TCM Schedule for Thursday, April 15 -- Based on George Bernard Shaw

[Staph]

We've got a day of science fiction, from 1929's The Mysterious Island (begun as a silent picture!) to the 1978 version of Return to Witch Mountain. Then tonight we have five films from Nobel- and Oscar-winning author and playwright George Bernard Shaw. Enjoy!


4:30am -- Norman...Is That You? (1976)
A retired man discovers his only son is gay.
Cast: Redd Foxx, Pearl Bailey, Dennis Dugan, Michael Warren
Dir: George Schlatter
C-91 mins, TV-14

The original Broadway production starred Maureen Stapleton and Lou Jacobi. The play ran for only 12 performances.


6:15am -- The Mysterious Island (1929)
A scientist builds an underwater ship to search for a legendary race of fish men.
Cast: Lionel Barrymore, Jane Daly, Lloyd Hughes, Montagu Love
Dir: Lucien Hubbard
BW-94 mins, TV-G

According to an article in the original "Famous Monsters of Filmland" magazines, production was actually started in 1926. There were various problems, including weather and the advent of talkies, which slowed/halted production several times before the film was finally completed and released three years later. The article included stills showing the original 1926 undersea denizens and the redesigned version which actually appeared in the film.


8:00am -- One Million B.C. (1940)
An exiled caveman finds love when he joins another tribe.
Cast: Victor Mature, Carole Landis, Lon Chaney Jr., John Hubbard
Dir: Hal Roach
BW-80 mins, TV-G

Nominated for Oscars for Best Effects, Special Effects -- Roy Seawright (photographic) and Elmer Raguse (sound), and Best Music, Original Score -- Werner R. Heymann

The special effects were so good that special effect footage from this film was used in numerous other films produced well into the 1960s, including Untamed Women (1952), Robot Monster (1953), The Incredible Petrified World (1957), Teenage Cave Man (1958), Valley of the Dragons (1961), One Million AC/DC (1969), and Horror of the Blood Monsters (1970).


9:30am -- The Thing From Another World (1951)
The crew of a remote Arctic base fights off a murderous monster from outer space.
Cast: Margaret Sheridan, Kenneth Tobey, Robert Cornthwaite, Douglas Spencer
Dir: Christian Nyby
BW-87 mins, TV-PG

Howard Hawks asked the US Air Force for assistance in making the film. He was refused because the top brass felt that such cooperation would compromise the U.S. government's official stance that UFOs didn't exist.


11:00am -- The Time Machine (1960)
A turn-of-the-century inventor sends himself into the future to save humanity.
Cast: Rod Taylor, Alan Young, Yvette Mimieux, Sebastian Cabot
Dir: George Pal
C-103 mins, TV-G

Won an Oscar for Best Effects, Special Effects -- Gene Warren and Tim Baar

Director George Pal was a close friend of fellow animator Walter Lantz, ever since Lantz did some cut-rate Woody Woodpecker work for Pal's Destination Moon (1950). As tribute, Pal tried to include Woody Woodpecker references in all his subsequent films. In the scenes where the Eloi are having a good time, every so often you can distinctly hear the "Woody Woodpecker" laugh. Also, during the air raid scene, as all the people rush into the shelter a little girl crossing the street stops to pick something up that she dropped. When she does, you can quickly see she picks up a small Woody Woodpecker figure


12:45pm -- War of the Planets (1965)
Martians with mind-control powers attempt to take over the earth.
Cast: Franco Nero, Tony Russel, Massimo Serato, Carlo Giustini
Dir: Antonio Margheriti
C-97 mins, TV-PG

Filmed in Rome and originally titled I diafanoidi vengono da Marte.


2:30pm -- The Wild, Wild Planet (1965)
Space amazons control the Earth by shrinking its leaders.
Cast: Tony Russel, Lisa Gastoni, Massimo Serato, Franco Nero
Dir: Anthony Dawson
C-94 mins, TV-14

This film, I diafanoidi vengono da Marte (1966), Il pianeta errante (1966) and La morte viene dal pianeta Aytin (1967) (the "Gamma One Quadrilogy") were all shot at the same time in order to save money.


