TCM Schedule for Friday, April 23 -- Special Effects by Douglas Trumball

[Staph]

Happy birthday to Shirley Temple, who is 82 years young today. To celebrate, we've got a wide selection of her later films, from ages 11 to 21. Then tonight, we've got a pair of films with ground-breaking special effects by Douglas Trumball. Enjoy!


5:30am -- The Cheat (1915)
In this silent film, a society woman makes a costly bargain to pay off her debts.
Cast: Fannie Ward, Sessue Hayakawa, Jack Dean, James Neill
Dir: Cecil B. DeMille
C-59 mins, TV-PG

Because of a protest from the Japanese Association of Southern California, Sessue Hayakawa's name and nationality was changed for the 1918 re-release. Originally he was a Japanese called Hishuru Tori; in the re-issue he was a Burmese called Haka Arakau.


6:45am -- The Little Princess (1939)
When her father is reported dead in war, his daughter fights harsh conditions at her boarding school.
Cast: Shirley Temple, Richard Greene, Anita Louise, Ian Hunter
Dir: Walter Lang
C-93 mins, TV-G

The original source of the movie was a novel called "Sara Crewe; or, What Happened at Miss Minchin's" by Frances Hodgson Burnett, and it was published in 1888. She later adapted her book for the stage calling it "A Little Princess" (in London, 1902) and "The Little Princess" (in New York, 1903). It was successful enough that her publisher, C. Scribner's Sons, requested that she expand her original novel to include scenes from the play. The result was the final novel, "A Little Princess; being the whole story of Sara Crewe," which was published in 1905, and is the secondary source for the movie.


8:30am -- Kathleen (1941)
A neglected daughter tries to find the right wife for her widowed father.
Cast: Shirley Temple, Herbert Marshall, Laraine Day, Gail Patrick
Dir: Harold S. Bucquet
BW-88 mins, TV-G

"Lux Radio Theater" broadcast a 60 minute radio adaptation of the movie on December 27, 1943 with Shirley Temple and Herbert Marshall reprising their film roles.


10:00am -- The Bachelor And The Bobby-Soxer (1947)
A teenage girl's crush on a playboy spells trouble, particularly when he falls for her older sister.
Cast: Cary Grant, Myrna Loy, Shirley Temple, Rudy Vallee
Dir: Irving Reis
BW-95 mins, TV-G

Won an Oscar for Best Writing, Original Screenplay -- Sidney Sheldon

Myrna Loy was twenty-three years older than her on-screen sister Shirley Temple .


11:45am -- Honeymoon (1947)
A teen bride eloping to Mexico suddenly falls for an older man.
Cast: Shirley Temple, Franchot Tone, Guy Madison, Lina Romay
Dir: William Keighley
BW-74 mins, TV-G

Based on a story by Vicki Baum, who also wrote the novel and play that became the movie Grand Hotel (1932).


1:00pm -- That Hagen Girl (1947)
A small-town teenager thinks a lawyer is her illegitimate dad.
Cast: Ronald Reagan, Shirley Temple, Rory Calhoun, Lois Maxwell
Dir: Peter Godfrey
BW-83 mins, TV-G

In his autobiography "Where's the Rest of Me?", Ronald Reagan wrote that he attempted to persuade director Peter Godfrey to have the ending rewritten, arguing that audiences wouldn't approve of a romantic pairing between Reagan and the 17-years-younger Shirley Temple. According to Reagan, Godfrey pointed out that his own wife, Renee Godfrey, was 20 years younger than himself, and Reagan decided it would be unwise to press the matter.


2:30pm -- Fort Apache (1948)
An experienced cavalry officer tries to keep his new, by-the-books commander from triggering an Indian war.
Cast: John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Shirley Temple, Pedro Armendariz
Dir: John Ford
BW-128 mins, TV-PG

Shirley Temple and John Agar were married at the time the movie was made, but went through a highly publicized divorce complete with allegations of spousal abuse, infidelity and alcoholism a couple of years later.


4:45pm -- Adventure In Baltimore (1949)
A turn-of-the-century socialite joins the women's suffrage movement.
Cast: Robert Young, Shirley Temple, John Agar, Albert Sharpe
Dir: Richard Wallace
BW-89 mins, TV-G

Based on a story by Christopher Isherwood, who also wrote the source material that became the musical and movie Cabaret (1972).


6:15pm -- The Story Of Seabiscuit (1949)
Fictionalized account of the legendary racehorse's training and triumphs.
Cast: Shirley Temple, Barry Fitzgerald, Lon McCallister, Rosemary De Camp
Dir: David Butler
C-93 mins, TV-G

In the close-ups, Seabiscuit was played by Sea Sovereign, his son.


