TCM Schedule for Thursday, October 15 -- Life During the Depression

[Staph]

A morning of the high school world of the 1950s, an afternoon of 1950s science fiction, and an evening of the Great Depression, including one of my favorites -- the Coen Brothers' O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000). Enjoy!


5:00am -- Son Of Kong (1933)
Producer Carl Denham returns to Skull Island in search of more monsters.
Cast: Robert Armstrong, Helen Mack, Frank Reicher, John Marston
Dir: Ernest B. Schoedsack
BW-70 mins, TV-PG

The Little Kong puppet is actually the "long face" Kong model used for the T-Rex battle in King Kong (1933). For this film the armature (metal skeleton) was stripped of its rubber and fur and remodeled to look like a younger albino gorilla.


6:15am -- Parole Girl (1933)
A wrongly convicted woman tries to make amends after getting out of prison.
Cast: Mae Clarke, Ralph Bellamy, Marie Prevost, Hale Hamilton
Dir: Edward Cline
BW-68 mins

Mae Clarke will always be remembered as the recipient of James Cagney's classic grapefruit-in-the-face in The Public Enemy (1931).


7:30am -- The Affairs Of Dobie Gillis (1953)
A lovesick teenager searches for romance at college.
Cast: Debbie Reynolds, Bobby Van, Barbara Ruick, Bob Fosse
Dir: Don Weis
BW-73 mins, TV-G

This modest (by MGM standards) black-and-white musical failed to be noted by a contemporary New York Times review. In addition, this was Debbie Reynolds' only monochrome song-and-dance picture. The main character was later imortalized in the television series The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis (1959-1963), starring Dwayne Hickman and a pre-Gilligan Bob Denver as the beatnik Maynard G. Krebs.


8:45am -- Life Begins at 17 (1958)
A spoiled rich boy makes a play for a 16-year-old whose sisters shot down his advances.
Cast: Mark Damon, Dorothy Johnson, Edward Byrnes, Ann Doran
Dir: Arthur Dreifuss
BW-74 mins, TV-PG

Edward Byrnes, aka Edd Byrnes, was about to achieve television superstardom in 1958, as the hip parking lot attendent, Kookie, in 77 Sunset Strip (1958-1964).


10:00am -- Senior Prom (1958)
Boys from opposite sides of the tracks vie to take a pretty senior to the prom.
Cast: Jill Corey, Paul Hampton, Jimmie Komack, Barbara Bostock
Dir: David Lowell Rich
BW-82 mins, TV-PG

Actor Jimmie Komack later became producer/director James Komack, responsible for television show The Courtship of Eddie's Father and Welcome Back, Kotter.


11:30am -- High School Confidential! (1958)
A young police officer returns to high school undercover to investigate the drug trade.
Cast: Russ Tamblyn, Jan Sterling, John Drew Barrymore, Mamie Van Doren
Dir: Jack Arnold
BW-85 mins, TV-PG

High School Confidential! was based on undercover police work performed by Texas Joe Foster, who played a henchman in the film.


1:00pm -- I Married A Monster From Outer Space (1958)
A young bride suspects her husband has been replaced by a space invader.
Cast: Tom Tryon, Gloria Talbott, Peter Baldwin, Robert Ivers
Dir: Gene Fowler Jr.
BW-78 mins, TV-PG

Near the end of the film (a Paramount production) take a good look at the hand weapon the Aliens are using. It looks remarkably like the one the Klingons used on the Original Star Trek, minus the longer barrel. Coincidence or reuse of props?


2:30pm -- The War Of The Worlds (1953)
A scientist on vacation stumbles upon a Martian invasion.
Cast: Gene Barry, Ann Robinson, Les Tremayne, Bob Cornthwaite
Dir: Byron Haskin
C-85 mins, TV-PG

Won an Oscar for Best Effects, Special Effects

Nominated for Oscars for Best Film Editing -- Everett Douglas, and Best Sound, Recording -- Loren L. Ryder (Paramount Sound Department)

The project was secured by Paramount in 1924. Filming was halted briefly, two days into filming, when Paramount discovered their filming rights to the novel were only for a silent version. It was quickly resolved through the kind permission of H.G. Wells's estate.


