TCM Schedule for Thursday, June 9, 2022 -- What's On Tonight: Prime Time Theme: Revisionist Westerns

[Staph]

In the daylight hours, TCM is featuring Nightclub Happenings. Then in prime time, it's week two of a month of Revisionist Westerns. This week -- Sam Peckinpah. Tell us more, Donald!

SPOTLIGHT: REVISIONIST WESTERNS
By Donald Liebenson
May 12, 2022
Thursdays | 26 Movies

This month, TCM spotlights revisionist westerns.

. . . .

Another of the most impactful revisionist westerns is Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (1969), which TCM will broadcast on June 9 as part of a Peckinpahlooza of four films. The Wild Bunch was released the same year as True Grit, and from its first words (“If they move, kill ‘em”) to the climactic bloodbath, there are few clearer delineations between the traditional and revisionist western.

As for with whom the audience is supposed to sympathize, it’s not like William Holden, Ernest Borgnine and company are the affable Butch and Sundance, but in comparison to the amoral bloodthirsty posse on their trail, they are paragons of western virtue. In fact, they are anachronisms. Doomed as they are, they at least live by a code of loyalty. “When you side with a man, you stay with him,” Holden’s Pike proclaims. “If you can’t do that, you’re like some animal.”

When a Reader’s Digest critic asked Peckinpah why he made the film, he replied, “We wanted to show violence in real terms. Dying is not fun and games. Movies make it look so detached.”

Also airing on TCM that night is Peckinpah’s sunset western, Ride the High Country (1962). It deals with two former lawmen (aged screen icons Joel McCrea and Randolph Scott), who reunite to transport a cache of gold. Their best days as lawmen are behind them, but their code of honor gives them a lived-in, authentic dignity (even if one of them flirts with forgetting it).

Enjoy!


6:30 AM -- Broadway Hostess (1935)
1h 8m | Musical | TV-G
A small-town girl rises to night-club stardom.
Director: Frank McDonald
Cast: Winifred Shaw, Genevieve Tobin, Lyle Talbot

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Dance Direction -- Bobby Connolly for "Playboy of Paree"

When Fishcake is talking to the French proprietor of the salon, he says he was in the "AEF" - which audiences at the time would have known that stood for the American Expeditionary Force in WWI.


7:45 AM -- Night Spot (1938)
1h | Crime | TV-G
An undercover cop tries to catch a gang of jewel thieves at a high-society nightclub.
Director: Christy Cabanne
Cast: Parkyakarkus, Allan Lane, Gordon Jones

Harry Parke was a comedian/dialectician best known to old time radio buffs for his characterization of Parkyakarkus, (pronounced Park Your Carcass) a stereotypically Greek luncheonette owner whose primary talent seemed to be comically mangling the English language.


9:00 AM -- Panama Hattie (1942)
1h 19m | Musical | TV-G
A nightclub owner in Panama takes on Nazi spies.
Director: Norman Z. McLeod
Cast: Red Skelton, Ann Sothern, "Rags" Ragland

When Hattie (Ann Sothern) is first in a scene with all three sailors (Red Skelton, Rags Ragland, and Ben Blue) Red's character asks her if she wants to go movies with them. Rags Ragland's character says, "Yeah, it's a swell picture. 'Maisie, the Beautiful Laundry Girl'." Ann Sothern replies, "Ah, she gives me a pain." Ann Sothern was the star of all the series of Maisie movies, up to, and past that point. "Maisie, the Beautiful Laundry Girl" is not an actual title of one of those movies, but was made up just for this film.


10:30 AM -- Stage Struck (1948)
1h 11m | Crime | TV-G
The murder of nightclub hostess leads an investigator to seedy nightspots.
Director: William Nigh
Cast: Kane Richmond, Audrey Long, Conrad Nagel

Final film of veteran director William Nigh.


11:45 AM -- Manpower (1941)
1h 45m | Drama | TV-PG
Power linemen feud over the love of a sultry nightclub singer.
Director: Raoul Walsh
Cast: Edward G. Robinson, Marlene Dietrich, George Raft

While visiting his friend George Raft on the set, Bugsy Siegel was introduced to Virginia Hill. In the scene where Raft gets into a brawl with Barton MacLane, Hill appears as the hat-check girl to whom Raft gives a piece of leg from a smashed chair as he leaves the nightclub. The brawl scene and Bugsy Siegel's first meeting with Virginia Hill on the gas station movie set are recreated in Bugsy (1991).