What's On Tonight: TCM PRIME TIME FEATURE: SPECIAL EFFECTS BY DOUGLAS TRUMBULL


8:00pm -- 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Classic sci-fi epic about a mysterious monolith that seems to play a key role in human evolution.
Cast: Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, William Sylvester, Daniel Richter
Dir: Stanley Kubrick
C-149 mins, TV-G

Won an Oscar for Best Effects, Special Visual Effects -- Stanley Kubrick

Nominated for Oscars for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration -- Anthony Masters, Harry Lange and Ernest Archer, Best Director -- Stanley Kubrick, and Best Writing, Story and Screenplay - Written Directly for the Screen -- Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke

After seeing a documentary called To the Moon and Beyond at the 1964 New York World's Fair, Stanley Kubrick hired one of its special effects technicians, Douglas Trumbull, to work on this film. Trumbull developed a process called Slitscan photography to create the wild, kaleidoscopic images Bowman experiences going through the Stargate. It involved moving the camera rapidly past different pieces of lighted artwork, with the camera shutter held open to allow for a streaking effect. The overall effect gave the audience the sense of plunging into the infinite.


11:00pm -- Close Encounters Of The Third Kind (1977)
A blue-collar worker's encounter with a UFO leaves him a changed man.
Cast: Richard Dreyfuss, Terry Garr, François Truffaut, Melinda Dillon
Dir: Steven Spielberg
C-137 mins, TV-MA

Won an Oscar for Best Cinematography -- Vilmos Zsigmond, as well as a Special Achievement Award for Frank E. Warner for sound effects editing.

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Melinda Dillon, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration -- Joe Alves, Daniel A. Lomino and Phil Abramson, Best Director -- Steven Spielberg, Best Effects, Visual Effects -- Roy Arbogast, Douglas Trumbull, Matthew Yuricich, Gregory Jein and Richard Yuricich, Best Film Editing -- Michael Kahn, Best Music, Original Score -- John Williams, and Best Sound -- Robert Knudson, Robert Glass, Don MacDougall and Gene S. Cantamessa

Real air-traffic controllers were used in the opening sequence. The synthesizer technician/performer was the actual engineer sent by ARP Instruments to install the synthesizer equipment (ARP 2500) on the set. Steven Spielberg watched his expert playing of the equipment and immediately cast him for the role. The name of the ARP engineer is Philip Dodds and he is actually mentioned in the credits.


2:00am -- Hell's Angels (1969)
Two brothers plot to use the Hell's Angels to provide a diversion while they rob a Vegas casino.
Cast: Jeremy Slate, Tom Stern, Conny Van Dyke.
Dir: Ernst Schmidt Jr
C-96 mins

Filmed in part in Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas.


3:45am -- Rebel Rousers (1970)
A businessman fights to rescue his pregnant girlfriend from a motorcycle gang.
Cast: Cameron Mitchell, Jack Nicholson, Bruce Dern, Diane Ladd
Dir: Martin B. Cohen
C-77 mins, TV-14

Filmed in 1967 but not released until 1970 after Jack Nicholson gained fame for his role in Easy Rider (1969).


5:15am -- Short Film: Wild at the Wheel (1970)
Driving safety short directed by legendary social guidance film director Sid Davis.
C-10 mins, TV-PG

Davis' films cover topics such as driver safety, marijuana use, heroin addiction, and gang warfare. Live and Learn (1956), a fairly famous Davis film, features Jill cutting out paper dolls in her room. When her father comes home she jumps up to greet him, trips on the carpet, and impales herself on the scissors. Other children in the film are equally unlucky -- falling off cliffs, being run over by cars, or losing vision in one eye from flying shards of glass.


5:30am -- Short Film: One Got Fat - Bicycle Safety (1963)
Children on the way to a picnic pay the price for bad bicycle safety habits.
Cast: Edward Everett Horton narrates, Diane Chambers, Charles Hagens.
Dir: Dale Jennings.
C-15 mins, TV-PG

The opening car crash sound effects from Signal 30 (1959) are copied for when the last monkey is hit by a car in the dark.

[Staph]

1. Douglas Trumbull Profile

Douglas Trumbull may not be a household name, but most classic movie fans are very familiar with his work. As a true pioneer in the field of Special Effects, Trumbull has given his magic touch to films like 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), and Blade Runner (1982).

Trumbull was born in Los Angeles on April 8, 1942. His father, Don, was a mechanical designer and engineer who had worked in Hollywood on 1939's The Wizard of Oz (and would later work with his son on several projects, including Star Trek: The Motion Picture), but when the United States entered World War II, he left to work in the aviation industry. Douglas Trumbull went to college intending to be an architect, but switched his major to illustration at El Camino College in Torrance, California. The cost of tuition prompted Trumbull to get a job at Graphic Films, a production company that made animated films for NASA and the United States Air Force. Trumbull’s portfolio of space illustrations had impressed Graphic Films and he became head of the background department, where he worked on Lifeline in Space for the Air Force and Space in Perspective for NASA. Another of Graphic Films’ projects was a film produced for the 1964/1965 New York World’s Fair, entitled To the Moon and Beyond, described in the World’s Fair Guide Book as “the most fantastic, incredible voyage through billions of miles of space…from its utmost outer reaches…back to the Earth itself, and into the center of the minutest atom. All through the magic of Cinerama!” Shot in the Cinerama 360 process, it was projected onto a 96 foot globe. One of the attendees of the Fair was director Stanley Kubrick.

