TCM Schedule for Friday, May 8 -- Star of the Month -- Sean Connery

[Staph]

Today is full of films about teenagers involved with older lovers -- so much angst! And tonight is again all about star of the month, Connery, Sean Connery. Enjoy!


4:30am -- California Conquest (1952)
A wealthy landowner leads the fight to leave Mexican rule and make California a state.
Cast: Cornel Wilde, Teresa Wright, Alfonso Bedoya, Lisa Ferraday
Dir: Lew Landers
C-79 mins

Screenwriter Robert E. Kent started as a B-movie writer and finished his career writing episodes of the television series The Wild, Wild West.


6:00am -- Take A Giant Step (1958)
A troubled black teenager tries to find his place in a white world.
Cast: Johnny Nash, Estelle Hemsley, Ruby Dee, Frederick O'Neal
Dir: Philip Leacock
BW-100 mins, TV-G

The theme song is mentioned in the opening credits but was never heard anywhere in the movie itself.


7:45am -- Teenage Millionaire (1961)
A teen tycoon becomes a rock star.
Cast: Jimmy Clanton, Rocky Graziano, ZaSu Pitts, Diane Jergens
Dir: Lawrence F. Doheny
BW-84 mins, TV-G

Jimmy Clanton had breakthrough hit in 1958 with the standard "Just A Dream"(#4 US Pop).


9:15am -- Goodbye Again (1961)
A 40-year-old woman swaps her sophisticated lover for a young law student.
Cast: Ingrid Bergman, Yves Montand, Anthony Perkins, Jessie Royce Landis
Dir: Anatole Litvak
BW-120 mins, TV-PG

Adaptation of the novel by Francoise Sagan.


11:23am -- Short Film: One Reel Wonders: The Background Beat (1965)
A short doc by director Ralph Nelson exploring how he uses music and scoring in his pictures. Includes examples from "Once A Thief" (1965).
Cast: Ralph Nelson, Lalo Schifrin
BW-7 mins

Once A Thief starred Alain Delon and Ann-Margaret.


11:30am -- The Explosive Generation (1961)
A high school teacher's attempts to teach sex education creates a furor.
Cast: William Shatner, Patty McCormack, Lee Kinsolving, Billy Gray
Dir: Buzz Kulik
BW-89 mins, TV-PG

Among the students are Patty McCormack (The Bad Seed), Billy Gray (Father Knows Best), and Beau Bridges.


1:00pm -- Something Wild (1961)
A rape victim runs away from her family and takes shelter with a romantic auto mechanic.
Cast: Carroll Baker, Ralph Meeker, Mildred Dunnock, Charles Watts
Dir: Jack Garfein
BW-113 mins, TV-14

Diane Ladd's film debut.


3:00pm -- The Young Racers (1963)
A writer pens an expose on the womanizing racer who stole his finacee.
Cast: Mark Damon, William Campbell, Luana Anders, Robert Campbell
Dir: Roger Corman
C-84 mins, TV-PG

All of Mark Damon's dialogue was looped by an uncredited William Shatner.


4:30pm -- Girl With Green Eyes (1964)
A young innocent gets involved with an older, married man.
Cast: Peter Finch, Rita Tushingham, Lynn Redgrave, Marie Kean
Dir: Desmond Davis
BW-92 mins, TV-PG

Lynn Redgrave's second film, after her small role as Susan the maid in Tom Jones (1963).


6:15pm -- The First Time (1969)
Three inexperienced teenage boys hope to visit a Canadian bordello.
Cast: Jacqueline Bisset, Wes Stern, Rick Kelman, Wink Roberts
Dir: James Neilson
C-90 mins

It was rumored that Wes Stern passed on the role of Benjamin Braddock in The Graduate (1967) because the script for this movie was floating around Hollywood. It was in development for two years, and by time it was released The Graduate was a smash hit.


What's On Tonight: STAR OF THE MONTH: SEAN CONNERY

8:00pm -- Goldfinger (1964)
James Bond tries to thwart an attempt to rob Fort Knox.
Cast: Sean Connery, Gert Fröbe, Honor Blackman, Shirley Eaton
Dir: Guy Hamilton
C-110 mins, TV-PG

Won an Oscar for Best Effects, Sound Effects -- Norman Wanstall

The Ford Motor Company happily supplied a Lincoln Continental for the car compactor scene in exchange for featuring their new model Ford Mustang in the Swiss mountain driving sequence. During the crushing of the Lincoln, the crew remained totally silent, in awe of what they were doing.


10:00pm -- Thunderball (1965)
James Bond hunts for stolen nuclear warheads in the Bahamas.
Cast: Sean Connery, Claudine Auger, Adolfo Celi, Luciana Paluzzi
Dir: Terence Young
C-130 mins, TV-PG

Won an Oscar for Best Effects, Special Visual Effects -- John Stears

For the first time, Sean Connery performs the gunbarrel opening sequence. In the first three Bond films, the job was done with stuntman Bob Simmons.


12:15am -- Woman Of Straw (1964)
A rich old man's nurse and his nephew plot his murder.
Cast: Gina Lollobrigida, Sean Connery, Ralph Richardson, Alexander Knox
Dir: Basil Dearden
C-117 mins, TV-PG

The white tuxedo Sean Connery wears in this film is the same one he would later wear in the pre-title sequence of Goldfinger (1964). The jacket even had the initials "AR" sewn on the inside, which stand for his character's name Anthony Richmond.


