TCM Schedule for Thursday, June 23, 2022 -- What's On Tonight: Prime Time Theme: Revisionist Western

[Staph]

In the daylight hours, TCM shows us that Marriage is Murder! Then in prime time, it's the next-to-last week of a month of Revisionist Westerns. This week -- Women in Revisionist Westerns and African Americans in Revisionist Westerns. Give us the deets, Donald!

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

This month, TCM spotlights revisionist westerns.

. . . .

The revisionist western cast a wide tent. In addition to giving Native-Americans an image reappraisal, westerns such as Nicholas Ray’s Johnny Guitar (1954) and Sidney Poitier’s Buck and the Preacher (1972) afforded women and actors of color substantial and non-stereotypical roles.

The role reversal cult favorite Johnny Guitar is bonkers (Francois Truffaut called it the Beauty and the Beast of westerns!) On its surface, it is “a cheap Western from Republic Pictures,” wrote Roger Ebert. “And also one of the boldest and most stylized films of its time, quirky, political, twisted.” Joan Crawford stars as tavern-owner Vienna, about whom her bartender states, “I never met a woman who was more man.” Mercedes McCambridge costars as her nemesis Emma, determined to run her out of town. Standing by is Johnny Guitar (Sterling Hayden), a former gunslinger and Vienna’s former lover.

Buck and the Preacher finds the Old West correlative to “sticking it to the man,” which was job one for most of the films of the early 1970s blaxploitation era. Sidney Poitier made his directorial debut and stars as Buck, who is leading a wagon train of escaped slaves west. Harry Belafonte costars as Preacher, a con man who throws in with him against the bounty hunters on Buck’s trail.

Buck and the Preacher’s revisionist bona fides have grown in stature over the years. As The New York Times noted, “For the most part… blacks showed up on the frontier only as servants or, occasionally, as outcasts and loners, most notably in Ford's Sergeant Rutledge (1960) and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. If they do nothing else, these new Soul Westerns may serve to desegregate our myths, which have always been out of the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court.”

Enjoy!


6:45 AM -- Night Watch (1973)
1h 45m | Suspense/Mystery | TV-PG
A woman recovering from mental problems witnesses a murder, but nobody believes her.
Director: Brian G. Hutton
Cast: Elizabeth Taylor, Laurence Harvey, Billie Whitelaw

Production was suspended for most of August of 1972 because Laurence Harvey underwent an "emergency appendectomy" as it was reported in the press at the time. It was actually an operation for stomach cancer that would eventually kill him in November of 1973.


8:45 AM -- Elevator to the Gallows (1958)
1h 27m | Crime | TV-PG
A businessman kills his boss to cover up his affair with the man's wife.
Director: Louis Malle
Cast: Jeanne Moreau, Maurice Ronet, Georges Poujouly

Louis Malle shot his lead actress Jeanne Moreau in close-up and natural light and often without make-up. Moreau, an icon of French film, had never been seen like this before, to the extent that lab technicians, reportedly appalled at how unflatteringly she was photographed, refused to process the film. Once they were persuaded to, however, it soon began clear that Malle had captured every nuance of Moreau's performance.


10:30 AM -- Dial M for Murder (1954)
1h 45m | Suspense/Mystery | TV-PG
A straying husband frames his wife for the murder of the man he'd hired to kill her.
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Cast: Ray Milland, Grace Kelly, Robert Cummings

Alfred Hitchcock had chosen a very expensive robe for Grace Kelly to wear when she answered the phone. Kelly balked and said that no woman would put on such a robe just to answer the ringing telephone while she was asleep alone; she would answer it in her nightgown. Hitchcock agreed to do it her way and liked the way the rushes turned out, and he allowed Kelly to make all costume decisions for herself in their subsequent movies together.


12:30 PM -- Conflict (1945)
1h 26m | Suspense/Mystery | TV-PG
A man murders his wife so he can be free to marry her sister.
Director: Curtis Bernhardt
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Alexis Smith, Sydney Greenstreet

The brooch worn by Bogart's wife in the film is the same one worn by Ingrid Bergman in her opening scene in "Casablanca". Also, a statuette resembling the "Maltese Falcon" is seen perched on top of a file cabinet at the police homicide bureau.


2:00 PM -- The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)
1h 51m | Crime | TV-PG
A frustrated wife seduces a drifter into murdering her husband.
Director: Tay Garnett
Cast: Lana Turner, John Garfield, Cecil Kellaway

This is the third version of "The Postman Always Rings Twice" novel. The first was French, Le dernier tournant (1939), whilst the second was Italian, Obsession (1943). The fourth was The Postman Always Rings Twice (1981). As such, this 1946 film was the first English language version but was the third version in black-and-white, as both earlier versions were not in color.


