TCM Schedule for Friday, January 1, 2021 -- What's On Tonight: A Fresh Start

[Staph]

In the daylight hours, we've got a slew of comedies for the new year. Then in prime time, TCM has movies about folks surviving a fresh start. Have a Happy New Year and enjoy!


6:00 AM -- A Night at the Opera (1935)
1h 36m | Comedy | TV-G
Three zanies turn an operatic performance into chaos in their efforts to promote their protege's romance with the leading lady.
Director: Sam Wood
Cast: Groucho Marx, Chico Marx, Harpo Marx

When producer Irving Thalberg learned that the fourth member of The Marx Brothers, Zeppo Marx, would not be joining the brothers at MGM he asked the troupe if they would be willing to take a pay cut from their usual fee. Groucho Marx did not miss a beat when he responded "Without Zeppo we're worth twice as much."


8:00 AM -- Twentieth Century (1934)
1h 31m | Comedy | TV-PG
A tempestuous theatrical director tries to win back the star he created and then drove away.
Director: Howard Hawks
Cast: John Barrymore, Carole Lombard, Walter Connolly

Howard Hawks allowed John Barrymore and Carole Lombard to improvise freely during filming. "When people are as good as those two, the idea of just sticking to lines is rather ridiculous," he told Peter Bogdanovich in an interview. "Because if Barrymore gets going, and he had the ability to do it, I'd just say, 'Go do it.' And Lombard would answer him; she was such a character, just marvelous." Hawks then told a story about Lombard coming to him one day to complain about studio head Harry Cohn making passes at her. Between them, director and star worked out a plan to embarrass their boss. Hawks was in Cohn's office, having a serious discussion with him, when Lombard burst in to exclaim, "I've decided to say yes!" As Cohn watched in shock, she made as if to begin removing her clothes. Hawks said self-righteously, "I'd better get out of here if this is the kind of studio you run." A shaken Cohn asked Lombard to leave, and she never had any further problems with him.


10:15 AM -- The Awful Truth (1937)
1h 30m | Comedy | TV-PG
A divorced couple experiences a series of adventures, which brings them closer together.
Director: Leo McCarey
Cast: Irene Dunne, Cary Grant, Ralph Bellamy

Winner of an Oscar for Best Director -- Leo McCarey

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Irene Dunne, Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Ralph Bellamy, Best Writing, Screenplay -- Viña Delmar, Best Film Editing -- Al Clark, and Best Picture

Ralph Bellamy got a good taste of Leo McCarey's working style very early on. He was simply told to show up on the set the following Monday for filming, with no script, no dialogue, or even a hint about his upcoming scene. So he went to see the director, but received no help at all from the perpetually upbeat McCarey. "He just joshed and said not to worry, we'd have lots of fun but there wasn't any script," Bellamy wrote years later. The actor showed up on set for the first day of production to find Irene Dunne at a piano. (McCarey almost always kept a piano on his sets, and he would often sit playing while he thought up a new scene or piece of business he wanted his actors to try.) Dunne was pecking away at the melody to "Home on the Range," and McCarey asked Bellamy if he could sing. "Can't get from one note to the other," the actor replied. "Great!" McCarey said and ordered the cameras to roll while Dunne played and Bellamy sang for all he was worth. When they finished the song, they heard no "Cut." Looking over, they found McCarey by the camera, doubled over with laughter. Finally he said, "Print it!" The scene ended up in the finished picture. That was the way McCarey worked, and Bellamy had to get used to it quickly.


12:00 PM -- The Producers (1967)
1h 28m | Comedy | TV-14
A Broadway producer decides to get rich by creating the biggest flop of his career.
Director: Mel Brooks
Cast: Zero Mostel, Gene Wilder, Dick Shawn

Winner of an Oscar for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay - Written Directly for the Screen -- Mel Brooks

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Gene Wilder

Mel Brooks related the following in an interview with Larry Siegel in Playboy Magazine in 1966:
PLAYBOY: What else are you working on?
BROOKS: Springtime for Hitler.
PLAYBOY: You're putting us on.
BROOKS: No, it's the God's honest truth. It's going to be a play within a play, or a play within a film, I haven't decided yet. It's a romp with Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun at Berchtesgaden. There was a whole nice side of Hitler. He was a good dancer, no one knows that. He loved a parakeet named Bob, no one knows that either. It's all brought out in the play.


1:45 PM -- The Fortune Cookie (1966)
2h 5m | Comedy | TV-PG
A crooked lawyer trumps up an insurance case for a cameraman injured at a pro football game.
Director: Billy Wilder
Cast: Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, Ron Rich

Winner of an Oscar for Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Walter Matthau

Nominee for Oscars for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay - Written Directly for the Screen -- Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond, Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Joseph LaShelle, and Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White -- Robert Luthardt and Edward G. Boyle

Marked the first pairing of Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau, who subsequently worked together on 11 additional films (including Kotch (1971), in which Lemmon directed Matthau). Lemmon and Matthau bonded early in the production process, finding a connection in their mutual love of football. They would remain friends the rest of their lives.


