TCM Schedule for Friday, July 9 -- TCM Prime Time Feature -- Honest Abe

[Staph]

Three hankie alert -- today is full day of tragic romances, including Romeo and Julliet (1936), Wuthering Heights (1939), Love Affair (1939), and Dark Victory (1939). Tonight we have a trio of movies about Abraham Lincoln, starring Raymond Massey, Henry Fonda and Walter Huston. Enjoy!


6:00am -- Romeo and Juliet (1936)
Shakespeare's classic tale of young lovers from feuding families.
Cast: Norma Shearer, Leslie Howard, John Barrymore, Edna May Oliver
Dir: George Cukor
BW-125 mins, TV-G

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Basil Rathbone, Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Norma Shearer, Best Art Direction -- Cedric Gibbons, Fredric Hope and Edwin B. Willis, and Best Picture

The film's literary consultant was Professor William Strunk Jr., co-author of the famous treatise on the English language, Strunk and White's "The Elements of Style." Producer Irving Thalberg hired Strunk to work with the screenwriters to make sure that the Hollywood adaption of Shakespeare's play stayed true and respectful to its original source. Thalberg told Strunk, "Your job is to protect Shakespeare from us."


8:30am -- Wuthering Heights (1939)
A married noblewoman fights her lifelong attraction to a charismatic gypsy.
Cast: Merle Oberon, Laurence Olivier, David Niven, Flora Robson
Dir: William Wyler
BW-104 mins, TV-PG

Won an Oscar for Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Gregg Toland

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Laurence Olivier, Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Geraldine Fitzgerald, Best Art Direction -- James Basevi, Best Director -- William Wyler, Best Music, Original Score -- Alfred Newman, Best Writing, Screenplay -- Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, and Best Picture

In the final sequence, the spirits of Heathcliff and Cathy are seen walking their favorite pathway. This was added after filming was complete, and because Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon had already moved on to other projects, doubles had to be used.


10:30am -- 'Til We Meet Again (1940)
A dying woman shares a shipboard romance with a criminal on his way to the gallows.
Cast: Merle Oberon, George Brent, Pat O'Brien, Geraldine Fitzgerald
Dir: Edmund Goulding
BW-100 mins, TV-PG

Geraldine Fitzgerald was pregnant with her son Michael Lindsay-Hogg during the filming, which is why she has so many close-ups in the beginning but seems to disappear in the second half of the movie.


12:30pm -- Love Affair (1939)
Near-tragic misunderstandings threaten a shipboard romance.
Cast: Irene Dunne, Charles Boyer, Maria Ouspenskaya, Lee Bowman
Dir: Leo McCarey
BW-87 mins, TV-G

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Irene Dunne, Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Maria Ouspenskaya, Best Art Direction -- Van Nest Polglase and Alfred Herman, Best Music, Original Song -- Buddy G. DeSylva for the song "Wishing", Best Writing, Original Story -- Mildred Cram and Leo McCarey, and Best Picture

After this movie was released restaurants were suddenly bombarded with requests for pink champagne.


2:00pm -- Dark Victory (1939)
A flighty heiress discovers inner strength when she develops a brain tumor.
Cast: Bette Davis, George Brent, Humphrey Bogart, Geraldine Fitzgerald
Dir: Edmund Goulding
BW-104 mins, TV-PG

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Bette Davis, Best Music, Original Score -- Max Steiner, and Best Picture

Bette Davis pestered Warner Brothers to buy the rights to the story, thinking it a great vehicle for her. WB studio chief Jack L. Warner fought against it, arguing that no one wanted to see someone go blind. Of course, the film went on to become one of the studio's biggest successes of that year.


4:00pm -- Sweet November (1968)
A woman refuses to let her romances last longer than one month.
Cast: Anthony Newley, Sandy Dennis, Theodore Bikel, Burr DeBenning
Dir: Robert Ellis Miller
C-113 mins

Remade in 2001 with Keanu Reeves and Charlize Theron.


6:00pm -- Invitation (1952)
A millionaire tries to buy his dying daughter a husband.
Cast: Van Johnson, Dorothy McGuire, Ruth Roman, Louis Calhern
Dir: Gottfried Reinhardt
BW-85 mins, TV-G

The haunting theme music by Bronislau Kaper was actually introduced two years earlier in MGM's A Life of Her Own (1950), but became a jazz standard under the title Invitation, especially associated with tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson.


7:30pm -- MGM Parade Show #26 (1955)
Eleanor Powell performs in a clip from "Broadway Melody"; Spencer Tracy performs in a clip from "Captains Courageous." Hosted by George Murphy.
BW-25 mins, TV-G

Captains Courageous was one of the final films Lionel Barrymore made before his degenerative arthritis crippled him. The following year, he was hobbling around on crutches in Frank Capra's "You Can't Take It with You" (1938); after that, he was confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life.


What's On Tonight: TCM PRIME TIME FEATURE: HONEST ABE


8:00pm -- Abe Lincoln In Illinois (1940)
An exploration into the domestic and political life of this past president.
Cast: Raymond Massey, Gene Lockhart, Ruth Gordon, Mary Howard
Dir: John Cromwell
BW-110 mins, TV-G

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Raymond Massey, and Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- James Wong Howe

After his success playing Lincoln in the film and on Broadway, Raymond Massey began to assume the character in real life. He often appeared at social gatherings dressed in Lincoln-esque attire, assuming a Lincoln-like manner and speech. His friend, the playwright George S. Kaufman, observed, "Massey won't be satisfied until someone assassinates him."


