TCM Schedule for Saturday, May 18, 2019 -- What's On Tonight: The Essentials: Starring Lena Horne

[Staph]

In the daylight hours, TCM has the usual Saturday matinee lineup of films and shorts. In primetime, The Essentials is back! (or should that be The Essentials are back?) Take it away, Roger!

THE ESSENTIALS - SATURDAYS IN MAY

TCM is thrilled to welcome back The Essentials to our lineup, in which a TCM host sits with special guests who have chosen films to be added to our list of "must-sees" for movie lovers. Each Saturday in primetime, this weekly showcase will once again highlight some of the finest movies ever made.

This year's special host for "The Essentials" is the trailblazing producer, director and screenwriter Ava DuVernay, who will join primetime host Ben Mankiewicz to discuss the films she has chosen. DuVernay, who is based in Los Angeles, is a winner of Emmy, BAFTA and Peabody awards.

...

Cabin in the Sky (1943) is director Vincente Minnelli's film version of the 1940 all-black Broadway musical about a gambler who comes close to death after being shot and finds agents of the Lord and the Devil struggling for his soul. Eddie "Rochester" Anderson is the gambler, Little Joe; Ethel Waters is his faithful wife, Petunia; and Lena Horne (in her only leading role in an MGM musical) is the temptress Georgia Brown. "Happiness Is a Thing Called Joe" was nominated for Best Original Song.

...

by Roger Fristoe

Enjoy!


6:00 AM -- GREEN MANSIONS (1959)
A young adventurer falls in love with a mystical woman in the South American jungle.
Dir: Mel Ferrer
Cast: Audrey Hepburn, Anthony Perkins, Lee J. Cobb
C-104 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

During the film, Rima is shown accompanied by a fawn. In order for the animal to properly bond with the actress, Audrey Hepburn effectively adopted the baby deer in the weeks preceding production.


8:00 AM -- MGM CARTOONS: THE GOOSE GOES SOUTH (1941)
The geese are flying south all except for the runty one.
Dir: William Hanna
Cast: Sara Berner, Mel Blanc, Truman Bradley
BW-6 mins, CC,


8:08 AM -- RADIO HAMS (1939)
This short film takes a look at amateur radio operators.
Dir: Felix E. Feist
Cast: Dorothy Vaughan, Jack Daley, Robert Homans
BW-10 mins,


8:19 AM -- ICE CLIMBERS (1956)
This short film takes a look at the Austrian sport of "ice climbing."
Cast: Harry Wismer
BW-8 mins,

The mountain climbed in the film is Grossglockner in Austria.


8:28 AM -- RENEGADES OF THE WEST (1933)
A cowboy goes undercover to catch the cattle thieves who killed his father.
Dir: Casey Robinson
Cast: Tom Keene, Rosco Ates, Betty Furness
BW-55 mins,

Version of The Miracle Baby (1923).


9:30 AM -- LOST CITY OF THE JUNGLE: HIMALAYA HORROR (1946)
Episode one of thirteen.
Dir: Lewis D. Collins, Ray Taylor
Cast: Russell Hayden, Jane Adams, Lionel Atwill
BW-27 mins, CC,


10:00 AM -- POPEYE: I LIKES BABIES AND INFINKS (1937)
Swee'pea is crying, so Olive calls on Popeye (and Bluto overhears) to cheer him up.
Dir: Dave Fleischer, Seymour Kneitel (uncredited)
Cast: Jack Mercer, Mae Questel, Gus Wickie
BW-7 mins, CC,


10:09 AM -- THE FALCON IN DANGER (1943)
A society sleuth tracks a lost plane carrying $100,000.
Dir: William Clemens
Cast: Tom Conway, Jean Brooks, Elaine Shepard
BW-70 mins, CC,

In an interesting take on double standards, when Tom Conway and Jean Brooks fall on their derrières in the roller skating rink, he had a stuntman to take the fall, but Brooks was left to do the stunt herself.


11:30 AM -- BEERS AND PRETZELS (1933)
In this short film, Ted Healy and the his Stooges are fired by their theater and try out new jobs as waiters.
Dir: Jack Cummings
Cast: Ted Healy, Larry Fine, Moe Howard, Curly Howard
BW-21 mins,

The first Three Stooges two-reel short comedy film.


12:00 PM -- HERE COMES MR. JORDAN (1941)
A prizefighter who died before his time is reincarnated as a tycoon with a murderous wife.
Dir: Alexander Hall
Cast: Robert Montgomery, Evelyn Keyes, Claude Rains
BW-94 mins, CC,

Winner of Oscars for Best Writing, Original Story -- Harry Segall, and Best Writing, Screenplay -- Sidney Buchman and Seton I. Miller

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Robert Montgomery, Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- James Gleason, Best Director -- Alexander Hall, Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Joseph Walker, and Best Picture

Columbia chief Harry Cohn had serious misgivings about this adaptation of Harry Segall's minor stage play. He preferred to reserve his more lavish budgets for surefire successes (i.e., anything featuring the studio's biggest star, Rita Hayworth). However, Sidney Buchman was eventually able to talk Cohn into forking out for costly celestial sets and Farnsworth's elaborate mansion and also into hiring Robert Montgomery on loan-out from MGM. Buchman was also able to convince Cohn that he had a better appreciation of what the public would pay to see than the Wall Street bankers who Cohn answered to.

