TCM Schedule for Friday, November 28 -- Elvis Mitchell: Under the Influence

[Staph]

Today is the Battle of the Broads, alternating films starring Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. This evening Elvis Mitchell talks to Richard Gere about the films and performers that influenced him. Enjoy!


5:30am -- 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.


6:00am -- Stardust: The Bette Davis Story (2005)
TCM original documentary that explores the life and career of legendary actress Bette Davis.
Narrator: Susan Saradon.
Dir: Peter Jones, Mark A. Catalena.
BW-88 mins, TV-14

While Bette Davis was the star pupil at John Murray Anderson's Dramatic School in New York, another of her classmates was sent home because she was "too shy". It was predicted that this girl would never make it as an actress. The girl was Lucille Ball.


7:30am -- Storm Center (1956)
A librarian fights to keep a controversial book on the shelves.
Cast: Bette Davis, Brian Keith, Kim Hunter.
Dir: Daniel Taradash.
BW-86 mins

The Legion of Decency did not like the movie because of what it considered the film's "pro-Communist" leanings. Instead of condemning the picture, though, it used a "separate classification" for it. That had previously been used on Blockade (1938) (a Spanish Civil War film that the League also thought was anti-Catholic and pro-Communist) and Martin Luther (1953) (because the film portrayed the life of the man who split Christianity, and also because the League thought it was full of inaccurate presentations of Church teachings).


9:00am -- Joan Crawford: The Ultimate Movie Star (2002)
A TCM original documentary that examines Crawford's life and unparalleled movie career.
Narrator: Angelica Huston.
Dir: Peter Fitzgerald.
BW-87 mins, TV-14

Each time Crawford married, she changed the name of her Brentwood estate and installed all new toilet seats.


10:30am -- Queen Bee (1955)
A manipulative Southern socialite sets out to destroy the lives of all those around her.
Cast: Joan Crawford, Barry Sullivan, Betsy Palmer.
Dir: Ranald MacDougall.
BW-95 mins, TV-PG

Nominated for Oscars for Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Charles Lang, and Best Costume Design, Black-and-White -- Jean Louis

Christina Crawford, Joan Crawford's adopted daughter, recounted in her autobiography "Mommy Dearest" that she had to leave the theater midway through a showing of this film because it was too true-to-life in her mother's portrayal of the main character.


12:15pm -- The Old Maid (1939)
An unmarried mother gives her illegitimate child to her cousin.
Cast: Bette Davis, Miriam Hopkins, Jane Bryan.
Dir: Edmund Goulding.
BW-95 mins, TV-PG

To get the effects of aging, Bette Davis didn't wear any eye makeup or lipstick, and makeup artist Perc Westmore used a pale, ashen base on her face.


2:00pm -- Possessed (1947)
A married woman's passion for a former love drives her mad.
Cast: Joan Crawford, Van Heflin, Raymond Massey.
Dir: Curtis Bernhardt.
BW-108 mins, TV-PG

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Joan Crawford

Bette Davis was originally offered the role of Louise, but turned it down to go on maternity leave.


4:00pm -- The Great Lie (1941)
Believing her husband to be dead, a flyer's wife bargains with his former love to adopt the woman's baby.
Cast: Bette Davis, Mary Astor, George Brent.
Dir: Edmund Goulding.
BW-108 mins, TV-PG

Won an Oscar for Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Mary Astor

Mary Astor mimed playing the piano in this film extremely convincingly, being an accomplished pianist in her own right. However, the actual piano playing on the soundtrack was dubbed by Max Rabinowitz. When close-up shots were needed, it is not Miss Astor but Norma Boleslawski's hands that we see on the piano.


6:00pm -- Mildred Pierce (1945)
A woman turns herself into a business tycoon to win her selfish daughter a place in society.
Cast: Joan Crawford, Ann Blyth, Jack Carson.
Dir: Michael Curtiz.
BW-111 mins, TV-PG

Won an Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Joan Crawford (Joan Crawford was not present at the awards ceremony and feigned ill that night. Meanwhile she listened to the show on the radio. When she won, she ushered the press into her bedroom, where she finally accepted her Oscar.)

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Eve Arden, Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Ann Blyth, Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Ernest Haller, Best Writing, Screenplay -- Ranald MacDougall, and Best Picture

Shooting the early scenes, director Michael Curtiz accused Joan Crawford of needlessly glamorizing her working mother role. She insisted she was buying her character's clothes off the rack, but didn't mention that her own dressmaker was fitting the waists and padding out the shoulders.


