TCM Schedule for Friday, December 19 -- Romantic Christmas

[Staph]

We've got a day of WWII films; after all, nothing says Christmas like bombing Tokyo! Tonight features the romantic side of Christmas, including a couple of gems that you shouldn't miss -- The Bishop's Wife, with Cary Grant, David Niven and Loretta Young, and Christmas In Connecticut, with Barbara Stanwick and Dennis Morgan. Enjoy!


5:15am -- Support Your Local Gunfighter (1971)
A con artist poses as a notorious hired gun.
Cast: James Garner, Suzanne Pleshette, Jack Elam.
Dir: Burt Kennedy.
C-92 mins, TV-PG

James Garner and his wife Lois Clarke were married in 1956 at the Beverly Hills Court House, just two weeks after they met at a political rally. They are still married today!


6:10am -- Short Film: From The Vaults: Have Faith In Our Children (1955)
Glenn Ford and Eleanor Powell urge moviegoers to donate to the Variety Club of Northern California, a charity for blind children.
Cast: Glenn Ford, Eleanor Powell
BW-3 mins

Ford and Powell divorced four years after this short.


7:00am -- The Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse (1962)
Members of an Argentinian family fight on opposite sides during World War II.
Cast: Glenn Ford, Ingrid Thulin, Charles Boyer.
Dir: Vincente Minnelli.
C-153 mins, TV-PG

Vincente Minnelli did all he could to sign Alain Delon for the role of Julio, but the producers were set on having an American star in the lead role eventually played by Glenn Ford.


9:45am -- Paths Of Glory (1957)
A military lawyer comes to question the status quo when he defends three men accused of cowardice.
Cast: Kirk Douglas, Adolphe Menjou, George Macready.
Dir: Stanley Kubrick.
BW-88 mins, TV-PG

For box office reasons, Stanley Kubrick intended to impose a happy ending. After several draft scripts he changed his mind and restored the novel's original ending. Producer James B. Harris then had to inform studio executive Max E. Youngstein and risk rejection of the change. Harris managed by simply having the entire final script delivered without a memo of the changes, on the assumption that nobody in the studio would actually read it.


11:15am -- Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944)
General Jimmy Doolittle trains American troops for the first airborne attacks on Japan.
Cast: Spencer Tracy, Van Johnson, Robert Walker.
Dir: Mervyn LeRoy.
BW-138 mins, TV-PG

Won an Oscar for Best Effects, Special Effects -- A. Arnold Gillespie (photographic), Donald Jahraus
(photographic), Warren Newcombe (photographic), and Douglas Shearer (sound)

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Robert Surtees and Harold Rosson

When Lawson's plane arrives in Tokyo and sees the fire and smoke from the previous bomber, Davy Jones, we are not looking at a special effect. During the making of the film, there was a fuel-oil fire in Oakland, near the filming location. The quick-thinking filmmakers scrambled to fly their camera plane and B-25 through the area, capturing some very real footage for the movie.


1:45pm -- Destination Tokyo (1943)
A U.S. sub braves enemy waters during World War II.
Cast: Cary Grant, John Garfield, Alan Hale.
Dir: Delmer Daves.
BW-135 mins, TV-PG

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Writing, Original Story -- Steve Fisher

Aspects of the appendectomy used in the scene in this movie were taken from the events outboard the Seadragon. An appendectomy performed by a 22-year-old pharmacist's mate named Wheeler Lipes and an assistant. They used bent spoons as retractors, alcohol taken from torpedoes, and sterilized pajamas as surgical gowns. It took place 120 feet below the surface of the South China Sea in 1942. Lipes' actions were criticized by Navy doctors, and the US surgeon general even considered a court-martial. Lipes finally received the Navy Commendation Medal two months before his death in April 2005.


