TCM Schedule for Sunday, May 17 --- A NIGHT AT THE RODEO

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17 Sunday



6:00 AM Something to Sing About (1936)
A New York bandleader takes Hollywood by storm. Cast: James Cagney, Evelyn Daw, William Frawley. Dir: Victor Schertzinger. BW-92 mins, TV-G

7:33 AM Short Film: You, John Jones! (1943)
John Jones (James Cagney) is on duty as air raid warden when he realizes how fortunate he is to live safely with his family while others around the world suffer from the war. Cast: James Cagney, Ann Sothern, Margaret O'Brien Dir: Mervyn LeRoy BW-10 mins,

8:00 AM Room at the Top (1959)
A young accountant claws his way to the top in the boardroom and the bedroom. Cast: Laurence Harvey, Simone Signoret, Heather Sears. Dir: Jack Clayton. BW-115 mins, TV-PG, Letterbox Format

10:00 AM The Lady From Shanghai (1948)
A romantic drifter gets caught between a corrupt tycoon and his voluptuous wife. Cast: Rita Hayworth, Orson Welles, Everett Sloane. Dir: Orson Welles. BW-87 mins, TV-PG

11:30 AM Double Indemnity (1944)
An insurance salesman gets seduced into plotting a client's death. Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray, Edward G. Robinson. Dir: Billy Wilder. BW-108 mins, TV-PG, CC

1:30 PM A Child Is Waiting (1963)
An emotionally fragile woman takes a job teaching mentally handicapped children. Cast: Judy Garland, Burt Lancaster, Gena Rowlands. Dir: John Cassavetes. BW-104 mins, TV-PG, Letterbox Format

3:30 PM In Cold Blood (1967)
Two vagrants try to outrun the police after committing a savage crime in this real-life shocker. Cast: Robert Blake, Scott Wilson, John Forsythe. Dir: Richard Brooks. BW-134 mins, TV-14, CC, Letterbox Format

6:00 PM In The Heat Of The Night (1967)
A black police detective from the North forces a bigoted Southern sheriff to accept his help with a murder investigation. Cast: Sidney Poitier, Rod Steiger, Warren Oates. Dir: Norman Jewison. C-110 mins, TV-14, CC, Letterbox Format

What's On Tonight: TCM PRIME TIME FEATURE: A NIGHT AT THE RODEO

8:00 PM Junior Bonner (1972)
An aging rodeo rider tries to deal with his dysfunctional family. Cast: Steve McQueen, Robert Preston, Ida Lupino. Dir: Sam Peckinpah. C-100 mins, TV-PG, CC, Letterbox Format

10:00 PM J.W. Coop (1971)
A professional rodeo rider tries to pick up the pieces after eight years in prison. Cast: Cliff Robertson, Geraldine Page, Cristina Ferrare. Dir: Cliff Robertson. C-112 mins, TV-14, Letterbox Format

12:08 AM Short Film: Movie-Mania (1937)
BW-21 mins,

12:30 AM The Parson's Widow (1920)
In this silent film, a young minister must marry the previous parson's widow. Cast: Einar Rod, Hildur Carlberg, Mathilde Nielsen. Dir: Carl Theodor Dreyer. BW-71 mins, TV-14

2:00 AM Cesar (1936)
After letting his son be raised by another man, a retired seaman tries to rebuild his family. Cast: Raimu, Pierre Fresnay, Fernand Charpin. Dir: Marcel Pagnol. BW-133 mins, TV-G

4:35 AM Short Film: David O. Selznick: Your New Producer (1935)
BW-24 mins,

5:00 AM Sweepings (1933)
A man spends his life building a successful business to pass on to his kids who are uninterested. Cast: Lionel Barrymore, Eric Linden, William Gargan. Dir: John Cromwell. BW-80 mins, TV-G

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1. In Cold Blood

In Cold Blood

On November 15, 1959 at 2 a.m. in the morning, two ex-convicts, Perry Smith and Dick Hickock, broke into the Holcomb, Kansas home of Herbert Clutter hoping to find $10,000 in his safe. They had foolishly believed a story about his wealth from one of his former employees and now they knew the truth - there was no safe. But instead of leaving, the criminals roused the family of four from their beds, bound and gagged them, and then brutally murdered them before fleeing to Mexico with a pathetic $43 between them. Novelist Truman Capote happened to catch a news item about the murders in the paper and upon investigating further decided it would make a great subject for a book. When his "non-fiction" novel, In Cold Blood, appeared in 1966, it became a publishing sensation and made Capote both a wealthy man and an international celebrity. It was inevitable that Hollywood would make a movie of the book, but critics and audiences alike were quite unprepared for the film version that writer/director Richard Brooks delivered.

