TCM Schedule for Friday, January 29 -- TCM Memorial Tribute: Jean Simmons

[Staph]

Most of today is dedicated to a variety of westerns, but this evening we're remembering the beautiful and talented Jean Simmons. This kind of memorial tribute is one of the things I truly enjoy about TCM -- they have access to so many great films, and they choose very wisely. Enjoy!


6:00am -- Two Weeks to Live (1943)
Thinking he's terminally ill, a man tries to raise money by undertaking daredevil stunts.
Cast: Lum, Abner, Franklin Pangborn, Kay Linaker
Dir: Malcolm St. Clair
BW-74 mins, TV-G

One of eight films based on the adventures of hillbillies Lum Edwards and Abner Peabody, played by Chester Lauck and Norris Goff, life-long friends who created and stared in the Lum and Abner radio show on NBC from 1932 to 1954 -- more than 5000 shows!


7:16am -- One Reel Wonders: On The Shores Of Nova Scotia (1947)
In this "Traveltalk," we learn about the history, land, and people of Nova Scotia
Cast: James A. FitzPatrick
C-8 mins

A visit to several coastal communities, including is Lunenberg, where deep sea fishing and shipbuilding are the main industries, Blue Rocks, where lobstering is an important source of income, and Peggy's Cove, known for its artist community.


7:30am -- Ma And Pa Kettle (1949)
On the verge of eviction, the hillbilly family wins a slogan contest and moves into an automated home.
Cast: Marjorie Main, Percy Kilbride, Richard Long, Meg Randall
Dir: Charles Lamont
BW-76 mins, TV-G

Second of eight films in which Marjorie Main and Percy Kilbride portrayed Ma and Pa Kettle. The first was The Egg and I (1947), starring Claudette Colbert and Fred MacMurray.


9:00am -- I Shot Jesse James (1949)
After shooting his best friend, an outlaw tries to cope with guilt.
Cast: Preston Foster, Barbara Britton, John Ireland, Reed Hadley
Dir: Samuel Fuller
BW-81 mins, TV-PG

Director Samuel Fuller said that he wanted to make this picture because, unlike many filmmakers in Hollywood, he did not see the real Jesse James as a "folk hero" or someone to be admired. Fuller saw him as a cold-blooded psychopath who shot down women, children, the elderly, the helpless (his gang once stopped a Union hospital train and executed every wounded federal soldier on it) and, in Fuller's words, Bob Ford "did something that should have been done quite a bit earlier in the life of Jesse Woodson James".


10:30am -- Johnny Guitar (1954)
A lady saloon owner battles a female rancher out to frame her for murder.
Cast: Joan Crawford, Sterling Hayden, Mercedes McCambridge, Scott Brady
Dir: Nicholas Ray
C-110 mins, TV-PG

Joan Crawford and Mercedes McCambridge fought both on and off camera. One night, in a drunken rage, Crawford scattered the costumes worn by McCambridge along an Arizona highway. Cast and crew had to collect the outfits.


12:30pm -- Santa Fe Trail (1940)
Romantic rivals get caught in the battle to stop abolitionist John Brown.
Cast: Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Raymond Massey, Ronald Reagan
Dir: Michael Curtiz
BW-110 mins, TV-PG

Raymond Massey starred as John Brown again in Seven Angry Men (1955), the main story of which is also the trial and hanging of the abolitionist.


2:30pm -- The Baron Of Arizona (1950)
A swindler forges documents to make himself the owner of an entire state.
Cast: Vincent Price, Ellen Drew, Vladimir Sokoloff, Beulah Bondi
Dir: Samuel Fuller
BW-97 mins, TV-PG

James Addison Reavis (1843-1914) was a real person who, as depicted in the movie, was found guilty of attempting to steal most of Arizona by forging land grant documents. He paid a fine of $5,000 and served two years in jail.


4:19pm -- One Reel Wonders: Wild Boar Hunt (1940)
This "Bow and Arrow Adventures" entry was filmed on an unidentified island off the coast of Southern California, where wild boars run freely.
Narrator: Knox Manning
BW-10 mins

Howard Hill, billed as the "world's greatest archer," shows his speed and accuracy shooting at stationary targets, birds in flight, and a charging wild boar.


