TCM Schedule for Thursday, March 21, 2019 -- TCM Spotlight - Journalism in the Movies

[Staph]

In the daylight today, TCM is all at sea. Then this evening TCM continues their month-long look at the news in the movies with TV News and Newspaper Comedies.

JOURNALISM IN THE MOVIES - THURSDAYS IN MARCH

Stop the presses! This month's Spotlight on TCM examines the role played by journalism in the world of cinema, with perspectives ranging from screwball comedies of the 1930s to hard-hitting dramas of the 1970s and '80s. The power of journalism and freedom of the press have been important topics over the decades and is gaining new urgency in recent times.

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TV News features two 1970s dramas that were very timely in their day and remain relevant today. The China Syndrome, stars Jane Fonda as a news reporter at the center of discovering a coverup from a nuclear plant mishap; and Network (1976), directed by Sidney Lumet from a script by Paddy Chayefsky, looks at volatile relationships among the staff of a television network that will do anything for high ratings. Among the film's four Oscars were those for Best Actor (Peter Finch as a suicidal news anchor) and Best Actress (Faye Dunaway as a ruthless executive).

Newspaper Comedies include It Happened One Night (1934), a captivating screwball lark about an enterprising reporter (Clark Gable) on the trail of a runaway heiress (Claudette Colbert). This one was the surprise winner of all five major Academy Awards: Best Picture, Director (Frank Capra), Actor (Gable), Actress (Colbert), and Screenplay (Robert Riskin). Howard Hawks' His Girl Friday (1940) is a hilarious variation of the Charles MacArthur/Ben Hecht play The Front Page, with Cary Grant as the hard-boiled editor-whose star reporter is now a female (Rosalind Russell) and his former wife.
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by Roger Fristoe

Enjoy!



6:00 AM -- MELODY CRUISE (1933)
A playboy finds true love during an ocean cruise.
Dir: Mark Sandrich
Cast: Charles Ruggles, Phil Harris, Helen Mack
BW-76 mins,

Phil Harris' first film.


7:30 AM -- THE CAPTAIN HATES THE SEA (1934)
A bond thief, a private eye and a drunken reporter wreak havoc on an ocean voyage.
Dir: Lewis Milestone
Cast: Victor McLaglen, Wynne Gibson, Alison Skipworth
BW-85 mins, CC,

Director Lewis Milestone needed to persuade Columbia Pictures president Harry Cohn to hire actor John Gilbert for this picture. At the time it was generally believed that Gilbert's voice recorded higher in pitch than suited his masculine silent screen image, but Milestone believed that Gilbert's voice recorded higher in pitch because of the actor's anxiety at having to test for MGM as a means of defending his exorbitant salary there. Gilbert agreed to submit to a new voice-test for the role as a means of persuading Cohn that his casting in the picture was a viable investment. With his friend Milestone directing the test for the Columbia picture his voice recorded perfectly and John Gilbert was hired for the role.


9:15 AM -- 'TIL WE MEET AGAIN (1940)
A dying woman shares a shipboard romance with a criminal on his way to the gallows.
Dir: Edmund Goulding
Cast: Merle Oberon, George Brent, Pat O'Brien
BW-100 mins, CC,

Although the character's name has changed, Frank McHugh plays the same part as he had in the original version titled One Way Passage (1932).


11:15 AM -- A MAJORITY OF ONE (1961)
A Jewish widow falls in love with a Japanese businessman.
Dir: Mervyn LeRoy
Cast: Rosalind Russell, Alec Guinness, Ray Danton
C-149 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Cinematography, Color -- Harry Stradling Sr.

This movie depicts the passage to Japan from San Francisco on the ship S.S. President Hoover. There was such an ocean liner with that name plying the Pacific routes, however it ran aground off Taiwan in December, 1937, and was so damaged, it was scrapped in place. At the time it was built in 1930, it was the largest commercial ship in the U.S.


2:00 PM -- THE LAST VOYAGE (1960)
Passengers and crew fight to escape a sinking ocean liner.
Dir: Andrew L. Stone
Cast: Robert Stack, Dorothy Malone, George Sanders
C-91 mins, CC,

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Effects, Special Effects -- Augie Lohman

The ship used by the filmmakers was the SS Ile de France, the famous French liner that cruised the Atlantic from 1926-59. She was leased for $4,000 a day. After shooting completed, she was re-floated (having been partially sunk for the film) and towed to the scrap yard. She has a more heroic place in history, however. It was she that played a major role in the rescue of the passengers from the Italian liner Andrea Doria in 1956, after the latter ship collided with the Swedish ship Stockholm and sank off the coast of Nantucket, Massachusetts. She was the first ship to arrive at the scene of the collision and immediately began taking aboard the Andrea Doria's passengers.


4:00 PM -- LUXURY LINER (1948)
The daughter of a ship's captain becomes a sea-going cupid.
Dir: Richard Whorf
Cast: George Brent, Jane Powell, Lauritz Melchior
C-98 mins, CC,

In the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, the Danish tenor Lauritz Melchior was generally considered the world's preeminent performer of Wagner's big heldentenor (heroic tenor) roles, such as Siegmund, Siegfried, Lohengrin, Walther von Stolzing, Tristan, Tannhauser, and Parsifal. Numerous recordings of him singing these roles are available.


