TCM Schedule for Thursday, May 21 -- Race and Hollywood

[Staph]

Happy birthday to Robert Montgomery, who would have been 105 years old today. In prime time, we've got a return to the occasional series Race And Hollywood, tonight with Latinos (and pseudo-Latinas like Natalie Wood) in Hollywood musicals. Enjoy!


4:00am -- Family Plot (1976)
A phony psychic takes on a pair of kidnappers.
Cast: Karen Black, Bruce Dern, Barbara Harris, William Devane
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock
C-120 mins, TV-14

Alfred Hitchcock's final film.


6:00am -- Their Own Desire (1929)
A young couple's affair is complicated by her father's relationship with his mother.
Cast: Norma Shearer, Belle Bennett, Lewis Stone, Robert Montgomery
Dir: E. Mason Hopper
BW-65 mins, TV-G

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Norma Shearer

Robert Montgomery pioneered the concept of the political "image consultant" in the early television era by advising President Dwight D. Eisenhower on how to most effectively present himself to TV viewers. Following Richard Nixon's disastrous first televised debate with John F. Kennedy during the 1960 campaign, Eisenhower remarked that he was certain that if Nixon had only let Montgomery coordinate his appearance, Nixon would have looked much better, and would have probably won the debate... and the election.


7:15am -- The Big House (1930)
An attempted prison break leads to a riot.
Cast: Chester Morris, Wallace Beery, Lewis Stone, Robert Montgomery
Dir: George Hill
BW-87 mins, TV-PG

Won Oscars for Best Sound, Recording -- Douglas Shearer (sound director), and Best Writing, Achievement -- Frances Marion

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Wallace Beery, and Best Picture

In Frances Marion's original script, the characters played by Leila Hyams and Robert Montgomery were husband and wife. After the film flopped in a preview screening, MGM studio executive Irving Thalberg decided that the problem was that audiences, especially women, didn't want to see the Chester Morris character have an affair with a married woman. So the script was rewritten to make Robert Montgomery and Leila Hyams brother and sister. Retakes were made and the film, in its modified form, became a major hit.


8:45am -- Strangers May Kiss (1931)
A sophisticated woman risks her marriage for love of a ruthless schemer.
Cast: Norma Shearer, Robert Montgomery, Neil Hamilton, Marjorie Rambeau
Dir: George Fitzmaurice
BW-81 mins, TV-G

Montgomery was widely considered to be one of the best dressed men in Hollywood and for years did not carry a wallet because it ruined the drape of his suits.


10:15am -- Hide-Out (1934)
Farmers take in an injured racketeer and try to reform him.
Cast: Robert Montgomery, Maureen O'Sullivan, Edward Arnold, Elizabeth Patterson
Dir: W. S. Van Dyke
BW-81 mins, TV-G

Nominated for Oscars for Best Writing, Original Story -- Mauri Grashin

"If you are lucky enough to be a success, by all means enjoy the applause and the adulation of the public. But never, never believe it." Robert Montgomery


11:45am -- The Last Of Mrs. Cheyney (1937)
A chic jewel thief in England falls in love with one of her marks.
Cast: Joan Crawford, William Powell, Robert Montgomery, Frank Morgan
Dir: Richard Boleslawski
BW-98 mins, TV-G

Myrna Loy was originally cast as Fay Cheyney, while Joan Crawford was cast in Parnell (1937). Because Crawford did not like her role in that film, she switched roles and films with Loy.



1:30pm -- The First Hundred Years (1938)
A working woman doesn't want to give up her career when she marries.
Cast: Robert Montgomery, Virginia Bruce, Warren William, Binnie Barnes
Dir: Richard Thorpe
BW-74 mins, TV-PG

Robert Montgomery is the father of Samantha Stephens (aka Elizabeth Montgomery). Does that make him Maurice?


2:45pm -- Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1941)
A quarrelsome couple discovers their marriage isn't legal.
Cast: Carole Lombard, Robert Montgomery, Gene Raymond, Jack Carson
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock
BW-95 mins, TV-G

This was Alfred Hitchcock's only screwball comedy. He was talked into directing it by Carole Lombard. Lombard directed Alfred Hitchcock's cameo, making him do repeated retakes.

In order to twit Alfred Hitchcock and generate publicity about his comment that "actors are cattle", Lombard set up a miniature cattle pen on the set. The pen held three heifers, each emblazoned with the name of one of the three stars.