2:15am -- The Trip (1967)
A young man drops acid in search of help with his troubled emotional life.
Cast: Peter Fonda, Susan Strasberg, Bruce Dern, Dennis Hopper
Dir: Roger Corman
C-79 mins, TV-MA

Jack Nicholson wrote this screenplay for Corman based on his own experience of taking LSD under controlled laboratory conditions and also on his marriage break-up with first wife, Sandra Knight.


3:45am -- Alice's Restaurant (1969)
A young folksinger becomes a fugitive after dumping trash in the wrong place.
Cast: Arlo Guthrie, Pat Quinn, James Broderick, Michael McClanathan
Dir: Arthur Penn
C-111 mins, TV-MA

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Director -- Arthur Penn

Although many people regarded Arlo Guthrie's recording of "The Alice's Restaurant Massacree" to be fiction, Arthur Penn, who owns a home in Stockbridge where the story takes place, realized it was for the most part based on events that had actually taken place. Therefore, what appears to be a continuity problem is in fact a correct representation of the facts. The movie portrays the actual photos used as evidence at the trial. The real life "blind judge" in Guthrie's song, "Judge James Hannon", also plays himself (Judge James Hannon) in the film.

[Staph]

1. Alice's Restaurant

After the phenomenal success of Bonnie and Clyde in 1967, director Arthur Penn wanted to go in a different thematic direction, away from exploring violence as an unavoidable human condition. His inspiration for a new project came from an unlikely source, an eighteen-minute talking blues ballad by Arlo Guthrie entitled "The Alice's Restaurant Massacree." In an interview with Bernard Weinraub for the New York Times, Penn said, "I heard a record and said, 'That's a movie.' I didn't know what shape it would take. It seemed so active and cinematic. It took on images very quickly. It was difficult, though, because we didn't have a strong narrative, as we had in Bonnie and Clyde, to thrust it forward." But using key moments from the song like the confrontation with Officer Obie over the illegal dumping of garbage in the town dump and Arlo's experiences at the Army induction center, Penn's movie began to take shape, one that he hoped would encapsulate the counterculture of the sixties -- flower children, draft card burning, commune living, the rebellion against authority.

Retaining the loose and rambling ballad structure of the song, Alice's Restaurant (1969) is an often lyrical and bittersweet movie about an awkward time in the sixties. Though the general tone of the film is humorous, a more serious side emerges occasionally through the addition of new incidents -- such as Arlo's visit to the hospital to see his dying father, the legendary folk singer Woody Guthrie (played by Joseph Boley) -- or new characters like Shelly (Michael McClanathan), who dies of a drug overdose. But overall, the storyline mimics the song. Arlo, an itinerant hippie, drops in on a commune run by his friends, Ray (James Broderick) and Alice (Pat Quinn), and decides to stay awhile in their Berkshire County home (a reconverted church). A spectacular Thanksgiving Day meal ends in Arlo's arrest, which later inadvertently helps him avoid the draft and return to the commune. But the easygoing camaraderie among the hippies is slowly eroded by competitive relationships and sexual rivalries -- typical human foibles.

Alice's Restaurant was filmed in and around Stockbridge, Pittsfield, and Great Barrington, Massachusetts, and New York City. One of the most celebrated moments in the movie is the final shot of Alice, sitting alone on the steps of the deserted church, staring into an uncertain future. Penn and his editor, Dede Allen, spent months planning this complicated sequence which took hours to actually shoot. "The camera was dollying back and zooming in at the same time and the image of Alice remained constant," Penn said in the aforementioned New York Times article. "I wanted a certain melancholy in that scene. It was the closure of a phase in someone's life. I wanted the constancy of a memory experience and the physical sense of departure." In 1974, director Sidney Lumet would try to recreate this tricky final sequence with Blythe Danner in Lovin' Molly, an adaptation of Larry McMurtry's novel, Leaving Cheyenne.

When Alice's Restaurant opened theatrically, it received decidedly mixed reviews from the critics and wasn't a popular box-office success with its intended age group. Many pointed out that Arlo Guthrie was no actor but is merely playing himself here. Still, the film did garner an Oscar nomination for Best Director and introduced audiences to some talented newcomers, including Pat Quinn as Alice; character actor M. Emmet Walsh as the Group W sergeant; Tina Chen as Mari-Chan, Arlo's girlfriend; and Shelley Plimpton (former wife of David Carradine and mother of Shelley Plimpton) as Reenie, an undernourished groupie. James Broderick (father of Matthew), who plays Ray, had only appeared on television and in a few bit parts like The Group (1966) before winning this important role. Folk singer Pete Seeger appears as himself, performing "Pastures of Plenty" and the "Car-Car Song" with Arlo. And Joni Mitchell can be heard singing "Songs to Aging Children" during the wintry funeral scene at Shelly's gravesite. By the way, the real Alice of Alice's Restaurant appears in a cameo. She later published a cookbook of her recipes.

Producer: Hillard Elkins, Joseph Manduke
Director: Arthur Penn
Screenplay: Arthur Penn, Venabel Herndon
Production Design: Warren Clymer
Cinematography: Michael Nebbia
Editing: Dede Allen
Music: Arlo Guthrie, Garry Sherman
Principal Cast: Arlo Guthrie (Arlo), Pat Quinn (Alice), James Broderick (Ray), Michael McClanathan (Shelly), Geoff Outlaw (Roger), Tina Chen (Mari-Chan), Kathleen Dabney (Karin), William Obanhein (Officer Obie), Joseph Boley (Woody), Shelley Plimpton (Reenie), M. Emmet Walsh (Group W Sergeant).
C-111m.

by Jeff Stafford