TCM Schedule for Thursday, December 4 -- A Girl's Best Friend

[Staph]

A day of westerns (including the third film in John Ford's calvary trilogy, Rio Grande (1950)), and an evening of "a girl's best friend" -- it ain't a dog! Enjoy!


4:45am -- The Corpse Vanishes (1942)
A mad scientist kills brides and uses their glands to keep his wife alive.
Cast: Bela Lugosi, Luana Walters, Elizabeth Russell.
Dir: Wallace Fox.
BW-63 mins, TV-PG

Featured in a second season episode of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 in 1989.


6:00am -- Comanche (1956)
A frontier scout tries to protect an Indian tribe from a bigoted Cavalry officer.
Cast: Dana Andrews, Kent Smith, Linda Cristal.
Dir: George Sherman.
C-83 mins, TV-PG

Dana Andrews is best remembered for his roles as the detective in Laura (1944) and as a soldier returning from WWII in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946).


7:30am -- Rockin' in the Rockies (1945)
A rancher enlists two vagrants to help him hunt for gold.
Cast: Moe Howard, Larry Fine, Curly Howard.
Dir: Vernon Keays.
BW-68 mins, TV-G

In one slapstick bit, Curly forgets himself and refers to Shorty Williams as "Moe". While Curly and Larry used their real names in the picture, Moe wasn't Moe. He was Shorty Williams.


8:45am -- Blazing the Western Trail (1945)
The Durango Kid tries to save a beautiful young woman's stagecoach line from an unscrupulous rival.
Cast: Charles Starrett, Dub Taylor, Carole Mathews.
Dir: Vernon Keays.
BW-57 mins, TV-G

In Durango Kid movies, the main character was usually called "Steve" something, but he could change outfits and horses to become the hero behind the black mask. His horses had aliases also; they were named "Bullet" for Steve's horse and "Raider" if the rider was the Durango Kid.


9:43am -- Short Film: One Reel Wonders: A Day In Death Valley (1944)
An installment of James A. Fitzpatrick's Travel Talk featuring Death Valley.
Cast: James A. Fitzpatrick
C-10 mins

The last part of this TravelTalk features Scotty's Castle, a vacation home that isn't a castle and wasn't owned by a guy named Scotty. You just can't make this stuff up!


10:00am -- Rio Grande (1950)
A cavalry unit located on the Mexican border must control Indian uprisings.
Cast: John Wayne, Maureen O'Hara, Ben Johnson.
Dir: John Ford.
BW-105 mins, TV-PG

Ben Johnson (Tyree) and Victor McLaglen (Quincannon) had the same character names in both She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and Rio Grande. The oddity is in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, the earlier film, they were older soldiers with higher ranks than in Rio Grande. John Wayne's character in this film, Lt. Col. Kirby Yorke, is similarly but not identically named as his character in She Wore A Yellow Ribbon (1948), Captain Kirby York. However, Captain York is a gray-haired man preparing to retire, and Lt. Col. Yorke is father of a teen-aged boy, in the prime of his life!


12:00pm -- On the Old Spanish Trail (1947)
A cowboy turns bounty hunter to pay off his debts.
Cast: Roy Rogers, Tito Guizar, Jane Frazee.
Dir: William Witney.
BW-75 mins, TV-G

The print shown on Turner Classic Movies is undoubtedly an old 16 mm print made especially for TV in the early decades of television. (TV was B&W for those decades and the machines used to broadcast them were 16 mm). The tip-off is on the opening title card a black bar has been superimposed on the print covering what must have been the words 'In Color' or 'In Trucolor'. The commercially available VHS tapes are also B&W and possibly from the same source.


