TCM Schedule for Thursday, April 25, 2019 -- TCM Primetime - What's On Tonight: Fan Dedication

[Staph]

In the daylight today, it's all about authors of prose and poetry and soaring drama! Then in primetime, TCM is on day nine of Fan Dedications. Take it away, Roger!

In celebration of TCM's 25 years on air, we have handpicked 25 fans who entered our Fan Dedication Contest to introduce a film of their choice on air with Ben Mankiewicz. Each fan's choice is dedicated to a special person that they have chosen. Our 25 fans come from all walks of life and backgrounds brought together through their love of classic film and TCM. Each night during the 3rd and 4th weeks of April, each winner will discuss their pick with Mankiewicz. Here are the fans and their films:

Brief Encounter (1945), Matthew Myrick
The Shop Around the Corner (1940), Christopher Carhart
Gigi (1958), Greg Joseph

by Roger Fristoe

Enjoy!



6:00 AM -- THE BRIDE'S PLAY (1921)
An Irish lass is torn between the poet who seduced her and the nobleman who truly loves her.
Dir: George W. Terwilliger
Cast: Marion Davies, Jack O'Brien, Frank Shannon
BW-72 mins,

The first of many films in which Marion Davies played a dual role, here playing Aileen Barrett in the modern story and Enid of Cashell in the medieval arc.


7:15 AM -- WINTER MEETING (1948)
A repressed poetess and an embittered war hero help each other cope with their problems.
Dir: Bretaigne Windust
Cast: Bette Davis, Janis Paige, James Davis
BW-104 mins, CC,

Bette Davis said the Production Code did not allow the film to bring out the differences between Catholics and non-Catholics, thus rendering the film "dull and meaningless".


9:15 AM -- OSCAR WILDE (1960)
A biographical look at the tumultuous life of the legendary playwright, poet, and wit.
Dir: Gregory Ratoff
Cast: Robert Morley, Phyllis Calvert, Ralph Richardson
BW-98 mins, CC,

Robert Morley made his name on the stage playing Oscar Wilde at the London Gate Theatre in 1936. The play was a success despite being banned from major London theatres because of its theme of homosexuality, and was later produced in America with Morely making his Broadway debut in the part on October 10, 1938. The play was a hit in New York City and ran for two hundred forty-seven performances, a substantial run at the time for a straight play.


11:00 AM -- A FINE MADNESS (1966)
A womanizing poet falls into the hands of a psychiatrist with a straying wife.
Dir: Irvin Kershner
Cast: Sean Connery, Joanne Woodward, Jean Seberg
C-104 mins, CC,

The scene involving a topless Sue Ane Langdon and Sir Sean Connery near the beginning was the subject of a photo feature in Playboy Magazine.


1:00 PM -- CYRANO DE BERGERAC (1950)
A swordsman and poet helps another man woo the woman he loves.
Dir: Michael Gordon
Cast: Jose Ferrer, Mala Powers, William Prince
BW-114 mins, CC,

Winner of an Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- José Ferrer

Edmond Rostand took much inspiration from Alexandre Dumas's musketeer novels in writing his play. It takes place during the same historical period, the early 17th century, and involves come of the same characters. Dumas's hero, d'Artagnan, makes a brief appearance in the play, though he is frequently left out of film versions. Cyrano and d'Artagnan appear together in many stories published in the late 19th and early 20th century, and on film in Cyrano et d'Artagnan (1964), in which José Ferrer once again played Cyrano. The main antagonist of The Three Musketeers is Cardinal Richelieu. As portrayed in this film, the historical Comte de Guice, Antoine de Gramont III, was married to Richelieu's niece. His son, Armand de Gramont, succeeded him as Comte de Guiche, and is featured as a character in Dumas's latter Musketeer novels, Twenty Years After and The Viscount of Bragelonne (AKA The Man in the Iron Mask). He is portrayed as the closest friend of Raul, whose father is the Musketeer Athos. In the film The Fifth Musketeer (1979); based on The Viscount of Bragelonne, Athos is played by José Ferrer.


3:00 PM -- IT'S A WONDERFUL WORLD (1939)
A runaway poetess helps a fugitive prove himself innocent of murder charges.
Dir: W. S. Van Dyke II
Cast: Claudette Colbert, James Stewart, Guy Kibbee
BW-86 mins, CC,

Claudette Colbert's first picture for MGM.


4:30 PM -- THREE MEN ON A HORSE (1936)
Gangsters kidnap a timid poet with a knack for picking winning horses.
Dir: Mervyn LeRoy
Cast: Frank McHugh, Joan Blondell, Guy Kibbee
BW-86 mins,

The Milton Bradley Company released a board game in 1936 called "3 Men on a Horse". The graphics on the box declare it "a sparkling game of chance for everybody" and "from Warner Bros.' laff hit!"


