TCM Schedule for Thursday, May 20 -- TCM Spotlight -- Race and Hollywood

[Staph]

Happy birthday to Jimmy Stewart, born in Indiana, Pennsylvania, on this date in 1908. We've got a day full of his films, and tonight we return to the subject of Native Americans in Hollywood. Enjoy!


5:00am -- Eyes In The Night (1942)
Blind detective Duncan Maclain gets mixed up with enemy agents and murder when he tries to help an old friend with a rebellious stepdaughter.
Cast: Edward Arnold, Ann Harding, Donna Reed, Horace McNally
Dir: Fred Zinnemann
BW-80 mins, TV-G

Followed by The Hidden Eye (1945)


6:30am -- The Get-Away (1941)
A jailed cop befriends a mob chieftain and stages a breakout with him.
Cast: Robert Sterling, Charles Winninger, Donna Reed, Henry O'Neill
Dir: Richard Rosson
BW-89 mins, TV-PG

Donna Reed's first film


8:05am -- One Reel Wonders: U.S. Navy Band (1943)
A patriotic wartime short showcasing the U.S. Navy Band and their famous songs, interspersed with footage of the Navy in action both during WWII as well as in the before.
Cast: Adm. Ernest J. King, Lt. Charles Brendler
Dir: Jean Negulesco
BW-10 mins

Filmed on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.


8:15am -- Navy Blue And Gold (1937)
Three buddies fight to survive the rigorous training at Annapolis.
Cast: Robert Young, James Stewart, Florence Rice, Billie Burke
Dir: Sam Wood
BW-94 mins, TV-G

Gil Kuhn, captain of the 1936 U.S.C. football team, was "technical expert for gridiron sequences."


10:00am -- Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
An idealistic Senate replacement takes on political corruption.
Cast: Jean Arthur, James Stewart, Claude Rains, Edward Arnold
Dir: Frank Capra
BW-130 mins, TV-G



Won an Oscar for Best Writing, Original Story -- Lewis R. Foster

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- James Stewart, Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Harry Carey, Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Claude Rains, Best Art Direction -- Lionel Banks, Best Director -- Frank Capra, Best Film Editing -- Gene Havlick and Al Clark, Best Music, Scoring -- Dimitri Tiomkin, Best Sound, Recording -- John P. Livadary (Columbia SSD), Best Writing, Screenplay -- Sidney Buchman, and Best Picture

In 1942, when a ban on American films was imposed in German-occupied France, the title theaters chose Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) for their last movie before the ban went into effect. One Paris theater reportedly screened the film nonstop for thirty days prior to the ban.


12:15pm -- The Mortal Storm (1940)
The Third Reich's rise tears apart a German family.
Cast: Margaret Sullavan, James Stewart, Robert Young, Frank Morgan
Dir: Frank Borzage
BW-100 mins, TV-PG

When this movie was made, America was not part of World War II. At this time, a number of Hollywood studios were pro-American involvement in the war. This movie is one of a number of films made during the late 1930s and early 1940s that represented pro-American intervention in the war. These films include: A Yank in the R.A.F. (1941), Man Hunt (1941), Foreign Correspondent (1940), The Mortal Storm (1940), Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939) and Sergeant York (1941).


2:00pm -- Bell, Book and Candle (1959)
A beautiful witch puts a love spell on an unknowing publisher.
Cast: James Stewart, Kim Novak, Jack Lemmon, Ernie Kovacs
Dir: Richard Quine
C-102 mins, TV-PG

Nominated for Oscars for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White or Color -- Cary Odell and Louis Diage, and Best Costume Design, Black-and-White or Color -- Jean Louis

This was James Stewart's final appearance as a romantic lead. This was because many of the leading ladies that were playing his romantic interest were becoming younger and a few were half his age. The critics in 1958 felt that Stewart was miscast as a suave New York businessman, and he apparently agreed. After this film he would concentrate more on roles that portrayed him as an everyman or as a father figure.


3:44pm -- One Reel Wonders: Black Cats And Broomsticks (1955)
Superstitions are examined in the context of mid-20th century America.
Narrator: Peter Roberts
Dir: Larry O'Reilly
BW-8 mins

Walking under ladders, spilt salt, stepping on cracks, haunted houses, voodoo dolls, and such are used to illustrate the widespread belief in the supernatural.


4:00pm -- The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)
An experienced gunman and a peace-loving tenderfoot clash with a Western bully.
Cast: James Stewart, John Wayne, Vera Miles, Lee Marvin
Dir: John Ford
BW-123 mins, TV-14

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Costume Design, Black-and-White -- Edith Head

At the beginning of the movie, in the scene in which Vera Miles comes near John Wayne's burned house, the music from John Ford's Young Mr. Lincoln (1939) is played.


6:15pm -- The Man From Laramie (1955)
A wandering cowboy gets caught in the rivalry between an aging rancher's sons.
Cast: James Stewart, Arthur Kennedy, Donald Crisp, Cathy O'Donnell
Dir: Anthony Mann
C-102 mins, TV-PG

The film has been described as a western version of King Lear.


What's On Tonight: TCM SPOTLIGHT: RACE AND HOLLYWOOD


8:00pm -- Devil's Doorway (1950)
A Native American Civil War hero returns home to fight for his people.
Cast: Robert Taylor, Louis Calhern, Paula Raymond, Marshall Thompson
Dir: Anthony Mann
BW-84 mins, TV-PG

Blue-eyed Robert Taylor seems an odd choice to play a full-blooded Indian.


