TCM Schedule for Thursday, October 4, 2018 -- What's On Tonight: TCM Spotlight - Funny Ladies

[Staph]

In the daylight hours, TCM is hiding out in the desert. Then in the evening hours, TCM begins a month-long salute to Funny Ladies. From the TCM website:

TCM SPOTLIGHT: FUNNY LADIES - THURSDAYS IN OCTOBER

"People either have comedy or they don't; you can't teach it to them," Lucille Ball famously said. Lucy, of course, had it in spades - just like the other Funny Ladies in our roundup of great comic female actresses. Each Thursday in October, TCM presents a lineup of rib-tickling films featuring many of the cinema's most gifted comediennes.

This Spotlight is hosted by actress/filmmaker Illeana Douglas, a TCM regular who has presented other programming related to accomplishments by women in film; and comedy legend Carol Burnett, a special favorite of television, stage and film audiences for decades.

Our salute is broken down by eras:
Silents to the 1930s, features a number of leading comic actresses from this era, including Mabel Normand, teamed with Fatty Arbuckle in the silent short Fatty and Mabel Adrift (1916); Marion Davies in Show People (1928); Marie Dressler in Dinner at Eight (1933); Mae West in I'm No Angel (1933); and Margaret Dumont, a recurring partner and classic foil to the Marx Brothers, in A Day at the Races (1937).

This night also includes two TCM premieres. Babes in the Goods (1934) is a short starring Thelma Todd and Patsy Kelly, a popular comedy team who were sometimes called "the female Abbott and Costello" and appeared together in more than 20 short films at MGM during the mid-1930s. The other premiere in the lighthearted musical comedy College Swing (1938), starring the adorably ditzy Gracie Allen as a coed who ends up owning her college and turning it into a haven for swing bands and jitterbuggers. The boisterous Martha Raye, another leading comedienne of the day, costars as a "professor of romance." The cast also includes George Burns (Allen's husband and performing partner) and another married couple (at the time), Betty Grable and Jackie Coogan.

Enjoy!



6:00 AM -- HELL'S HEROES (1930)
Three cowboys risk their lives to get an abandoned baby to civilization.
Dir: William Wyler
Cast: Charles Bickford, Raymond Hatton, Fred Kohler
BW-68 mins, CC,

Peter B. Kyne's bestselling 1913 novel, "The Three Godfathers", had been adapted twice before as successful Universal Silents, the first a six-reeler in 1916 and the second a John Ford remake, "Marked Men" in 1920. Then it was remade as Three Godfathers (1936) starring Chester Morris, Lewis Stone and Walter Brennan, 3 Godfathers (1948) starring John Wayne, Pedro Armendáriz and Harry Carey Jr., and The Godchild (1974) (TV Movie) starring Jack Palance, Jack Warden and Keith Carradine.


7:15 AM -- THE LOST PATROL (1934)
A British army troop fights off Arab snipers while holed up in an oasis.
Dir: John Ford
Cast: Victor McLaglen, Boris Karloff, Wallace Ford
BW-72 mins, CC,

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Music, Score -- Max Steiner (head of department) with score by Max Steiner

Victor McLaglen, who plays The Sergeant, is the brother of Cyril McLaglen, who played The Sergeant in the earlier (Lost Patrol (1929)) version of this film.


8:30 AM -- DESERT NIGHTS (1929)
In this silent film, diamond robbers get caught in a violent sandstorm.
Dir: William Nigh
Cast: John Gilbert, Ernest Torrence, Mary Nolan
BW-62 mins,

John Gilbert's last silent film. Later that year he would make his disastrous sound debut in His Glorious Night (1929).


9:45 AM -- BAD LANDS (1939)
Indians pick off the members of a posse lost in the desert.
Dir: Lew Landers
Cast: Robert Barrat, Noah Beery Jr., Guinn Williams
BW-70 mins, CC,

Leading man John Payne is often mistakenly credited as playing the bit part of Apache Jack in this film. It is not he. The role is played by Jack Payne, whose only known film this was. John Payne was far too well known by 1939 to play a bit part without dialog in a B-Western.


11:00 AM -- BENGAZI (1955)
Three shady characters team up to search for Nazi gold in the African desert.
Dir: John Brahm
Cast: Richard Conte, Victor McLaglen, Richard Carlson
BW-79 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

The last music score for RKO by Roy Webb, who had been with the studio since 1929.


12:30 PM -- THE PETRIFIED FOREST (1936)
An escaped convict holds the customers at a remote desert cantina hostage.
Dir: Archie L. Mayo
Cast: Leslie Howard, Bette Davis, Genevieve Tobin
BW-82 mins, CC,

Leslie Howard and Humphrey Bogart had played the same roles in the stage version. Warner Bros. wanted to put Howard in the film but replace Bogart with Edward G. Robinson. Howard insisted on Bogart, sending a telegram to Jack L. Warner which read "Insist Bogart play Mantee; no Bogart, no deal." Bogart would later name his second child with Lauren Bacall Leslie, in honor of Howard, the man who gave him his first big break.


