TCM Schedule for Thursday, January 21, 2020 -- What's On Tonight: Star of the Month Miriam Hopkins

[Staph]

In the daylight hours, the theme is Everyone's a Critic. Then in prime time, it's week three with star of the month Miriam Hopkins. Enjoy!


5:30 AM -- The Lady Vanishes (1938)
1h 37m | Crime | TV-G
A young woman on vacation triggers an international incident when she tries to track an elderly friend who has disappeared.
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Cast: Margaret Lockwood, Michael Redgrave, Paul Lukas

In an interview with Peter Bogdanovich, Sir Alfred Hitchcock revealed that this movie was inspired by a legend of an Englishwoman who went with her daughter to the Palace Hotel in Paris in the 1880s, at the time of the Great Exposition: "The woman was taken sick and they sent the girl across Paris to get some medicine in a horse-vehicle, so it took about four hours. When she came back she asked, 'How's my mother?' 'What mother?' 'My mother. She's here, she's in her room. Room 22.' They go up there. Different room, different wallpaper, everything. And the payoff of the whole story is, so the legend goes, that the woman had bubonic plague and they dared not let anybody know she died, otherwise all of Paris would have emptied." The urban legend, known as the Vanishing Hotel Room, also formed the basis of one segment of the German portmanteau movie Eerie Tales (1919), So Long at the Fair (1950) (in which the missing person was the young woman's brother as opposed to her mother) and Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955) season one, episode five, "Into Thin Air", starring Hitchcock's daughter Patricia Hitchcock.


7:15 AM -- When Were You Born (1938)
1h 5m | Suspense/Mystery | TV-G
An astrologer tries to help the police catch a killer.
Director: William McGann
Cast: Margaret Lindsay, Anna May Wong, Lola Lane

The film was meant to be the first in a low-budget franchise starring Anna May Wong as a amateur detective who uses astrology to solve crimes.


8:30 AM -- Torch Song (1953)
1h 30m | Drama | TV-G
A tempestuous musical theatre star falls for a blind pianist.
Director: Charles Walters
Cast: Joan Crawford, Michael Wilding, Gig Young

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Marjorie Rambeau

This film marked Joan Crawford's return to MGM after a ten year absence. She was previously under contract to MGM from 1925-1943.


10:15 AM -- Never a Dull Moment (1950)
1h 29m | Comedy | TV-G
A female music critic marries a rancher and has to adjust to life out West.
Director: George Marshall
Cast: Irene Dunne, Fred Macmurray, William Demarest

Won the Harvard Lampoon's "Dullest Movie" Award.


11:45 AM -- Sing and Like It (1934)
1h 12m | Comedy | TV-G
A gangster tries to turn his tone-deaf girlfriend into a singing star.
Director: William A. Seiter
Cast: Zasu Pitts, Pert Kelton, Edward Everett Horton

Although the Catholic Church of Detroit placed this movie on its "to be boycotted" list in July 1934, the Production Code Administration gave it an approval certificate for its re-release in 1935, when the Code was even more rigorously enforced.


1:00 PM -- No Time for Comedy (1940)
1h 33m | Comedy | TV-G
A wealthy culture vulture tries to steal a playwright from his actress wife.
Director: William Keighley
Cast: James Stewart, Rosalind Russell, Charles Ruggles

The original play by S.N. Behrman opened out of town in Indianapolis, Indiana, on 31 March 1939. It then opened on Broadway at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, 243 W. 47th St., on April 17, 1939 and ran for 185 performances until September.


2:45 PM -- Speak Easily (1932)
1h 20m | Comedy | TV-G
A professor gets mixed up with chorus girls in a Broadway musical.
Director: Edward Sedgwick
Cast: Buster Keaton, Jimmy Durante, Ruth Selwyn

Three years after its first film appearance in The Hollywood Revue of 1929 (1929), the song "Singin' in the Rain" is played and referred by Jimmy Durante. Although the characters imply the song was famous at the time, it wasn't until 1952 when Gene Kelly performed it in the film of the same name (Singin' in the Rain (1952)) and gave it its worldwide fame that continues to this day.


