TCM Schedule for Friday, January 21, 2022 -- What's on Tonight: Motorcycle Classics

[Staph]

During the day, it's all about Horrible Husbands. Then in prime time, TCM has a trio of Motorcycle Classics, including Electra Glide in Blue (1973), Easy Rider (1969), and Mad Max (1979). Enjoy!


6:45 AM -- The Man with Two Faces (1934)
1h 12m | Suspense/Mystery | TV-PG
An actor uses his skills to protect his sister from her sinister husband.
Director: Archie Mayo
Cast: Edward G. Robinson, Mary Astor, Ricardo Cortez

When Edward G. Robinson says, "Revenons a nos moutons," he is using a French catch-phrase that literally means "Let's get back to the sheep" and is used to mean "Let's get back to the point at hand." The phrase comes from the French play "La Farce de Maitre Pathelin," in which a legal case about sheep keeps getting sidetracked in comical ways, and the judge has to keep saying it.


8:15 AM -- Conspirator (1949)
1h 27m | Suspense/Mystery | TV-PG
A newlywed suspects her husband of being a Communist spy.
Director: Victor Saville
Cast: Robert Taylor, Elizabeth Taylor, Robert Flemyng

Robert Taylor, though American, played an Englishman, while Dame Elizabeth Taylor, English, played an American. She had unhappy memories of making this movie, later claiming that Robert Taylor had made clumsy efforts to seduce her, despite the fact that she was still a minor.


9:45 AM -- The Stranger (1946)
1h 35m | Suspense/Mystery | TV-PG
A small-town schoolteacher suspects her new husband may be an escaped Nazi war criminal.
Director: Orson Welles
Cast: Edward G. Robinson, Loretta Young, Orson Welles

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Writing, Original Story -- Victor Trivas

A "Carthaginian peace," as mentioned by the characters, is used to refer to any peace treaty demanding total subjugation of the defeated side. It is based on the defeat of Carthage by Rome and the total destruction of Carthage thereafter. In modern times, it is often used to describe a peace settlement in which the terms imposed by the victor are overly harsh and designed to keep the loser subjugated for a long time, if not forever.


11:30 AM -- Shadow of a Woman (1946)
1h 18m | Crime | TV-G
A woman suspects her husband of plotting to kill his son from a previous marriage.
Director: Joseph Santley
Cast: Helmut Dantine, Andrea King, William Prince

Based on the novel He Fell Down Dead, by Virginia Perdue


1:00 PM -- Suspicion (1941)
1h 39m | Suspense/Mystery | TV-PG
A young woman marries a charming man after a brief romance but then comes to believe that he is trying to kill her.
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Cast: Cary Grant, Joan Fontaine, Sir Cedric Hardwicke

Winner of an Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Joan Fontaine

Nominee for Oscars for Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic Picture -- Franz Waxman, and Best Picture

In interviews, Alfred Hitchcock said that an RKO executive ordered that all scenes in which Cary Grant appeared menacing be excised from the movie. When the cutting was completed, the movie ran only fifty-five minutes. The scenes were later restored, Hitchcock said, because he shot each piece of film so that there was only one way to edit them together properly. This is a technique called 'in-camera editing', a trick Hitchcock had already employed a year before during filming of Rebecca (1940), to prevent producer David O. Selznick from interfering with the final cut of the movie.


2:45 PM -- Julie (1956)
1h 39m | Suspense/Mystery | TV-PG
A stewardess is stalked by her psychotic, estranged husband.
Director: Andrew L. Stone
Cast: Doris Day, Louis Jourdan, Barry Sullivan

Nominee for Oscars for Best Writing, Best Screenplay - Original -- Andrew L. Stone, and Best Music, Original Song -- Leith Stevens (music) and Tom Adair (lyrics) for the song "Julie"

While making this film on location, Doris Day repeatedly complained to her husband Martin Melcher, whose first film as a producer this was, that she felt ill and needed a rest. He insisted that she adhere to her Christian Science beliefs - and the film's shooting schedule - and "have faith" that whatever was ailing her would pass. Once shooting was completed, Day consulted her doctor in Beverly Hills, and discovered a large ovarian tumor, which required her to have a hysterectomy.


