TCM Schedule for Friday, November 26 -- TCM Prime Time Feature: Music by Ennio Morricone

[Staph]

It took a little digging, but apparently tonight's theme is the music of Ennio Morricone, beginning with his memorable score from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (1966). And in the daylight hours today, we have a quartet of Alfred Hitchcock films, followed by a Dick Cavett interview of the great director from 1972. Enjoy!


4:30am -- Ride, Vaquero! (1953)
Ranchers in New Mexico have to face Indians and bandits.
Cast: Robert Taylor, Ava Gardner, Howard Keel, Anthony Quinn
Dir: John Farrow
C-90 mins, TV-PG

A small uncredited role is played by Movita, aka Marie Castaneda, Marlon Brando's second wife.


4:36am -- One Reel Wonders: Horse With The Human Mind (1946)
We spend the day with Bess, considered by many to be the smartest horse in the movies, as she works with her trainer.
Cast: Frank Whitbeck
Dir: Harry Loud
BW-8 mins

Bess also appeared in Gallant Bess (1946), with Marshall Thompson, George Tobias and Clem Bevans.


6:15am -- Lone Star (1952)
A frontiersman helps out with Texas's fight for independence from Mexico.
Cast: Clark Gable, Ava Gardner, Broderick Crawford, Lionel Barrymore
Dir: Vincent Sherman
BW-95 mins, TV-PG

Lionel Barrymore's last movie, and George Hamilton's first.


8:00am -- My Forbidden Past (1951)
A beauty with a skeleton in her closet seeks revenge on the suitor who jilted her.
Cast: Robert Mitchum, Ava Gardner, Melvyn Douglas, Lucile Watson
Dir: Robert Stevenson
BW-70 mins, TV-PG

Both Ann Sheridan and Polan Banks sued Howard Hughes for not respecting the contract clauses replacing Sheridan by Ava Gardner on loan from MGM.


9:15am -- The Bribe (1949)
A sultry singer tries to tempt a federal agent from the straight-and-narrow.
Cast: Robert Taylor, Ava Gardner, Charles Laughton, Vincent Price
Dir: Robert Z. Leonard
BW-98 mins, TV-PG

"The Screen Guild Theater" broadcast a 30 minute radio adaptation of the movie on November 10, 1949 with Ava Gardner reprising her film role.


11:00am -- Foreign Correspondent (1940)
An American reporter covering the war in Europe gets mixed up in the assassination of a Dutch diplomat.
Cast: Joel McCrea, Laraine Day, Herbert Marshall, George Sanders
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock
BW-120 mins, TV-PG

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Albert Bassermann, Best Art Direction, Black-and-White -- Alexander Golitzen, Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Rudolph Maté, Best Effects, Special Effects -- Paul Eagler (photographic) and Thomas T. Moulton (sound), Best Writing, Original Screenplay -- Charles Bennett and Joan Harrison, and
Best Picture

The ending with Joel McCrea delivering a propaganda broadcast as bombs fall on London was written (by Ben Hecht) and shot after the rest of the film was completed. It replaced a more sardonic ending in which Folliott (George Sanders) tells Haverstock (McCrea) how the Germans will likely cover up the incidents depicted in the main part of the film.


1:00pm -- Strangers On A Train (1951)
A man's joking suggestion that he and a chance acquaintance trade murders turns deadly.
Cast: Farley Granger, Ruth Roman, Robert Walker, Leo G. Carroll
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock
BW-101 mins, TV-PG

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Robert Burks

This is the movie that determined the location of Carol Burnett's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 1951, she was working as an usher when this film was playing at the Warner Theatre on Hollywood Blvd. A couple arrived late, and Burnett, having already seen the film, advised them that it was a wonderful film that should be seen from the very beginning. The manager of the theatre very rudely fired her for this. Years later, when Carol Burnett was asked where she would like to have her star placed on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, she requested that it be placed in front of that theatre.


2:45pm -- Dial M For Murder (1954)
A straying husband frames his wife for the murder of the man he'd hired to kill her.
Cast: Ray Milland, Grace Kelly, Robert Cummings, John Williams
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock
C-105 mins, TV-PG

Alfred Hitchcock arranged to have Grace Kelly dressed in bright colors at the start of the film and made them progressively darker as time goes on.


