TCM Schedule for Friday, June 18 -- TCM Spotlight -- Under The Sea

[Staph]

Happy birthday, Jeannette MacDonald, born in 1903 in Philadelphia. We have a day of her films, including a quartet of her Nelson Eddy films. Tonight, we continue the celebration of Jacques-Yves Cousteau's 100th birthday, with three more films from Under the Sea. Jacques Cousteau and Don Knotts -- an interesting juxtaposition! Enjoy!


4:45am -- Affectionately Yours (1941)
A foreign correspondent hurries home to stop his wife from getting a divorce.
Cast: Merle Oberon, Dennis Morgan, Rita Hayworth, Ralph Bellamy
Dir: Lloyd Bacon
BW-88 mins, TV-G

The second of the two films that costarred Hattie McDaniel and Butterfly McQueen. I expect that you remember the first one!


6:15am -- Complicated Women (2003)
Documentary that looks at the phenomenon of "pre-code women" during the years 1929-1934.
Cast: Frances Dee, Kitty Carlisle, Molly Haskell, Mick LaSalle
Dir: Hugh Munro Neely
BW-55 mins, TV-PG

Jane Fonda narrates the story of the years between the ascent of talkies until late in 1934, when the Hays Office cracked down on what it perceived as immorality in Hollywood movies. The emphasis is on how women were portrayed, and focuses on how they were much more liberated and equal (or superior) to men, until 1935 when they once again took subservient roles to their male co-stars.


7:15am -- The Merry Widow (1934)
A prince from a small kingdom courts a wealthy widow to keep her money in the country.
Cast: Maurice Chevalier, Jeanette MacDonald, Edward Everett Horton, Una Merkel
Dir: Ernst Lubitsch
BW-99 mins, TV-PG

Won an Oscar for Best Art Direction -- Cedric Gibbons and Fredric Hope

A French-language version was filmed simultaneously, with Chevalier and MacDonald in the starring roles. (As a trained opera singer, MacDonald spoke and sang excellent French.) However, the rest of the cast was replaced with French-speaking actors. Marcel Vallée played the Ambassador (who is played by Edward Everett Horton in the English version).


9:15am -- Naughty Marietta (1935)
A French princess in Colonial America gets involved with an Indian scout.
Cast: Jeanette MacDonald, Nelson Eddy, Frank Morgan, Elsa Lanchester
Dir: W. S. Van Dyke
BW-104 mins, TV-G

Won an Oscar for Best Sound, Recording -- Douglas Shearer (sound director)

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture

Although Victor Herbert's songs were used for this movie, the plot is not the same as that of the original musical, due to the censorship restrictions of the Hays Office. The two crucial missing characters are the Governor's effeminate son Etienne and the Gypsy girl with whom he has fallen in love. They form an alternate love match which was completely eliminated from the movie version because in the stage version, Etienne is actually a notorious pirate.


11:00am -- Rose Marie (1936)
An opera singer goes undercover in the Canadian wilderness to hunt for her criminal brother.
Cast: Jeanette MacDonald, Nelson Eddy, Reginald Owen, Allan Jones
Dir: W. S. Van Dyke
BW-111 mins, TV-G

According to Louis B. Mayer biographer Charles Higham, Nelson Eddy was reportedly so jealous and insecure about potential competition from tenor Allan Jones that he asked that Jones' footage in the film be reduced; the studio agreed and cut what would have been Jones' only solo number in the film, the famous aria "E lucevan le stelle" from Giacomo Puccini's "Tosca".


1:00pm -- Bitter Sweet (1940)
A voice teacher and his star pupil run away together to a life of love and poverty.
Cast: Jeanette MacDonald, Nelson Eddy, George Sanders, Ian Hunter
Dir: W. S. Van Dyke II
C-93 mins, TV-G

Nominated for Oscars for Best Art Direction, Color -- Cedric Gibbons and John S. Detlie, and Best Cinematography, Color -- Oliver T. Marsh and Allen M. Davey

Except for a few shots where she was doubled by Audrey Scott, Jeanette MacDonald did most of her own horseback riding.


