TCM Schedule for Thursday, April 4, 2024: Fortune Hunters / Annie Hall & Diner / Mary Astor
TCM's 30th anniversary theme continues 8:00 pm EST with Annie Hall and Diner, followed by the 2018 documentary Scandal: The Trial of Mary Astor (see description below) and three Astor films.
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6:15 AM | Nobody Lives Forever (1946)
A con artist falls for the rich widow he's trying to fleece.
Dir: Jean Negulesco | Cast: John Garfield, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Walter Brennan
8:00 AM | Lucky Partners (1940)
Two strangers who share a sweepstakes ticket take it on the lam.
Dir: Lewis Milestone | Cast: Ronald Colman, Ginger Rogers, Jack Carson
10:00 AM | Two Smart People (1946)
A lady crook tries to steal a con man's hidden loot.
Dir: Jules Dassin | Cast: Lucille Ball, John Hodiak, Lloyd Nolan
12:00 PM | The Treasure of Pancho Villa (1955)
An American adventurer competes with the famed Mexican bandit while recovering lost gold.
Dir: George Sherman | Cast: Rory Calhoun, Shelley Winters, Gilbert Roland
1:45 PM | I Like Your Nerve (1931)
A bookworm turns himself into a romantic adventurer in Central America.
Dir: William McGann | Cast: Douglas Fairbanks, Loretta Young, Henry Kolker
3:00 PM | Love on the Run (1936)
Rival newsmen get mixed up with a runaway heiress and a ring of spies.
Dir: W. S. Van Dyke | Cast: Joan Crawford, Clark Gable, Franchot Tone
4:30 PM | Please Believe Me (1950)
Three men pursue a shipboard romance with a woman they think is an heiress.
Dir: Norman Taurog | Cast: Deborah Kerr, Robert Walker, Mark Stevens
6:00 PM | Yolanda and the Thief (1945)
A con man poses as a Latin American heiress' guardian angel.
Dir: Vincente Minnelli | Cast: Fred Astaire, Lucille Bremer, Frank Morgan
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8:00 PM | Annie Hall (1977)
A comedian and an aspiring singer try to overcome their neuroses and find happiness.
Dir: Woody Allen | Cast: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Tony Roberts
10:00 PM | Diner (1982)
A group of college-age buddies in 1959 Baltimore struggle with their passage into adulthood.
Dir: Barry Levinson | Cast: Steve Guttenberg, Mickey Rourke, Daniel Stern
12:00 AM | Dodsworth (1936)
A bittersweet tale of the increasing estrangement of a retired automobile tycoon and his wife.
Dir: William Wyler | Cast: Walter Huston, Ruth Chatterton, Mary Astor
2:00 AM | Scandal: The Trial of Mary Astor (2018)
Mary Astor has to make a difficult choice after learning her personal diaries have been stolen.
Dir: Alexa Foreman | Cast: Alexa Foreman | Documentary
From the very beginning of the medium, the public was fascinated with the private lives of people they would only see projected onto the silver screen.
In the 1930s, stars like Jean Harlow made headlines for her unmarried romances, but as she was known for playing sexy and comedic roles, her career survived outrage from the church women's groups.
On the other hand, Mary Astor, best known to modern audiences as the scheming Brigid O'Shaughnessy in The Maltese Falcon (1941), specialized in playing elegant women, and so was the unlikely subject of lurid headlines that might have been more believable for a Harlow or a Clara Bow.
While filming Dodsworth (1936), in which she played Edith Cortright, a sympathetic and independent woman who falls in love with a married man (Walter Huston), Astor was fighting a child custody battle against her vindictive ex-husband, who sought revenge by taking away her young daughter, Marylyn.
Although nude selfies have recently been used by an ex-husband to bring down his politician wife, and are occasionally used today to blackmail celebrities, Astor's 1930s version was a stolen, secret diary, full of explicit details of her love affairs that her husband leaked to the press. It threatened to cost Astor the custody of her child and destroy her career and damage that of her also-married and much older lover, the playwright George S. Kaufman.
SNIP
Producer, writer and director Alexa Foreman said in a recent interview that Astor's story is still relevant in the #MeToo era.
Like many of the actresses who are now standing up to the studios and revealing tales of sexual assault, despite the consequences, Mary Astor stood up to all of the heads of the major studios on the same day.
On the last day of filming on Dodsworth, Astor was ordered to Samuel Goldwyn's office, where she was confronted by the Hollywood moguls who were afraid of yet another scandal that could damage their business, as the Roscoe Arbuckle scandal had in the early 1920s. Astor stood up to all of these powerful men and refused to settle the case as they wanted. Later, Goldwyn considered that the story of a mother fighting for her child was not such a bad thing, after all.
MORE: https://www.tcm.com/watchtcm/titles/2201666
3:15 AM | Upper World (1934)
A wealthy man escapes his wife's social pretensions in the arms of a burlesque queen.
Dir: Roy Del Ruth | Cast: Warren William, Mary Astor, Ginger Rogers
4:30 AM | Paradise for Three (1938)
A businessman mingles with German laborers to learn more about their lives.
Dir: Edward Buzzell | Cast: Robert Young, Frank Morgan, Mary Astor
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Happy viewing!
