TCM Schedule for Friday, November 21 -- Elvis Mitchell: Under the Influence

[Staph]

This morning there are a couple of Eleanor Powell song-and-dance films, followed by an afternoon of "ladies". This evening Elvis Mitchell talks to John Leguizamo about the films and performers that influenced him. Enjoy!


6:00am -- Rosalie (1937)
A West Point cadet falls for a European princess.
Cast: Eleanor Powell, Nelson Eddy, Ray Bolger.
Dir: W.S. Van Dyke II.
BW-123 mins, TV-G

There were several dance numbers cut before the movie was released. The football game at the beginning was cut from several newsreels. Over 100 original West Point students appeared in that movie, and there are rumours that each of them who took part in one dance number, received a kiss by Eleanor Powell.


8:15am -- Broadway Melody Of 1940 (1940)
A vaudeville team breaks up when both men fall for the same gorgeous hoofer.
Cast: Fred Astaire, Eleanor Powell, George Murphy.
Dir: Norman Taurog.
BW-102 mins, TV-G

It had been reported that Fred Astaire was intimidated by Eleanor Powell because she was one of the few female tap dancers capable of out-performing him.


10:02am -- Short Film: One Reel Wonders: Martin Block'S Musical Merry-Go-Round #5 (1948)
The guest star is Frankie Carle.
BW-11 mins

Frankie Carle's popular song and instrumental compositions also include "Falling Leaves", "Roses in the Rain", "Lover's Lullaby", "Carle Boogie", "Sunrise Boogie", "Sunrise in Napoli", "Georgianna", "Blue Fantasy", "I Didn't Know", "The Golden Touch" and "The Apple Valley Waltz".


10:15am -- Lady Be Good (1941)
Married songwriters almost split up while putting on a big show.
Cast: Eleanor Powell, Ann Sothern, Robert Young.
Dir: Norman Z. McLeod.
BW-112 mins, TV-PG

Won an Oscar for Best Music, Original Song -- Jerome Kern (music) and Oscar Hammerstein II (lyrics) for the song "The Last Time I Saw Paris".

For Eleanor Powell's dance-version of the song "Lady, Be Good", MGM auditioned several dogs, but none of them was able to do the required tricks. Finally, Powell bought a dog off a propman and trained it herself for several weeks so that the dance could be done as she wanted.


12:15pm -- Go West, Young Lady (1941)
A sheriff's girlfriend tries to unearth the identity of a masked bandit chief.
Cast: Penny Singleton, Glenn Ford, Ann Miller.
Dir: Frank R. Strayer.
BW-70 mins, TV-G

If you were around in the 1930s and 1940s, you probably best remember Penny Singleton as Blondie Smith Bumstead in nearly 20 Blondie and Dagwood films. But if, like me, you were a kid in the 1960s, you know Penny Singleton as the voice of Jane Jetson, long-suffering wife of George Jetson and mother of Judy and Elroy. She also provided Jane's voice in several Jetson's TV movies and the theatrical Jetsons: The Movie (1990) before her death in 2003.


1:30pm -- Obliging Young Lady (1941)
A lawyer's secretary tries to protect a controversial client from prying eyes at an over-crowded hotel.
Cast: Joan Carroll, Edmond O'Brien, Ruth Warrick.
Dir: Richard Wallace.
BW-80 mins, TV-G

Ruth Warrick's first film role was as Emily Monroe Norton Kane, the first Mrs. Charles Foster Kane.


3:00pm -- Lady Gangster (1942)
A district attorney tries to reform a gangster's moll who's been sent up the river.
Cast: Faye Emerson, Frank Wilcox, Jackie Gleason.
Dir: Robert Florey.
BW-62 mins, TV-G

Based on Dorothy Mackaye's play Gangstress, Or Women In Prison.


4:15pm -- The Lady Is Willing (1942)
A Broadway star has to find a husband so she can adopt an abandoned child.
Cast: Marlene Dietrich, Fred MacMurray, Aline MacMahon.
Dir: Mitchell Leisen.
BW-91 mins, TV-G

Early in the shooting, Marlene Dietrich severely injured her right ankle in a fall, and her entire right leg had to be placed in a cast. That's why in this film she is always shown in full-length outfits (gowns, slacks, etc.) and just one shot of her unclothed leg is seen, and that is in shadow.


6:00pm -- Lady Of Vengeance (1957)
When he hires a killer to avenge an innocent girl's death, a man gets caught up in a string of killings.
Cast: Dennis O'Keefe, Ann Sears, Patrick Barr.
Dir: Burt Balaban.
BW-75 mins, TV-G

Director Burt Balaban is the cousin of Bob Balaban, who played the translator for Francois Truffaut in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).