1:30pm -- All The Brothers Were Valiant (1953)
Brothers on a whaling schooner become romantic rivals.
Cast: Robert Taylor, Stewart Granger, Ann Blyth.
Dir: Richard Thorpe.
C-95 mins, TV-PG

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Cinematography, Color -- George J. Folsey

Remake of All the Brothers Were Valiant (1923), starring Malcolm McGregor, Lon Chaney Sr. and Billie Dove, and Across to Singapore (1928), starring Ramon Navarro, Ernest Torrence and Joan Crawford.


3:15pm -- Captain Caution (1940)
When a ship's captain dies at war, his daughter takes command.
Cast: Victor Mature, Louise Platt, Leo Carrillo.
Dir: Richard Wallace.
BW-86 mins, TV-G

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Sound, Recording -- Elmer Raguse

J. Pat O'Malley's first film.


4:50pm -- Short Film: From The Vaults: Lanza Christmas Trailer (Ave' Maria) (1951)
BW-3 mins

According to Hedda Hopper's Hollywood (radio show broadcast February 11, 1951), Mario Lanza was playing semi-pro football in Scranton, Pennsylvania in the 1940s. Scranton named February 15 Mario Lanza day.


5:00pm -- Monsoon (1943)
A team of pearl fishers clashes over the discovery of a sunken treasure.
Cast: John Carradine, Gale Sondergaard, Sidney Toler.
Dir: Edgar G. Ulmer.
BW-74 mins, TV-G

The villain of the film is played by Sidney Toler, best known as the second Charlie Chan.


6:30pm -- The Tall Stranger (1957)
When rustlers leave him for dead, a Westerner throws in his lot with the wagon train whose inhabitants have rescued him.
Cast: Joel McCrea, Virginia Mayo, Michael Ansara.
Dir: Thomas Carr.
C-83 mins, TV-PG

Based on a Louis Lamour story.


What's On Tonight: TCM PRIME TIME FEATURE: A GIRL'S BEST FRIEND


8:00pm -- Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)
Two singers work their way to Paris, enjoying the company of eligible men they meet along the way.
Cast: Jane Russell, Marilyn Monroe, Charles Coburn.
Dir: Howard Hawks.
C-91 mins, TV-G

Originally bought by Fox as a vehicle for Betty Grable. After the success of Niagara (1953) (which featured Marilyn Monroe), however, the studio believed they had a more potent and far less expensive sex symbol than Grable (who was earning around $150,000 per picture vs. Monroe's $18,000).


9:45pm -- The Pink Panther (1964)
In the first Inspector Clouseau film, the bumbling French police detective tries to stop a notorious jewel thief from nabbing a princess' diamond.
Cast: Peter Sellers, David Niven, Robert Wagner.
Dir: Blake Edwards.
C-115 mins, TV-PG

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Music, Score - Substantially Original -- Henry Mancini

The film was intended to have David Niven's character Sir Charles Lytton as the main character. However, Peter Sellers' portrayal of Inspector Clouseau was so loved by the crew (and later by the audience) it became his character this film and the sequels focused on.


11:45pm -- The Notorious Landlady (1962)
A junior diplomat in London falls in love with his landlady even though she's a murder suspect.
Cast: Jack Lemmon, Kim Novak, Fred Astaire.
Dir: Richard Quine.
BW-123 mins

Jack Lemmon's father appears in the movie in a non-speaking role.


2:00am -- Family Plot (1976)
A phony psychic takes on a pair of kidnappers.
Cast: Barbara Harris, Bruce Dern, Karen Black.
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock.
C-120 mins, TV-14

Alfred Hitchcock's final film.


4:15am -- King Solomon's Mines (1950)
A spirited widow hires a daredevil jungle scout to find a lost treasure in diamonds.
Cast: Deborah Kerr, Stewart Granger, Richard Carlson.
Dir: Compton Bennett, Andrew Marton.
C-103 mins, TV-PG

Won Oscars for Best Cinematography, Color -- Robert Surtees, and Best Film Editing -- Ralph E. Winters and Conrad A. Nervig

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture

The movie has no music score whatever. The only thing at all musical in the film is some African chanting and drums.