4:30pm -- Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941)
A prizefighter who died before his time is reincarnated as a tycoon with a murderous wife.
Cast: Robert Montgomery, Evelyn Keyes, Claude Rains, Rita Johnson
Dir: Alexander Hall
BW-94 mins, TV-G

Won Oscars for Best Writing, Original Story -- Harry Segall, and Best Writing, Screenplay -- Sidney Buchman and Seton I. Miller

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Robert Montgomery, Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- James Gleason, Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Joseph Walker, Best Director -- Alexander Hall, and Best Picture

James Gleason was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in the role of Max Corkle. This is the first time in Academy Awards history for a person to be nominated for a supporting Oscar for a role for which a different person would later also be nominated for a supporting Oscar: Jack Warden was nominated for Best Supporting Actor as Max Corkle in Heaven Can Wait (1978).


6:15pm -- Lady In The Lake (1947)
Philip Marlowe searches for a missing woman in this mystery shot entirely from the detective's viewpoint.
Cast: Robert Montgomery, Audrey Totter, Lloyd Nolan, Tom Tully
Dir: Robert Montgomery
BW-103 mins, TV-PG

The entire movie plot unfolds from lead Robert Montgomery's point of view, thus creating a rarity in film: the principal character is never seen on-screen except as a reflection in mirrors and windows.


What's On Tonight: TCM SPOTLIGHT: RACE AND HOLLYWOOD


8:00pm -- Greenwich Village (1944)
A speakeasy owner steals a serious young composer's songs so he can produce a musical.
Cast: Carmen Miranda, Don Ameche, William Bendix, Vivian Blaine
Dir: Walter Lang
C-82 mins

"I Like to Be Loved by You" (music by Harry Warren, lyrics by Mack Gordon) originally was planned for Carmen Miranda to sing and dance in Springtime in the Rockies (1942). Ultimately, Carmen's number was interpolated into the score of this picture.


9:30pm -- West Side Story (1961)
A young couple from dueling street gangs falls in love.
Cast: Natalie Wood, Richard Beymer, Russ Tamblyn, Rita Moreno
Dir: Robert Wise
C-152 mins, TV-PG

Won Oscars for Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- George Chakiris, Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Rita Moreno, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color -- Boris Leven and Victor A. Gangelin, Best Cinematography, Color -- Daniel L. Fapp, Best Costume Design, Color -- Irene Sharaff, Best Director -- Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins (For the first time a directing award is being shared.), Best Film Editing -- Thomas Stanford, Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture -- Saul Chaplin, Johnny Green, Sid Ramin and Irwin Kostal, Best Sound -- Fred Hynes (Todd-AO SSD) and Gordon Sawyer (Samuel Goldwyn SSD), and Best Picture

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium -- Ernest Lehman

The actors in the rival gangs were instructed to play pranks on each other off the set to keep tensions high. But Gus Trikonis who played Indio, one of the Puerto Rican Sharks--and who is actually Greek--is the brother of Gina Trikonis, who played Graziella, the tough red-haired Italian girlfriend of Riff, leader of the Jets.


12:15am -- La Bamba (1987)
Singer Richie Valens fights family problems and bigotry to become a recording star.
Cast: Lou Diamond Phillips, Esai Morales, Rosana De Soto, Elizabeth Pena
Dir: Luis Valdez
C-109 mins, TV-MA

According to Lou Diamond Phillips in the VH1 documentary "Behind The Music: The Day The Music Died" (1990), Ritchie Valens' sister was on the set the day they filmed the "coin toss" scene where Ritchie wins (or rather, loses) the chance to fly on the plane with Buddy Holly and The Big Bopper. As the scenes were being shot, Ritchie's sister began to weep uncontrollably and when Phillips tried to console her, she hugged him and sobbed, "Why Ritchie? Why did you get on the plane?"


2:15am -- The Mambo Kings (1992)
Two Cuban brothers fight small-time crooks to make their Latin band a hit.
Cast: Armand Assante, Antonio Banderas, Cathy Moriarty-Gentile, Maruschka Detmers
Dir: Arne Glimcher
C-104 mins, TV-MA

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Music, Original Song -- Robert Kraft (music) and Arne Glimcher (lyrics) for the song "Beautiful Maria of My Soul"

Antonio Banderas couldn't speak English when this movie was filmed, and thus performed all his lines phonetically. Armand Assante couldn't speak Spanish and thus performed all his lines phonetically.

