TCM Schedule for Friday, September 13, 2019 -- TCM Spotlight: College Football

[Staph]

Today in the daylight hours, TCM is featuring Ruth Chatterton. From her TCM biography:

Respected stage actress who made her screen debut in "Sins of the Fathers" (1928) and, at the relatively advanced age of 35, became a popular star of "women's films" of the early 1930s. An intense, often richly theatrical actress with a fine speaking voice, Chatterton enjoyed rewarding parts in such films as "Sarah and Son" (1930) and "Female" (1933). She played determined or high-powered women, often sexually quite liberated and aggressive, who undergo considerable emotional torment, and brought considerable class and dignity even to routine melodramatic romances. Her success in the first sound version of "Madame X" (1929) also insured that many of her later starring vehicles, such as "Frisco Jenny" (1933), would be variations of that film's glamorously suffering wife-and-mother role.

Although her stardom slipped after 1934, Chatterton came back to enjoy one of her finest roles, and the one for which she is best remembered, as Walter Huston's selfish and self-dramatizing wife, dreading the approach of middle age, in William Wyler's superb, beautifully acted adapatation of Sinclair Lewis' novel, "Dodsworth" (1936). Chatterton wrote a Broadway play in 1930 ("Monsieur Brotonneau&quot and, some time after retiring from films, published several popular novels in the 1950s. Married to actors Ralph Forbes, George Brent and Barry Thomson.

Then in prime time, it's back to the gridiron! Enjoy!


6:00 AM -- MADAME X (1929)
Infidelity and an accidental death force a society wife to leave her infant son.
Dir: Lionel Barrymore
Cast: Lewis Stone, Ruth Chatterton, Raymond Hackett
BW-95 mins,

Nominee of Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Ruth Chatterton (No official nominees had been announced this year.), and Best Director -- Lionel Barrymore (No official nominees had been announced this year.)

No music is heard under the opening or closing credits of Madame X, which was the result of a short-lived practice in which studios expected the local theater musicians to provide live accompaniment to the opening credits of sound films. Keyboardists and orchestras were still working in the theaters in the late 1920s providing music for silent films still in distribution. Live music was a way to make the screening more of a special event and not a purely "canned" presentation.


7:45 AM -- THE LADY OF SCANDAL (1930)
A nobleman risks his family's wrath by courting an actress.
Dir: Sidney Franklin
Cast: Ruth Chatterton, Basil Rathbone, Ralph Forbes
BW-75 mins,

Based on the stage play The High Road, by Frederick Lonsdale.


9:15 AM -- THE CRASH (1932)
The stock market crash costs a faithless wife her fortune.
Dir: William Dieterle
Cast: Ruth Chatterton, George Brent, Lois Wilson
BW-57 mins, CC,

The $250,000 Geoff says he needs to keep from getting wiped out in the market crash is the equivalent of over $3.5M in 2016.


10:30 AM -- THE RICH ARE ALWAYS WITH US (1932)
A socialite gets a divorce but can't keep out of her ex-husband's life.
Dir: Alfred Green
Cast: Ruth Chatterton, George Brent, Bette Davis
BW-71 mins, CC,

Ruth Chatterton and George Brent married shortly after this film. And divorced two years later.


12:00 PM -- FEMALE (1933)
A female CEO who's used to buying love meets her match in an independent young executive.
Dir: Michael Curtiz
Cast: Ruth Chatterton, George Brent, Lois Wilson
BW-60 mins, CC,

In December 10, 2013, the American car company General Motors announced that it had appointed its first female CEO, Mary Barra, scheduled to assume the role in January, 2014. This announcement marked the first time in history a woman was appointed to head an automobile company anywhere in the world, eighty years after the release of this film.


1:15 PM -- FRISCO JENNY (1933)
A district attorney prosecutes his own mother for murder.
Dir: William A. Wellman
Cast: Ruth Chatterton, Louis Calhern, Helen Jerome Eddy
BW-71 mins, CC,

George Brent was originally cast opposite Ruth Chatterton but withdrew to star in 42nd Street (1933).