4:15pm -- The Land That Time Forgot (1975)
A World War I U-boat takes a wrong turn and discovers a lost world of dinosaurs and cavemen.
Cast: Doug McClure, John McEnery, Susan Penhaligon, Keith Barron
Dir: Kevin Connor
C-91 mins, TV-PG

Michael Moorcock has said his original script was faithful to the book. But the last 20 minutes were changed by the producers to include the volcano and caveman attacks on the Tyler's men and destruction of the submarine.


6:00pm -- Return From Witch Mountain (1978)
A mad scientist kidnaps an alien teen with amazing powers.
Cast: Bette Davis, Christopher Lee, Kim Richards, Ike Eisenmann
Dir: John Hough
C-94 mins, TV-G

Bette Davis agreed to do the movie because it was a picture her grand children could watch. Moreover, Davis had three people tending to her on the set throughout the shooting of the film.


What's On Tonight: TCM PRIME TIME FEATURE: BASED ON GEORGE BERNARD SHAW


8:00pm -- Major Barbara (1941)
A munitions manufacturer tries to reconcile with his revivalist daughter.
Cast: Wendy Hiller, Rex Harrison, Robert Morley, Emlyn Williams
Dir: Gabriel Pascal
BW-121 mins

This is Deborah Kerr's first credited movie role.


10:15pm -- Caesar And Cleopatra (1945)
Julius Caesar gives the famed Egyptian queen lessons in government.
Cast: Vivien Leigh, Claude Rains, Stewart Granger, Flora Robson
Dir: Gabriel Pascal
C-128 mins, TV-G

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Color -- John Bryan

It was the last film version of a George Bernard Shaw play made during his lifetime. His verdict afterward on Leigh's performance: "She's not right at all."


12:30am -- Pygmalion (1938)
A linguistics professor bets he can turn a flower girl into a lady by teaching her to speak properly.
Cast: Leslie Howard, Wendy Hiller, Wilfrid Lawson, Marie Lohr
Dir: Anthony Asquith
BW-96 mins, TV-G

Won an Oscar for Best Writing, Screenplay -- George Bernard Shaw, Ian Dalrymple, Cecil Lewis and W.P. Lipscomb (George Bernard Shaw was not present at the ceremony. When presenter Lloyd C. Douglas announced that Pygmalion has won the Oscar he joked "Mr. Shaw's story now is as original as it was three thousand years ago". Shaw's reaction to the award was not enthusiastic as he is quoted as saying "It's an insult for them to offer me any honour, as if they had never heard of me before - and it's very likely they never have. They might as well send some honour to George for being King of England". Although popular legend says Shaw never received the Oscar, when Mary Pickford visited him she reported that he was on his mantle. When Shaw died in 1950 his home at Ayot St Lawrence became a museum. By this time his Oscar statuette was so tarnished, the curator believed it had no value and used it as a door stop. It has since been repaired and is now on displayed at the museum.)

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Leslie Howard, Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Wendy Hiller, and Best Picture

George Bernard Shaw is the only person to have won both the Academy Award and the Nobel Prize. Some sources incorrectly list former US vice president Al Gore as another person who won both prizes. Al Gore did win the Nobel Peace Prize; however, the Oscar for Gore's documentary An Inconvenient Truth (2006) was given to the film's director, Davis Guggenheim.


2:15am -- The Devil's Disciple (1959)
A preacher and a rebel leader change places during the Revolution.
Cast: Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, Laurence Olivier, Janette Scott
Dir: Alexander Mackendrick
BW-83 mins, TV-PG

Natalie Wood turned down the role of Judith Anderson (eventually played by Janette Scott) because she didn't want to work with Kirk Douglas for "personal" reasons.


3:45am -- The Millionairess (1961)
When the world's richest woman falls for an ascetic Indian doctor, they plan a test to decide whose dreams will come true.
Cast: Sophia Loren, Peter Sellers, Alastair Sim, Vittorio De Sica
Dir: Anthony Asquith
C-86 mins, TV-PG

Peter Sellers and Sophia Loren recorded the novelty song "Goodness Gracious Me!" in order to promote the movie. The song became a big worldwide hit.