2:45pm -- Smilin' Through (1941)
An embittered man threatens the love life of his niece, who's a dead ringer for his lost fiancee.
Cast: Jeanette MacDonald, Brian Aherne, Gene Raymond, Ian Hunter
Dir: Frank Borzage
C-100 mins, TV-G

The only film in which MacDonald costarred with her husband Gene Raymond.


4:30pm -- I Married An Angel (1942)
A playboy drops his many girlfriends when he falls in love with a grounded angel.
Cast: Jeanette MacDonald, Nelson Eddy, Edward Everett Horton, Binnie Barnes
Dir: Roy Del Ruth
BW-85 mins, TV-G

Because the Hays Code had taken effect in the years since this project was first suggested to MGM, the show's "racy" content (the idea of an angel having sex with a mortal) had to be considerably toned down for the film.


6:00pm -- Three Daring Daughters (1948)
Three young girls try to help their widowed mother find the right husband.
Cast: Jeanette MacDonald, José Iturbi, Jane Powell, Edward Arnold
Dir: Fred M. Wilcox
C-115 mins, TV-G

This musical was declared "morally objectionable" by the Catholic League of Decency for portraying divorce as respectable.


What's On Tonight: TCM SPOTLIGHT: UNDER THE SEA


8:00pm -- Around The World Under The Sea (1966)
An underwater team circles the globe to test an earthquake warning system.
Cast: Lloyd Bridges, Shirley Eaton, Brian Kelly, David McCallum
Dir: Andrew Marton
C-111 mins, TV-G

In 1914, Lloyd Bridges was awarded the winner's cup in a fat-baby contest by its judge, former-President William H. Taft, who thought Lloyd was as fat as he was.


10:00pm -- The Incredible Mr. Limpet (1964)
A World War II 4-F saves the U.S. Navy when he's transformed into a dolphin.
Cast: Don Knotts, Carole Cook, Jack Weston, Andrew Duggan
Dir: Arthur Lubin
C-99 mins, TV-G

Elizabeth MacRae who provides the voice for Ladyfish portrayed Gomer Pyle's girlfriend on "Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C." (1964) which starred Jim Nabors who started out on "The Andy Griffith Show" (1960) as did Don Knotts who voices "The Incredible Mr. Limpet".


12:00am -- Underwater! (1955)
Divers race the clock to find a Caribbean treasure before modern-day pirates can catch up to them.
Cast: Jane Russell, Gilbert Roland, Richard Egan, Lori Nelson
Dir: John Sturges
C-99 mins, TV-PG

At a promotional event for the movie, a young Jayne Mansfield was one of several swimmers participating in a underwater skit when the top of her bathing suit came off, which obviously drew attention to her, and not the movie. It is believed that she let this happen on purpose for the free publicity.


2:00am -- Darktown Strutters (1975)
An all-female biker gang takes off in search of a member's mother.
Cast: Trina Parks, Edna Richardson, Sweet Bettye, Shirley Washington
Dir: William Witney
C-84 mins, TV-14

From the credits: "Any similarity between this true life adventure and the story Cinderella ... is bullshit."


3:45am -- Watermelon Man (1970)
A bigoted man comes to see the many sides of racism.
Cast: Godfrey Cambridge, Estelle Parsons, Howard Caine, D'Urville Martin
Dir: Melvin Van Peebles
C-100 mins, TV-MA

Mae Clarke's final film. She is probably best remembered as the recipient of James Cagney's classic grapefruit-in-the-face in The Public Enemy (1931).


5:30am -- Short Film: Distant Drummer: A Movable Scene (1970)
An education film that exposes drug use and drug culture.
Cast: Robert Mitchum narrates.
C-22 mins, TV-14

Robert Mitchum is an interesting choice to narrate an anti-drug film, as he was arrested for marijuana possession in 1948.