9:30pm -- Little Big Man (1970)
An American pioneer raised by Indians ends up fighting alongside General Custer.
Cast: Dustin Hoffman, Faye Dunaway, Martin Balsam, Richard Mulligan
Dir: Arthur Penn
C-140 mins, TV-14

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Chief Dan George

Dustin Hoffman was entered into The Guinness Book of World Records as "Greatest Age Span Portrayed By A Movie Actor" for Little Big Man (1970) in which he portrayed a character from age 17 to age 121.


12:15am -- Thunderheart (1992)
An FBI man gets back in touch with his Native roots investigating a murder on a reservation.
Cast: Val Kilmer, Sam Shepard, Graham Greene, Fred Dalton Thompson
Dir: Michael Apted
C-119 mins, TV-MA

The movie is actually a thinly veiled account of real events that occurred on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation during the early to mid-Seventies. Exploration for Uranium, disease from irradiated water, the American Indian Movement (AIM) and the "Traditional" Natives fight against the Tribal government "Guardians Of the Oglala Nation (GOON's), and the FBI's assistance to the "Goons" by providing weaponry and other assistance are some of the things that are referred to in the movie that were true and documented by Writer/Director Michael Apted when he was a regular visitor to the Reservation during that time.


2:30am -- Jim Thorpe--All American (1951)
The famous Native American athlete fights prejudice in his pursuit of sports stardom.
Cast: Burt Lancaster, Charles Bickford, Steve Cochran, Phyllis Thaxter
Dir: Michael Curtiz
BW-105 mins, TV-PG

At the Carlisle Indian School, when we first see Jim at the blackboard, he is erasing a formula: I = E/R. This is Ohm's law (1827), in which, in an electrical circuit, you can determine I (current, in amps), E (voltage, in volts), or R (resistance, in ohms) by knowing two of the three values.

[Staph]

1. Navy Blue and Gold (1937)

Three young men from radically different backgrounds become roommates and quick friends at the Naval Academy in Annapolis in Navy Blue and Gold (1937). Richard Gates (Tom Brown) is a wealthy preppie. John "Truck" Cross (James Stewart) is an enlisted man in the Navy anxious to be an officer and to clear the name of his father, who was dishonorably discharged from Annapolis. Roger Ash (Robert Young) is a cocky kid with an irreverent attitude who defies Navy tradition at every turn. The film follows their assorted adventures, studying, romancing and defying or upholding the values of the Academy. All are also players on the Naval Academy football squad and two of them, Ash and Cross, vie for the same woman, Gates' beautiful, vivacious sister Patricia (Florence Rice). A former Annapolis cadet, Captain Skinny Dawes (Lionel Barrymore), now a beloved fixture on the Annapolis scene, becomes a kind of father figure and guardian angel to the trio, occasionally doing his part to get them out of a tight jam.

The rousing climax of the film - an away game at West Point where the Navy-Army rivalry is intense - occurs as Cross awaits news of his dismissal from the Navy for lying about his true identity and Captain Dawes lies sick in the hospital, his very health apparently hinging on a Navy football win.

Navy Blue and Gold had several secrets to its success, offering audiences a celebration of three American institutions: football, Annapolis and the engaging James Stewart. Much of the critical praise for the film was heaped on Stewart's shoulders, who offered a thoroughly convincing performance as an earnest, go-Navy plebe who overcomes tremendous odds in his desire to honor the Academy and his father. The New York Herald Tribune said of Stewart, "If Navy Blue and Gold is not the most beguiling service-college picture yet filmed, it is not Mr. Stewart's fault." The review went on to add, "It is due to his expert rendition of a rather preposterous part that a rather preposterous show becomes generally exciting."

Maybe there were personal reasons for the conviction with which Stewart played a cadet. Though he eventually went to Princeton and graduated with a degree in architecture, James Stewart at one point wanted to attend Annapolis. In real life, Stewart had a long legacy of service, first as an Eagle Scout growing up in his hometown of Indiana, Pennsylvania and then as an Air Force officer during WWII and the first star to enter service, joining up a year before the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He was highly decorated and eventually served in the Air Force Reserve before retiring as a brigadier general, the highest ranking officer in the US military.

Though all three leads were considered a little old to play new cadets (Young was 30, Brown 24 and Stewart 29), the public embraced the film and its patriotic message. The director of Navy Blue and Gold, Sam Wood, undoubtedly played a major role in crafting a wholesome, crowd-pleasing entertainment out of material that might have been hackneyed in another man's hands. Wood had a love of fitness and sports which was often reflected in the other films he helmed such as the story of baseball legend Lou Gehrig in The Pride of the Yankees (1942) and The Stratton Story (1949) starring James Stewart as Chicago White Sox pitcher Monty Stratton, whose career continued despite losing a leg in a hunting accident. Wood's direction of the final Army-Navy game is especially effective, using actual footage of the cadets performing cheers, the Army mule and Navy goat mascots and the jubilation of the cadet-filled stadium.

Director: Sam Wood
Producer: Sam Zimbalist Screenplay: George Bruce based on his novel
Cinematography: John Seitz
Production Design: Cedric Gibbons, Urie McCleary
Music: Edward Ward
Cast: Robert Young (Roger Ash), James Stewart (John "Truck" Cross), Lionel Barrymore (Capt. ÒSkinnyÓ Dawes), Florence Rice (Patricia Gates), Billie Burke (Mrs. Alyce Gates), Tom Brown (Richard Arnold Gates, Jr.), Samuel S. Hinds (Richard A. Gates, Sr.), Paul Kelly (Tommy Milton), Frank Albertson (Weeks).
BW-94m.

by Felicia Feaster