TCM Schedule for Saturday, January 22, 2022 -- What's On Tonight: Epic Saturday Nights

[Staph]

In the daylight hours, TCM has the usual Saturday matinee lineup of films and shorts. Then in primetime, it's the third week of Epic Saturday nights, featuring some of Hollywood's greatest epics. Tonight's big film is Doctor Zhivago (1965). Enjoy!


6:00 AM -- Susan and God (1940)
1h 55m | Comedy | TV-PG
A flighty socialite neglects her family to promote a new religious group.
Director: George Cukor
Cast: Joan Crawford, Fredric March, Ruth Hussey

The unnamed religion Susan found fashionable was based on a real Christian movement created by Lutheran Rev. Frank N. D. Buchman, which he named the Oxford Group and it later became known as Moral Re-armament. He denied it was a religion, explaining that it was a group of like-minded individuals wishing to surrender to God and was without any organization, nor membership.


8:00 AM -- What Price Fleadom (1948)
6m | Animation | TV-Y7
A flea see a girl flea on another dog and bothers the other dog, trying to get to know the girl flea.
Director: Tex Avery (fred)
Cast: Joseph Barbera, William Hanna

The title spoofs What Price Beauty? (1925), a silent film featuring Rudolph Valentino's deserter wife #2.


8:08 AM -- Goofy Movies Number Four (1934)
9m | Short | TV-G
In this short film, Pete Smith provides comedic narration over footage compiled from various silent films.
Cast: Pete Smith


8:18 AM -- Playlands of Michigan (1949)
9m | Documentary | TV-G
This travel short takes the viewer to several popular vacation spots in Michigan.
Cast: James A. Fitzpatrick


8:28 AM -- The Rookie Cop (1939)
1h 1m | Drama | TV-PG
A young policeman fights to prove the value of police dogs.
Director: David Howard
Cast: Tim Holt, Virginia Weidler, Janet Shaw

As the police chase the criminal down the street, they pass a movie theatre with a 3-sheet for RKO's Pacific Liner (1939) prominently displayed.


9:30 AM -- Batman And Robin: Batman vs. Wizard (1949)
16m | Crime | TV-G
The Caped Crusader fights to save Commissioner Gordon from an invisible assassin.
Director: Spencer Gordon Bennet
Cast: Robert Lowery, Johnny Duncan, Jane Adams

Lyle Talbot is the first actor to officially play Commissioner James Gordon in a film. The earlier Batman (1943) serial starred Charles C. Wilson as Captain Arnold, a character who was Gordon in all but name.


10:00 AM -- Gym Jam (1950)
6m | Animation | TV-PG
Popeye has a rough time of it when it's Ladies Day at the gym.
Director: Izzy Sparber
Cast: Jack Mercer, Jackson Beck, Mae Questel


10:08 AM -- Bowery Battalion (1951)
1h 9m | Comedy | TV-G
The Bowery Boys join the Army to catch a spy ring.
Director: William Beaudine
Cast: Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Donald Macbride

The donkey's voice is an impression of Edward G. Robinson.


11:30 AM -- One Good Turn (1930)
17m | Musical | TV-G
Discovering her agents want to get rid of her partner, a singer decides to give him singing lessons.
Director: Roy Mack
Cast: Ruth Etting, Jay Velie, Maurice Barrett


12:00 PM -- Tortilla Flat (1942)
1h 45m | Drama | TV-PG
Inhabitants of a Southern California fishing village strive for the simple pleasures of life.
Director: Victor Fleming
Cast: Spencer Tracy, Hedy Lamarr, John Garfield

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Frank Morgan

"NOT IN THE SCRIPT: A scene for 'Tortilla Flat' required five dogs to jump on Frank Morgan simultaneously while he was sitting in church. For a time it seemed like an impossibility until director Victor Fleming started hiding things in the beard Morgan wears for the role. Bits of meat, a rubber mouse, fish and bacon were tried. The meat did the trick. 'How do you feel,' Fleming asked Morgan when a good 'take' was finally made. 'With five dogs getting lunch out of my beard,' said Morgan, 'I feel like an automat'..." (Newspaper Enterprise Association, "Erskine Johnson's Hollywood," The San Bernardino Daily Sun, San Bernardino, California, Sunday 8 February 1942, Colume 48, page 16.)


2:00 PM -- King Solomon's Mines (1950)
1h 42m | Adventure | TV-PG
A spirited widow hires a daredevil jungle scout to find a lost treasure in diamonds.
Director: Compton Bennett
Cast: Deborah Kerr, Stewart Granger, Richard Carlson

Winner of Oscars for Best Cinematography, Color -- Robert Surtees, and Best Film Editing -- Ralph E. Winters and Conrad A. Nervig

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Picture

While filming on location in Carlsbad National Park's New Cave, Deborah Kerr took her lipstick and wrote the initials "DK" on a cave formation near the Klansman formation that was used as a background. An electrician also took a burned out lamp and tossed it in a hole under that formation. Since the cave is still 'active', meaning the formations are still slowly being encased in more minerals, the initials and the lamp are now solidly encased in a layer limestone that is thin enough to see through but thick enough to prevent removal. The Carlsbad Park Rangers refer to the "DK" as the Deborah Kerr formation. Both are still visible to this day.