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


8:00pm -- TCM Presents Elvis Mitchell Under the Influence: Richard Gere (2008)
Celebrities reveal the classic movies that influenced their lives in interviews with acclaimed film critic/interviewer Elvis Mitchell.
C-27 mins, TV-14

Gere was chosen by People magazine as one of the 50 Most Beautiful People in the world in 1991. In 1993, People Magazine didn't name a "Sexiest Man Alive", but named Richard and his then-wife Cindy Crawford as Sexiest Couple'. Gere was then named People Magazine's Sexiest Man Alive in 1999.


8:30pm -- Sergeant York (1941)
True story of the farm boy who made the transition from religious pacifist to World War I hero.
Cast: Gary Cooper, Walter Brennan, Margaret Wycherly.
Dir: Howard Hawks.
BW-134 mins, TV-G

Won Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Gary Cooper, and Best Film Editing -- William Holmes

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Walter Brennan, Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Margaret Wycherly, Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Black-and-White -- John Hughes and Fred M. MacLean, Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Sol Polito, Best Director -- Howard Hawks, Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic Picture -- Max Steiner, Best Sound, Recording -- Nathan Levinson (Warner Bros. SSD), Best Writing, Original Screenplay -- Harry Chandlee, Abem Finkel, John Huston and Howard Koch, and Best Picture

Alvin C. York had been approached by producer Jesse Lasky several times, beginning in 1919, to allow a movie to be made of his life, but had refused, believing that "This uniform ain't for sale." Lasky convinced York that, with war threatening in Europe, it was his patriotic duty to allow the film to proceed. York finally agreed - but only on three conditions. First, York's share of the profits would be contributed to a Bible School York wanted constructed. Second, no cigarette smoking actress could be chosen to play his wife. Third, that only Gary Cooper, could recreate his life on screen. Cooper at first turned down the role, but when York himself contacted the star with a personal plea, Cooper agreed to do the picture.


11:00pm -- TCM Presents Elvis Mitchell Under the Influence: Richard Gere (2008)
Celebrities reveal the classic movies that influenced their lives in interviews with acclaimed film critic/interviewer Elvis Mitchell.
C-27 mins, TV-14

An accomplished pianist and music writer; in fact, Gere composed and performed the piano solo featured in Pretty Woman (1990).


11:30pm -- The Misfits (1961)
A sensitive divorcee gets mixed up with modern cowboys roping mustangs in the desert.
Cast: Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Montgomery Clift.
Dir: John Huston.
BW-125 mins, TV-PG

This was the last completed film for both Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe. Gable died of a heart attack and Monroe died of a drug overdose a year later. (Note: While Something's Got to Give (1962) is listed as her last film, it was never completed because she was fired.)

On the last day of filming, Clark Gable said, "Christ, I'm glad this picture's finished. She damn near gave me a heart attack." The next day, Gable suffered a massive heart attack; he died 11 days later.


1:47am -- Short Film: One Reel Wonders: The Movie Makers - Wild Rover'S Featurette (1971)
This is a short promotional film for the feature film Wild Rovers (1971).
Narrator: John Dehner.
Dir: Ronald Saland.
C-12 mins

In the Wild Rovers (1971), William Holden and Ryan O'Neal play a couple of cowhands looking for a better life -- robbing banks.


2:00am -- The Harder They Come (1972)
An aspiring Reggae singer gets mixed up with big-city drug dealers.
Cast: Jimmy Cliff, Janet Bartley, Carl Bradshaw.
Dir: Perry Henzell.
C-103 mins

The first feature film produced in Jamaica. The movie is in English, but the actors have such strong Jamaican accents that there are subtitles in English for much of the movie on the original theatrical print.


4:00am -- Beat Street (1984)
Bronx teens find an outlet to express themselves in the world of hip-hop and breakdancing.
Cast: Rae Dawn Chong, Guy Davis, John Chardiet.
Dir: Stan Lathan.
C-106 mins

Most of the graffiti art that was displayed all throughout the film was not done by real graffiti artists - it was airbrushed by set decorators.

[Staph]

1. The Misfits

"I have a sense that we are all moving into one of those rare productions when everything touched becomes alive."
Arthur Miller

Arthur Miller couldn't have been further from the truth when he wrote those words during the early days of bringing The Misfits (1961) to the screen. The tortured production -- once a classic flop, now considered a minor classic -- marked the last completed film for both of its stars, Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable. And the debate continues as to whether the film led to Gable's death from a heart attack at the still-young age of 59.

