TCM Schedule for Thursday, April 21, 2022 -- What's On Tonight: TCM Spotlight: It's About Time

[Staph]

In the daylight hours, grab your hankies, for the sad stories of Melodrama Heroines. Then in prime time, it's the third week of the TCM Spotlight on Time. Tell us about tonight's films, Rob!

The third night of the series finds us looking backward to “simpler” times, rather than racing ahead to uncertain, scary futures. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1949), based on the satirical novel by Mark Twain, transports a mechanic who sings (because Bing Crosby) from 1912 back to ancient Camelot, where he dazzles the population with his 20th century technology and meddles in court politics. In Turn Back the Clock (1933), a financially struggling tobacconist (quintessential 30s fast-talker Lee Tracy) awakens after being hit by a car to discover himself transported 20 years earlier with the chance to correct his mistake in not marrying a wealthy woman. And a young boy is magically carried back in time to Blackbeard’s ship on the high seas in The Boy and the Pirates (1960).

Working in the U.S. from 1935 to 1945, French director René Clair (Under the Roofs of Paris, 1930; À Nous la Liberté, 1931) made three fantasy films, all of them comedies with a supernatural twist: The Ghost Goes West (1935), I Married a Witch (1942) and the half-forgotten comic gem It Happened Tomorrow (1944) about a news reporter (Dick Powell) who finds he can predict the future when he gains access to the following day’s newspaper. To avoid having to deal with the realities of World War II, Clair and co-writer Dudley Nichols set the story near the turn of the 20th century. Although he was never particularly fond of the picture, Clair later admitted, “the last twenty minutes are the best thing I did in Hollywood.”

The line-up also includes Berkeley Square (1933), with Oscar-nominated Leslie Howard as an American who tries not to alter the course of history when he goes back in time to meet his ancestors in the London house he has inherited. The story is based on an unfinished novel by Henry James. Before attempting to destroy humanity (or at least some of it) in 1970s disaster movies, writer-director-producer Irwin Allen took a stab at saving it in The Story of Mankind (1957). The Spirit of Man (Ronald Colman, in his final screen appearance) and the Devil (Vincent Price) argue whether humankind is worth saving after the invention of nuclear weaponry, traveling through history to show both the good and bad of the species. Along the way they look in on some notable historical personages, played by an all-star cast that includes Hedy Lamarr, Virginia Mayo, Agnes Moorehead, Peter Lorre, Dennis Hopper and the Marx Brothers in their last film, although they do not appear in the same scenes together.

Enjoy!


6:00 AM -- Invitation (1952)
1h 24m | Romance | TV-G
A millionaire tries to buy his dying daughter a husband.
Director: Gottfried Reinhardt
Cast: Van Johnson, Dorothy Mcguire, Ruth Roman

Helen Rose who designed Dorothy McGuire's wedding gown in this film, also designed Grace Kelly's gown for her 1956 wedding to Prince Rainier of Monaco The McGuire gown appears to be an earlier version Grace Kelly's wedding dress.


7:30 AM -- Lizzie (1957)
1h 21m | Drama | TV-PG
A mousy woman discovers she has two other personalities.
Director: Hugo Haas
Cast: Eleanor Parker, Richard Boone, Joan Blondell

This movie was MGM's rival to the hit The Three Faces of Eve (1957), which won an Oscar for Joanne Woodward. Both movies are about the multiple personalities of a young woman and the doctor who helps her with hypnotism.


9:00 AM -- Wall of Noise (1963)
1h 52m | Drama | TV-PG
Story of an ambitious horse trainer working at the Hollywood Race Track.
Director: Richard Wilson
Cast: Suzanne Pleshette, Ty Hardin, Dorothy Provine

The title was explained in a contemporary article in the Los Angeles Times as the sound a jockey hears from the crowd as he goes down the final stretch in a race.


11:00 AM -- In the Cool of the Day (1963)
1h 29m | Romance | TV-PG
A man's efforts to save his friend's marriage lead to infidelity.
Director: Robert Stevens
Cast: Jane Fonda, Peter Finch, Angela Lansbury

On Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen, Jane Fonda would call In the Cool of the Day as the worst movie of her career, so bad she suspected (incorrectly) that it had been denied theatrical release and definitely a film which should never been made. Ironically Fonda had been eager to star in In the Cool of the Day; to fit its shoot into her schedule had necessitated a "rushed wrap" on her precedent film Period of Adjustment (1962) and the postponement of her upcoming Broadway show ''The Fun Couple''.


12:30 PM -- BUtterfield 8 (1960)
1h 49m | Drama | TV-PG
A party girl ruins her life when she falls for a married man.
Director: Daniel Mann
Cast: Elizabeth Taylor, Laurence Harvey, Eddie Fisher

Winner of an Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Elizabeth Taylor

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Cinematography, Color -- Joseph Ruttenberg and Charles Harten

Dame Elizabeth Taylor and her husband, Mike Todd, had planned for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) to be her final movie, as she intended to retire from the screen. Todd had made a verbal agreement about this with MGM, but after his death, MGM forced Taylor to make this movie in order to fulfill the terms of her studio contract. As a result, Taylor refused to speak to director Daniel Mann for the entire production and hated this movie.