5:30am -- MGM Parade Show #23 (1955)
Gene Kelly and Jerry the Mouse perform in a clip from "Anchors Aweigh"; George Murphy, Dore Schary and Richard Brooks show a short film about the making of "The Last Hunt."
Hosted by George Murphy.
BW-26 mins, TV-G

[Staph]

1. George Bernard Shaw Profile

Arguably one of the most famous writers of the 20th century, George Bernard Shaw was born on July 26, 1856 in Synge Street, Dublin, Ireland to George Carr Shaw, a failed grain merchant and his wife Lucinda Gurly, who had been a professional singer. As a child, Shaw attended several schools around Dublin which fostered a life-long hatred of teachers and schools, which he referred to as “prisons and turnkeys in which children are kept to prevent them disturbing and chaperoning their parents.” His reasons were that standardized curricula were useless because they confined the intellect, and he objected to the use of corporal punishment, which was common in schools in his time.

Shaw’s father was an alcoholic and his mother left home when he was sixteen, taking her daughters with her to London where she lived with her music teacher, Vandeleur Lee. Shaw remained behind with his father in Dublin, working at a real estate agency until he was twenty, when he joined his mother in London. There, he was given a pound a week by his family for ghost-writing Lee’s music column in the Hornet newspaper. Shaw spent his time haunting libraries and the British Museum, reading and writing novels, which were unsuccessful at the time they were written but were published after Shaw became famous. Until he was nearly 30, Shaw was unable to make a living as a writer until he became an art critic for the Pall Mall Gazette in 1885 and drama critic for The Saturday Review from 1895 to 1898 which made him well-known for his hatred of the overblown Victorian theater and his desire to see more realistic plays.

Shaw began to write his own plays around 1890 and his first, Widowers’ Houses was produced in 1892. His first real success came in 1897 with the American actor Richard Mansfield’s production of The Devil’s Disciple, and by the end of the decade he was a successful playwright, writing sixty-three plays in all. In addition, he wrote short stories, novels and pamphlets, often for socialist causes, of which he was an ardent supporter; social inequities were a major theme in his work. His outspoken personality made him as famous as his plays. In 1925, Shaw was awarded the Nobel Prize for his contributions to literature, but refused it. He eventually accepted it only because his wife, Charlotte, believed it to be a tribute to Ireland. Neither wanting nor needing the money nor being in favor of awards in general, he refused the cash prize. He asked that it go toward translating Swedish books into English. Shaw treated his Academy Award no better. At the time of his death, it had tarnished so badly that it was nearly unrecognizable and his housekeeper was using it for a doorstop. It was later repaired by the Academy.

Unlike many of his contemporaries, George Bernard Shaw embraced motion pictures at a time when they were considered low-class entertainment without much value. As Michael Holroyd wrote in his biography of Shaw, “He predicted that the cinema would be an invention of even more revolutionary significance than printing. Films told their stories to the illiterate as much to the literate – ‘that is why the cinema is going to produce effects that all the cheap books in the world could never produce’. He foresaw a time when motion pictures would ‘form the mind of England. The national conscience, the national ideals and tests of conduct,’ he had written in 1914, ‘will be those of the film.’ One day pictures would be ‘brought to my home for me’ and it was in this direction, he told a journalist, ‘that you must look for the most important changes.’”

Shaw himself appeared several times in the newsreels, billed by the Fox Movietone news as "The World’s Outstanding Literary Genius” on his first appearance in America. The newsreels, which are available for viewing on YouTube, reveal a tall, Irish-accented man with a snowy white beard. In the 1930 newsreel for Fox, Shaw pretends the audience has dropped in on him. Having acquired the reputation of a curmudgeon, he used the opportunity to show his lighter side. “I like people to see me. I don’t know how it is but people who only know me from reading my books or sometimes even from seeing my plays get a most unpleasant impression of me. The people who really meet me see that I’m a most harmless person, I’m quite a kindly person you know.” He then proceeds to imitate different faces, including Mussolini, who he kids for looking stern despite having a ‘kindly’ nature. These newsreels were made, he explained later “to satisfy my curiosity and enable me to acquaint myself with the technique of the lens and microphone as I believe that acting and drama can be portrayed far more effectively as well as lucratively from the screen than from the stage.”

Shaw’s first work to be made into a motion picture came in 1921 when a Czech company adapted his first novel, Cashel Byron’s Profession. In 1927 Shaw oversaw an experimental talkie short of the actress Sybil Thorndike doing the Cathedral scene from his play Saint Joan. Two versions of Pygmalion had been produced – in 1935 in Germany and in 1937 in the Netherlands before Shaw met film producer Gabriel Pascal.