7:30pm -- Festival of Shorts #29 (2000)
TCM promotes three shorts showcasing the youthful talents of Judy Garland:

Bubbles (1930)
A Vitaphone Varieties short featuring costumed children in a cavern-like land of 'make believe' where they sing and tap dance. Judy appears as one of the Three Gumm Sisters.
C-8 mins

Every Sunday (1936)
Judy and Deanna Durbin perform at a concert in the park.
BW-11 mins

If I Forget You (1940)
Judy Garland sings the title song, a tribute to Will Rogers.
BW-8 mins

Judy Garland was considered an icon in the gay community in the 1950s and 1960s. Her death and the loss of that emotional icon in 1969 has been thought to be a contributing factor to the feeling of the passing of an era that helped spark the Stonewall Riots that began the militant gay rights movement.


What's On Tonight: TCM PRIME TIME FEATURE: ELVIS MITCHELL: UNDER THE INFLUENCE


8:00pm -- TCM Presents Elvis Mitchell Under the Influence: John Leguizamo (2008)
Celebrities reveal the classic movies that influenced their lives in interviews with acclaimed film critic/interviewer Elvis Mitchell.
C-28 mins, TV-PG

John Leguizamo Was accepted into Lee Strasberg's actors' studio and studied with the master for one day before Strasberg died. "I have that affect on people," Leguizamo quipped.


8:30pm -- Moulin Rouge (1952)
French painter Toulouse-Lautrec fights to find love despite his physical limitations.
Cast: Jose Ferrer, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Colette Marchand.
Dir: John Huston.
C-119 mins, TV-PG

Won Oscars for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color -- Paul Sheriff and Marcel Vertès, and Best
Costume Design, Color -- Marcel Vertès

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- José Ferrer, Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Colette Marchand, Best Director -- John Huston, Best Film Editing -- Ralph Kemplen, and Best Picture

Tall actor José Ferrer was transformed into the short artist Toulouse-Lautrec by the use of camera angles, makeup, costume, concealed pits and platforms and short body doubles. Ferrer also used a set of special knee pads of his own design which allowed him to walk on his knees with his lower legs strapped to his upper body. He suffered extreme pain and could only use them for short periods of time. The cane he used in most of his scenes was of absolute necessity. This fact was covered in a LIFE magazine story in 1952.


10:45pm -- TCM Presents Elvis Mitchell Under the Influence: John Leguizamo (2008)
Celebrities reveal the classic movies that influenced their lives in interviews with acclaimed film critic/interviewer Elvis Mitchell.
C-28 mins, TV-PG

For his role in Ice Age (2002), Leguizamo tried a variety of different speaking voices for his character, Sid. After watching several hours of Discovery Channel footage of sloths, he developed the lisp, because sloths store food in their cheeks.


11:15pm -- They Made Me A Criminal (1939)
A young boxer flees to farming country when he thinks he's killed an opponent in the ring.
Cast: John Garfield, Claude Rains, Gloria Dickson.
Dir: Busby Berkeley.
BW-92 mins, TV-PG

Desert location shooting was so hot at times that the film melted in the camera.


1:00am -- The John Garfield Story (2003)
A TCM original documentary that traces John Garfield's life and career from his humble childhood.
Dir: David Heeley.
BW-58 mins, TV-PG

Blacklisted during the McCarthy "Red Scare" era in the early 1950s for his left-wing political beliefs, John Garfield adamantly refused to "name names" in testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in April 1951. He was found dead of a heart attack in the apartment of a former showgirl, Iris Whitney on May 21, 1952, the day after Clifford Odets, testifying before HUAC, reaffirmed that Garfield had never been a member of the Communist Party. His funeral in New York was mobbed by thousands of fans.


2:00am -- Monster A Go-Go (1965)
A radioactive monster on a killing spree may be actually be a missing astronaut.
Cast: Phil Morton, June Travis, George Perry.
Dir: Bill Rebane, Herschell Gordon Lewis.
BW-68 mins

The film was featured in a 1993 episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. The makers of the show considered it to be the worst film they had watched up until the episode that featured the infamous film Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966). Monster A Go-Go is still counted among the top worst movies to be featured on the eleven season series.


3:15am -- The Giant Spider Invasion (1975)
Following a mysterious explosion, a Wisconsin town is overrun by giant spiders.
Cast: Paul Bentzen, Tain Bodkin, Steve Brodie.
Dir: Bill Rebane.
C-79 mins

There was supposed to be a shot of a big spider in a tree bursting into flames. To achieve this, the director covered a large prop spider with gunpowder and had two crew members sitting above it in the tree who would drop a match on the spider. The director got the camera up to a very fast fps to achieve a slow motion look, and had them drop the first match. Nothing happened, so they dropped a second. Still nothing happened, so they lit the entire book of matches and dropped it on the spider. With nothing happening, the director turned off the camera - and immediately afterwords a huge explosion and fireball shot up, burning the hair off of the crew members and starting several small brush fires. The director was furious that he wasn't able to get the shot on film.