4:00pm -- Bedknobs And Broomsticks (1971)
An apprentice witch and three war orphans try to prevent the Nazi invasion of England.
Cast: Angela Lansbury, David Tomlinson, Roddy McDowall, Sam Jaffe
Dir: Robert Stevenson
C-117 mins, TV-G

Won an Oscar for Best Effects, Special Visual Effects -- Alan Maley, Eustace Lycett and Danny Lee

Nominated for Oscars for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration -- John B. Mansbridge, Peter Ellenshaw. Emile Kuri and Hal Gausman, Best Costume Design -- Bill Thomas, Best Music, Original Song -- Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman for the song "The Age of Not Believing", and Best Music, Scoring Adaptation and Original Song Score -- Richard M. Sherman, Robert B. Sherman and Irwin Kostal

The armor in the climactic battle with the Nazis was authentic medieval armor, previously used in Camelot (1967) and El Cid (1961). When any item of armor was to be destroyed, exact fiberglass replicas were created and used.


6:00pm -- The Shaggy Dog (1959)
An ancient spell turns a teenager into a large sheep dog.
Cast: Fred MacMurray, Jean Hagen, Tommy Kirk, Annette Funicello
Dir: Charles Barton
BW-102 mins, TV-G

The first live-action feature comedy produced by Walt Disney.


What's On Tonight: TCM SPOTLIGHT: LIFE DURING THE DEPRESSION


8:00pm -- Paper Moon (1973)
A fraudulent bible salesman reluctantly adopts a tough little girl who could be his daughter.
Cast: Ryan O'Neal, Tatum O'Neal, Madeline Kahn, John Hillerman
Dir: Peter Bogdanovich
BW-102 mins, TV-14

Won an Oscar for Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Tatum O'Neal (Tatum O'Neal, at age 10, became the youngest winner ever in a competitive category. (Shirley Temple had won an Honorary Award at age 6 in 1935.))

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Madeline Kahn, Best Sound -- Richard Portman and Les Fresholtz, and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium -- Alvin Sargent

Peter Bogdanovich didn't like the title of the novel "Addie Pray", but wasn't sure whether "Paper Moon" was good enough; so he asked his mentor Orson Welles what he thought about it. Welles replied, "That title is so good, you shouldn't even make the picture, just release the title!"


10:00pm -- O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)
A convict escapes a chain gang to stop his wife from remarrying.
Cast: George Clooney, John Turturro, Tim Blake Nelson, John Goodman
Dir: Joel Coen
C-107 mins, TV-14

Nominated for Oscars for Best Cinematography -- Roger Deakins, and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published -- Ethan Coen and Joel Coen

References to Homer's Odyssey:

• The names of George Clooney and Holly Hunter's characters (Ulysses and Penelope)
  
• One-eyed Big Dan as the Cyclops (blinded with a burning pole)
  
• The three girls by the river as the Sirens
  
• Ulysses' wife marrying someone else when he comes home
  
• The old-man disguise
  
• The changing of one of Ulysses' companions into an animal
  
• The Baptists as the Lotus-eaters
  
• The Ku Klux Klan has a rank of Grand (or Exalted) Cyclops
  
• They catch a ride on a hand-pumped railway that is being operated by a blind prophet, who tells them that they will not find the treasure they seek. The prophet character in the Odyssey was Teiresias, whom Odysseus consulted in the underworld when he needed information on how to get home again
  
• The movie theater scene as the trip through the Underworld.
  
• Odysseus nearly drowned, but clings to a piece of wood
  
• Odysseus and Everett both reveal themselves by performing an act no one else could: Odysseus strings a special bow and fires it through seven rings; Everett sings "Man of Constant Sorrow" as only the leader of the Soggy Bottom Boys can
  
• "Pappy's" given name, Menelaus, is the same as the king who declared war on Troy in the first place
  
• The Latin equivalent of the Greek name Odysseus is Ulysses
  
• "Sing in me O Muse...”, the line at the beginning of the film, is the first line of the Odyssey
  
• The killing of the cattle of Helios by the "fools" in the Odyssey is mirrored by Baby Face Nelson shooting the cows
  
• Every time Ulysses falls asleep something bad happens
  
• The song which plays throughout the movie is called "Man of Constant Sorrow", Odysseus means "man who is in constant pain and sorrow"
  
• A man of constant sorrow is also a description of Odysseus
  
• Pappy's opposition for Governor's has the first name Homer
  
• When Ulysses first meets Big Dan in the restaurant there is a statue of Homer in the background
  
• There is a "Blind Bard" who pays the boys to "sing into his can". Homer was often (and probably erroneously) thought to be a blind bard who told his stories verbally to his students

12:00am -- Sounder (1972)
Black sharecroppers during the Depression fight to get their children a decent education.
Cast: Cicely Tyson, Paul Winfield, Kevin Hooks, Carmen Matthews
Dir: Martin Ritt
C-105 mins, TV-PG

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Paul Winfield, Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Cicely Tyson, Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium -- Lonne Elder III, and Best Picture

Cicely Tyson commented in a TCM interview that director Martin Ritt's cinematographer (principal cameraman), while shooting the famous "homecoming sequence" with Tyson and co-star Paul Winfield, was so moved by their performances that he was certain he missed framing the action properly in the shots and respectfully asked them to do the difficult scene again. They obliged, but a later examination of daily rushes revealed that they got shot and acting perfect the first time, and take one was a print.