4:30pm -- The Last Hunt (1956)
Two frontiersmen clash over the slaughter of a buffalo herd.
Cast: Robert Taylor, Stewart Granger, Lloyd Nolan, Debra Paget
Dir: Richard Brooks
C-104 mins, TV-PG

US government marksmen actually shot and killed buffalo during production as part of a scheduled herd-thinning.


6:15pm -- One Reel Wonders: Duck Hunter's Paradise (1932)
Shows two duck hunters in the Sacramento River Valley.
Narrator: Paul Girard Smith
Dir: Harold Austin
BW-8 mins

Smith began writing for the movies in 1926, with an uncredited script for The Son of the Sheik, starring Rudolph Valentino, through a 1955 episode of Disneyland -- The Wind in the Willows.


6:30pm -- The Cariboo Trail (1950)
A cattleman fights to establish a ranch in the middle of gold country.
Cast: Randolph Scott, George "Gabby" Hayes, Bill Williams, Karin Booth
Dir: Edwin L. Marin
C-81 mins, TV-G

Final feature film appearance of George 'Gabby' Hayes.


What's On Tonight: TCM MEMORIAL TRIBUTE: JEAN SIMMONS


8:00pm -- Great Expectations (1946)
A mysterious benefactor finances a young boy's education.
Cast: John Mills, Valerie Hobson, Bernard Miles, Francis L. Sullivan
Dir: David Lean
BW-118 mins, TV-G

Won Oscars for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White -- John Bryan and Wilfred Shingleton, and Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Guy Green

Nominated for Oscars for Best Director -- David Lean, Best Writing, Screenplay -- David Lean, Ronald Neame and Anthony Havelock-Allan, and Best Picture

David Lean was not a particularly well-read man, and only became aware of the power of Charles Dickens' story when his wife Kay Walsh dragged him along to a theatrical production of "Great Expectations" in 1939. Incidentally, playing Herbert Pocket in this production, was a young Alec Guinness, whom Lean subsequently cast in the same role in the film version. Aside from bit parts, it was Guinness' first major screen role and was also the first of six films he made with Lean. Martita Hunt was also in the stage production, playing Miss Havisham, a role she reprised in the film.


10:15pm -- Elmer Gantry (1960)
A young drifter finds success as a traveling preacher until his past catches up with him.
Cast: Burt Lancaster, Jean Simmons, Arthur Kennedy, Dean Jagger
Dir: Richard Brooks
C-147 mins, TV-PG

Won Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Burt Lancaster, Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Shirley Jones, and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium -- Richard Brooks

Nominated for Oscars for Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture -- André Previn, and Best Picture

For the film's debut on US network television, the subplot featuring Shirley Jones in her Oscar-winning role as a prostitute was largely excised. This was because Jones was then the star of the hugely successful and very wholesome "The Partridge Family" (1970).


12:45am -- The Happy Ending (1969)
A middle-aged woman leaves her husband and children in search of herself.
Cast: Jean Simmons, John Forsythe, Shirley Jones, Lloyd Bridges
Dir: Richard Brooks
C-112 mins

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Jean Simmons, and Best Music, Original Song -- Michel Legrand (music), Alan Bergman (lyrics) and Marilyn Bergman (lyrics) for the song "What Are You Doing for the Rest of Your Life?"

As of 2007, Jean Simmons is one of six women, who have received Best Actress nominations for performances directed by their spouses. The other five are Frances McDormand for Fargo (1996), Gena Rowlands for A Woman Under the Influence (1974) & Gloria (1980), Julie Andrews for Victor/Victoria (1982), Elisabeth Bergner for Escape Me Never (1935) and Joanne Woodward for Rachel, Rachel (1968). Jules Dassin also directed his future wife Melina Mercouri in an Oscar-nominated performance (Pote tin Kyriaki (1960)), but they weren't married yet at the time of the nomination.