[Staph]

1. Rio Grande

John Ford never really intended to make a 'cavalry trilogy', but Fort Apache (1948), She Wore A Yellow Ribbon (1949) and Rio Grande (1950) have come to be recognized by film historians as a connecting trio of films. And they did bear the common threads of the Monument Valley landscape, plots based on stories by James Warner Bellah and the presence of John Wayne as a cavalry officer.

Rio Grande was the result of a brief alliance between Ford's Argosy Productions and Republic Studios (Wayne made many pictures at Monogram, one of the companies that preceded Republic). Ford's relationship with Republic producer Herbert Yates was a prickly one; by 1950, Ford had his sights set on The Quiet Man, a movie that would become a classic for Ford and Wayne both. Yates, however, insisted on a solid box-office film from Ford before he'd consider investing in The Quiet Man. The result was Rio Grande, an archetypal cavalry Western.

Based on Bellah's "Mission With No Record", Rio Grande finds Wayne reprising his role as Col. Kirby Yorke, assigned to a remote outpost on the Rio Grande with an assignment to train fifteen recruits, one of whom is his son he's not seen in years. His mother shows up to remove him, but the young trooper decides to stay and fight the Apaches. Soon Yorke finds himself locked in a family conflict and a bloody Indian war, facing the possibility of a court-martial for his unorthodox tactics.

Shot on location in Moab, Utah, Rio Grande was treated as an exercise by Ford (Harry Carey, Jr. called it one of the director's "vacation pictures"). The budget was half of the production costs for Fort Apache, and no one, Ford included, seemed to take the project very seriously. The director was especially irritated when producer Yates showed up on location with fellow Republic executive Rudy Ralston. Pointing out the time (it was ten in the morning), Yates asked when Ford intended to start shooting; "Just as soon as you get the hell of my set", Ford supposedly replied. The director later played a practical joke on the two producers at dinnertime. He hired one of his actors, Alberto Morin, to masquerade as a French waiter with poor English skills. During their meal, Morin managed to spill soup on the men, break several plates, and create a general ruckus in the dining room but Yates and Ralston never seemed to catch on to the joke.

In June 1950, while Rio Grande was being filmed in Utah, North Korea was invading South Korea. By late November, when the picture was in theaters, Chinese forces were attacking U.S. positions in North Korea. General Douglas MacArthur suggested using atomic weapons against the Chinese but President Harry Truman opposed the idea. This conflict between diplomatic tact and defense through aggression was certainly a timely theme and the subplot of Rio Grande mirrored a similar situation.

One last bit of trivia: Rio Grande features nine songs, many of which are performed by the Sons of the
Pioneers. It was also the first of five films in which John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara starred together, the others being The Quiet Man (1952), The Wings of Eagles (1957), McLintock! (1963), and Big Jake (1971).

Producer: Merian C. Cooper, John Ford, Herbert J. Yates
Director: John Ford
Screenplay: James Warner Bellah (story "Mission With No Record"), James Kevin McGuinness
Art Direction: Frank Hotaling
Cinematography: Bert Glennon
Costume Design: Adele Palmer
Film Editing: Jack Murray
Original Music: Dale Evans (songs), Stan Jones (songs), Tex Owens (songs), Victor Young
Principal Cast: John Wayne (Lieutenant Colonel Kirby Yorke), Maureen O'Hara (Mrs. Kathleen Yorke), Ben
Johnson (Trooper Travis Tyree), Claude Jarman Jr. (Trooper Jeff Yorke), Harry Carey Jr. (Trooper Daniel
"Sandy" Boone), Chill Wills (Doctor Wilkins), Victor McLaglen (Sergeant Quincannon), J. Carrol Naish (General Sheridan).
BW-105m. Closed captioning.

by Jerry Renshaw

[terrya]

2. Of course TCM shows "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes". Right after I buy a dvd copy on ebay.

"Terry slaps forehead"