TCM Schedule for Thursday, July 21, 2022 -- What's On Tonight: Deep Sea Cinema

[Staph]

(My humble apologies for posting late -- real life got in the way!)

In the daylight hours, TCM celebrates two birthdays: director Norman Jewison, born on July 21, 1926, in Toronto, Ontario, and actor C. Aubrey Smith, born July 21, 1863, in London, England.

Then in prime time, it's the first of three weeks of Deep Sea Cinema and today's subject is Octopuses or Octopi! Tell us more, Sean!

The second night of programming is devoted to another unique denizen of the deep: the octopus. Where sharks are sleek, scary, prehistoric predators that roam the waters for food, octopi are shy, solitary creatures who attack humans only when threatened. Yet their alien appearance, with eight rubbery arms that move with an otherworldly grace and a fleshy head with a beaked mouth, can be the thing of nightmares. In ancient times, they inspired such mythological creatures as the Kraken and the Medusa. In 19th century literature it was magnified into a creature that attacked ships in Victor Hugo's "The Toilers of the Sea" (1866) and Jules Verne's "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" (1870). By the 20th century, they made for a memorable movie monster.

The deep sea diving adventure Below the Sea (1933), a tale of treasure hunters who join a scientific expedition to retrieve sunken gold from World War I, features just such a giant octopus roused to attack a diving bell lowered to the ocean floor. Isle of Fury (1936), a drama of pearl divers in the South Seas starring Humphrey Bogart, is based a novel by W. Somerset Maugham but the love triangle at the center of the story is overshadowed by the undersea action spectacle promised on both film's poster and trailer: "See the undersea fight with a giant octopus." And Sh! The Octopus (1937), a B-movie comedy-mystery starring the comedy team of Hugh Herbert and Allen Jenkins as bumbling detectives, delivers on the title with writhing tentacles that reach through doorways to snatch up characters on dry land.

Much more serious is the CinemaScope spectacle Beneath the 12-Mile Reef (1953) starring Robert Wagner as the impetuous son of Greek-American sponge diver Gilbert Roland. The film was shot on location in Key West and Tarpon Springs, Florida, with underwater sequences photographed with a specially designed French underwater camera called the Aquaflex to show off the beauty of the undersea world off the coast of Florida and in the Bahamas.

All of these films turned to full-sized rubber puppets, animating their tentacles with air hoses or, more often, manipulating them like marionettes with wires. Both approaches have their limitations. Special effects wizard Ray Harryhausen upped the ante on octopi menace with It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955), one of the most entertaining of the atomic-powered giant monster movies of the 1950s. Driven from the depths of the ocean by atomic fallout, the radioactive mutant octopus goes in search of new feeding grounds and discovers the cornucopia called San Francisco. Harryhausen was a wizard of stop motion animation but what made his screen monsters stand out was the personality imbued in each creation. The tentacled attack of the Golden Gate Bridge by the giant cephalopod, each tentacle writhing like an angry snake, is one of the great monster movie spectacles of the golden age. To save time and money on the budget-strained production, Harryhausen gave the octopus only six tentacles (a hexapus?).

Tentacles (1977), a low-budget Italian-American production, was one of the hordes of Jaws knock-offs that were cobbled together in the wake of Spielberg's blockbuster, this one replacing the shark with a vengeful octopus terrorizing a quiet ocean community. And in Warlords of Atlantis (1978), a British action-fantasy about 19th century scientists enslaved by a society of underwater dwellers, a giant octopus is the guardian of the secret entrance to a hidden empire.

Stay out of the water, and enjoy!


6:00 AM -- Best Friends (1982)
1h 56m | Comedy | TV-14
Two screenwriters who have lived and worked together for years decide to escalate their relationship.
Director: Norman Jewison
Cast: Burt Reynolds, Goldie Hawn, Jessica Tandy

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Music, Original Song -- Michel Legrand (music), Alan Bergman (lyrics) and Marilyn Bergman (lyrics) for the song "How Do You Keep the Music Playing?"

The film's director Norman Jewison said of this film's screenplay and the movie's two leads: "The script gave us the broad brush strokes for what, hopefully, has become a montage of small, revealing, funny scenes. I encourage improvisation only when it's relevant to the story and the actors can handle it. In this case it was the right approach. Burt is remarkably ingenious, and Goldie has the greatest body language of anyone I've ever known. I gave them a free rein and much of what happens on the honeymoon journey between Los Angeles and Buffalo is their own invention".


8:00 AM -- The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)
1h 42m | Romance | TV-14
A bored millionaire decides to live his life on the edge and stages a multimilion dollar burglary.
Director: Norman Jewison
Cast: Steve McQueen, Faye Dunaway, Paul Burke

Winner of an Oscar for Best Music, Original Song -- Michel Legrand (music), Alan Bergman (lyrics) and Marilyn Bergman (lyrics) for the song "The Windmills of Your Mind"

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Music, Original Score for a Motion Picture (not a Musical) -- Michel Legrand

According to Norman Jewison, the initial bank robbery was filmed at the downtown branch of the National Shawmut Bank, and that although the guards and bank officials knew what was going on, the customers did not because the filmmakers were using a concealed camera. Although they apparently thought that a real robbery was occurring, none of the customers or pedestrians interfered in any way.