2:45am -- Girls on the Loose (1958)
A nightclub owner runs an all-woman robbery gang.
Cast: Mara Corday, Lita Milan, Barbara Bostock, Mark Richman
Dir: Paul Henreid
C-78 mins

Yes, the director is that Paul Henreid, the one who lights Bette Davis' cigarette in Now, Voyager (1942) and caused a generation of young men and women to take up smoking in the hope of attaining even a fraction of Henreid's sexual magnetism.


4:15am -- Teen-Age Crime Wave (1955)
Juvenile delinquents pull a young innocent into their crime spree.
Cast: Tommy Cook, Mollie McCart, Sue England, Frank Griffin
Dir: Fred F. Sears
BW-76 mins, TV-PG

One of two movies filmed on location at Griffith Park Observatory in 1955 (the other was Rebel Without a Cause, with James Dean and Natalie Wood.

[Staph]

1. Jean Simmons Profile

An articulate, elegant beauty with a distinctive presence, Jean Simmons has always had in her makeup something of the sprite as well as the ethereal angel. Although she has enjoyed a long and successful career, she never quite achieved the superstar status of Audrey Hepburn, an actress with whom she had much in common and with whom she sometimes competed for roles.

Born January 31 in London, Simmons made her debut in English films at age 14 in Give Us the Moon (1944) before making strong impressions as Estella in David Lean's Great Expectations (1946) and as the lovely native girl in Michael Powell's Black Narcissus (1947). She earned an Oscar® nomination for her compelling Ophelia opposite Laurence Olivier's Hamlet (1948), and emerged from that film a star.

In 1950 Simmons married British actor Stewart Granger and came with him to Hollywood, where she was unhappily under contract to Howard Hughes through the early 1950s. At Hughes' studio, RKO, she starred in such films as the George Bernard Shaw satire Androcles and the Lion (U.S. debut, 1953), playing Lavinia; the thriller Angel Face (1952), as a beautiful angel of death; and the comedies Affair With a Stranger (1953) and She Couldn't Say No (1954).

Simmons was assigned to more distinguished fare at MGM, where her roles included an aspiring actress in The Actress (1953), an adaptation of Ruth Gordon's autobiography with Spencer Tracy as the father; Young Bess (1953), in which Simmons shines as the young Queen Elizabeth I; and Until They Sail (1957), a romantic melodrama set in New Zealand in which she is well-teamed with Paul Newman.

She partnered with Marlon Brando in both the historical drama Desiree (1954), playing the title role to his Napoleon; and the musical Guys and Dolls (1955), as a sprightly Sarah Brown to Brando's Sky Masterson. She was charming as always in This Could Be the Night (1957), playing a prim schoolteacher who becomes involved with gangsters.

Under the direction of Richard Brooks, who would become her second husband, Simmons gives an outstanding performance in Elmer Gantry (1960) as the evangelist exploited by the title character (played by Burt Lancaster). She is equally fine in Brooks' domestic drama The Happy Ending (1969), for which she received a Best Actress Oscar® nomination. Other notable performances include those in The Big Country (1958), Home Before Dark (1958), Spartacus (1960) and All the Way Home (1963).

Simmons toured successfully in the stage musical A Little Night Music in the early 1970s, and won a Supporting Actress Emmy for her role in the TV mini-series The Thorn Birds (1983). She has remained active in films and television; her last screen credit was the 2009 British drama Shadows in the Sun.

by Roger Fristoe

[lavenderdiva]

2. Great Expectations

I've already set my DVR to record tonight's showing of 'Great Expectations'. This is my favorite version of the story- I pretty much like anything David Lean set his hand to: 'Brief Encounter', 'Great Expectations', 'Bridge on the River Kwai', 'Lawrence of Arabia', 'The Greatest Story Ever Told', 'Doctor Zhivago', 'Ryan's Daughter', and 'A Passage To India'. Those are only some of his offerings. To have one director at the helm of SOOOOOO many great movies is amazing! Oscar-nominated 7 times, won twice. Most of his films are considered classics. what talent!