TCM Schedule for Friday, July 31 -- Prime Time Feature: Sessue Hayakawa

[Staph]

After finishing up the last of the great films of 1939, we get a trio of movies featuring Sessue Hayakawa, the first Asian actor to find stardom in the United States as well as Europe. Between the mid-1910s and the late 1920s, he was as well known as actors Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks. He was one of the highest paid stars of his time; making $5,000 a week in 1915, and $2 million a year via his own production company during the 1920s. Unfortunately, we won't get to see his best known role as Col. Saito in The Bridge On The River Kwai (1957). Enjoy!


5:15am -- Love Affair (1939)
Near-tragic misunderstandings threaten a shipboard romance.
Cast: Irene Dunne, Charles Boyer, Maria Ouspenskaya, Lee Bowman
Dir: Leo McCarey
BW-86 mins, TV-G

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Irene Dunne, Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Maria Ouspenskaya, Best Art Direction -- Van Nest Polglase and Alfred Herman, Best Music, Original Song -- Buddy G. DeSylva for the song "Wishing", Best Writing, Original Story -- Mildred Cram and Leo McCarey, and Best Picture

After this movie was released restaurants were suddenly bombarded with requests for pink champagne.


7:00am -- The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939)
Elizabeth I's love for the Earl of Essex threatens to destroy her kingdom.
Cast: Bette Davis, Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Donald Crisp
Dir: Michael Curtiz
BW-106 mins, TV-G

Nominated for Oscars for Best Art Direction -- Anton Grot, Best Cinematography, Color -- Sol Polito and W. Howard Greene, Best Effects, Special Effects -- Byron Haskin (photographic) and Nathan Levinson (sound), Best Music, Scoring -- Erich Wolfgang Korngold, and Best Sound, Recording -- Nathan Levinson (Warner Bros. SSD)

Errol Flynn and Bette Davis disliked each other, and when Elizabeth slaps Essex in front of the entire court, Davis hauled off and unexpectedly belted Flynn for real. The anger on Essex's face is quite genuine, as is Flynn's visible imposition of self-control to avoid hitting Davis back.


9:00am -- Midnight (1939)
An unemployed showgirl poses as Hungarian royalty to infiltrate Parisian society.
Cast: Claudette Colbert, Don Ameche, John Barrymore, Francis Lederer
Dir: Mitchell Leisen
BW-94 mins, TV-G

When Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett turned in their script, the studio liked it, but felt it needed some work. The writers they hired to rewrite the script were: Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett. The studio sent them their own script to rewrite without knowing it. Wilder and Brackett simply retyped their original script and the studio loved the "rewrites" so much, they produced it with no further "changes".


10:45am -- 1939: Hollywood's Greatest Year (2009)
This documentary focuses on 1939, considered to be Hollywood's greatest year, with film clips and insight into what made the year so special.
Cast: Kenneth Branagh
BW-68 mins, TV-G

If you are new to the films of 1939, this is a pretty good introduction. If you know these films (as I expect most of y'all in our Classic Films Group do), this documentary will just make you want to see them again.


12:00pm -- Lone Star (1952)
A frontiersman helps out with Texas's fight for independence from Mexico.
Cast: Clark Gable, Ava Gardner, Broderick Crawford, Lionel Barrymore
Dir: Vincent Sherman
BW-95 mins, TV-PG

Lionel Barrymore's last movie, and George Hamilton's first movie.


2:00pm -- Dark Passage (1947)
A man falsely accused of his wife's murder escapes to search for the real killer.
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Bruce Bennett, Agnes Moorehead
Dir: Delmer Daves
BW-106 mins, TV-PG

The third of four films made by husband and wife Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. The others are To Have And To Have Not (1944), The Big Sleep (1946), and Key Largo (1948).


4:00pm -- Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948)
A New York businessman's dream of a country home is shattered when he buys a tumbledown rural shack.
Cast: Cary Grant, Myrna Loy, Melvyn Douglas, Reginald Denny
Dir: H. C. Potter
BW-94 mins, TV-G

Although this film was from the novel of the same name, much of the story is autobiographical. Eric Hodgins and his wife built the actual house in the rural Litchfield County, Connecticut town of New Milford. Located in the bucolic Merryall section of town, the house recently sold for $1.2 million.


6:00pm -- The Swan (1956)
On the eve of her marriage to a prince, a noblewoman falls for her brother's tutor.
Cast: Grace Kelly, Alec Guinness, Louis Jourdan, Agnes Moorehead
Dir: Charles Vidor
C-108 mins, TV-G

While filming The Swan (1956) in Hollywood, Alec Guinness he met James Dean, just days before the young actor's death. Sir Alec later recalled predicting that Dean would die in a car crash: when Dean showed Guinness his newly-bought Porsche, Guinness advised him to "Get rid of that car, or you'll be dead in a week!" Guinness unfortunately proved right.


What's On Tonight: TCM PRIME TIME FEATURE: SESSUE HAYAKAWA


8:00pm -- Three Came Home (1950)
A woman fights to survive as a prisoner of the Japanese during World War II.
Cast: Claudette Colbert, Patric Knowles, Florence Desmond, Sessue Hayakawa
Dir: Jean Negulesco
BW-105 mins, TV-14

It was while filming this movie that Claudette Colbert sustained the back injury that forced her to give up the part of Margo Channing in All About Eve (1950) to Bette Davis.