Their first meeting was unusual. Pascal had been swimming nude in the sea off of Cap d’Antibes when he came across Shaw, who was treading water. The two introduced themselves, with Pascal saying that he wanted to make films of Shaw’s work. As Pascal swam away, Shaw reportedly called out, “When you are utterly broke, come and call on me and I will let you make one of my plays into a film.” Sometime later, at the end of 1935, Pascal turned up at Shaw’s home unannounced. The two got along famously, with Shaw calling him “a genius, quite outside all ordinary rules.’ As Shaw’s secretary remembered, “G.B.S. never met a human being who entertained him more.” Shaw explained the formation of their partnership, “When Pascal appeared out of the blue, I just looked at him, and handed him Pygmalion to experiment with.” Pascal said, “I was the happiest man in the world.” His enthusiasm, which at times bordered on obsession, moved Shaw to write, “I have had to forbid Pascal to kiss me, as he did at first to the scandal of the village.”

Despite Pascal’s promises to Shaw that he would “make you even more famous and very rich,” he was more a dreamer than a pragmatist, especially when it came to money; something that Shaw was never very interested in. While he personally adored Pascal, Shaw must have been aware of this. He protected his works fiercely, as his letters of agreement were for only one play at a time with the rights restricted for Pascal to make the films only, keeping contractual rights to a five year license; with control of script and a royalty of ten percent of the gross receipts going to Shaw. These made it difficult for Pascal to get the films made, as Shaw explained, “Film work, or anything else of a theatrical nature is fatal to business habits.”

Eventually, Pascal was able to come up with the financing and Pygmalion went into production on March 11, 1938, with Shaw appearing at a press luncheon at Pinewood studios. It was seen as a celebration but it was really to get the investors to pay up. Although Shaw had promised not “to interfere in the direction of the picture, since I cannot, at my age, undertake it myself,” he did want a say in casting. Wendy Hiller was his first choice to play Eliza Doolittle, saying she would be the “film sensation of the next five years.” Shaw’s choice for Henry Higgins was Charles Laughton. He believed Pascal’s choice of Leslie Howard was completely wrong for the role because “he thinks he’s Romeo” and that public would want him to marry Eliza, “which is just what I don’t want.”

Shaw’s love of Wendy Hiller was not shared by Pascal. Hiller remembered, “There was a terrible row and throughout the whole shooting of the picture we were never on speaking terms. But as the direction was in the expert hands of Anthony Asquith we managed remarkably well.” Pygmalion would be nominated for four Academy Awards including Best Actor (Leslie Howard), Best Actress (Wendy Hiller), Best Picture, and Best Writing, Screenplay (for Shaw, Ian Dalrymple, Cecil Lewis and W.P. Lipscomb), which it won. It was also a box office smash.

In all, Pascal produced four films based on Shaw’s plays, Pygmalion, Major Barbara (1941), Caesar and Cleopatra (1945) and Androcles and the Lion (1952) before his death at the age of 60 in 1954.

To date, over 120 film and television adaptations have been made from Shaw’s works, including The Devil’s Disciple (1959) with Laurence Olivier, Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster, and The Millionairess (1960) with Peter Sellers and Sophia Loren, again directed by Anthony Asquith. Sadly, Shaw did not live to see My Fair Lady (1964) with Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison, which was based on Pygmalion, but the longer he lived, the longer it would have been delayed. Shaw hated the 1908 musical production of The Chocolate Soldier (which Oscar Straus had based on Shaw’s 1894 play Arms and the Man) so much that he forbade any musical versions of his works during his lifetime. My Fair Lady was first produced on the stage in 1956, six years after Shaw’s death from complications from a fall, on November 2, 1950. He was 94.

by Lorraine LoBianco

SOURCES:
Holroyd, Michael Bernard Shaw: The Lure of Fantasy 1918-1951
http://imdb.com
http://nobelprize.org
Weintraub, Stanley Shaw: An Autobiography

[elleng]

2. The Rain in Spain falls Mainly in the Plain.

How Kind of you to Let me Come.

:-)

[Staph]

3. In 'Artford, 'Ereford, and 'Ampshire,

'urricanes 'ardly hever 'appen!

[elleng]

4. Was utterly delightful (AND ENLIGHTENING)

to see 3 'Shaw' movies last night!