TCM Schedule for Friday, May 6 -- Hammer Time

[Staph]

No, we're not spending the evening with Stanley Kirk Burrell, aka MC Hammer. Instead, we have a primetime trio of detective Mike Hammer films, with three different Hammers (including author Mickey Spillane playing his own creation). And prepare to swoon during the daylight hours, ladies. We're celebrating the birth, in 1895, of the Sheik himself, Rudolph Valentino. Enjoy!



6:00 AM -- On An Island With You (1948)
A movie star falls for a handsome naval officer during location shooting in Hawaii.
Dir: Richard Thorpe
Cast: Esther Williams, Peter Lawford, Ricardo Montalban.
C-108 min, TV-G , CC

Cyd Charisse completed the bulk of this film (most impressively in two romantic dance duets with Ricardo Montalban), then broke her leg during the filming of the big ceremonial dance, where the corps de ballet is in island native makeup. A double completed her scenes (shot at full length), but the injury kept her out of her next scheduled film, Easter Parade (1948). That role, which would've advanced her to fourth billing, went to Ann Miller, making her MGM debut.


8:00 AM -- Beyond the Rocks (1922)
In this silent film, a young woman on her honeymoon with her aging millionaire husband falls for a handsome younger man.
Dir: Sam Wood
Cast: Gloria Swanson, Rodolph Valentino, Edythe Chapman.
80 min, TV-PG

Lost for most of the 20th century, a copy of this film was discovered in April 2003 in Haarlem (The Netherlands) in a private collection. It was restored by the Nederlands Film Museum and the Hagheflim Conservation and was screened in 2005, complete with English dialogue screens in place of the original Dutch, at the Cannes film festival. It made its television debut on May 21, 2006, on Turner Classic Movies as part of a nine-film tribute to Rudolph Valentino.


9:30 AM -- Moran of the Lady Letty (1922)
In this silent film, a playboy fights to save a young woman from the smugglers who have kidnapped them.
Dir: George Melford
Cast: Dorothy Dalton, Rodolph Valentino, Charles Brinley.
68 min, TV-G

The character played by Rudolph Valentino was called "Ross Wilbur" in the novel by Frank Norris on which the film was based, but the name was changed to "Ramon Laredo" for the film to accommodate Valentino's non-American appearance.


10:45 AM -- The Young Rajah (1922)
In this silent film, an All-American boy learns that he is really an Indian ruler and must desert his sweetheart to reclaim his throne.
Dir: Philip Rosen
Cast: Rodolph Valentino, Wanda Hawley, Pat Moore.
54 min, TV-G

An nitrate print of this film, once thought lost, has been discovered and restored. Approximately the first two-thirds is still lost and has been fleshed out with stills. The restored film had its American television debut on Turner Classic Movies on May 21, 2006.


11:45 AM -- Camille (1921)
In this silent film, a kept woman gives up her glamorous life for an innocent young man.
Dir: Ray C. Smallwood
Cast: Nazimova, Rudolph Valentino, Arthur Hoyt.
70 min, TV-PG

Based, of course, on the novel and play by Alexandre Dumas fils.


1:00 PM -- The Conquering Power (1921)
In this silent film, a young man falls for his wicked uncle's stepdaughter.
Dir: Rex Ingram
Cast: Alice Terry, Rudolph Valentino, Eric Mayne.
89 min, TV-G

Based on the story Eugénie Grandet by Honoré de Balzac.


2:45 PM -- Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921)
In this silent film, a young Argentine fights for France, his father's country, in World War I.
Dir: Rex Ingram
Cast: Rudolph Valentino, Alice Terry, Pomeroy Cannon.
133 min, TV-G

Rudolph Valentino signed onto the film for $350 a week, less than Wallace Beery earned for his small role as a German officer. Metro provided Valentino only with his Argentine gaucho costume and his French soldier's uniform. For the Parisian sequence, Valentino purchased more than twenty-five custom-fitted suits from a New York tailor, which he spent the next year paying for.