4:00 PM -- Young Cassidy (1965)
1h 50m | Romance | TV-14
True story of playwright Sean O'Casey's involvement with the Irish rebellion of 1910.
Director: Jack Cardiff
Cast: Rod Taylor, Julie Christie, Maggie Smith

The character of "John Cassidy" is allegedly based on playwright Sean O'Casey (his name is an Anglicization of O'Casey's), but Rod Taylor, playing the part, bears no resemblance to the famous writer. The real O'Casey was a diminutive man with poor eyesight who always wore thick glasses and kept out of violent encounters. He was a working-class man of strong intellectual gifts and fierce political views, and in reality was, at the time of the events depicted, about fifteen or twenty years older than "Cassidy" is supposed to be.


6:00 PM -- The Sunshine Boys (1975)
1h 51m | Comedy | TV-14
A feuding comedy team reunites for a television comeback.
Director: Herbert Ross
Cast: Walter Matthau, George Burns, Richard Benjamin

Winner of an Oscar for Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- George Burns

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Walter Matthau, Best Writing, Screenplay Adapted From Other Material -- Neil Simon, and Best Art Direction-Set Decoration -- Albert Brenner and Marvin March

Based on the lives and careers of vaudeville comics Joe Smith and Charles Dale (né Sultzer and Marks). Unlike the characters in the Broadway play and later film, Smith and Dale were almost inseparable friends. In fact, when Dale died in 1971, Smith commissioned a single tombstone to be prepared for them both, ordering that the inscription read "Smith and Dale". The pair's strained relationship is based on another old-time vaudeville duo, Gallagher and Shean, the latter of whom was Groucho Marx's uncle.



WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: PRIMETIME THEME -- EPIC SATURDAY NIGHTS



8:00 PM -- Doctor Zhivago (1965)
3h 17m | Epic | TV-PG
Sweeping epic about a Russian doctor pursuing the woman he loves during Russia's turbulent revolution.
Director: David Lean
Cast: Geraldine Chaplin, Julie Christie, Tom Courtenay

Winner of Oscars for Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium -- Robert Bolt, Best Cinematography, Color -- Freddie Young, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color -- John Box, Terence Marsh and Dario Simoni, Best Costume Design, Color -- Phyllis Dalton, and Best Music, Score - Substantially Original -- Maurice Jarre

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Tom Courtenay, Best Director -- David Lean, Best Sound -- A.W. Watkins (M-G-M British SSD) and Franklin Milton (M-G-M SSD), Best Film Editing -- Norman Savage, and Best Picture

This movie was shot in Spain during the regime of General Francisco Franco. One day, while filming the scene with the crowd chanting the Marxist theme (at 3:00 a.m.), police showed up on set thinking a real revolution was taking place, and insisted on staying until the scene was finished. Apparently, people who lived nearby had awoken to the sound of revolutionary singing, and mistakenly believed that Franco had been overthrown. The secret police surveyed the crowd as the extras sang the Internationale for a protest scene, so many extras pretended they didn't know the words.


12:00 AM -- Over-Exposed (1956)
1h 20m | Drama
Sexy blonde dance club girl learns the photography trade and moves to New York in pursuit of a new career.
Director: Lewis Seiler
Cast: Cleo Moore, Richard Crenna, Isobel Elsom

The cameraman in the first scene, goes to the trouble of replacing the flash bulbs for the three photos taken, but the large format of the camera would require either flipping the film holder over between the first and second or complete replacement on each. He never touches the film holder.


1:45 AM -- The China Syndrome (1979)
2h 2m | Drama | TV-MA
A television newswoman stumbles onto deadly secrets at a nuclear power plant.
Director: James Bridges
Cast: Jane Fonda, Jack Lemmon, Michael Douglas

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Jack Lemmon, Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Jane Fonda, Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen -- Mike Gray, T.S. Cook and James Bridges, and Best Art Direction-Set Decoration -- George Jenkins and Arthur Jeph Parker

When the film was first released on 16 March 1979, nuclear power executives soon lambasted the picture as being "sheer fiction" and a "character assassination of an entire industry". Then twelve days after its launch, the Three Mile Island nuclear accident occurred near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.


4:00 AM -- Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
1h 33m | Comedy | TV-PG
A mad United States General orders an air strike against Russia.
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Cast: Peter Sellers, George C Scott, Sterling Hayden

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Peter Sellers, Best Director -- Stanley Kubrick, Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium -- Stanley Kubrick, Peter George and Terry Southern, and Best Picture

The film, ready for release in 1963 but delayed until 1964 (it was screened for critics, but the Kennedy assassination put it on the back-burner until the public mood had changed), came out in the same year as Thomas Pynchon's V. - a novel which features characters with names like Benny Profane, Rachel Owlglass, and Sidney Stencil, not unlike those of Colonel (Bat) Guano, Merkin Muffley, and other characters' names in the Kubrick film. (Of course, it's altogether possible Pynchon *read* Terry Southern - and, in any case, both of them were hipsters who liked to party!)