TCM Schedule for Friday, June 21, 2024: Allied Artists / Pride Month Part 1 (Torch Song Trilogy & more)
TCM kicks off Pride Month programming with the first of two specially themed evenings. Part Two airs Friday, June 28th, and includes an airing of Brokeback Mountain (2005).
During the day TCM airs a respectable sampling of Allied Artists productions, featuring films from the late 1940s to late 1950s.
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Allied Artists Productions was formed in 1946 as a unit of Monogram Pictures to make higher quality (and costlier) films. The studio's policy permitted what executives called "B-plus" pictures. Its first release was It Happened on Fifth Avenue (1947), airing early this morning.
By the mid-1950s Allied Artists had signed working contracts with Hollywood luminaries such as William Wyler, John Huston, Billy Wilder and Gary Cooper. Its first big-name productions -- Wyler's Friendly Persuasion (1956) and Wilder's Love in the Afternoon (1957)-- were box-office flops, convincing studio-heads to retreat into the kind of pictures Monogram had always favored: low-budget action and thrillers.
More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_Artists_International
--------------------- MORNING & AFTERNOON (EST) ---------------------
6:30 AM | It Happened on 5th Avenue (1947)
Two homeless men move into a mansion while its owners are wintering in the South.
Dir: Roy Del Ruth | Cast: Don Defore, Ann Harding, Charles Ruggles
8:30 AM | Black Gold (1947)
A small ranch owner, adopts a Chinese orphan, raises a racehorse, and discovers oil on his land.
Dir: Phil Karlson | Cast: Anthony Quinn, Katherine De Mille, Ducky Louie
10:15 AM | The Phenix City Story (1955)
A crusading lawyer takes on the corrupt machine running a Southern town.
Dir: Phil Karlson | Cast: John McIntire, Richard Kiley, Kathryn Grant
12:00 PM | The Cyclops (1957)
A scientific expedition discovers a 25-foot tall mutant.
Dir: Bert I. Gordon | Cast: James Craig, Gloria Talbott, Lon Chaney Jr.
1:15 PM | Bitter Creek (1954)
A man attempts to find the killer of his brother.
Dir: Thomas Carr | Cast: Wild Bill Elliott, Carleton Young, Beverly Garland
2:30 PM | I Was an American Spy (1951)
A war widow spies for the U.S. in Japanese-occupied Manila.
Dir: Lesley Selander | Cast: Ann Dvorak, Gene Evans, Douglas Kennedy
4:00 PM | Love in the Afternoon (1957)
A private investigator discovers his client's wife has been having an affair with an American playboy,
Dir: Billy Wilder | Cast: Gary Cooper, Audrey Hepburn, Maurice Chevalier
6:15 PM | The Strangler (1964)
A disturbed lab technician develops a doll fetish and a bad habit of murdering nurses.
Dir: Burt Topper | Cast: Victor Buono, David Mclean, Diane Sayer
------------------- PRIME TIME & LATE NIGHT -------------------
8:00 PM | Sylvia Scarlett (1935)
A female con artist masquerades as a boy to escape the police.
Dir: George Cukor | Cast: Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Edmund Gwenn
The film's history, and some harsh critic reception written upon the film's release, is available here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvia_Scarlett
9:45 PM | Gay USA (1977) TCM PREMIERE
Documentary of every Pride parade which took place in June, 1977.
Dir: Arthur J Bressan | Cast: Stuart Loomis, Pat Parker
11:15 PM | Torch Song Trilogy (1988)
A drag queen's affair with a bisexual throws his life into turmoil.
Dir: Paul Bogart | Cast: Anne Bancroft, Matthew Broderick, Harvey Fierstein
1:30 AM | The Queen (1968)
Documentary of 1967 NYC national drag queen contest; rehearsals, dressing room conversations, and competitive jealousies.
Dir: Frank Simon | Cast: Bernard Giquel, Jack Doroshow, Jim Dine
2:45 AM | The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972)
Two women form a sexual triangle with a fashion designer.
Dir: Rainer Werner Fassbinder | Cast: Margit Carstensen, Hanna Schygulla, Eva Mattes
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5:00 AM | The Blue Angel (1930)
A stodgy professor falls from grace when he's seduced by a nightclub singer.
Dir: Josef Von Sternberg | Cast: Emil Jannings, Marlene Dietrich, Kurt Gerron