5:00 PM -- Flesh (1932)
A simple-minded wrestler falls for a woman with a dark secret.
Dir: John Ford
Cast: Wallace Beery, Karen Morley, Ricardo Cortez.
96 min, TV-G

In the Coen brothers' film Barton Fink, (1991), the title character deals with writers' block while attempting to write a screenplay for a Wallace Beery wrestling picture. At the time they wrote it, the Coens were unaware of this movie. In addition, Barton Fink features a character based somewhat on William Faulkner that Fink consults for help in writing the script.


6:37 PM -- Willie And Eugene Howard In "The Music Makers" (1929)
11 min,

Willie and Eugene Howard were born Wilhelm and Eugene Levkowitz, in Neustadt, Germany, in the 1880s.


7:00 PM -- Warriors & Peace Makers (2010)
In Episode Five of this seven-part documentary, examining the years 1941 to 1950, Hollywood responds to a country poised on the edge of war, and film auteurs such as Orson Welles emerge.
C-60 min, TV-14, CC



TCM PRIMETIME - WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: HAMMER TIME



8:00 PM -- Kiss Me Deadly (1955)
Detective Mike Hammer fights to solve the murder of a beautiful hitchhiker with a mysterious connection to the Mob.
Dir: Robert Aldrich
Cast: Ralph Meeker, Albert Dekker, Paul Stewart.
106 min, TV-PG , CC

The Kefauver Commission, a federal unit dedicated to investigating corrupting influences in the 1950s, singled this out as 1955's number one menace to American youth. Because of this, Robert Aldrich felt compelled to conduct a writing campaign for the free speech rights of independent film-makers.


10:00 PM -- My Gun Is Quick (1957)
Detective Mike Hammer's investigation of a murder puts him in the middle between warring jewel thieves.
Dir: George A. White
Cast: Robert Bray, Whitney Blake, Don Randolph.
91 min, TV-PG , CC

The third of many Mike Hammer movies and television series. We are going to miss the first one -- I, The Jury (1953), starring Biff Elliot.


11:45 PM -- The Girl Hunters (1963)
Hardboiled private eye Mike Hammer investigates a Communist spy ring that may hold the secret to his secretary's disappearance.
Dir: Roy Rowland
Cast: Mickey Spillane, Shirley Eaton, Lloyd Nolan.
98 min, TV-14 , CC

One of the few times (or maybe the only time) that the author has portrayed his own character.


1:31 AM -- Alaska Lifeboat (1956)
This "Theater of Life" series short focuses on a medical services ship that stops in the native village of Haines.
Dir: Herbert Morgan
Cast: Ralph Sarlan
21 min,


2:00 AM -- Santa Claus (1959)
Santa Claus enlists Merlin to help him save Christmas from the devil.
Dir: Rene Cardona
C-95 min,

This film did not receive a general release in the United States. The U.S. distributor, K. Gordon Murray, booked the film as a special children's matinée attraction in which the film would only be shown once or twice.


3:45 AM -- The 5,000 Fingers Of Dr. T. (1953)
A young boy dreams that his piano teacher is a super-villain out to rule the world.
Dir: Roy Rowland
Cast: Peter Lind Hayes, Mary Healy, Hans Conried.
C-89 min, TV-PG, CC

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture -- Friedrich Hollaender and Morris Stoloff

According to Dr. Seuss, the film's creator and co-writer, one of the 150 boys vomited on the piano while filming. This caused a chain reaction and they were left with 150 vomiting boys. Dr. Seuss said that the film's reviews were similar.


5:16 AM -- People On Paper (1945)
A history of comic strips, with clips of various cartoonists at work.
Dir: Herbert Morgan
Cast: H.H. Knerr, Bud Fisher, Fred Lasswell Jr.
11 min,


5:30 AM -- Wonderful World of Tupperware (1959)
Industrial film showing the making of Tupperware.
C-29 min, TV-G

[CBHagman]

1. That is some late-night schedule.

Santa Claus versus the devil? The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T? Tupperware? Maybe it's the stoner schedule.

:rofl:

[Staph]

2. Late night Friday on TCM is always . . . unusual.

Horror films, blaxplotation films, 1970s/80s drug culture, you name it, TCM will show it on Friday nights. It's not my cup of tea, but I like that fact that TCM caters to both high-brow and low-brow tastes.