4:45pm -- To Catch a Thief (1955)
A retired cat burglar fights to clear himself of a series of Riviera robberies committed in his style.
Cast: Cary Grant, Grace Kelly, Jessie Royce Landis, John Williams
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock
C-106 mins, TV-G

Won an Oscar for Best Cinematography, Color -- Robert Burks

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color -- Hal Pereira, J. McMillan Johnson, Sam Comer and Arthur Krams, and Best Costume Design, Color -- Edith Head

For the scene between Robie and the insurance agent, when they talk about the cook's sensitive hands, the German version of the movie differs completely from the original. In English, Robie notes she once strangled a German general without a sound, while in German, he says she once caught a lion escaped from a circus with her bare hands.


6:45pm -- The Dick Cavett Show: Alfred Hitchcock (1972)
Alfred Hitchcock appears in an episode of The Dick Cavett Show that originally aired June 8, 1972.
C-65 mins, TV-PG

In this interview with Dick Cavett, Alfred Hitchcock revealed that the plane crash scene in Foreign Correspondent (1940) was filmed by using footage shot from a stunt plane diving on the ocean, rear projected on rice paper in front of a cockpit set. Also behind the rice paper were two chutes aimed at the cockpit's windshield connected to large tanks of water. With the press of a button at the right moment, water came crashing through the rice paper, into the plane simulating the plane crashing into the sea from the cockpit view.


What's On Tonight: Music by Ennio Morricone


8:00pm -- The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly (1966)
Three men seek hidden loot during the Civil War.
Cast: Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach, Lee Van Cleef, Aldo Giuffrè
Dir: Sergio Leone
C-179 mins, TV-14

In the theatrical trailer, Angel Eyes (Lee Van Cleef) is "The Ugly" and Tuco (Eli Wallach) "The Bad," which is the reverse of their designations in the actual film. This is because the Italian title translated into English is actually The Good, the Ugly, the Bad, not The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, and the Italian trailer had "The Ugly" and "The Bad" in that order. When the trailer was transferred to English, The Ugly and The Bad were not reversed to coincide with the altered title, causing the incorrect designations.


11:15pm -- Days Of Heaven (1978)
Young lovers pose as brother and sister to survive on the American frontier during the early 20th century.
Cast: Richard Gere, Brooke Adams, Sam Shepard, Linda Manz
Dir: Terrence Malick
C-94 mins, TV-MA

Won an Oscar for Best Cinematography -- Néstor Almendros

Nominated for Oscars for Best Costume Design -- Patricia Norris, Best Music, Original Score -- Ennio Morricone, and Best Sound -- John Wilkinson, Robert W. Glass Jr., John T. Reitz and Barry Thomas

Shot almost entirely at "magic hour," the hours between day and night early in the morning and late in the evening. Terrence Malick wanted to have a white sky and no sight of the sun. This was the first film to utilize a new Eastman ultra light-sensitive stock negative which enabled clarified images to be shot in the magic hour; at dawn, at dusk and into the night.


1:00am -- Burn! (1969)
A British agent stifles a slave revolt on a Caribbean island.
Cast: Marlon Brando, Evaristo Marquez, Renato Salvatori, Norman Hill
Dir: Gillo Pontecorvo
C-112 mins, TV-MA

The setting of the film is a fictional sugar cane-producing Caribbean Island named Queimada. In the original script, this fictive island was part of the Spanish empire, which would have been a more accurate historical conceit, since Spain, rather than Portugal, was the dominant European power in the Caribbean. The Spanish government of Francisco Franco pressured the filmmakers to alter the script, and since Portugal accounts for a considerably smaller share of international box-office receipts than Spain, the producers did the economically expedient thing by making the Portuguese the bad guys. No Portuguese is actually spoken in the film, but various forms of Spanish.


3:00am -- Strange Behavior (1981)
A scientist's experiments on teenagers turn them into killers.
Cast: Michael Murphy, Louise Fletcher, Dan Shor, Fiona Lewis
Dir: Michael Laughlin
C-99 mins

Though the film is set in suburban Illinois, the production couldn't find any "authentic" looking locales for a small American town so the production was moved to New Zealand.