4:00 PM -- Born Yesterday (1950)
1h 43m | Comedy | TV-PG
A newspaper reporter takes on the task of educating a crooked businessman's girlfriend.
Director: George Cukor
Cast: Judy Holliday, Broderick Crawford, William Holden

Winner of an Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Judy Holliday (Judy Holliday was not present at the awards ceremony but watched it with several nominees in New York including fellow-best actress candidate Gloria Swanson. In Hollywood, Ethel Barrymore accepted on her behalf.)

Nominee for Oscars for Best Director -- George Cukor, Best Writing, Screenplay -- Albert Mannheimer, Best Costume Design, Black-and-White -- Jean Louis, and Best Picture

To help build up Judy Holliday's image, particularly in the eyes of Columbia Pictures chief Harry Cohn, Katharine Hepburn deliberately leaked stories to the gossip columns suggesting that her performance in Adam's Rib (1949) was so good that it had stolen the spotlight from Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. This got Cohn's attention and Holliday won the part in Born Yesterday (1950).


6:00 PM -- Lover Come Back (1961)
1h 47m | Comedy | TV-G
An ad exec in disguise courts his pretty female competitor.
Director: Delbert Mann
Cast: Rock Hudson, Doris Day, Tony Randall

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay - Written Directly for the Screen -- Stanley Shapiro and Paul Henning

Hollywood legend claims that, during the filming of Rock Hudson and Doris Day's bathing suit scene (set on a soundstage beach) one of Hudson's testicles kept popping out from his swimtrunks. While screening dailies the next afternoon, the crew laughed so hard, they became teary-eyed, especially when the projectionist figured how to roll the film back-and-forth so it looked like Hudson's testicle was doing a "dance."



WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: PRIMETIME THEME -- A FRESH START



8:00 PM -- It's a Gift (1934)
1h 7m | Comedy | TV-G
A disgruntled druggist sells his store to buy an orange grove in California.
Director: Norman Z. McLeod
Cast: W. C. Fields, Kathleen Howard, Jean Rouverol, Julian Madison

The final scene, on Bissonette's "orange ranch", was filmed at the house and property W.C. Fields was living in at the time of the filming. For his entire life, Fields rented living quarters, adamantly refusing to buy a house or land.


9:15 PM -- Please Don't Eat the Daisies (1960)
1h 51m | Comedy | TV-G
A drama critic and his family try to adjust to life in the country.
Director: Charles Walters
Cast: Doris Day, David Niven, Janis Paige

The final scene, on Bissonette's "orange ranch", was filmed at the house and property W.C. Fields was living in at the time of the filming. For his entire life, Fields rented living quarters, adamantly refusing to buy a house or land.


11:30 PM -- Murphy's Romance (1985)
1h 48m | Comedy | TV-MA
A mother and her young son move to Arizona to start a new life, where she meets an older man.
Director: Martin Ritt
Cast: Dortha Duckworth, C Ray Cook, Paul E Pinnt

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- James Garner, and Best Cinematography -- William A. Fraker

Sally Field once said on the A&E television show Biography: James Garner: Hollywood Maverick (2000) that her kissing scene with Garner in this picture was the best on-screen kiss she had ever had. She's a lucky woman!


1:30 AM -- The Sundowners (1960)
2h 13m | Drama | TV-PG
An Australian sheepherder and his wife clash over their nomadic existence and their son's future.
Director: Fred Zinnemann
Cast: Deborah Kerr, Robert Mitchum, Peter Ustinov

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Deborah Kerr, Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Glynis Johns, Best Director -- Fred Zinnemann, Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium -- Isobel Lennart, and Best Picture

Gary Cooper was originally cast in the lead role of Paddy Carmondy, but had to back out due to poor health. Errol Flynn replaced him, but died before production began. Robert Mitchum stepped into the role for the chance to act with his good friend Deborah Kerr, with whom he had previously co-starred in Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957). Mitchum agreed to give Kerr top billing, joking to the production team, "You can design a twenty-four-foot sign of me bowing to her if you like."


4:00 AM -- The Big Chill (1983)
1h 43m | Drama | TV-MA
Seven friends from college are reunited for a weekend and re-evaluate their lives.
Director: Lawrence Kasdan
Cast: Glenn Close, Tom Berenger, Jeff Goldblum

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Glenn Close, Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen -- Lawrence Kasdan and Barbara Benedek, and Best Picture

Before actual shooting was to begin, Lawrence Kasdan wanted the cast to spend some significant time rehearsing together. As they travelled from California to Atlanta, Georgia and ultimately Beaufort, South Carolina, the actors had nearly three weeks of rehearsal time before the cameras rolled--something extremely rare for a film. JoBeth Williams believed it was partly due to the studio not wanting to spend a lot of money on the actual shooting process. More importantly, however, Kasdan wanted to give the cast and crew a chance to work out how they would play their scenes together and get to know each other well enough to achieve the effortless camaraderie that comes with the close long-time friendships depicted in the story. It was a strategy that all of the actors found extremely helpful in making their characters' relationships believable. "It's like playing on a wonderful team," said Kevin Kline at the time, "and it's fun being part of that team. It's a sharing, like sharing a victory when you've won. There's a beautiful exhilaration in team play, which is about as apt a parallel as I can make to this ensemble."