TCM Schedule for Thursday, December 24, 2020 -- What's On Tonight: TCM Classic Christmas Marathon

[Staph]

It's the last full day of the TCM Classic Christmas Marathon. Enjoy!


6:45 AM -- Tenth Avenue Angel (1948)
1h 14m | Comedy | TV-G
A child of the tenements helps an ex-con find a new life.
Director: Roy Rowland
Cast: Margaret O'Brien, Angela Lansbury, George Murphy

Flavia's block party speech was taken from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's address to the Young Democratic Club in Baltimore, Maryland on April 13, 1936.


8:15 AM -- All Mine to Give (1957)
1h 50m | Drama | TV-G
Pioneer children fight to build a new family after their parents die.
Director: Allen Reisner
Cast: Glynis Johns, Cameron Mitchell, Rex Thompson

Based on the true story of author Dale Eunson's father who, as the eldest orphaned son, found homes for his siblings on Christmas.


10:00 AM -- Love Finds Andy Hardy (1938)
1h 30m | Comedy | TV-G
A small-town boy tries to juggle two girlfriends at once.
Director: George B. Seitz
Cast: Lewis Stone, Mickey Rooney, Cecilia Parker

The calendar Andy uses to count off the days until Christmas is inaccurate. Christmas Day fell on a Sunday in 1938. Andy's calendar shows Christmas falling on a Thursday.


11:45 AM -- It Happened on 5th Avenue (1947)
1h 55m | Comedy | TV-G
Two homeless men move into a mansion while its owners are wintering in the South.
Director: Roy Del Ruth
Cast: Don Defore, Ann Harding, Charles Ruggles

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Writing, Original Story -- Herbert Clyde Lewis and Frederick Stephani

The men are getting paid $1.00 an hour for shoveling snow. One dollar in 1947 is worth $11.50 in 2020. The minimum wage in New York City in 2020 is $15.00 (though NYS will not reach $15.00/hour until December 31, 2020). (Although the character doesn't state whether that is $1 each or for both men together.)


2:00 PM -- In the Good Old Summertime (1949)
1h 43m | Comedy | TV-PG
In this musical remake of The Shop Around the Corner, feuding co-workers in a small music shop do not realize they are secret romantic pen pals.
Director: Robert Z. Leonard
Cast: Judy Garland, Van Johnson, S. Z. "Cuddles" Sakall

Buster Keaton was working as a gag writer at MGM when this movie was made. The filmmakers approached him to devise a way for a violin to get broken that would be both comic and plausible. Keaton came up with an appropriate fall, and the filmmakers then realized he was the only one who would be able to execute it properly, so they cast him in the film. Keaton also devised the sequence in which Van Johnson inadvertently wrecks Judy Garland's hat, and coached Johnson intensively in how to perform the scene. This was the first MGM film Keaton appeared in since being fired from the studio in 1933.


4:00 PM -- Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)
1h 53m | Comedy | TV-G
Young love and childish fears highlight a year in the life of a turn-of-the-century family.
Director: Vincente Minnelli
Cast: Judy Garland, Margaret O'Brien, Mary Astor

Winner of a Juvenile Oscar Award for Margaret O'Brien for outstanding child actress of 1944

Nominee for Oscars for Best Writing, Screenplay -- Irving Brecher and Fred F. Finklehoffe, Best Cinematography, Color -- George J. Folsey, Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture -- George Stoll, and Best Music, Original Song -- Ralph Blane and Hugh Martin for the song "The Trolley Song"

For many, Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) is considered essential Christmas Eve viewing. If the film is begun at precisely 10:22:30 pm, the church bell that tolls midnight during John's Christmas Eve proposal to Esther coincides perfectly with the real-time stroke of midnight, thus allowing die-hard fans to ring in Christmas morning with the characters in the film.


6:00 PM -- Christmas in Connecticut (1945)
1h 41m | Comedy | TV-G
A homemaking specialist who can't boil water is forced to provide a family holiday for a war hero.
Director: Peter Godfrey
Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, Dennis Morgan, Sydney Greenstreet

John Sloan's Connecticut home in this film is the same set used in Bringing Up Baby (1938).



WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: PRIMETIME THEME -- TCM CLASSIC CHRISTMAS MARATHON



8:00 PM -- The Bishop's Wife (1948)
1h 49m | Comedy | TV-G
An angel helps set an ambitious bishop on the right track.
Director: Henry Koster
Cast: Cary Grant, Loretta Young, David Niven

Winner of an Oscar for Best Sound, Recording -- Gordon Sawyer (Samuel Goldwyn SSD)

Nominee for Oscars for Best Director -- Henry Koster, Best Film Editing -- Monica Collingwood, Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture -- Hugo Friedhofer, and Best Picture

One scene shows Cary Grant and Loretta Young in a conversation. Director Henry Koster staged this with the two facing each other, but both complained that this showed the "wrong" side of their faces. In order to show the "right" side, they both had to be looking screen left, which made a face-to-face talk impossible to film. Koster had a window set piece brought in, and he filmed it from outside, with both looking out in the same direction, Grant behind Young. The next day, producer Samuel Goldwyn visited the set after seeing dailies and berated Koster for shooting the scene in that manner. Koster replied by asking Young and Grant to explain why the scene was shot that way. After both told Goldwyn about the "right" and "wrong" sides of their faces, Goldwyn said "Look, if I'm only getting half a face, you're only getting half a salary!" and stormed off the set. The subject of "right" and "wrong" sides never came up again.