4:15 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

Based on the best-selling autobiographical book of the same name, written by Jean Kerr, wife of powerful New York theatre critic Walter Kerr. For this film adaptation, characters' names were changed, but the bulk of the comic incidents seen here are from Kerr's memoir.


6:15 PM -- Critic's Choice (1963)
1h 40m | Comedy | TV-G
A Broadway critic must write a negative review about his wife's play.
Director: Don Weis
Cast: Bob Hope, Lucille Ball, Marilyn Maxwell

The film prudently leaves out the joke which had been most severely criticized by reviewers in the original play. In the play, Parker Ballantyne keeps on his desk two small boxes containing file-cards, one box white and the other black; the white box has cards inscribed with pre-written smart remarks of a laudatory nature, whilst the black box's cards are inscribed with insults. The notion that a critic might write part of a review before ever seeing the play was dismissed as an obvious absurdity by real-life critics, although the joke was much appreciated by theater professionals.



WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: PRIMETIME THEME -- STAR OF THE MONTH MIRIAM HOPKINS



8:00 PM -- The Richest Girl in the World (1934)
1h 16m | Romance | TV-G
To put off fortune-hunters, an heiress trades places with her secretary.
Director: William A. Seiter
Cast: Miriam Hopkins, Joel McCrea, Fay Wray

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Writing, Original Story -- Norman Krasna

When Tony arrives at the cabin in the Adirondacks during a wild rainstorm, he walks in saying "Ain't a fit night out for man or beast." This is a line popularized the year before by W.C. Fields in The Fatal Glass of Beer (1933).


9:30 PM -- Splendor (1935)
1h 15m | Romance | TV-G
A man disappoints his destitute family by marrying a poor girl.
Director: Elliott Nugent
Cast: Miriam Hopkins, Joel McCrea, Paul Cavanaugh

Producer Samuel Goldwyn's house on Laurel Lane in Beverly Hills is used as a location in this film. The front of the house and courtyard appear in the scene in which Miriam Hopkins and Paul Cavanagh mount horses. The rear of the house and swimming pool appear in a party scene. The house was built by the Goldwyns in 1934. It is now owned by singer Taylor Swift.


11:00 PM -- These Three (1936)
1h 33m | Drama | TV-14
Scandal destroys the lives of two small-town schoolteachers.
Director: William Wyler
Cast: Miriam Hopkins, Merle Oberon, Joel McCrea

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Bonita Granville

In 1961, director William Wyler remade the film as The Children's Hour (1961), with the lesbian theme intact, starring Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine. Miriam Hopkins, who plays Martha Dobie in this film, plays her aunt, Lily Mortar, in the 1961 film.


12:45 AM -- Woman Chases Man (1937)
1h 11m | Comedy | TV-G
A millionaire hires a lady architect to con the money for a housing project out of his wealthy son.
Director: John Blystone
Cast: Miriam Hopkins, Joel McCrea, Charles Winninger

Broderick Crawford's film debut.


2:15 AM -- Virginia City (1940)
2h 1m | Western | TV-G
A rebel spy poses as a wild West dance hall girl.
Director: Michael Curtiz
Cast: Errol Flynn, Miriam Hopkins, Randolph Scott

When the film premiered in Virginia City, NV, in 1940, the townspeople were charged an exorbitant admission fee (for those days) of $1.10 per customer. This was owing to the fact that Errol Flynn, Miriam Hopkins and others from the cast had been scheduled to make a personal appearance on stage after the film's showing. However, when Flynn and the others failed to appear, enraged audience members stormed out of the theater and took the Warner Brothers entourage (including five busloads of studio personnel) hostage, demanding they get their money back. Eventually the theater's manager agreed to make up the difference by refunding the audience 70 cents apiece, thus reducing admission to its usual 40-cent fee.


4:30 AM -- Rocky Mountain (1950)
1h 23m | War | TV-PG
A Confederate troop makes a last desperate attempt to build up an army in the West.
Director: William Keighley
Cast: Errol Flynn, Patrice Wymore, Scott Forbes

Final western of Errol Flynn.