10:00pm -- Young Mr. Lincoln (1939)
The future president considers a political career while practicing law.
Cast: Henry Fonda, Alice Brady, Marjorie Weaver, Arleen Whelan
Dir: John Ford
BW-100 mins, TV-G

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Writing, Original Story -- Lamar Trotti

Henry Fonda originally turned down the role of Lincoln, saying he didn't think he could play such a great man. He changed his mind after John Ford asked him to do a screen test in full makeup. After viewing himself as Lincoln in the test footage, Fonda liked what he saw, and accepted the part. He later told an interviewer, "I felt as if I were portraying Christ himself on film."


12:00am -- Abraham Lincoln (1930)
In this biography the simple backwoods boy rises to become one of America's most beloved presidents.
Cast: Walter Huston, Lucille La Verne, W. L. Thorne, Helen Freeman, Otto Hoffman
Dir: D. W. Griffith
BW-90 mins, TV-G

Jason Robards Jr., the son of the actor appearing here as Lincoln's law partner, played Abe Lincoln three times on the small screen: in a 1964 Hallmark Hall of Fame special, a 1991 made-for-TV movie and a 1992 documentary. He has also played three other US presidents.


2:00am -- Superstition (1985)
A witch executed in 1692 returns to the present for revenge.
Cast: Casey King, Bennett Liss, John Alderman, Robert Symonds
Dir: James W. Roberson
C-85 mins, TV-MA

The ornate iron cross used to keep the spirit of the witch in the pond is a prop that was also used in The Evil (1978) which was also produced by Ed Carlin.


3:30am -- The Blood On Satan's Claw (1970)
When farmers unearth a strange skeleton, their children convert to Satanism.
Cast: Barry Andrews, Linda Hayden, Patrick Wymark, Avice Landone
Dir: Piers Haggard
BW-96 mins, TV-MA

The film was originally conceived as three stories that would play out separately, but all have the unearthed remains of Satan being the linking factor between them. The stories of Peter Edmonton and his mad fiance, the possessed village children, and the Judge's battle with evil were all at first suppose to take place independently. However when the script was written it was decided that the plots should be combined to create one central story.


5:15am -- Ask Me, Don't Tell Me (1961)
San Francisco gang members turn their lives around working in community service projects.
Cast: William Winters narrates, Stanley Mosk.
Dir: David Myers.
BW-22 mins, TV-14

Short film documenting the 'Youth for Service' program in San Fransico which gives gang members something positive to do and helps give them a sense of purpose. The program assigns projects to members of these 'jacket clubs' in which they help out the under privileged and elderly.

[Staph]

1. Dark Victory (1939)

Between 1932 - when they were both young up-and-comers at Warner Brothers - and 1942 - when she was Warners' top female star - Bette Davis and George Brent appeared in 11 films together. But never were the two more romantically well matched, and more heartbreakingly in love, than in Dark Victory (1939). And for the first time, their romance continued off screen.

Davis and Brent met while making So Big! in 1932. Davis fell for Brent, but it was unrequited. During their next film, The Rich Are Always With Us (1932), Brent was in love with the film's star, Ruth Chatterton, whom he soon married. Over the course of five more films together, Davis and Brent were both otherwise involved, so only a strong friendship developed. By the time they made Dark Victory, however, Brent was newly divorced from Chatterton, and Davis' first husband was divorcing her.

In Dark Victory, Davis plays Judith Traherne, a party-loving heiress with a terminal brain tumor. She falls in love with her doctor, Brent, and after initially worrying that he pities rather than loves her, agrees to marry him and grab whatever happiness she can in the time she has left. It's an intensely emotional role, and Davis' own emotions were then at the breaking point. Her marriage, as well as recent affairs with director William Wyler and Howard Hughes, were over. Although she had begged Jack Warner to buy the play on which Dark Victory was based, a distraught Davis was convinced she couldn't do justice to Judith, and after only a few days of shooting, begged to be released from the film, claiming she was sick. Producer Hal Wallis replied, "Bette, I've seen the rushes - stay sick!"

Director Edmund Goulding did his best to reassure her, and enlisted the help of co-star Brent. Before long, the two stars were having an affair. The film was shot in sequence, and Davis' nervous intensity in the early scenes, glowing romanticism in the middle, and serenity in the end mirrored her own feelings during the filming. Secure in her new romance, Davis claimed she was "a doll" during production of Dark Victory. But the waspish Bette Davis occasionally broke through her docility. Getting ready to shoot her death scene, Davis jokingly asked the director, "Well, Eddie, am I going to act this, or is Max?" meaning composer Max Steiner. Goulding assured her that the drama would be all hers, but Steiner's choirs of angels eventually did escort Judith into the hereafter, to Davis' dismay.

Dark Victory was a three-hanky hit. Filmgoers and critics alike knew their emotions were being manipulated, but so expertly and touchingly that they couldn't help but cheer. Both Davis' performance and Max Steiner's score were nominated for Academy Awards. As for the Davis-Brent romance, it endured through three more films onscreen, and for over a year off screen. Davis later admitted that she had wanted to marry Brent, but he didn't think it would work. But they maintained an enduring affection and respect for each other. "Of the men I didn't marry," Davis would say, "the dearest was George Brent."

Director: Edmund Goulding
Producer: Hal B. Wallis, David Lewis
Screenplay: Casey Robinson, based on the play by George Emerson Brewer, Jr. & Bertram Bloch
Editor: William Holmes
Cinematography: Ernest Haller
Art Direction: Robert Haas
Music: Max Steiner
Principal Cast: Bette Davis (Judith Traherne), George Brent (Dr. Frederick Steele), Humphrey Bogart (Michael O'Leary), Geraldine Fitzgerald (Ann King), Ronald Reagan (Alec Hamin), Henry Travers (Dr. Parsons), Cora Witherspoon (Carrie Spottswood).
BW-105m. Closed captioning. Descriptive video.

by Margarita Landazuri