TCM Schedule for Saturday, June 8, 2019 -- What's On Tonight: The Essentials: 1976 Documentaries

[Staph]

In the daylight hours, TCM has the usual Saturday matinee lineup of films and shorts. And just before primetime, one of my favorite guilty pleasures from my college days, The Gumball Rally (1976). After seeing the film in the theatre, we hoped in a friend's car and made a little 60-mile drive at midnight. Speed limits may have been broken!

In primetime, The Essentials is back! (or should that be The Essentials are back?), with 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. Tonight's theme are documentaries from 1976, including Harlan County, USA, and Grey Gardens. Enjoy!


6:00 AM -- YOUNG MAN WITH A HORN (1950)
A young trumpet player is torn between an honest singer and a manipulative heiress.
Dir: Michael Curtiz
Cast: Kirk Douglas, Lauren Bacall, Doris Day
BW-112 mins, CC,

The film contains a reference to homosexuality, although the Hays Office--the industry's censor--required any mention of it be subtle. The character of Amy (Lauren Bacall) is lesbian, which is why Rick (Kirk Douglas) walks out on her, telling her that she is "a very sick girl". Many decades later, Bacall told a Turner Classic Movies interviewer that the reference was so subtle (and she was then so young and naive) that she didn't understand until years later that the character she played was supposed to be lesbian.


8:00 AM -- MGM CARTOONS: THE ROOKIE BEAR (1941)
In a humorous report, "Strife" magazine follows a bear who gets drafted and goes through the rigors of Army basic training.
Dir: Rudolf Ising
Cast: Rudolf Ising, Gayne Whitman
BW-8 mins, CC,

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Short Subject, Cartoons


8:10 AM -- BONE CRUSHERS (1933)
This short film short showcases professional wrestling.
Dir: Ward Wing
Cast: Paul Girard Smith
BW-8 mins,


8:19 AM -- GLIMPSES OF ARGENTINA (1952)
This short film takes the viewer to the South American country of Argentina.
C-8 mins,


8:28 AM -- ROAD AGENT (1952)
Cowboys fight bandits trying to take over the trails.
Dir: Lesley Selander
Cast: Tim Holt, Noreen Nash, Mauritz Hugo
BW-60 mins, CC,

Tim Holt made ten films as the character "Tim Holt". This is the seventh.


9:30 AM -- LOST CITY OF THE JUNGLE: THE PIT OF PENDRANG (1946)
Episode four of thirteen.
Dir: Lewis D. Collins, Ray Taylor
Cast: Russell Hayden, Jane Adams, Lionel Atwill
BW-19 mins, CC,


10:00 AM -- POPEYE: FOWL PLAY (1937)
Popeye gives Olive a parrot that he's trained. Bluto sets the bird free and then tries to kill it.
Dir: Dave Fleischer
Cast: Jack Mercer, Mae Questel, Gus Wickie
BW-7 mins,

Spoofs Dracula (1931) and Mutiny on the Bounty (1935).


10:08 AM -- THE FALCON IN MEXICO (1944)
A society sleuth travels South of the border to investigate an art dealer's murder.
Dir: William Berke
Cast: Tom Conway, Mona Maris, Martha MacVicar
BW-70 mins, CC,

Some of the Latin American exterior footage that is seen behind the opening credits, and which is inter-cut with the studio-shot scenes and projected behind the cast in some sequences, is rumored but unconfirmed to have come from Orson Welles' never-completed and Brazilian-located RKO documentary "It's All True"; that project was itself the subject of a documentary, It's All True (1993).


11:30 AM -- THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE (1938)
This short film offers an account of the meeting of the Continental Congress in the summer of 1776.
Dir: Crane Wilbur
Cast: John Litel, Owen King, Ted Osborn
C-17 mins,

Winner of an Oscar for Best Short Subject, Two-reel

This short focuses on Caesar Rodney and his ride from Delaware to cast the tie-breaking vote for the Declaration.


12:00 PM -- KING KONG (1933)
A film crew discovers the "eighth wonder of the world," a giant prehistoric ape, and brings him back to New York, where he wreaks havoc.
Dir: Merian C. Cooper
Cast: Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong, Bruce Cabot
BW-104 mins, CC,

Merian C. Cooper's first vision for the film, was of a giant ape on top of the world's tallest building, fighting airplanes. He worked backward from there, to develop the rest of the story.