6:00 PM -- KISMET (1955)
In this Arabian Nights musical, the "king of the beggars" infiltrates high society when his daughter is wooed by a handsome prince.
Dir: Vincente Minnelli
Cast: Howard Keel, Ann Blyth, Dolores Gray
C-113 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

The orange seller (the man who Hajj (Howard Keel) holds down and calls the "father of none and son of many&quot was played by Jamie Farr, best known for his role as Corporal Maxwell Q. Klinger on M*A*S*H (1972).



TCM PRIMETIME - WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: FAN DEDICATIONS



8:00 PM -- BRIEF ENCOUNTER (1945)
Two married strangers meet in a train station and fall in love.
Dir: David Lean
Cast: Celia Johnson, Trevor Howard, Stanley Holloway
BW-87 mins, CC,

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Celia Johnson, Best Director -- David Lean, and Best Writing, Screenplay -- Anthony Havelock-Allan, David Lean and Ronald Neame

The film had an unexpected, profound impact on a young 21-year old Robert Altman. Kathryn Altman, wife of the famed director, said, "One day, years and years ago, just after the war, [Altman] had nothing to do and he went to a theater in the middle of the afternoon to see a movie. Not a Hollywood movie: a British movie. He said the main character was not glamorous, not a babe. And at first he wondered why he was even watching it. But twenty minutes later he was in tears, and had fallen in love with her. And it made him feel that it wasn't just a movie." The film was "Brief Encounter".


9:45 PM -- THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER (1940)
Feuding co-workers don't realize they're secret romantic pen pals.
Dir: Ernst Lubitsch
Cast: Margaret Sullavan, James Stewart, Frank Morgan
BW-99 mins, CC,

To make sure his film was stripped of the glamour usually associated with him, Ernst Lubitsch went to such lengths as ordering that a dress Margaret Sullavan had purchased off the rack for $1.98 be left in the sun to bleach and altered to fit poorly.


11:45 PM -- GIGI (1958)
A Parisian girl is raised to be a kept woman but dreams of love and marriage.
Dir: Vincente Minnelli
Cast: Leslie Caron, Maurice Chevalier, Louis Jourdan
C-115 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Winner of Oscars for Best Director -- Vincente Minnelli, Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium -- Alan Jay Lerner, Best Cinematography, Color -- Joseph Ruttenberg, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White or Color -- William A. Horning, E. Preston Ames, Henry Grace and F. Keogh Gleason (William A. Horning's nomination and win was posthumously, as he died after completing his work on Gigi (1958) and in the midst of the production on Ben-Hur (1959) and North by Northwest (1959); the last two films would earn him Oscar nominations and a win (for Ben-Hur alone) the next year.), Best Costume Design, Black-and-White or Color -- Cecil Beaton, Best Film Editing -- Adrienne Fazan, Best Music, Original Song -- Frederick Loewe (music) and Alan Jay Lerner (lyrics) for the song "Gigi", Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture -- André Previn, and Best Picture

By mid-July 1957, the songwriters had still not come up with the title song. One evening, Frederick Loewe was at a piano while Alan Jay Lerner was indisposed in the bathroom, and when Loewe began playing a particular melody, he later recalled Lerner jumped up, "his trousers still clinging to his ankles, and made his way to the living room. 'Play that again,' he said." That melody ended up as the film's title song.


2:00 AM -- THE GREAT JEWEL ROBBER (1950)
A master thief escapes from a Canadian prison farm and makes his way to New York.
Dir: Peter Godfrey
Cast: David Brian, Marjorie Reynolds, John Archer
BW-92 mins, CC,

Written by Borden Chase. From IMDB: "Prior to his career as a writer, Chase was employed as chauffeur for notorious prohibition-era gangster Frankie Yale -- until Yale was 'rubbed out' by Al Capone's mob in July 1928. Chase, then still going by the more prosaic name Frank Fowler, as well Yale's other regular driver, James Caponi, were lucky to be alive: Yale, having received a strange phone call, was in a panic about something that had happened to his wife Lucy, and decided to drive his coffee-coloured Lincoln himself. The car was machine-gunned near Tenth Avenue by the occupants of a black Nash and crashed into a curb. For good measure, one of the gunmen jumped out and shot Yale in the head with a .45. After that adventure, Chase went in for tamer pursuits, first working as a digger on the Holland Tunnel and then as a taxi driver."


3:45 AM -- MEET ME ON BROADWAY (1946)
When his career crashes and burns, a director tries to come back staging country club shows.
Dir: Leigh Jason
Cast: Marjorie Reynolds, Fred Brady, Jinx Falkenburg
BW-78 mins, CC,

The sets, costumes, dancers, choreography, and even Marjorie Reynold's voice double (Martha Mears) are all recycled from Tonight and Every Night (1945).


5:15 AM -- WEDDING IN MONACO (1956)
Exclusive footage captures the wedding of Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier in this short film.
Dir: Jean Masson
Cast: Grace Kelly,
C-31 mins, Letterbox Format