2:30 PM -- Of Human Bondage (1964)
1h 38m | Drama | TV-PG
A medical student risks his future when he falls for a low-class waitress.
Director: Ken Hughes
Cast: Kim Novak, Laurence Harvey, Robert Morley

Original director Henry Hathaway had wanted Marilyn Monroe and Montgomery Clift as his leads; this was in the 1950s, many years before the film was eventually made. At that time, the plan was to make it in a Hollywood studio. By the time this version actually got under way, Monroe was dead and Clift's career nearly over.


4:15 PM -- The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1961)
1h 44m | Drama | TV-G
A fading stage star gets caught up in the decadent life of modern Rome when she hires a male companion.
Director: José Quintero
Cast: Vivien Leigh, Warren Beatty, Lotte Lenya

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Lotte Lenya

This was Tennessee Williams' personal favorite film adaptation of any of his works.


6:00 PM -- Dear Heart (1964)
1h 54m | Romance | TV-PG
A middle-aged postmistress falls for an engaged man during a convention in New York.
Director: Delbert Mann
Cast: Glenn Ford, Geraldine Page, Michael Anderson Jr.

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Music, Original Song -- Henry Mancini (music), Jay Livingston (lyrics) and Ray Evans for the song "Dear Heart"

Alice Pearce and Sandra Gould appeared in this movie, the original and replacement actresses who played Gladys Kravitz on Bewitched (1964). Though this movie completed filming a few months before Alice Pearce was cast on Bewitched (1964), her name tag in this movie revealed her character name to be "Agnes Moore". Agnes Moorehead played Samantha's mother Endora on Bewitched (1964). Additionally, Ruth McDevitt played "Mrs. Tait". Darren's boss was Larry Tate.



WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: PRIMETIME THEME -- TCM SPOTLIGHT: IT'S ABOUT TIME



8:00 PM -- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1949)
1h 47m | Musical | TV-G
A blow to the head sends an auto mechanic back to the days of Camelot.
Director: Tay Garnett
Cast: Bing Crosby, Rhonda Fleming, Sir Cedric Hardwicke

Mark Twain got his idea for Hank Martin to use the eclipse for his benefit from Christopher Columbus who used an eclipse knowingly to perhaps alter history. Stranded in Jamaica in 1503, on his fourth voyage, Columbus and his crew were wearing out their welcome with the natives who were feeding them. Columbus knew a lunar eclipse was coming, so he "predicted" the moon's disappearance. The natives begged him to bring it back and, of course, he did in due time.


10:00 PM -- Berkeley Square (1933)
1h 24m | Romance | TV-G
Leslie Howards time-travels between 1784 and 1933 London in this fantasy romance.
Director: Frank Lloyd
Cast: Leslie Howard, Heather Angel, Valerie Taylor

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Leslie Howard

S.T. Joshi points to this film as an inspiration for H.P. Lovecraft's novel "The Shadow Out of Time": "Lovecraft saw this film four times in late 1933; its portrayal of a man of the 20th century who somehow merges his personality with that of his 18th-century ancestor was clearly something that fired Lovecraft's imagination, since he had written a story on this very theme himself--the then unpublished "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward" (1927)." Lovecraft called the film "the most weirdly perfect embodiment of my own moods and pseudo-memories that I have ever seen--for all my life I have felt as if I might wake up out of this dream of an idiotic Victorian age and insane jazz age into the sane reality of 1760 or 1770 or 1780." Lovecraft noted some conceptual problems in this film's depiction of time travel, and felt that he had "eliminated these flaws in his masterful novella of mind-exchange over time."


11:45 PM -- It Happened Tomorrow (1944)
1h 14m | Comedy | TV-G
A newspaper editor writes headlines that predict the future.
Director: René Clair
Cast: Dick Powell, Linda Darnell, Jack Oakie

Nominee for Oscars for Best Sound, Recording -- Jack Whitney (Sound Services Inc.), and Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture -- Robert Stolz

Writer Helene Fraenkel, who was working on her first film, observed Jack Oakie answering dialogue cues in his own words and generally rewriting his part. Director René Clair observed that the actor always conveyed the information that was necessary, albeit in his own words. Fraenkel was surprised that Clair didn't seem threatened by these changes and, in fact, seemed to welcome them.



1:30 AM -- Turn Back the Clock (1933)
1h 19m | Drama | TV-G
A middle aged working man gets to relive his life and make himself wealthy.
Director: Edgar Selwyn
Cast: Lee Tracy, Mae Clark, Otto Kruger

First appearance of Curly Howard with the Three Stooges in a full-length feature film.


3:00 AM -- The Story of Mankind (1957)
1h 40m | Epic | TV-PG
Satan and the spirit of mankind contend for the future of humanity.
Director: Irwin Allen
Cast: Ronald Colman, Hedy Lamarr, Groucho Marx

Irwin Allen managed to assemble his all-star cast by promising them they would only be filming for one day and that they would get paid $25,000 for doing so.


4:45 AM -- The Boy and the Pirates (1960)
1h 22m | Adventure | TV-PG
Magic transports a boy to the days of cutthroats and buccaneers.
Director: Bert I. Gordon
Cast: Charles Herbert, Susan Gordon, Murvyn Vye

Director Bert I. Gordon didn't have to look far for an actress to play Kathy. He cast his own daughter, Susan Gordon, in the role.

[CBHagman]

1. I've got to watch more movies!

Thank you for posting this.

As always, the background information is fascinating, and this time out there's the added enticement of selections that are less familiar or even wholly new to classic movie fans. I've been making a list of things I want to catch up on.