4:00 PM -- Suspicion (1941)
1h 39m | Suspense/Mystery | TV-PG
A wealthy wallflower suspects her penniless playboy husband of murder.
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

Alfred Hitchcock always claimed that he wanted his film to end with Lina being murdered by her husband, as in the novel. However, his biographer Patrick McGilligan, writing more than a quarter of a century after Hitchcock's death, reveals that there is some evidence that Hitchcock considered, quite early in preparing the film, changing the ending so that John Aysgarth seems to prove his innocence, as in the final movie. Furthermore, the historian and critic Michael Wood has intriguingly suggested that the ending of the film is presented in such a way that we don't actually know that Johnnie is telling the truth to Lina, and that he may simply be planning to murder her at a later date.


5:45 PM -- Monsieur Verdoux (1947)
2h 2m | Comedy | TV-PG
A man woos and murders rich widows to support his invalid wife.
Director: Charles Chaplin
Cast: Charles Chaplin, Mady Correll, Allison Roddan

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Writing, Original Screenplay -- Charles Chaplin

According to Robert Lewis, "It was easy to define the position held by Charlie Chaplin in the making of 'Monsieur Verdoux'. He was everything--writer, star, director, producer and casting director, as well as supervisor of all other departments: costumes, scenery, make-up, lighting, shooting schedules, camera set-ups, and the musical score. He also crawled around on the floor with a knife, scraping up bits of old chewing gum stuck to the floor. For good measure he'd entertain the troops between shots with hilarious imitations, such as William Gillette's inanimate playing in "Sherlock Holmes," a Kabuki actor pounding his feet on the floor, and crossing his eyes with pain, or Maurice Schwartz, the Yiddish actor, intoning a speech while twirling an imaginary beard that went clear to the floor."



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



8:00 PM -- Johnny Guitar (1954)
1h 50m | Western | TV-PG
A lady saloon owner battles a female rancher out to frame her for murder.
Director: Nicholas Ray
Cast: Joan Crawford, Sterling Hayden, Mercedes McCambridge

According to Penny Stallings' "Flesh and Fantasy," the crew broke into spontaneous applause after one of Mercedes McCambridge's powerhouse scenes, which infuriated star Joan Crawford. According to Nicholas Ray, he then began shooting the younger actress' scenes in the early morning before Crawford got there. After the star witnessed one of these early shoots she flew into a rage, broke into McCambridge's dressing room and slashed her clothes to shreds. McCambridge blamed her next two years of inactivity on Crawford's repeated attempts to blacklist her.


10:00 PM -- Westward the Women (1951)
1h 58m | Western | TV-PG
A frontiersman leads a wagon train full of mail-order brides.
Director: William A. Wellman
Cast: Robert Taylor, Denise Darcel, Hope Emerson

Might have helped inspire "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers," which, in turn, inspired the TV series "Here Come the Brides." But the real basis for all were the French 17th century Filles du Roi, who came as potential wives to the colonists of New France.


12:15 AM -- Buck and the Preacher (1972)
1h 42m | Western | TV-14
A con man helps a group of former slaves survive the perils of the wild West in their search for the promised land.
Director: Sidney Poitier
Cast: Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte, Ruby Dee

On the advice of his future wife Joanna Shimkus, Sidney Poitier took over directorial duties from Joseph Sargent when he became dissatisfied with the film's point of view. As a result, this turned out to be Poitier's debut behind the camera and he would go on to direct eight more pictures.


2:15 AM -- Thomasine and Bushrod (1974)
1h 33m | Crime | TV-14
A pair of thieves steals from the rich to give to poor people of color.
Director: Gordon Parks
Cast: Max Julien, Vonetta McGee, George Murdock

Arthur Lee of the Los Angeles band Love wrote the theme for the movie.


4:15 AM -- Going Attractions: The Definitive Story of the Movie Palace (2019)
Documentary | TV-PG
The evolution of the movie business over the past century.
Director: April Wright
Cast: Leonard Maltin, Richard L. Fosbrink, Matt Lambros

The narrative takes an unexplained leap from the depression years of the early 1930s to the post-WWII era of the consent decree and the arrival of television thus completely omitting and ignoring the games and giveaways which helped theatres survive from the mid-1930s to the early-1940s, and the huge increase in patronage during the WWII years, when downtown theatres ran 18 hours a day, and movie attendance peaked at an all time record of close to 100 million tickets per week.

[CBHagman]

1. "Westward the Women"

I remember the first time I saw Westward the Women on TCM. I'd first heard of it in the '70s or '80s, but I have no memory of it turning up on late-afternoon or late-night features, or even at the student union when I was a university student. I found it a hugely entertaining movie, grittier than I was expecting, and it's a prime example of the Anyone Can Die trope.

The story itself came from Frank Capra, who was reportedly inspired by an article about a group of women on a similar journey in South America.

As for Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, it was inspired by The Sobbin' Women by Stephen Vincent Benét.

https://gutenberg.ca/ebooks/benetsv-thirteen07-sobbinwomen/benetsv-thirteen07-sobbinwomen-00-h-dir/benetsv-thirteen07-sobbinwomen-00-h.html