[Staph]

1. West Side Story Trivia

West Side Story was made for approximately $6 million. Its earnings have been reported as between $11 million (on its initial release) and nearly $20 million (total rentals). It was the second highest-grossing film of 1962, after Spartacus.

The lyrics to a few of the songs in West Side Story were changed from the stage version. In one case, it was done to avoid offending a certain ethnic group. Sondheim's use of the rhyming phrases "island of tropical breezes" and "island of tropic diseases" was taken to task by The New York Times during the play's run. In the Broadway stage version, the lines went "Puerto Rico, you ugly island, island of tropic diseases, always the hurricanes blowing, always the population growing, and the babies crying, and the bullets flying." In the film version, they were changed to "Puerto Rico, my heart's devotion, let it sink back in the ocean, always the hurricanes blowing, always the population growing, and the sunlight streaming, and the natives steaming." Other lyrics were toned down to be less suggestive, such as the line in the "Jets Song" that was changed from the stage version - "on the whole ever-mother-lovin'-street" to "on the whole buggin' ever-lovin street" on screen. Other lyrics had to be changed simply because the setting or time of the song had changed. Maria's "I Feel Pretty" was moved to earlier in the film, occurring in daytime instead of at night. Therefore, the line "I feel pretty and witty and bright, and I pity any girl who isn't me tonight" became "I feel pretty and witty and gay, and I pity any girl who isn't me today."

Director Robert Wise started his long and varied career in 1939 as an editor at RKO Studios, where he was nominated for an Oscar for cutting Orson Welles' Citizen Kane (1941). He also edited Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) before moving on to a directing career in producer Val Lewton's famous horror unit at RKO. There he directed Curse of the Cat People (1944) and The Body Snatcher (1945). He made several pictures in the film noir genre, including Born to Kill (1947) and The Set-Up (1949), and directed one of the most famous sci-fi movies of all time, The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951). Throughout the next decade, he concentrated on small personal dramas, such as Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956) and I Want to Live (1958). After West Side Story, however, he concentrated primarily on blockbusters and big, commercial features; some hugely successful - The Sound of Music (1965) - and some disastrous (Star!, 1968).

Scriptwriter Ernest Lehman has been nominated for five Oscars (including one for his work on West Side Story) and received an honorary award in 2001. Among his screenplays were Executive Suite (1954), Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956), and The Sound of Music (1965), all directed by Robert Wise. In terms of gritty New York stories and themes, he was certainly qualified for this picture through his creation of Sweet Smell of Success (1957). Arthur Laurents, who wrote the book for the stage version of West Side Story, did his first movie script for Alfred Hitchcock's Rope (1948). He was Oscar-nominated as both co-producer and screenwriter on The Turning Point (1977). A noted writer for the stage, his play The Time of the Cuckoo was turned into the Katharine Hepburn film Summertime (1955), and he wrote both the stage and screen versions of the musical Gypsy (1962). Among his other film scripts are Anastasia (1956) and The Way We Were (1973).

Natalie Wood was the biggest star of the cast. She had been a popular child actress since 1943, most notably in Miracle on 34th Street (1947) and made the transition to more grown-up roles with no interruption in her career. The same year she made West Side Story, she was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar for Splendor in the Grass (1961). Wood maintained a successful career for 40 years until her accidental drowning death at 43 during filming of her last movie, Brainstorm (1983). United Artists offered Wood either $50,000 and a share of the profits to play Maria or a one-time salary of $250,000. At the time, Wood's husband -Robert Wagner - was suffering a career slump and the couple really needed fast cash, so she took the latter option. Considering the huge profits West Side Story earned, it was a bad financial decision for Wood in the long run.

Russ Tamblyn had a successful career before West Side Story as a child actor - Samson and Delilah (1949), Father of the Bride (1950); in musicals - Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954), Hit the Deck (1955); and in teen dramas - Peyton Place (1957), High School Confidential (1958). After playing Riff, he was cast in supporting roles in a handful of major films, including The Haunting (1966), but soon was making low-budget horror and exploitation flicks. Richard Beymer suffered a similar fate. After leads in Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man (1962) and The Stripper (1963), he made only a few minor films in the following 20 years like the suspense thriller, Cross Country (1983). Beymer and Tamblyn were later reunited in David Lynch's cult TV series Twin Peaks (1990).