10:00 PM -- The Shop Around the Corner (1940)
1h 37m | Comedy | TV-G
Feuding co-workers do not realize they are secret romantic pen pals.
Director: Ernst Lubitsch
Cast: Margaret Sullavan, James Stewart, Frank Morgan

The original source material for this plot, the 1937 play Illatszertár (in English, titled Parfumerie) by the Hungarian writer Miklós László, has been adapted into numerous other movies and plays. The first film adaptation was The Shop Around the Corner (1940) starring Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart. The first musical adaptation was In the Good Old Summertime (1949), which starred Judy Garland and Van Johnson. In 1963, a second musical adaptation, "She Loves Me," premiered on Broadway; its first production, which starred Daniel Massey as Georg Nowack and Barbara Cook, was a critical success but a box-office disappointment. A 1993 Broadway revival (starring Boyd Gaines and Judy Kuhn) met the same fate, as did a third Broadway mounting in 2016 (with Laura Benanti, Zachary Levi, and Jane Krakowski). While MGM planned a film version of "She Loves Me" designed to reunite Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke following Mary Poppins (1964), it was ultimately scrapped. A third film version of the story came about in You've Got Mail (1998), which updated the plot to embrace the techno age and starred Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks.


12:00 AM -- A Christmas Carol (1938)
1h 9m | Drama | TV-G
In this adaptation of Charles Dickens' classic tale, an elderly miser learns the error of his ways.
Director: Edwin L. Marin
Cast: Reginald Owen, Gene Lockhart, Kathleen Lockhart

The word "humbug" is misunderstood by many people, which is a pity since the word provides a key insight into Scrooge's hatred of Christmas. The word "humbug" describes deceitful efforts to fool people by pretending to a fake loftiness or false sincerity. So when Scrooge calls Christmas a humbug, he is claiming that people only pretend to charity and kindness in a scoundrel effort to delude him, each other, and themselves. In Scrooge's eyes, he is the one man honest enough to admit that no one really cares about anyone else, so for him, every wish for a Merry Christmas is one more deceitful effort to fool him and take advantage of him. This is a man who has turned to profit because he honestly believes everyone else will someday betray him or abandon him the moment he trusts them.


1:30 AM -- Meet John Doe (1941)
2h 3m | Drama | TV-G
A reporter's fraudulent story turns a tramp into a national hero and makes him a pawn of big business.
Director: Frank Capra
Cast: Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward Arnold

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Writing, Original Story -- Richard Connell and Robert Presnell Sr.

Well into production, Frank Capra refused to reveal publicly what the film was about. Part of the motivation for his secrecy was fear that powerful US fascist organizations would pressure Warner Bros. not to make the film, but he also did not have a completed screenplay, and keeping mum on the film's subject was his way of keeping Warner Bros. from pulling out of its agreement.


3:45 AM -- Beyond Tomorrow (1940)
1h 24m | Romance | TV-G
A ghost tries to smooth the way for two young lovers he knew during his lifetime.
Director: A. Edward Sutherland
Cast: Harry Carey, C. Aubrey Smith, Charles Winninger

This was the most famous of the handful of films produced by Lee Garmes. Garmes was better known as one of the industry's leading Directors of Photography.


5:15 AM -- 3 Godfathers (1949)
1h 45m | Drama | TV-PG
Three outlaws on the run risk their freedom and their lives to return a newborn to civilization.
Director: John Ford
Cast: John Wayne, Pedro Armendariz, Harry Carey

This is a remake of the silent film The Three Godfathers (1916), which starred Ford's long-time friend Harry Carey. When Carey died in 1947, Ford decided to remake the story in Technicolor and dedicate the film to his memory. Carey's son, Harry Carey Jr., plays one of the three, "The Abilene Kid". The film Three Godfathers (1936) is based on the same source, so this film is, in some sense, a remake of that film as well.

[CBHagman]

1. Well, if we're talking Parfumerie/The Shop Around the Corner/She Loves Me . . .

. . . I'm going to post a scene from that recent Broadway production of She Loves Me. It's a plot element that doesn't figure in The Shop Around the Corner, but it's soooo entertaining.

[Staph]

2. Ooooh! That looks so good!

I saw Holiday Inn the Broadway musical on PBS recently - what a snooze. And I so love the original movie.

But this musical looks good. I wonder if it will be on PBS's Great Performances. I don't think I'll be making it to the Great White Way any time soon!