[Staph]

1. Broadway Melody of 1940

As photographed by Joseph Ruttenberg and Oliver T. Marsh, MGM's Broadway Melody of 1940 (1940) is one of the most visually arresting of all black-and-white film musicals. Ironically, the movie - which marks the only teaming of dancing legends Fred Astaire and Eleanor Powell - was to have been shot in color. In his autobiography, Steps in Time, Astaire wrote of his disappointment that "the ominous state of world affairs," and the anticipation that the onset of World War II would mean the loss of revenues from European audiences, dictated the switch to black and white. But, with an abundance of sparkling sets in the best MGM tradition and camerawork by Ruttenberg and Marsh that glides in rhythm to a Cole Porter score, the move has a stylized appeal that color could hardly improve upon.

The glittering cinematography reaches its peak in a climactic, three-part production number built around Porter's "Begin the Beguine" that includes a female chorus, a jazz orchestra and an elaborate mirrored set with a glass floor that had to be kept at temperatures near freezing to guard it from cracking under the lights. The number's justly celebrated final passage, a competitive tap duet by Astaire and Powell, forms a highlight of That's Entertainment! (1974). Film historian David Thomson, in his Biographical Dictionary of Film, writes that he would choose this segment if he could have only one film clip to watch while sentenced forever to solitary confinement: "Black and white and a hard, reflective floor, a set that recedes into darkness. Fred in all white with a black bowtie. Eleanor Powell wears three-quarter heels and a dress that stops just below the knees.... I know of nothing as exhilarating or unfailingly cheerful, and maybe the loveliest moment in films is the last second or so, as the dancers finish, and Powell's alive frock has another half-turn, like a spirit embracing the person."

Broadway Melody of 1940 was important to Astaire because it marked his first starring role at MGM after his RKO successes with Ginger Rogers. Much publicity attended his filming with a new partner, and some fans resented his being "unfaithful" to Rogers. He and Powell, a bit awed by each other's ability, found themselves being almost too polite as they began working together. For weeks they addressed each other as "Mr. Astaire" and "Miss Powell." Afraid of seeming pushy, each held back and waited for the other to take the lead. Powell recalled finally saying to Astaire, "Look, we can't go on like this. I'm Ellie; you're Fred. We're just two hoofers." After that, the two perfectionists worked together smoothly - and so diligently that they exhausted their rehearsal pianist!

The plot of Broadway Melody of 1940, despite a plethora of screenwriters, is a simple one. Astaire and George Murphy play dancing partners who are separated when Murphy - in a mixup involving their names - is chosen instead of Astaire to star in a Broadway musical opposite Powell. When Murphy gets drunk on opening night, the self-effacing Astaire steps in, wearing a mask, to save the day. Later, of course, he gets his own chance to dance his way into the heart of his leading lady, not to mention the audience. Other songs in the Porter score include "I've Got My Eyes on You," "I Am the Captain," "Please Don't Monkey with Broadway," "Between You and Me" and "I Concentrate on You." Despite the celebrity of "Begin the Beguine," Powell chose another duet with Astaire, the "Jukebox Dance," as her favorite routine in films.

Producer: Jack Cummings
Director: Norman Taurog
Screenplay: Walter DeLeon, Leon Gordon, Vincent Lawrence, Albert Mannheimer, Eddie Morna, George Oppenheimer, Thomas Phipps, Sid Silvers, Preston Sturges, from story by Jack McGowan and Dore Schary
Art Direction: John S. Detlie, Cedric Gibbons
Cinematography: Joseph Ruttenberg, Oliver T. Marsh
Costume Design: Adrian, Valles
Editing: Blanche Sewell
Original Music: Cole Porter, Roger Edens (additional music), Walter Ruick (additional music) Principal Cast: Fred Astaire (Johnny Brett), Eleanor Powell (Clare Bennett), George Murphy (King Shaw), Frank Morgan (Bob Casey), Ian Hunter (Bert C. Matthews), Florence Rice (Amy Blake).
BW-102m. Closed captioning.

by Roger Fristoe

[CBHagman]

2. Catch the Garfield documentary, if you can.

TCM has been re-running The John Garfield Story every so often, sometimes around his birthday in March. I first noticed him in showings of Four Daughters and Between Two Worlds on Canadian TV many years ago and didn't really appreciate him until fairly recently. I can understand why he's not an icon, for all that he deserves to be; his characters don't fit neatly into some category or trend, and they range from antiheroes to thugs to nerds. But I can no longer imagine the American cinema without Garfield, and I wish he'd lived long enough to get beyond the blacklist and work with the likes of Scorsese and Coppola.