The Misfits began life as a 1957 short story in which Miller combined his memories of the modern-day cowboys he met while in Reno to divorce his first wife and his feelings about his second wife, Monroe, who initially struck him as a pure creature intimately connected to the spirit of life. In search of a project that would allow the newlyweds to work together, they pitched a film version to United Artists. They offered the script to director John Huston, who accepted with a one-word cable, "Magnificent." Huston wanted Robert Mitchum to star as the washed-out cowboy who becomes involved with a sensitive divorcee in Reno and takes her along on a job to catch wild horses for a dog food company. Unfortunately, Mitchum considered the script incomprehensible and dodged Huston's phone calls until Clark Gable was cast. When he finally spoke to the director, he warned him about Gable's age and health: "You get him at the end of a rope, fighting those horses, and that's going to be the end of him."

The damage may have been done before the horses even entered the picture, however. Because of Monroe's commitment to make the musical Let's Make Love (1960), production couldn't start until July 1960, when the Nevada locations were baked by temperatures climbing to 120 degrees each day. Delays caused by Monroe's habitual lateness didn't help either. Because of her sleeping problems, Monroe rarely was called before 11 a.m., and usually showed up later than that. In her defense, however, she also had to stay up into the small hours trying to learn Miller's many script changes while trying to deal with the effects of her numerous pain and sleeping medications. Though he often resented her lateness, Gable went out of his way to help her through the shoot, enduring retakes while she tried to focus on the lines and praising her work at every opportunity.

Compounding Monroe's problems was the fact that the film, conceived while she and Miller were still in the full flush of first love, was filmed as their marriage was falling apart. During shooting, she moved out of their shared hotel room to stay with her acting coach, Paula Strasberg. Moreover, she was heartbroken that a role she had seen as her chance to prove that she could play something other than "Marilyn Monroe" was being re-written to include embarrassing elements from her personal life, including references to her mother's mental problems and the failure of her marriage to baseball legend Joe DiMaggio. Even Gable's casting contributed to the autobiographical elements of the film. Miller knew she had idolized "The King" during her childhood, often fantasizing that he was her father.

Huston played his own part in the production problems. He was already developing emphysema after decades of heavy smoking, and several days were lost when he was too sick to work. And location shooting in the only U.S. state with legal gambling was a huge mistake for him; he was usually up in the casinos until five in the morning and kept falling asleep in the director's chair during filming. United Artists had given him a gambling allowance. When his losses exceeded that, he had to shut down production for a week to find the money. So he convinced Monroe's psychiatrist and doctor to put her in a Los Angeles hospital for a week to deal with her drug dependency, thereby making her bear the blame for the production shutdown he had caused.

The most grueling scenes in the film were those near the end in which Gable and two other cowboys (Montgomery Clift and Eli Wallach) capture wild horses in the desert and break their leader. Rumors at the time suggested that the scenes trying to hold back the lead horse contributed to Gable's heart problems, but a close study of the film reveals that most of these were done through careful cutting. Gable is rarely in the same shot as the horse. He did, however, have to shoot a scene in which the horse drags him across the desert floor. He was actually holding a rope attached to a truck, with the camera in the bed. But even though he was heavily padded, he came home from the day's shooting a bloody mess. He tried to lie to his wife that it had just been an accident, but she knew better, telling him he was out of his mind.

The film finished shooting with studio work in Hollywood, but Gable was already too sick to attend the wrap party on November 4. He suffered a heart attack on the sixth and died ten days later. In a sorrowful interview, Monroe wondered if she'd contributed to his ill health, while gossip columnist Hedda Hopper blamed it on Huston. Few at the time even considered his three-pack-a-day smoking habit or his grief over the death of good friend Ward Bond just days earlier.

Since Huston had shot in sequence and cut the film as they went along, Gable had already seen his performance before he took ill and felt it was his best acting ever. With his death, United Artists tried to get the film completed in time for the 1960 Academy Awards®, hoping he would snare a posthumous nomination. But when composer Alex North protested that he couldn't possibly get the picture scored that quickly, Huston had to agree. The release was pushed back to a more reasonable February 1 date, when it fared poorly with critics and audiences. Over time, however, the film has gained a special luster, particularly when Monroe died two years later without having finished another picture. Today, The Misfits is considered a minor classic, with special interest as an example of the loss of traditional values in the modern Western, as one of Huston's trademark celebrations of a team of charismatic losers and as the last film from two of Hollywood's greatest stars.

Producer: Frank E. Taylor
Director: John Huston
Screenplay: Arthur Miller
Based on a Short Story by Miller
Cinematography: Russell Metty
Art Direction: Stephen Grimes, William Newberry
Music: Alex North
Principal Cast: Clark Gable (Gay Langland), Marilyn Monroe (Roslyn Taber), Montgomery Clift (Perce Howland), Thelma Ritter (Isabelle Steers), Eli Wallach (Guido), Estelle Winwood (Church Lady), Kevin McCarthy (Raymond Taber), Marietta Tree (Susan).
BW-125m. Letterboxed.

by Frank Miller