4:00pm -- Operation Petticoat (1959)
During World War II, the crew of a decrepit submarine takes on a team of Navy nurses.
Cast: Cary Grant, Tony Curtis, Dina Merrill.
Dir: Blake Edwards.
C-121 mins, TV-G

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay - Written Directly for the Screen -- Paul King (story), Joseph Stone (story), Stanley Shapiro (screenplay), and Maurice Richlin (screenplay)

Some of the plot points of the movie were based on real-life incidents. Most notable were scenes set at the opening of WW II, based on the actual sinking of the submarine USS Sealion (SS-195), sunk at the pier at Cavite Navy Yard, the Philippines; Cmdr. Sherman's letter to the supply department on the inexplicable lack of toilet paper, based on an actual letter to the supply department of Mare Island Naval Shipyard by Lt. Cmdr. James Wiggin Coe of the submarine Skipjack (SS-184); and the need to paint a submarine pink, due to the lack of enough red lead or white lead undercoat paint.


6:02pm -- Short Film: From The Vaults: Will Rogers Memorial Hospital (1940)
Cary Grant asking moviegoers to donate to the Will Rogers Memorial Hospital, a hospital and recovery center for tuberculosis patients.
Cast: Cary Grant, Frank Sinatra.
BW-2 mins

Cary Grant once phoned hotel mogul Conrad Hilton in Istanbul, Turkey, to find out why his breakfast order at the Plaza Hotel, which called for muffins, came with only one and a half English muffins instead of two. When Grant insisted that the explanation (a hotel efficiency report had found that most people ate only three of the four halves brought to them) still resulted in being cheated out of a half, the Plaza Hotel changed its policy and began serving two complete muffins with breakfast. From then on, Grant often spoke of forming an English Muffin-Lovers Society, members of which would be required to report any hotel or restaurant that listed muffins on the menu and then served fewer than two.


6:15pm -- Many Rivers To Cross (1955)
A pioneer woman sets her sights on a trapper.
Cast: Robert Taylor, Eleanor Parker, Victor McLaglen.
Dir: Roy Rowland.
C-95 mins, TV-G

"The higher up the berry tree the sweeter grows the berry
The more you hug and kiss a gal the more she wants to marry
The berry tree's a wise old tree the sweetest fruit is his'n
But marryin' up with any gal is just like goin' to prison."


What's On Tonight: TCM PRIME TIME FEATURE: ROMANTIC CHRISTMAS


8:00pm -- The Bishop's Wife (1947)
An angel helps set an ambitious bishop on the right track.
Cast: Cary Grant, Loretta Young, David Niven.
Dir: Henry Koster.
BW-109 mins, TV-G

Won an Oscar for Best Sound, Recording -- Gordon Sawyer (Samuel Goldwyn SSD)

Nominated for Oscars for Best Director -- Henry Koster, Best Film Editing -- Monica Collingwood, Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture -- Hugo Friedhofer, and Best Picture

Originally Cary Grant played the bishop and David Niven the angel. When original director William A. Seiter left the film, Henry Koster replaced him and viewed what had been shot so far. He realized that the two were in the wrong roles. It took some convincing because Grant wanted the title role of the Bishop. He soon accepted the change and his role as the angel was one of the most widely praised of his career.


10:00pm -- Christmas In Connecticut (1945)
A homemaking specialist who can't boil water is forced to provide a family holiday for a war hero.
Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, Dennis Morgan, Sydney Greenstreet.
Dir: Peter Godfrey.
BW-102 mins, TV-G

The Connecticut home is the same set used in Bringing Up Baby (1938).


11:45pm -- Holiday Affair (1950)
A young widow is torn between a boring businessman and a romantic ne'er-do-well.
Cast: Robert Mitchum, Janet Leigh, Wendell Corey.
Dir: Don Hartman.
BW-87 mins, TV-G

Robert Mitchum briefly served in the US Army during World War II, from April 12 to October 11, 1945, after he was drafted. According to Lee Server's 2001 biography, "Robert Mitchum: Baby I Don't Care," Mitchum said he served as a medic at an induction department, checking recruits' genitals for venereal disease (a "pecker checker"). Always the iconoclast, although he did not want to join the military, he served honorably and was discharged as a Private First Class and received the World War II Victory Medal.


1:15am -- Tenth Avenue Angel (1948)
A child of the tenements helps an ex-con find a new life.
Cast: Margaret O'Brien, Angela Lansbury, George Murphy.
Dir: Roy Rowland.
BW-74 mins, TV-G

Filmed between March 11 and May 15, 1946, with retakes shot in April 1947, the movie was held back until its nationwide release on February 20, 1948. Moreover, the picture was not given a contemporary New York Times review.