[Staph]

1. The Incredible Mr. Limpet (1964)

Believe it or not, Don Knotts enjoys a vast cult following. Just check out the many internet shrines and personal pages dedicated to him on the worldwide web. While he is most famous for his hilarious portrayal of small town deputy sheriff Barney Fife on The Andy Griffith Show, his film career is distinguished by a handful of truly eclectic comedies like The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (1966), a haunted house farce, and The Love God? (1969), in which he inherits a girlie magazine and becomes a national sex symbol. The strangest one of all, however, is The Incredible Mr. Limpet (1964), an odd combination of live-action and animation which works as both a fantasy musical-romance (the songs by Sammy Fain and Harold Adamson include "I Wish I Were a Fish") and an underwater espionage thriller. Set during the early days of World War II, Knotts plays Henry Limpet, a henpecked bookkeeper in Brooklyn whose only pleasure in life is his all-consuming interest in aquatic life. During an outing to Coney Island with his nagging wife Bessie (Carole Cook) and her admirer (Jack Weston), Limpet falls off the pier and is miraculously transformed into a dolphin. His new life underwater proves to be a lot more exciting than his former life as a man; he falls in love with a beautiful female dolphin called Ladyfish and he becomes the U.S. Navy's secret weapon, tracking down and sinking Nazi U-boats in the Atlantic. Yet, despite a happy ending, there is a core of sadness at the center of the film - that of a loner who never finds his place in human society and instead chooses to live in an alternate fantasy world.

Granted, the premise of The Incredible Mr. Limpet was a little too weird to pass as a Walt Disney film (it was actually produced by Warner Brothers) but if it had actually been created and marketed by the folks at Disney, it might have been a huge success at the box office. As it was, the film didn't quite fit into any niche though it was targeted at family audiences and kiddie matinees.

In his autobiography, Barney Fife and Other Characters I Have Known, Knotts fondly recalls the film and the difficulties of making it: "I was only on-screen as myself for about twenty minutes. The rest of my work was doing the voice of the animated fish. The picture was produced...by a man named John C. Rose...a perfectionist, he hired and fired several animation artists before he found one who came up with a drawing of the fish, Henry Limpet, that satisfied him...I don't think the powers that be at the studio quite understood the picture. According to the director, Arthur Lubin, Jack Warner, who'd been watching the dailies, sent him a memo one day that read: "You've got a funny actor down there. Why don't you give him something funny to do?" Mr. Limpet was not supposed to be funny. Quaint and amusing, yes, but not funny. All of John Rose's dogged determination paid off. I thought it turned out to be a splendid motion picture. I can't say the New York Times critics agreed with that assessment, however. They panned it. While I was in New York doing PR for the picture, I approached the front door of a restaurant and the doorman said, "Welcome back to New York, Mr. Knotts. Gee, I understand you've got a lousy movie in town."

Obviously the New York Times critics represented a minority viewpoint because The Incredible Mr. Limpet has gone on to become a cult favorite over the years through its frequent television showings. Jim Carrey is rumored to be interested in a remake of it and the film was certainly a smart career move for Knotts. Lou Wasserman, president of Universal, saw The Incredible Mr. Limpet and immediately signed Knotts to a long term contract that resulted in a steady stream of profitable comedies beginning with The Ghost and Mr. Chicken and including The Reluctant Astronaut (1967) and The Shakiest Gun in the West (1968). Knotts' unpredictable success as a solo comic led to his own variety show (The Don Knotts Show, 1970-71) and a career resurgence in the mid-seventies due to a series of comedies with co-star Tim Conway (The Apple Dumpling Gang (1975), Gus (1976) and several more).

Producer: John C. Rose
Director: Arthur Lubin
Screenplay: Jameson Brewer, Joe DiMona, Theodore Pratt, John C. Rose
Cinematography: Harold E. Stine
Film Editing: Donald Tait
Art Direction: LeRoy Deane
Music: Harold Adamson, Sammy Fain, Frank Perkins
Cast: Don Knotts (Henry Limpet), Carole Cook (Bessie Limpet), Jack Weston (George Stickel), Andrew Duggan (Harlock), Larry Keating (Admiral Spewter), Elizabeth MacRae (voice of Ladyfish), Paul Frees (voice of Crusty).
C-100m. Letterboxed.

By Jeff Stafford