2:00am -- They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969)
Desperate characters stake their fortune on a Depression-era dance marathon.
Cast: Jane Fonda, Michael Sarrazin, Susannah York, Gig Young
Dir: Sydney Pollack
C-120 mins, TV-MA

Won an Oscar for Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Gig Young

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Jane Fonda, Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Susannah York, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration -- Harry Horner and Frank R. McKelvy, Best Costume Design -- Donfeld, Best Director -- Sydney Pollack, Best Film Editing -- Fredric Steinkamp, Best Music, Score of a Musical Picture (Original or Adaptation) -- Johnny Green and Albert Woodbury, and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium -- James Poe and Robert E. Thompson

Sydney Pollack shot some of the frightening derby sequences himself, donning a pair of roller skates to get right in the action with the frantically heel/toe-ing actors.


4:15am -- Private Screenings: Jane Fonda (2007)
Actress Jane Fonda discusses her life and career with host Robert Osborne.
Dir: Sean Cameron.
C-56 mins, TV-PG

Urban legend -- when Vassar was a women's college, the story goes, Jane Fonda refused to wear the elegant white gloves and pearls that were the attire for the daily Tea in the Rose Parlor. When confronted, Fonda returned to the parlor wearing the gloves and the pearls, and nothing else.


5:15am -- MGM Parade Show #21 (1955)
Wallace Beery and Jackie Cooper perform in a clip from "The Champ"; Russ Tamblyn introduces a clip from "The Last Hunt." Hosted by George Murphy.
BW-26 mins, TV-G

By 1955, The Champ was a 24-year-old film, and MGM wouldn't remake it until 1979.

[Staph]

1. O Brother, Where Art Thou?

In the opening credits of Joel and Ethan Coen's, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, their 2000 depression-era prison break movie-turned-screwball odyssey through the deep south, is the attribution: "Based upon The Odyssey by Homer." It's a cheeky proclamation and it doesn't take a classical scholar to note that, if it's indeed true, they've taken liberties with the material. George Clooney comes on like a goofball Clark Gable as the fast-talking but slow-witted convict Everett, a greasy con-man who escapes from a chain gang, dragging along a couple of dim bulbs (a tetchy John Turturro and a sweetly stupid Tim Blake Nelson, both of whom spend much of the film with mouths agape and eyes glazed over). And drag them he does, almost literally, as they are chained together in those opening scenes. Once they throw off those chains, he appoints himself leader of their quest to uncover a buried treasure in a valley scheduled to be flooded. Along the way they have their fates foretold by a blind seer, become enchanted by the seductive song of three women washing in the river (the Sirens), are attacked by a giant of a one-eyed salesman (John Goodman, standing in for the Cyclops) and race to Everett's home town to stop his abandoned wife, Penny (Holly Hunter as a tart Penelope), from marrying another man. Did I mention that Everett's given name is Ulysses?

It has a remarkable (if playfully skewed) fidelity to the epic poem of mythical struggle, even if the filmmaking brother act never actually read Homer's work (as they take pains to point out). "But we read the comic book version of The Odyssey," confessed Ethan, as well as saw Hollywood spectacles and Ray Harryhausen fantasies based on, inspired by or selectively cribbed from it. Yet Homer's epic poem is merely one of many inspirations for a film that Joel described as "the Lawrence of Arabia of hayseed comedies." You could call the opening scenes a Three Stooges version of I Was a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932). They pick up a blues guitarist (Chris Thomas King) on his way to the crossroads to seal his deal with the devil (a classic blues legend), tag along with Baby Face Nelson on a bank robbery spree ("My name is George Nelson! Not Baby Face!") and crash a Ku Klux Klan rally that looks like a marching band halftime show and plays out like a scene from The Wizard of Oz (1939). Colorful tidbits from real-life southern politics and good 'ol boy populism of the thirties and forties make up the crazy quilt backdrop of their adventure. Hillbilly humor and screwball scenes play out in surreal imagery. And the title comes from one of the great depression comedies of all time: Preston Sturges' Sullivan's Travels (1941). It’s the name of the social drama that earnest, ambitious Hollywood comedy director John Sullivan so desperately wants to make that he hits the road as a hobo to learn the hardscrabble human condition first hand. In that film, Sullivan has a change of heart when he sees the joy that comedies bring even the most wretched souls. The lesson isn't lost on the Coens. Despite the heavy-hearted title, their depression road movie is lighthearted and whimsical and filled with infectious music.