10:00 AM -- Fiddler on the Roof (1971)
3h | Musical | TV-G
Before the Russian revolution, a Jewish milkman tries to marry off his daughters who have their own ideas about marriage.
Director: Norman Jewison
Cast: Topol, Norma Crane, Leonard Frey

Winner of Oscars for Best Cinematography -- Oswald Morris, Best Sound -- Gordon K. McCallum and David Hildyard, and Best Music, Scoring Adaptation and Original Song Score -- John Williams

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Topol, Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Leonard Frey, Best Director -- Norman Jewison, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration -- Robert F. Boyle, Michael Stringer and Peter Lamont, and Best Picture

Director Norman Jewison was brought into the project by executives at United Artists who thought he was Jewish. His first words to the executives upon meeting them were, "You know I'm not Jewish, right?"


1:15 PM -- Little Lord Fauntleroy (1936)
1h 38m | Drama | TV-G
An American orphan discovers he is heir to a British title.
Director: John Cromwell
Cast: Freddie Bartholomew, Dolores Costello Barrymore, C. Aubrey Smith

When the original story was published in the 1880's, the suit worn by the main character became the height of fashion for well-dressed young gentlemen. Even the cartoon and trademark character of Buster Brown was seen wearing the outfit.


3:00 PM -- Beyond Tomorrow (1940)
1h 24m | Romance | TV-G
A ghost tries to smooth the way for two young lovers he knew during his lifetime.
Director: A. Edward Sutherland
Cast: Harry Carey, C. Aubrey Smith, Charles Winninger

Many of the film's older cast members, including Harry Carey, C. Aubrey Smith, and Maria Ouspenskaya, passed away less than ten years after the film's release.


4:30 PM -- Maisie Was a Lady (1941)
1h 19m | Comedy | TV-G
A Brooklyn showgirl signs on as a maid for a family of wealthy eccentrics.
Director: Edwin L. Marin
Cast: Ann Sothern, Lew Ayres, Maureen O'sullivan

In the opening scene at the carnival, the carnival barker at the Freak Show is the actor Joe Yule. He is the real life father of Mickey Rooney.


6:00 PM -- The Prisoner of Zenda (1937)
1h 41m | Adventure | TV-PG
An Englishman who resembles the king of a small European nation gets mixed up in palace in...
Director: John Cromwell
Cast: Ronald Colman, Madeleine Carroll, C. Aubrey Smith

Nominee for Oscars for Best Art Direction -- Lyle R. Wheeler, and Best Music, Score -- Alfred Newman (musical director) with score by Alfred Newman

In his first autobiography "Salad Days", Douglas Fairbanks Jr. said that when Raymond Massey told Sir C. Aubrey Smith, who played Colonel Zapt, that he didn't understand his own part of Black Michael, Smith said, "Ray, in my time, I've played every part in Zenda except Princess Flavia, and I've never understood Black Michael either."



WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: PRIMETIME THEME -- DEEP SEA CINEMA: SEA MONSTERS, SHARKS, AND CREATURES FROM BELOW



8:00 PM -- Below the Sea (1933)
1h 19m | Adventure | TV-G
Criminals threaten a wealthy woman's underwater expedition.
Director: Albert Rogell
Cast: Ralph Bellamy, Fay Wray, Frederick Vogeding

A short documentary sequence on undersea life, filmed in two-strip technicolor, running approximately 4 minutes, originally filmed to be used in The Uninvited Guest (1924), and shown at the shipboard party at the beginning of the third reel, is now missing and apparently lost.


9:30 PM -- It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955)
1h 20m | Horror/Science-Fiction | TV-PG
A giant, radioactive octopus rises from the Philippine Trench to terrorize the North American Pacific Coast.
Director: Robert Gordon
Cast: Kenneth Tobey, Faith Domergue, Donald Curtis

Because the budget was so low, Ray Harryhausen saved money by building his octopus model with six rather than the correct eight tentacles. He tried to pose the creature so this lack of the right number of arms wasn't apparent.


11:00 PM -- Tentacles (1977)
1h 42m | Horror/Science-Fiction | TV-14
A giant octopus attacks a seaside resort.
Director: Ovidio G Assonitis
Cast: Shelley Winters, Henry Fonda, Bo Hopkins

The production spent nearly $1 million on a life-sized replica of a giant octopus, which promptly sank when put it in the water.


1:00 AM -- Warlords Of Atlantis (1978)
1h 36m | Action | TV-14
Searching for the lost world of Atlantis, Prof. Aitken and his team are betrayed by the crew of their expedition's ship, attracted by the fabulous treasures of Atlantis.
Director: Kevin Connor
Cast: Doug Mcclure, Peter Gilmore, Ashley Knight

The film was originally known as Atlantis. However it was decided to change the title to avoid confusion with Atlantis, the Lost Continent (1961). So the title became 7 Cities of Atlantis. Then the TV series The Man from Atlantis flopped and executives did not want to associate the film with that show, so it became Warlords of the Deep. However Columbia, who partly financed, thought this was too close to The Deep so the title was changed again to Warlords of Atlantis.


3:00 AM -- Beneath the 12-Mile Reef (1953)
1h 42m | Adventure | TV-G
Fierce competition forces a Greek-American family to fish in the dangerous 12-mile reef area off the coast of Florida.
Director: Robert D. Webb
Cast: Robert Wagner, Terry Moore, Gilbert Roland

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Cinematography, Color -- Edward Cronjager

Robert Wagner was nearly drowned during filming at Tarpon Springs, FL, when he was kicked in the abdomen by another swimmer. He sank to the bottom and had to be rescued by a crew member.


5:00 AM -- Isle of Fury (1936)
1h | Drama | TV-G
A man on the run in the South Seas gets caught up in a romantic triangle.
Director: Frank Mcdonald
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Margaret Lindsay, Donald Woods

One of only two films in which Humphrey Bogart sported a mustache. (The other was Virginia City (1940).)