4:30 PM -- Gaslight (1940)
1h 24m | Suspense/Mystery | TV-PG
A turn-of-the-century bride moves into the house where her aunt was murdered and begins to believe that she is losing her mind.
Director: Thorold Dickinson
Cast: Anton Walbrook, Diana Wynyard, Frank Pettingell

When MGM remade the film with Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman, the studio attempted to have all prints of this earlier version destroyed. Fortunately, several prints escaped the fire (in fact, it is believed that director Thorold Dickinson surreptitiously struck a print himself before the negative was lost).


6:00 PM -- Undercurrent (1946)
1h 56m | Suspense/Mystery | TV-PG
A sheltered woman realizes that either her husband or his mysterious brother is a psychopath.
Director: Vincente Minnelli
Cast: Katharine Hepburn, Robert Taylor, Robert Mitchum

For years there were stories that Katharine Hepburn and Robert Mitchum didn't get along. One day she told him, "You know you can't act, and if you hadn't been good looking you would never have got a picture at all. I'm tired of working with people like you who have nothing to offer." However, Mitchum told Dick Cavett in a TV interview that this story is completely apocryphal as he and Hepburn got along famously.



WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: PRIMETIME THEME -- MOTORCYCLE CLASSICS



8:00 PM -- Electra Glide In Blue (1973)
1h 46m | Adventure | TV-MA
An Arizona motorcycle cop moves to the Homicide Division to solve a hermit's murder.
Director: James William Guercio
Cast: Robert Blake, Billy Green Bush, Mitchell Ryan

Peter Cetera, bassist and lead vocalist for the group Chicago, plays a character named "Bob Zemko". A character named "The Beard" is played by an actor whose real name is Bob Zemko. The real Zemko was a Chicago truck driver who became famous in that city in 1969 when he saved a teenage girl from an attacker and later prevented a gang of thugs from murdering a man in the street. He died a year after making this film, which was his only movie role.


10:00 PM -- Easy Rider (1969)
1h 34m | Drama | TV-MA
After scoring cocaine in Mexico, then re-selling it in California, two bikers set off on a cross-country ride.
Director: Dennis Hopper
Cast: Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, Jack Nicholson

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Jack Nicholson, and Best Writing, Story and Screenplay Based on Material Not Previously Published or Produced -- Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper and Terry Southern

For the famous soliloquy that Peter Fonda does in the cemetery while tripping on acid, director Dennis Hopper asked Peter to talk to the statue as if he were talking to his mother, who had committed suicide when Peter was ten years old. Peter didn't want to do it, as he had never confronted his feelings about his mother. But Hopper insisted, which is why you hear Peter call the statue "Mother", and he states that he both loves her and hates her, which expresses his conflicted emotions. This scene persuaded Bob Dylan to allow the use of his song "It's Alright Ma" in one of the final scenes, which contains lyrics referencing suicide. Peter told Dylan, "I need to hear those words", and he agreed to its use.


12:00 AM -- Mad Max (1979)
1h 30m | Adventure | TV-MA
A post-apocalyptic cop seeks revenge when his family is murdered.
Director: George Miller
Cast: Mel Gibson, Joanne Samuel, Steve Bisley

George Miller got the idea to make this movie when seeing hospital patients suffer many motorcycle and automobile accidents when working as an emergency room doctor. Most of the injuries he saw were put into the movie.


2:00 AM -- Heavy Metal (1981)
1h 30m | Horror/Science-Fiction | TV-MA
In this five-part animated feature, an evil glowing green orb travels through space and time.
Director: Gerald Potterton
Cast: John Candy, Jackie Burroughs, Harvey Atkin

This movie was inspired by a long-running science fiction magazine of the same title, which began in Europe as Metal Hurlant. Most of the story segments are based on stories or characters featured in the magazine.


3:45 AM -- American Pop (1981)
1h 36m | Musical
The story of four generations of a family of Russian Jewish immigrant musicians.
Director: Ralph Bakshi
Cast: Ron Thompson, Jerry Holland, Lisa Jane Persky

The incident in which Zalmie's mother dies is the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, one of the worst industrial disasters in New York City's history. 146 garment workers, mostly immigrant women, died either in the fire, or by jumping from the windows of the 8th-10th floors because the doors were locked shut. The fire prompted legislative and union action to improve safety and working conditions in garment sweatshops. The words "Triangle Shirtwaist" can be briefly seen on the wall of the sweatshop during the first scene of the sequence.


5:30 AM -- Shake Hands With Danger (1970)
23m | Short | TV-PG
Safety film about the dangers associated with earthmoving equipment operations.
Director: No Director Available
Cast: Charles Oldfather, John Clifford, Herk Harvey