Kubrick had been planning a film for MGM called Journey Beyond the Stars (the working title of 2001: A Space Odyssey) and was so impressed with To the Moon and Beyond that he sought out Graphic Films and requested some drawings. When Kubrick moved the production to the Borehamwood Studios in England, he cancelled the contract with Graphic Films and established his own team in the U.K. Trumbull, now out of work, called Kubrick and asked for a job. Kubrick agreed, and at the age of only twenty-three, Trumbull became the youngest member of Kubrick’s special effects team.

His first assignment was as an airbrush artist, later making animated graphics to simulate computer readouts on the computer screens. Along the way, he painted star backgrounds and learned cinematography, animation, photography and miniatures. He helped create a system to automatically photograph spaceship models and developed new animation techniques. Trumbull’s greatest contribution to the film – the “Star Gate” sequence - helped it to win an Academy Award® for Best Visual Effects.

After 2001, Trumbull returned to Los Angeles, where he started Trumbull Film Effects, which produced visual effects for TV commercials. He also created the network identification spot and graphics introducing programs on ABC. Trumbull Film Effects was hired, along with James Shourt to do effects for The Andromeda Strain (1971), directed by Robert Wise. At the same time, Trumbull was hired by Universal Studios to direct a film, despite having never directed before. After the success of Easy Rider (1969), Universal wanted to produce several low budget films to be partially financed by the studio in order to generate similar profits. Trumbull chose the Michael Cimino, Stephen Bochco, and Deric Washburn screenplay for a science-fiction film called Silent Running (1972). The film is set in a future in which the Earth is devastated by pollution and the last forests are placed onto spaceships. With a $1.3 million dollar budget and a crew that now included his father, Trumbull shot the film in only 32 days between February and March 1971, using college students for model-making and other special effects. The film received excellent reviews by the critics but did poorly at the box office due to a low key, ineffective marketing campaign.

Following Silent Running, Trumbull was to make a futuristic film called Pyramid, in which mankind struggles to survive while the sun burns out. As so often happens today, MGM went through changes in administration and the new team decided to cancel all the films greenlit by the previous administration, which killed Pyramid before it could be produced.

With the failure of Pyramid, Trumbull’s company was running out of money, when a deal made with Frank Yablans, the President of Paramount, allowed him to create Future General Corporation, a research and development company in the coastal community of Marina del Rey. Financed by Paramount and run by Trumbull, they created new film technologies and film formats. In the first year alone, they developed Magicam, a new version of compositing in which an actor acted in front of a blue screen. 3D arcade games and an IMAX prototype were also developed at this time. The biggest project was Showscan. A fan of widescreen films since his childhood, Trumbull created a 65mm process, as opposed to the normal 35mm or the 70mm of other widescreen formats. In his experiments, Trumbull learned that when film was projected at 60 frames per second rather than the normal 24 frames, “the surface of the screen disappears. It becomes completely fluid; it’s like a window on reality.” Unfortunately, just as Trumbull was gearing up to fully develop Showscan, Paramount, like MGM went through a regime change. The new administration did not want to put any money into the project, but they didn’t want Trumbull to leave the company, either. “I was just sitting around, twiddling my thumbs and collecting a paycheck,” he said.

Trumbull was finally able to return to films with Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind in which his special effects earned him an Academy Award® nomination; followed quickly by Star Trek: The Motion Picture. The latter was highly challenging as Trumbull and his crew had only five months to create hundreds of effects when the original effects company was fired and their footage deemed unusable. Working round the clock, Trumbull was able to complete the film in time for the Christmas release. It earned Trumbull another Best Effects Oscar® nomination.

Another Academy Award® nomination was given to Trumbull for Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, in which the mold for the mothership from Close Encounters was used to make the landing dock on the police station roof. (“We had no money to invent new gizmos, so we took a very conservative approach.”) Ten years after Silent Running, Trumbull was able to direct another film, Brainstorm (1983) which would be Natalie Wood’s final movie.

In a 1993 interview with Popular Science, Trumbull prophetically theorized that “movies are dinosaurs” and that the future of entertainment would be interactive film experiences and ride simulations. To that end, he worked in rural Massachusetts doing multimedia technologies for theme parks like Universal Studios’ Back to the Future ride, several World’s Fairs, and developed the In Search of the Obelisk film experience for the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas, which features Trumbull’s Showscan technology.

In 1993, Douglas Trumbull was awarded a Scientific and Engineering Academy Award, along with Geoffrey Williamson, Robert Auguste and Edmund DiGiulio, for the “CP-65 Showscan Camera System for 65mm motion picture photography (the first modern 65mm camera developed in 25 years).”

by Lorraine LoBianco

SOURCES:
Britton, Peter The WOW Factor Popular Science, Nov 93
LuBrutto, Vincent Stanley Kubrick
Morton, Ray Close Encounters of the Third Kind: the Making of Steven Spielberg’s Classic
Rickitt, Richard Special Effects: The History and Technique
The Internet Movie Database
Turan, Kenneth Now in Theaters Everywhere: A Celebration of a Certain Kind of Blockbuster

[Matilda]

2. I saw "2001" just a few weeks ago,

and it still stands up today as an example of the very best in special effects. Not the least bit dated. It
really is a brilliant film all round.