2:00 PM -- ACTION IN ARABIA (1944)
An adventurous reporter tangles with Nazis in the desert on the eve of World War II.
Dir: Leonide Moguy
Cast: George Sanders, Virginia Bruce, Lenore Aubert
BW-75 mins, CC,

Desert footage was shot by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack in 1937 for an unmade film on the life of Lawrence of Arabia.


3:30 PM -- THREE GODFATHERS (1936)
Three fugitives risk their lives to bring a newborn baby out of the desert to safety.
Dir: Richard Boleslawski
Cast: Chester Morris, Lewis Stone, Walter Brennan
BW-81 mins, CC,

Based on the novel The Three Godfathers by Peter B. Kyne. See Hell's Heroes (1929), at 6:00 am ET today.


5:00 PM -- THE BRIDE CAME C.O.D. (1941)
A pilot and a temperamental heiress are stranded in the desert together.
Dir: William Keighley
Cast: James Cagney, Bette Davis, Stuart Erwin
BW-92 mins, CC,

For her part, in her later biographies and interviews, Bette Davis derided this movie, sarcastically saying, "it was called a comedy". She would also complain that "all she got out of the film was a derriere full of cactus quills".


6:45 PM -- DESERT PURSUIT (1952)
A prospector hits it big and tries to escape the desert with a faro dealer named Mary and followed by three men on camels.
Dir: George Blair
Cast: Wayne Morris, Virginia Grey, George Tobias
BW-71 mins, CC,

Final screenplay of Scott Darling. It was released after he died.



TCM PRIMETIME - WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: TCM SPOTLIGHT: FUNNY LADIES



8:00 PM -- I'M NO ANGEL (1933)
A carnival dancer evades the law and invades high society.
Dir: Wesley Ruggles
Cast: Mae West, Cary Grant, Gregory Ratoff
BW-88 mins, CC,

Considerable problems arose with the censors, mostly about the suggestive lines in some of the songs. The song "Nobody Loves Me Like a Dallas Man" was originally "Nobody Does It Like a Dallas Man". After the songs were toned down, the Hays office approved the film, and it was passed by the National Board of Review.


9:45 PM -- DINNER AT EIGHT (1933)
A high-society dinner party masks a hotbed of scandal and intrigue.
Dir: George Cukor
Cast: Marie Dressler, John Barrymore, Wallace Beery
BW-111 mins, CC,

Marie Dressler was impressed with Jean Harlow. She recalled in her autobiography, "It was whispered behind more than one hand that Jean Harlow, Metro's much-advertised platinum menace, was picked for parts that called for more allure than art. And in Dinner at Eight, she had to throw a bomb in the works by proving that she is a first-rate actress! Her performance as the wife of the hard-boiled, self-made politician played by Wallace Beery belongs in that limited category of things which may with reason be called rare. The plain truth is, she all but ran off with the show!"


11:49 PM -- SCHOLASTIC ENGLAND (1948)
This short film focuses on the history of England's historic colleges and the towns that surround the campuses.
C-8 mins,


12:00 AM -- COLLEGE SWING (1938)
Gracie Alden tries to graduate on college to get an inheritance.
Dir: Raoul Walsh
Cast: George Burns, Gracie Allen, Martha Raye
BW-87 mins,

Based on an idea by Ted Lesser.


1:45 AM -- SHOW PEOPLE (1928)
In this silent film, a small-town girl tries to make it in Hollywood.
Dir: King Vidor
Cast: Marion Davies, William Haines, Dell Henderson
BW-79 mins,

The well known faces appearing in the banquet scene are, in the order they appear on screen: Dorothy Sebastian, Louella Parsons, Estelle Taylor, Claire Windsor, Aileen Pringle, Karl Dane, George K. Arthur, Leatrice Joy, Renée Adorée, Rod La Rocque, Mae Murray, John Gilbert, Norma Talmadge, Douglas Fairbanks, Marion Davies, and William S. Hart.


3:15 AM -- FATTY AND MABEL ADRIFT (1916)
Villains launch the beach house of Fatty and Mabel out to sea, much to the surprise of the protagonists in this silent short film.
Dir: Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle
Cast: Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle, Mabel Normand, Al St. John
BW-31 mins,

The opening credits cite Teddy the Keystone Dog as appearing in the film, although it is in fact Luke (dog of Roscoe Arbuckle and Minta Durfee) who appears in the film.


3:49 AM -- SOARING STARS (1942)
In this comedic short, two autograph hounds attend an air show at the Santa Anita racetrack.
Dir: Basil Wrangell
Cast: Sally Payne, Harry Strang, Mary Treen
BW-10 mins,

Remake of The Hollywood Gad-About (1934) (Short)


4:00 AM -- A DAY AT THE RACES (1937)
A group of zanies tries to save a pretty girl's sanitarium.
Dir: Sam Wood
Cast: Groucho Marx, Chico Marx, Harpo Marx
BW-109 mins, CC,

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Dance Direction -- Dave Gould for "All God's Children Got Rhythm"

The "Grand Steeplechase" sequence at the end had to be shot twice. Both times a crew member persuaded Chico Marx to gamble on it and not only to bet on the outcome of a rigged non-race, but to bet on a horse other than the one scripted to win. Chico, all his life an avid gambler, could offer as excuse only, "The odds were 20 to one."