Rita Moreno and George Chakiris received the best notices of the entire cast, but even their Academy Awards didn't guarantee them skyrocketing film careers. Moreno was flooded with offers to play every variation of the "Latin Spitfire" role. Because she found the parts demeaning, she concentrated more on her stage career and developed a highly successful club act. After acclaimed work in Carnal Knowledge (1971) and The Ritz (1976), she went on to a number of TV roles, most recently in the HBO series Oz. Chakiris has also had a successful stage and TV career after West Side Story. His motion picture roles have been largely in other countries. In the 70s and 80s, he launched a popular nightclub act in Las Vegas.

Several of the film's dancers went on to careers as choreographers and directors. Tony Mordente (Action), a member of the original Broadway cast, was married for a time to Chita Rivera, who played Anita on stage. He has directed a number of TV series over the last 30 years like Burke's Law and Valerie. Eliot Feld (Baby John) made no other movies but founded a highly acclaimed ballet company in New York. Gus Trikonis (Indio) followed this film with only a handful of small roles, including The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964), but has directed many made-for-TV movies and series. He was married to Goldie Hawn from 1969 to 1974.

Marni Nixon, who dubbed Natalie Wood's singing voice, has had a long and successful career singing (uncredited) for non-singing stars cast in musicals. He first film job was as the voice of an angel in Joan of Arc (1948). She dubbed Margaret O'Brien in The Secret Garden (1949), Deborah Kerr twice in The King and I (1956) and An Affair to Remember (1957), and Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady (1964). She also provided the high notes for Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953). Most recently, she was the singing voice of Grandmother Fa in the animated film Mulan (1998).

A number of eminent jazz musicians played on the soundtrack, including Shelly Manne and Pete Candoli.

George Segal, then a young unknown, tried out for the role of Tony. Among the many actors tested for the part was Keir Dullea, who later starred in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Dullea refused to cut his full head of wavy blond hair in order to play a gang member, according to producer Saul Chaplin.


FUN QUOTES FROM WEST SIDE STORY

SCHRANK (Simon Oakland): "You hoodlums don't own these streets. And I've had all the rough-house I can put up with around here. You want to kill each other, kill each other, but you ain't gonna do it on my beat. Are there any questions?"
BERNARDO (George Chakiris): "Yes, sir. Would you mind translating that into Spanish?"

RIFF (Russ Tamblyn): "Now I know Tony like I know me and I guarantee you can count him in."
ACTION (Tony Mordente): "In, out, let's get crackin'."
GEE-TAR (Tommy Abbott): "Where you gonna find Bernardo?"
RIFF: "He'll be at the dance tonight at the gym."
A-RAB (David Winters): "But the gym's neutral territory."
RIFF: "A-rab, I'm gonna make nice with him! I'm only gonna challenge him!"
ICE (Tucker Smith): "Great daddy-o!"

RIFF: "Look, Tony, I never asked the time of day from a clock but I'm asking you, come to the dance tonight. I already told the gang you'd be there. If you don't show I'll be marked lousy."
TONY (Richard Beymer): "What time?"
RIFF: "Ten."
TONY: "Ten it is."
RIFF: "Womb to tomb!"
TONY: "Birth to Earth. And I'll live to regret this."
RIFF: "Who knows? Maybe what you been waitin' on will be twitchin' at the dance tonight."

MARIA (Natalie Wood): "My brother is a silly watchdog!"
BERNARDO: "Ah, my sister is a precious jewel!"
ANITA (Rita Moreno): "What am I, cut glass?"

JETS: "Dear kindly Sgt. Krupke, ya gotta understand. It's just our bringin' upke that gets us outa hand. Our mothers all are junkies, our fathers all are drunks. Golly Moses, naturally we're punks! Gee, Officer Krupke, we're very upset. We never had the love that every child oughta get. We ain't no delinquents, we're misunderstood. Deep down inside us there is good."

SHARK WOMEN: "Here you are free and you have pride."
SHARK MEN: "Long as you stay on your own side."
SHARK WOMEN: "Free to be anything you choose."
SHARK MEN: "Free to wait tables and shine shoes."

BERNARDO: "I think I go back to San Juan."
ANITA: "I know a boat you can get on."
BERNARDO: "Everyone there will give big cheer!"
ANITA: "Everyone there will have moved here."

ICE: "Don't get hot, cause, man, you got some high times ahead. Take it slow and Daddy-o, you can live it up and die in bed. Boy, boy, crazy boy, keep cool boy."

MARIA: "All of you! You all killed him! And my brother, and Riff. Not with bullets, or guns, with hate. Well now I can kill, too, because now I have hate!"

Compiled by Rob Nixon