1:30 PM -- Illegal (1932)
1h 12m | Crime | TV-PG
A bitter divorcee opens an illegal gambling club to support her daughters.
Director: William McGann
Cast: Isobel Elsom, Ivor Barnard, D. E. Clarke-smith

This film had its U. S. television premiere as part of the Associated Artists Productions (AAP) Warner Bros. film package in 1956; it was more recently shown on Turner Classic Movies on 17 September 2007 during TCM's festival of films made by Warner Brothers at Teddington Studios in the UK.


2:45 PM -- Garden of the Moon (1938)
1h 33m | Comedy | TV-G
A nightclub owner and a bandleader compete for the lead singer's heart.
Director: Busby Berkeley
Cast: Pat O'Brien, Margaret Lindsay, John Payne

Hal Wallis recounted in his autobiography that both he and Jack Warner were so annoyed by Berkeley's behavior during filming that they were forced to fire him. This film marked the end of the elaborately produced musicals at Warner Brothers during the 1930s.


4:30 PM -- This Could Be the Night (1957)
1h 43m | Romance | TV-PG
A schoolteacher gets a secretarial job at a gangster-run nightclub.
Director: Robert Wise
Cast: Jean Simmons, Paul Douglas, Anthony Franciosa

Film debut of Anthony Franciosa.


6:30 PM -- The Shining Hour (1938)
1h 20m | Drama | TV-PG
A nightclub dancer marries into society and has to contend with her jealous sister-in-law.
Director: Frank Borzage
Cast: Joan Crawford, Margaret Sullavan, Robert Young

Joan Crawford specifically asked for Margaret Sullavan to play the role of Judy, despite Louis B. Mayer's warning that the accomplished stage actress could steal the picture from her. Joan replied "I'd rather be a supporting player in a good picture than the star of a bad one."



WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: PRIMETIME THEME -- REVISIONIST WESTERNS



8:00 PM -- Ride the High Country (1962)
1h 34m | Western | TV-PG
Two aging gunslingers sign on to transport gold from a remote mining town.
Director: Sam Peckinpah
Cast: Randolph Scott, Joel McCrea, Mariette Hartley

Final film of Randolph Scott. He retired from acting once he saw the finished film, saying he wanted to quit while he was ahead and that he would never be able to better his work here.


9:45 PM -- The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970)
2h 1m | Western | TV-14
A prospector creates a thriving stagecoach stop at the site of a spring.
Director: Sam Peckinpah
Cast: Jason Robards Jr., Stella Stevens, David Warner

The chaotic filming wrapped 19 days over schedule and $3 million over budget, terminating Sam Peckinpahs tenure with Warner Bros./Seven Arts, and caused permanent damage to his career. The critical and box office hits Deliverance (1972) and Jeremiah Johnson (1972) were in development at the time, and Peckinpah was considered the first choice to direct them. His departure from Warner Brothers left him with a limited number of directing jobs. Peckinpah was forced to do a 180-degree turn from this film, and travelled to England to direct Straw Dogs (1971), one of his darkest and most psychologically disturbing films.


12:00 AM -- The Wild Bunch (1969)
2h 28m | Western | TV-MA
A group of aging cowboys look for one last score in a corrupt border town.
Director: Sam Peckinpah
Cast: William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan

Nominee for Oscars for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay Based on Material Not Previously Published or Produced -- Walon Green (screenplay/story), Roy N. Sickner (story) and Sam Peckinpah (screenplay), and Best Music, Original Score for a Motion Picture (not a Musical) -- Jerry Fielding

According to editor Lou Lombardo the original release print contains some 3,643 editorial cuts, more than any other Technicolor film ever processed. Some of these cuts are near subliminal, consisting of three or four frames, making them almost imperceptible to the naked eye.


2:45 AM -- Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973)
1h 46m | Western | TV-MA
The legendary outlaw clashes with his former best friend, now the sheriff.
Director: Sam Peckinpah
Cast: James Coburn, Kris Kristofferson, Bob Dylan

Sam Peckinpah's alcoholism was so advanced during the making of this film that he would have to start the day with a large tumbler of neat vodkas to stop his shakes. By mid afternoon, he would have moved onto grenadine. After that, he was too drunk to work. James Coburn recalled that Peckinpah was only really coherent for four hours a day.


4:45 AM -- Bandit Ranger (1943)
1h 4m | Western | TV-G
A cowboy takes on a band of cattle rustlers single-handedly.
Director: Lesley Selander
Cast: Tim Holt, Cliff "Ukulele Ike" Edwards, Joan Barclay

This was the first of six movies hurriedly made by RKO between May 1942 and July 1942, before Tim Holt went into military service.