O Brother, Where Art Thou? is populated with familiar faces from previous Coen films—Hunter, Goodman, Turturro, Charles Durning, Michael Badalucco—but it's their first collaboration with Clooney, who was their first choice for the lead. In Clooney, they found a star with the look of a thirties matinee idol and the snappy delivery of a seasoned Hollywood comic. The actor, who grew up in Kentucky, jumped on the project and embraced the role of the pomade-addicted convict, and he turned to his uncle for help in mastering the accent he'd lost long ago. "I sent him a tape recorder with a script and asked him to read all of my lines," he told an interviewer. "I just did my Uncle Jack through the whole thing."

The "old-timey" blues, folk, gospel and country that fills the soundtrack was not just an integral part of the film. It sparked a whole revival of American roots music, spawning a Grammy-winning album and a couple of concert tours featuring the soundtrack artists. T-Bone Burnett compiled the archival songs (which included actual chain gang chants recorded by Alan Lomax) and produced the original music performed by such artists as Alison Krauss, John Hartford, Emmylou Harris and Gillian Welch. Clooney rehearsed his own vocals for weeks but ended up lip synching the film's signature song "A Man of Constant Sorrow" to the vocals of Dan Tyminski. He can claim credit for his own stage moves, however, including a hokey chicken dance that he remembered from his Kentucky childhood. According to Clooney, the film's choreographers hated it but it made the Coens laugh.

Though Joel Coen has solo director credit and Ethan takes producer credit, they were essentially co-directors on the film. According to cast members, they were both on set, each focusing on different parts of the scene, often swapping places like a tag team, yet always in synch when it came to what they wanted out of a scene. They also edited the film together under the pseudonym Roderick Jaynes.

O Brother, Where Art Thou? received Academy Award nominations for Ethan and Joel Coen's screenplay (duly nominated in the "Based on Material Previously Produced or Published" category) and for Roger Deakins' golden hued cinematography. The film was shot on location across Mississippi during the winter, when the country was green and wet, and he turned to digital recoloring to achieve that sepia-tinged dustbowl look and faded yesteryear atmosphere. That level of delicate digital color manipulation wasn't unknown at the time (Spielberg had used it to give Saving Private Ryan its distinctive color palette in 1998) but still a fairly radical step for a film in 2000, especially one produced on a Coen Brothers budget. It all paid off. Their odyssey (or is it their Odyssey?), reworked as a tall tale in the folk song idiom of superstition, magic realism and religious mysticism and delivered with a mix of screwball goofiness and intellectual whimsy, spins a surreal story from imagination, inspiration and ingenuity. It hit a chord with the public and became their biggest hit to date and remains one of their most beloved films.

Producer: Ethan Coen; Joel Coen (uncredited)
Director: Joel Coen; Ethan Coen (uncredited)
Screenplay: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen; Homer (epic poem “The Odyssey”)
Cinematography: Roger Deakins
Art Direction: Richard Johnson
Music: T Bone Burnett
Film Editing: Roderick Jaynes, Roderick Jaynes, Tricia Cooke
Cast: George Clooney (Everett), John Turturro (Pete), Tim Blake Nelson (Delmar), John Goodman (Big Dan Teague), Holly Hunter (Penny), Chris Thomas King (Tommy Johnson), Charles Durning (Pappy O'Daniel), Del Pentecost (Junior O'Daniel), Michael Badalucco (George Nelson), J.R. Horne (Pappy's Staff), Brian Reddy (Pappy's Staff), Wayne Duvall (Homer Stokes), Ed Gale (The Little Man), Ray McKinnon (Vernon T. Waldrip), Daniel Von Bargen (Sheriff Cooley), Royce D. Applegate (Man with Bullhorn), Frank Collison (Wash Hogwallop).
C-105m. Letterboxed. Closed Captioning.

by Sean Axmaker

[lavenderdiva]

2. As much as I LOVE me some Coen Brothers movies--

this is the one movie of theirs that I just haven't been able to make it through. Go figure! I don't know why, but I just get distracted and uninterested after a point. And I love George Clooney too!

Staph, as always, I am so impressed with your posts, and love reading all the behind-the-scenes scoop on each film! Thank you again for posting!:hi:

[CBHagman]

3. It's funny, because I had the opposite reaction.

I love some Coen Brothers movies (e.g., The Big Lebowski), have mixed feelings about others (Fargo, for instance), but I had a grand old time when I saw O Brother, Where Art Thou? in the theater, and it wasn't so much the casting or the music but the sheer madness of the plot and of course the ample homage paid to old movies -- not just Preston Sturges but The Wizard of Oz and others.