir: Robert Wise
Cast: Julie Harris, Claire Bloom, Richard Johnson
BW-112 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Claire Bloom was intrigued to the play the role of a woman who was attracted to another woman. She said she got along with everyone on the set, except for Julie Harris, who tried everything to avoid her and not talk to her. At the end of the shoot, Harris went over to Bloom's house with a present and explained that the reason she had kept to herself was to stay in character, because Harris' role in the film was that of an outsider that none of the others understand or will listen to. Bloom was happy to hear the real reason behind Harris' behavior, since Bloom stated that she really liked Harris and could not understand what she herself had done wrong to be treated like that by her co-star.


2:00 AM -- HOUSE (1977)
A schoolgirl spends her summer vacation in a haunted house.
Dir: Nobuhiko Obayashi
Cast: Kimiko Ikegami, Miki Jinbo, Kumiko Ohba
C-88 mins,

Many of the ways the girls are attacked in the various ways by the House, were ideas of the director, Obayashi's daughter. For instance, the mattresses, the head from the well, the piano, and the mirror. So initially, this film was co-written by a 10 year old Japanese girl.


4:00 AM -- A STORY FROM CHIKAMATSU (1954)
After being wrongly accused of adultery, a married woman and her husband's apprentice fall in love.
Dir: Kenji Mizoguchi
Cast: Kazuo Hasegawa, Kyoko Kagawa, Eitaro Shindo
BW-102 mins,

The movie is based on a play by the classic Japanese author Monzaemon Chikamatsu (1653-1725). The original title "Chikamatsu monogatari" means "A Tale From Chikamatsu". The film was released in the US under the name The Crucified Lovers.

[longship]

1. Robert Wise's version of "The Haunting" is a real chiller.

One does not need visual ghosts or blood and gore to make a film scary.

God! Whose hand was I holding?

Look for Lois Maxwell (Miss Moneypenny from the James Bond flicks) as Mrs. Markway.

The 1999 remake, as nearly always in Hollywood, is horrible trash.

And yes, Claire Bloom is a stand out in the cast.