10:00pm -- Tokyo Joe (1949)
An American in post-war Japan gets caught up in the black market.
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Alexander Knox, Florence Marley, Sessue Hayakawa
Dir: Stuart Heisler
BW-89 mins, TV-PG

This was the first movie allowed to film in post-war Japan.


11:45pm -- Swiss Family Robinson (1960)
Stranded on a deserted island, a close-knit family creates a tropical paradise.
Cast: John Mills, Dorothy McGuire, James MacArthur, Janet Munro
Dir: Ken Annakin
C-126 mins, TV-G

One of nearly a dozen versions of the 1812 Johann David Wyss novel, including a planned 2012 release. Many of the animal scenes from this version would not be allowed in a film today, due to laws governing the use of animals in movies.


2:00am -- Monster A Go-Go (1965)
A radioactive monster on a killing spree may be actually be a missing astronaut.
Cast: Phil Morton, June Travis, George Perry, Lois Brooks
Dir: Bill Rebane
BW-68 mins, TV-PG

The film was featured in a 1993 episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. The makers of the show considered it to be the worst film they had watched up until the episode that featured the infamous film Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966). Monster A Go-Go is still counted among the top worst movies to be featured on the eleven season series.


3:15am -- The Giant Spider Invasion (1975)
Following a mysterious explosion, a Wisconsin town is overrun by giant spiders.
Cast: Barbara Hale, Steve Brodie, Leslie Parrish, Alan Hale Jr.
Dir: Bill Rebane
C-79 mins, TV-14

There was supposed to be a shot of a big spider in a tree bursting into flames. To achieve this, the director covered a large prop spider with gunpowder and had two crew members sitting above it in the tree who would drop a match on the spider. The director got the camera up to a very fast fps to achieve a slow motion look, and had them drop the first match. Nothing happened, so they dropped a second. Still nothing happened, so they lit the entire book of matches and dropped it on the spider. With nothing happening, the director turned off the camera - and immediately afterwords a huge explosion and fireball shot up, burning the hair off of the crew members and starting several small brush fires. The director was furious that he wasn't able to get the shot on film.


4:45am -- Die, Monster, Die! (1965)
On a trip to meet his girlfriend's family, a young man uncovers deadly secrets.
Cast: Boris Karloff, Nick Adams, Freda Jackson, Suzan Farmer
Dir: Daniel Haller
C-79 mins, TV-PG

The train station at which Stephen Reinhart (Nick Adams) disembarks is called Arkham. Arkham was a fictional town created by H.P. Lovecraft.

[Staph]

1. The Swan

In 1956, the world thrilled to the fairytale romance of movie star Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier of Monaco. And by felicitous coincidence, just as their wedding was taking place, MGM released Kelly's final film, The Swan (1956), the story of a beautiful princess trying to get a prince to propose. Or was it a coincidence?

The Swan, a play by Hungarian playwright Ferenc Molnar, was a hit on Broadway in the 1920's. It had been made into a film with Lillian Gish, called One Romantic Night (1930). Grace Kelly had played the part of Princess Alexandra in a television version, before she went to Hollywood. In the summer of 1955, Kelly and MGM couldn't agree on what her next film would be...and suddenly, the actress was very eager to again play the princess whose destiny it is to marry a prince and glide through life "like a proud white swan...so dignified, so silent, so regal."

That spring, Kelly had been on the French Riviera for the Cannes Film Festival. A French magazine arranged a photo shoot with Prince Rainier at his palace in nearby Monaco. After that first meeting, the couple began to correspond secretly. So maybe a possible future with Rainier was on Kelly's mind when she suggested The Swan as her next project. Shooting began in late summer, with Biltmore House near Asheville, North Carolina standing in for the palatial home of European royalty. The house, built by George Vanderbilt in the 1890's, is a replica of a French chateau, and was then the largest mansion in the United States. Kelly seemed quite at home in the opulent surroundings.

The Swan wrapped production just before Christmas, and Kelly left to spend the holidays with her family in Philadelphia. Prince Rainier visited the Kellys, and by the end of his visit, the couple was engaged. MGM took full advantage of the publicity when it released The Swan to coincide with the royal wedding in the spring. Helen Rose, who had designed the costumes for the film, created Kelly's wedding gown as a gift from the studio. Although High Society would be released later, The Swan is actually the final Hollywood film Grace Kelly made. And it's a fitting "swan song" for the regal star who became Her Serene Highness, Princess Grace of Monaco.

Director: Charles Vidor
Producer: Dore Schary
Screenplay: John Dighton, based on the play by Ferenc Molnar
Editor: John Dunning
Cinematography: Joseph Ruttenberg, Robert Surtees
Art Direction: Cedric Gibbons, Randall Duell
Music: Bronislau Kaper
Principal Cast: Grace Kelly (Princess Alexandra), Alec Guinness (Prince Albert), Louis Jourdan (Dr. Nicholas Agi), Agnes Moorehead (Queen Maria Dominika), Jessie Royce Landis (Princess Beatrix), Brian Aherne (Father Hyacinth), Estelle Winwood (Symphorosa).
C-109m. Letterboxed. Closed captioning.

by Margarita Landazuri