2:30am -- The Road to Ruin (1934)
An innocent girl falls in with a crowd devoted to pot and free love.
Cast: Helen Foster, Nell O'Day, Glen Boles.
Dir: Dorothy Davenport, Melville Shyer.
BW-64 mins, TV-14

A young girl gets involved with a crowd that smokes marijuana, drinks and has sex. She winds up an alcoholic, pregnant drug addict and is forced to get an abortion. Some of my Republican co-workers would say that these terrible things happened to this poor, innocent girl because there was a Democratic president at the time!


4:00am -- Escort Girl (1941)
A woman tries to hide her job as a paid escort from her visiting daughter.
Cast: Betty Compson, Margaret Marquis, Wheeler Oakman.
Dir: Edward M. Kaye.
BW-57 mins, TV-14

Like The Road To Ruin, another cheesy exploitation film.

[Staph]

1. The Bishop's Wife (1947)

1947 was, by all accounts, Samuel Goldwyn's peak year. Although the legendary producer had by this period amassed an array of impressive hits (and interesting misses), the jewel in his crown had been the Oscar-winning Best Picture of 1946, The Best Years of Our Lives. The worldwide acclaim and mega-box office receipts of Best Years enhanced Goldwyn's already considerable reputation in Hollywood but how do you top what many critics were calling the "finest motion picture ever made"?

Taking his cue from one of RKO's biggest hits of 1945, The Bells of St. Mary's (Leo McCarey's smash sequel to 1944's Going My Way), he decided he would make a picture that was heartwarming and inspirational with a background Christmas setting. For his source material, Goldwyn optioned The Bishop's Wife, a popular novel by Robert Nathan whose other fantasy romance, Portrait of Jennie, would eclipse Bishop as both a literary work, and, as a 1948 Selznick movie. The fact that another RKO film, Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life, containing a similar earthbound angel storyline, flopped miserably the same year as Best Years, fell upon deaf ears.

In an odd move, the producer next hired writer Robert Sherwood, who had done such a splendid job on Best Years, to pen the script; Goldwyn figured Sherwood could do no wrong. Sherwood, whose take on the reality of post-war America was dead-on, was not equipped to handle the lighthearted whimsical narrative concerning a heavenly being sent to mend a shaky mortal marriage. It was the second of many mistakes. William A. Seiter, a fine comedy director who had guided everyone from Laurel and Hardy (Sons of the Desert, 1933) and the Marx Brothers (Room Service, 1938) to Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers (Roberta, 1935), was set to direct after William Wyler turned the picture down.

Next came the casting. Loretta Young (whom Goldwyn would constantly refer to as "Laurette Taylor," a famous actress who had recently died) and Cary Grant would be paired as the troubled couple with David Niven, ending his contract with the producer, slated as the angel, Dudley. From day one, Grant voiced his problems with the script, and stipulated re-writes. Soon, he realized that he had the wrong part: he should be the angel with Niven relegated to the title character's husband.

Shortly after this casting change went into effect, Grant had new doubts about his decision and wondered if perhaps he should have stuck with his original role. But Goldwyn had other problems to contend with according to co-star David Niven in his biography, Bring on the Empty Horses: "The day before shooting was to start, Goldwyn decided that the interiors of the Bishop's house were not ecclesiastical enough and ordered several sets to be torn down, redesigned and rebuilt. For three weeks, while this was going on, production was halted, then, two days after the cameras finally had a chance to turn, Goldwyn decided that Seiter's hand was a little too heavy on the tiller: he was removed, paid his full salary and after a week, Goldwyn hired Henry Koster to start again from scratch - with another two weeks of rehearsal. All this must have cost Goldwyn several hundred thousand dollars...."

Almost before Koster could cry his first "Action!," problems arose between Grant and Young - due primarily to Grant's notorious perfectionism. Off screen, the star was going through a rash of personal problems underlined by the near-death of his close friend Howard Hughes, who was hospitalized in critical condition after a plane crash. But on the set, Grant's obsessive attention to small details often irritated Young, who could be quite headstrong in her own working methods.