2:00 PM -- DIAL M FOR MURDER (1954)
A straying husband frames his wife for the murder of the man he'd hired to kill her.
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock
Cast: Ray Milland, Grace Kelly, Robert Cummings
C-105 mins, CC,

Sir Alfred Hitchcock had chosen a very expensive robe for Grace Kelly to wear when she answered the phone. Kelly balked, and said that no woman would put on such a robe, just to answer the ringing telephone while she was asleep alone, but would answer it in her nightgown. Hitchcock agreed to do it her way and liked the way the rushes turned out. Hitchcock agreed to allow Kelly to make all costume decisions for her in their subsequent movie together, afterwards.


4:00 PM -- LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (1962)
A British military officer enlists the Arabs for desert warfare in World War I.
Dir: David Lean
Cast: Peter O'Toole, Alec Guinness, Anthony Quinn
C-227 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Winner of Oscars for Best Director -- David Lean, Best Cinematography, Color -- Freddie Young, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color -- John Box, John Stoll and Dario Simoni, Best Sound -- John Cox (Shepperton SSD), Best Film Editing -- Anne V. Coates, Best Music, Score - Substantially Original -- Maurice Jarre, and Best Picture

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Peter O'Toole, Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Omar Sharif, and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium -- Robert Bolt and Michael Wilson (The nomination for Wilson was granted on 26 September 1995 by the Academy Board of Directors, after research at the WGA found that the then blacklisted writer shared the screenwriting credit with Bolt.)

The first time Peter O'Toole tried riding a camel, blood oozed from his jeans. "This is a very delicate Irish arse", he warned his instructor. He finally mastered his camel-riding technique by adding a layer of sponge rubber under the saddle to ease his bruised backside...a practical innovation quickly adopted by the actual Bedouin tribesmen acting as extras during the desert location filming. O'Toole was nicknamed "ab al-'Isfanjah" ("father of the sponge&quot by the Bedouin.



TCM PRIMETIME - WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: THE ESSENTIALS: 1976 DOCUMENTARIES



8:00 PM -- HARLAN COUNTY, U.S.A. (1976)
Kentucky miners risk their lives in a violent strike.
Dir: Barbara Kopple
Cast: Norman Yarborough, Houston Elmore, Phil Sparks
C-105 mins, CC,

Winner of an Oscar for Best Documentary, Features -- Barbara Kopple

When filming began, the film was intended to be about the 1972 campaign by Arnold Miller and Miners For Democracy to unseat UMWA president Tony Boyle, in the aftermath of Joseph Yablonski's murder; but the Harlan County strike began and caused the filmmakers to change their principal subject, with the campaign and murder becoming secondary subjects.


10:00 PM -- GREY GARDENS (1976)
Documentary of a reclusive mother and her daughter who created their on own world in their mansion known as "Grey Gardens."
Dir: Ellen Hovde
Cast: Brooks Hyers, Jerry Torre, Lois Wright
C-95 mins, CC,

The film was something of an accident, in the sense that Albert Maysles and David Maysles came across Edith Bouvier Beale and Edith 'Little Edie' Bouvier Beale when involved in another project--a movie about (Jacqueline Kennedy's sister) Lee Radziwill's childhood. As part of research, the Maysles brothers were introduced to the Beales, and were captivated by their world. Deciding not to make the Radzwill film, they turned instead to the Beales, and a year after first meeting the two women, began filming.


12:00 AM -- NORA PRENTISS (1947)
An ambitious singer ruins a doctor's life.
Dir: Vincent Sherman
Cast: Ann Sheridan, Kent Smith, Bruce Bennett
BW-111 mins, CC,

Sheilah Graham reported that Ann Sheridan had an infection in one ear during production, and during the final shots of the film, could only be photographed from one side.


2:00 AM -- CITY FOR CONQUEST (1940)
A truck driver risks his eyesight when he boxes to pay for his brother's education.
Dir: Anatole Litvak
Cast: James Cagney, Ann Sheridan, Frank Craven
BW-104 mins, CC,

Cagney's boxing stand-in was Quentin "Baby" Breese, a professional boxer who was ranked as one of the first ten lightweights in the world, and who lost only 15 of 100 fights in his career.


4:00 AM -- TORRID ZONE (1940)
A Central American plantation manager and his boss battle over a traveling showgirl.
Dir: William Keighley
Cast: James Cagney, Ann Sheridan, Pat O'Brien
BW-88 mins, CC,

James Cagney's (Nick) last line to Ann Sheridan (Lee) "You and your 14 carat oomph" was a subtle nod to Warner Brothers billing Ann Sheridan as "the oomph girl" beginning in the late 1930s. Although it was an arguably accurate nickname, Ann Sheridan did not care for the label.