6:00 PM -- ROMANCE ON THE HIGH SEAS (1948)
A singer on a Caribbean cruise gets mixed up in a series of romantic problems.
Dir: Michael Curtiz
Cast: Jack Carson, Janis Paige, Don DeFore
C-99 mins, CC,

Nominee for Oscars for Best Music, Original Song -- Jule Styne (music) and Sammy Cahn (lyrics) for the song "It's Magic", and Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture -- Ray Heindorf

According to her 1975 autobiography, "Doris Day: Her Own Story" (co-written with A.E. Hotchner), Miss Day attended a show-biz party the night before she planned to leave for New York City. Also at the gathering was lyric writer Sammy Cahn who, taking Doris aside, explained that she would be the right match for the Cahn-Jule Styne score of this upcoming film. When, at Mr. Cahn's urging, Doris sang "Embraceable You" (music by George Gershwin, lyrics by Ira Gershwin) for the party crowd, she was heard by director Michael Curtiz, who then asked her to test for the role of Georgia Garrett.



TCM PRIMETIME - WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: TCM SPOTLIGHT: JOURNALISM IN THE MOVIES



8:00 PM -- THE CHINA SYNDROME (1979)
A television newswoman stumbles onto deadly secrets at a nuclear power plant.
Dir: James Bridges
Cast: Jane Fonda, Jack Lemmon, Michael Douglas
C-122 mins, CC, Letterbox Format

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 in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania. It was commented how the events had left nuclear executives embarrassed with egg on their faces.


10:15 PM -- NETWORK (1976)
Television programmers turn a deranged news anchor into 'the mad prophet of the airwaves.'
Dir: Sidney Lumet
Cast: Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Peter Finch
BW-121 mins, CC,

Winner of Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Peter Finch (Nomination and award were posthumous. Finch became the first posthumous winner in an acting category. His widow Eletha Finch and screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky accepted the award on his behalf.), Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Faye Dunaway, Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Beatrice Straight ('Network' becomes the second film to win three awards for acting, following A Streetcar Named Desire (1951).), and Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen -- Paddy Chayefsky

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- William Holden, Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Ned Beatty, Best Director -- Sidney Lumet, Best Cinematography -- Owen Roizman, Best Film Editing -- Alan Heim, and Best Picture

Sidney Lumet said that he shot the film using a specific lighting scheme. He said in the film's opening scenes, he shot with as little light as possible, shooting the film almost like a documentary. As the film progressed, he added more light and more camera moves and by the end of the film, it was as brightly lit and "slick" as he could make it. The idea was to visually convey the theme of media manipulation.


12:30 AM -- HIS GIRL FRIDAY (1940)
An unscrupulous editor plots to keep his star reporter-and ex-wife-from re-marrying.
Dir: Howard Hawks
Cast: Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, Ralph Bellamy
BW-92 mins, CC,

During the 1930s, Howard Hawks was hosting a dinner party when the topic of dialogue was brought up. He pulled out a copy of "The Front Page" to demonstrate the snappy exchanges between characters, taking the role of Burns. A female guest took the role of Hildy. While reading, Hawks realized the dialogue sounded much better with a woman reading, and quickly secured the rights for the film from Howard Hughes. Ben Hecht (the author of The Front Page) approved the gender change and the screenplay was put into production.


2:15 AM -- IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT (1934)
A newspaperman tracks a runaway heiress on a madcap cross-country tour.
Dir: Frank Capra
Cast: Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, Walter Connolly
BW-105 mins, CC,

Winner of Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Clark Gable (In 1996, Steven Spielberg anonymously purchased Clark Gable's Oscar to protect it from further commercial exploitation, gave it back to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, commenting that he could think of "no better sanctuary for Gable's only Oscar than the Motion Picture Academy".), Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Claudette Colbert (Claudette Colbert was so convinced that she would lose the Oscar to write-in nominee Bette Davis that she didn't attended the ceremony originally. She was summoned from a train station to pick up her Academy Award.), Best Director -- Frank Capra, Best Writing, Adaptation -- Robert Riskin, and Best Picture

Since this movie was filmed near the end of 1933, all of the actors are of course no longer alive. The last surviving credited (and possibly uncredited as well) cast member was the star, Claudette Colbert, who died in 1996 at the age of 92, 62 years after this film's initial release. As the last survivor of this film, she was dumbfounded at its continued popularity and reputation as a classic masterpiece of American cinema decades later for a film that neither she nor Clark Gable wanted to do.


4:15 AM -- LIBELED LADY (1936)
When an heiress sues a newspaper, the editor hires a reporter to compromise her.
Dir: Jack Conway
Cast: Jean Harlow, William Powell, Myrna Loy
BW-98 mins, CC,

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Picture

Some of the cast and crew travelled to the California mountains during production in order to shoot exteriors of the bucolic scenes. They spent nearly a week living cosily in small cabins, according to Myrna Loy, and enjoying the rustic scenery far from the bright lights of Hollywood. This was where William Powell filmed his bit of slapstick in which he must pretend to be an expert angler in order to impress Connie's father. "It's a hysterical piece of work," praised Loy, "but then Bill was a very gifted man, able to do great comedy and tragedy, everything."

[Dem2theMax]

1. This looks like a good day to stay home and watch movies!

And to end the day with one of my favorite films, Libeled Lady. It doesn't get much better than that.

The first time I saw William Powell trying to catch a fish in that stream, I almost peed my pants from laughing so hard.

[Staph]

2. I adore William Powell!

He has the best timing for comedy.