According to Joe Morella and Edward Z. Epstein in the biography, Loretta Young: An Extraordinary Life, "Loretta and Cary were shooting a scene when Grant stopped abruptly, declaring, "If it's supposed to be cold outside, and the house is nice and warm inside, why isn't there any frost on the windows?" This was the kind of detail that was rarely overlooked at the Goldwyn studio, and everything stopped until the proper frost effect was accomplished by the propmen." It was just one of many incidents that encouraged Young to assert her own ego during production. The fact that the two leads had gotten along famously when they co-starred in Born to be Bad (1934) was apparently long forgotten when it came time to photograph them both in profile - from the same side - for a romantic scene.

"Neither actor had ever objected to being shot in profile," wrote Charles Higham and Roy Moseley in Cary Grant: The Lonely Heart. "But now Cary said he looked better from his left side, and Loretta said that she also looked better from that side. In despair, Koster said, "How can I direct what is, in essence, a love scene if both of you are looking the same way?" Eventually, Koster worked out the blocking for the scene that pleased both actors but the completed scene angered Goldwyn who later confronted Grant and Young and warned them, "From now on, both of you guys get only half your salary if I can only use half your faces."

Usually, Grant and Young would have turned to their co-star David Niven for comfort. The renowned wit and raconteur was a great pal of Cary's since the mid-1930s when he officially joined the Hollywood colony of expatriate British actors living there; furthermore, he and Loretta were good friends, having worked together four times previously. But the usually cheerful Niven was going through his own private hell. Prior to production on The Bishop's Wife, the actor's beloved wife Primmie suffered a fatal head injury; it occurred during a party game of "sardines" at Tyrone Power's house. She thought she was running into a closet, but instead took a long fall down the cellar stairs and died of complications days later.

Meanwhile, Goldwyn focused his energies on improving the script. With key sequences in crucial need of tweaking, Sam sent out an A.P.B. for the writing/directing/producing team of Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett. During a frantic Friday meeting and rough-cut screening, Goldwyn offered the formidable scribes $25,000 for doctoring three crucial scenes on the proviso that they be ready for the cameras by Monday. The duo agreed and worked round the clock, handing in the newly scripted scenes with no time to spare. However, Wilder and Brackett had a proviso of their own: Since the 25 grand would ultimately cause them more trouble than it was worth (due to the strict California tax laws), Wilder told Goldwyn, 'Sam, about that $25,000 you were going to pay us for those three scenes. We've decided we don't need the money.' 'Funny,' replied Sam, 'I had just come to the same conclusion myself.'

Surprisingly, despite all the problems encountered during filming, The Bishop's Wife emerged unscathed to excellent reviews. While not coming close to rivaling Goldwyn's The Best Years of Our Lives, the comedy-fantasy took in more than respectable grosses, and has since become a perennial Yuletide classic. Goldwyn himself was shocked at how well the picture turned out. He even went as far as to predict that Loretta Young would win the Best Actress Oscar for 1947! Of her performance, Young later said, "I thought of the wife as a frustrated little thing, rather lonely and rather thwarted....This was the hardest part I'd ever played."

In all, The Bishop's Wife picked up five Academy nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director, as well as Best Sound Recording, Best Editing and Best Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture. But Goldwyn would only take home one statuette - for Best Sound. As for his prediction, it proved to be an ironic example of "Don't wish so hard for something, you just might get it." Loretta Young did indeed win the Best Actress Oscar that year - for The Farmer's Daughter, produced through RKO by David O. Selznick!

Producer: Samuel Goldwyn
Director: Henry Koster
Screenplay: Leonardo Bercovici, Robert E. Sherwood, Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder; based on the novel by Robert Nathan
Art Direction: Perry Ferguson, Charles Henderson, George Jenkins
Cinematography: Gregg Toland
Editing: Monica Collingwood
Music: Hugo W. Friedhofer
Cast: Cary Grant (Dudley), Loretta Young (Julia Brougham), David Niven (Henry Brougham), Monty Woolley (Prof. Wutheridge), James Gleason (Sylvester), Gladys Cooper (Mrs. Hamilton).
BW-110m. Closed captioning.

by Mel Neuhaus