While Capote maintained a cold objectivity in his book, Brooks opted for a starkly realistic approach to the material. In his version of In Cold Blood (1967), the audience often views the world through the perspective of the killers. While this approach was criticized by fans of the book that said the film humanized the murderers while turning the innocent victims into one-dimensional caricatures, it was undeniably effective in dramatic terms, especially in the final execution sequence. In a New York Times article by William Cotter Murray, Brooks was quoted as saying, "I see the movie as a kind of Greek tragedy, American style. Everyone knows the ending. It's the treatment that matters. I'm not interested in Alfred Hitchcock stuff...I'm interested in the social aspect of this drama...If I thought this movie didn't have relevance to a general social problem, I wouldn't be making it....This isn't a tragedy of Fate. It's the tragedy of a house. Two houses. The poor farmer shack Hickock came from, and the Clutter's $40,000 farmhouse."

Brooks' attention to detail was practically obsessive on the set of In Cold Blood. He did extensive research at the Menninger Foundation in Topeka, Kansas on the subject of detecting and treating mentally ill and potentially homicidal prisoners. He insisted on and received permission to shoot on location in the actual Clutter home and in the actual courtroom where the murderers were convicted. Brooks even cast some of the Clutters' neighbors as extras, used seven of the original jurors for the courtroom scenes, brought Nancy Clutter's horse Babe out of retirement for a scene, and even hired the same hangman who had executed Smith and Hickock. And Brooks was no less meticulous in instructing his cast. For instance, he insisted that John Forsythe meet agent Al Dewey, the man he was portraying on film, in order to closely study his mannerisms and personality. Brooks also had his share of battles with the front office at Columbia Pictures who wanted him to shoot the film in color and even suggested Steve McQueen and Paul Newman for the roles of Dick and Perry.

While Truman Capote approved the choice of Brooks as director over all other candidates, he was still not allowed to read the screenplay, which Brooks had written himself. The director bluntly told him, "Truman, I can't work that way. Either you trust me to make it or you don't." When Capote finally viewed the film, he made the following remarks in private, "The introduction of the reporter, who acted as a kind of Greek chorus, didn't make sense. There also wasn't enough on the Clutter family. The book was about six lives, not two, and it ruined it to concentrate so much on Perry and Dick. On the other hand, I thought that the actors who played the two boys were very well cast, acted well, and were directed well." Indeed, critics were especially impressed with the performances of Robert Blake (a former child actor who appeared in Our Gang comedies) as Perry and Scott Wilson as Dick. But both actors were ignored when the Academy Award nominations for 1967 were announced. Instead In Cold Blood received Oscar nominations for Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography (Conrad Hall), and Best Music Score (Quincy Jones).

Trivia for In Cold Blood (1967)

- To get the authenticity he wanted, Richard Brooks filmed in all the actual locations including the Clutter house (where the murders took place) and the actual courtroom (6 of the actual jurors were used). Even Nancy Clutter's horse Babe was used in a few scenes, and that's the actual hangman who pulled the lever on the real Hickcock and Smith.

- 5 students from the University of Kansas' theater department got roles: Paul Hough, Kip Niven, Brenda Curran, Richard Kelton, and Mary-Linda Rapelye.

- Robert Blake and Scott Wilson were not the first choices to play the cold-blooded murderers. Studio heads at Columbia Pictures originally wanted Paul Newman and Steve McQueen in the lead roles. Newman chose instead to star in Cool Hand Luke and Hombre that year; McQueen worked on The Thomas Crown Affair and Bullitt.

- In the scene where the fugitives pick up the young boy and the old man on the way to Las Vegas, Robert Blake's character make's a reference to the movie Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The (1948).Robert Blake played the paper boy who sold the winning lottery ticket to Bogart in that classic movie.

- The family photos seen in the rooms of the house are real photos of the Clutter family members.