2:45 PM -- LILLY TURNER (1933)
After unwittingly marrying a bigamist, a pregnant woman faces many trials on the road to romance.
Dir: William A. Wellman
Cast: Ruth Chatterton, George Brent, Frank McHugh
BW-65 mins, CC,

Warner Bros. tried to re-release the movie in 1936, but the Production Code office refused to award an approval certificate.


4:15 PM -- JOURNAL OF A CRIME (1934)
Before she can confess to shooting her husband's mistress, a woman succumbs to amnesia.
Dir: William Keighley
Cast: Ruth Chatterton, Adolphe Menjou, Claire Dodd
BW-65 mins, CC,

The source is credited to a play onscreen, but it is actually a remake of the French film Une vie perdue (1933), written by the same author. Perhaps "screen play" was meant, because "screenplay" in the 1930s was two separate words.


5:30 PM -- EASY TO LOVE (1934)
When she thinks her husband has been unfaithful, a woman claims to be having an affair of her own.
Dir: William Keighley
Cast: Genevieve Tobin, Adolphe Menjou, Mary Astor
BW-61 mins, CC,

The desk clerk (Hobart Cavanaugh) at the Tavern hotel is reading the June 26, 1933 issue of Time magazine when John bursts in the front door. The cover features Italian General Italo Balbo, a well-known aviator at the time. He was about to lead a flight of flying boats from Rome to Chicago for the 1933 World's Fair.


6:45 PM -- LADIES THEY TALK ABOUT (1933)
A lady bank robber becomes the cell block boss after she's sent to prison.
Dir: Howard Bretherton
Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, Preston S. Foster, Lyle Talbot
BW-69 mins, CC,

Film has some rather blatant and oddball plugs for Warner Brothers stars. In several scenes photos of Joe E. Brown (whom Lillian Roth sings to) and Dick Powell are seen in the women's cells.



TCM PRIMETIME - WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: TCM SPOTLIGHT: COLLEGE FOOTBALL



8:00 PM -- THAT'S MY BOY (1932)
The star player of his college football team gets in over his head when he gets involved in some illegal gambling.
Dir: Roy William Neill
Cast: Richard Cromwell, Dorothy Jordan, Mae Marsh
BW-70 mins, CC,

Based on a novel by Francis Wallace.


9:30 PM -- OVER THE GOAL (1937)
A college football star risks his health to play in the big game.
Dir: Noel M. Smith
Cast: June Travis, William Hopper, Johnny Davis
BW-63 mins,

Based on a story by William Jacobs.


10:45 PM -- THE BIG GAME (1936)
A quarterback stands against gangsters out to control the college sports scene.
Dir: George Nicholls Jr.
Cast: Philip Huston, James Gleason, June Travis
BW-74 mins, CC,

The novel "Big Game" by Francis Wallace was first published as a serial entitled "Odds Against Honor" in Collier's magazine in 1935. The idea for the riot scene came from an actual riot at a New York University-Fordham University football game. RKO bought 1000 feet of the 1935 Rose Bowl game footage for use in the film.


12:15 AM -- GRIDIRON FLASH (1935)
A college football team recruits a tough convict.
Dir: Glenn Tryon
Cast: Eddie Quillan, Betty Furness, Grant Mitchell
BW-64 mins,

Also known as The Kick Off.


1:30 AM -- SATURDAY'S HEROES (1937)
A college football star rebels against the exploitation of the game and its players.
Dir: Edward Killy
Cast: Van Heflin, Marian Marsh, Richard Lane
BW-60 mins,

Based on a story by George Templeton.


2:45 AM -- DEATH BY INVITATION (1971)
The reincarnation of a witch burned at the stake seeks vengeance on her tormentors' descendants.
Dir: Ken Friedman
Cast: Norman Paige, Shelby Leverington, Aaron Phillips
C-82 mins, Letterbox Format

Film debut of Shelby Leverington.


4:15 AM -- WITCHBOARD (1987)
Dir: Kevin Tenney
Cast: Todd Allen, Tawny Kitaen, Stephen Nichols
BW-98 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

The house in the film was also used in Waxwork (1988) and Willard (1971). This Los Angeles home has since been "retired" as a filming location.