Wow, our Patron Saint twice in two days!




1:45 PM -- THE LUSTY MEN (1952)
A faded rodeo star mentors a younger rider but falls for his wife.
Dir: Nicholas Ray
Cast: Susan Hayward, Robert Mitchum, Arthur Kennedy
BW-113 mins, CC,

The practice of lying still after being thrown from a bull fell by the wayside many years ago, for obvious reasons.


3:45 PM -- THE MAN FROM LARAMIE (1955)
A wandering cowboy gets caught in the rivalry between an aging rancher's sons.
Dir: Anthony Mann
Cast: James Stewart, Arthur Kennedy, Donald Crisp
C-102 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

The film has been described as a western version of King Lear.


5:45 PM -- THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (1962)
A Korean War hero doesn't realize he's been programmed to kill by the enemy.
Dir: John Frankenheimer
Cast: Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, Janet Leigh
BW-127 mins, CC,

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Angela Lansbury, and Best Film Editing -- Ferris Webster

The topic of the movie was considered politically so highly sensitive it was censored and prohibited just before its theatrical release in many of the former 'Iron Curtain' countries, such as Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria - and even in neutral countries such as Finland and Sweden. The theatrical premiere for most of those countries was held after the collapse of Soviet Union in 1993.



TCM PRIMETIME - WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: THE ESSENTIALS: STARRING LENA HORNE



8:00 PM -- CABIN IN THE SKY (1943)
God and Satan battle for the soul of a wounded gambler.
Dir: Vincente Minnelli
Cast: Ethel Waters, Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, Lena Horne
BW-99 mins, CC,

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Music, Original Song -- Harold Arlen (music) and E.Y. Harburg (lyrics) for the song "Happiness Is a Thing Called Joe"

During filming, the movie's black stars were told by the studio manager that they were not allowed to eat at the MGM commissary. When studio head Louis B. Mayer heard about this, he invited the black performers to join him instead in his private dining room. All the performers were allowed to eat in the commissary the following day.


10:00 PM -- STORMY WEATHER (1943)
A relationship blossoms between an aspiring dancer and a popular songstress.
Dir: Andrew Stone
Cast: Lena Horne, Bill Robinson, Cab Calloway
BW-78 mins, CC,

Final film of Fats Waller. On December 15, 1943, less than five months after the film's July 21 opening in Manhattan, Waller, age 39, died of pneumonia on a train stopped at Union Station in Kansas City, Missouri. Having fallen ill during an engagement at the Zanzibar Room in Hollywood, he had boarded the Santa Fe Chief in Los Angeles and was headed for New York City. And final film of Bill Robinson, who died of heart failure at age 71 on November 25, 1949 in New York City.


12:00 AM -- KEY LARGO (1948)
A returning veteran tangles with a ruthless gangster during a hurricane.
Dir: John Huston
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson, Lauren Bacall
BW-100 mins, CC,

Winner of an Oscar for Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Claire Trevor

When Claire Trevor asked John Huston for some insight into her character, he told her, "You're the kind of drunken dame whose elbows are always a little too big, your voice is a little too loud, you're a little too polite. You're very sad, very resigned." Then he leaned on the set's bar in a way that encapsulated the character for her.


2:00 AM -- MARLOWE (1969)
Detective Philip Marlowe probes the seedy underbelly of Los Angeles in search of a woman's missing sister.
Dir: Paul Bogart
Cast: James Garner, Gayle Hunnicutt, Carroll O'Connor
C-96 mins, CC,

In the nightclub scene, Marlowe (James Garner) takes a sip of wine and smirking, judges it to be; "impertinent. . .even baroque." These were the exact words which a character in Gore Vidal's Myra Breckinridge (published a year earlier) had used to describe Garner's butt in an excerpt from an obtuse film journal which appeared in the novel. Obviously, an inside joke and from Garner's smarmy delivery of what was otherwise a pointless remark, he was very much in on the gag.


4:00 AM -- DEATHTRAP (1982)
A blocked playwright plots to kill a beginner and steal his script.
Dir: Sidney Lumet
Cast: Michael Caine, Christopher Reeve, Dyan Cannon
C-116 mins, CC,

Director Sidney Lumet once commented on the real stage-play scenes seen in this movie: "We used the original set of Deathtrap as our set for Sidney Bruhl's flop play. The Music Box (Theatre) is dark on Mondays, so we shot there on a Monday, along with six hundred dress extras as first-nighters. Thus, the opening scene is a movie of a play-within-a-play which takes place within the play on which the movie is based. If that's not completely clear, it's at least a first!"