TCM Schedule for Friday, January 7 -- TCM Prime Time Feature: Jeanne Crain

[Staph]

More of Star of the Month Peter Sellers, Vincente Minnelli's first two films, an afternoon of Western heroines and anti-heroines, and an evening of Jeanne Crain, including her Oscar-nominated role as Pinky (1949). Enjoy!



5:30am -- The Wrong Box (1966)
Two elderly brothers plot to kill each other for a fortune.
Cast: John Mills, Ralph Richardson, Michael Caine, Peter Cook
Dir: Bryan Forbes
C-106 mins, TV-PG

Peter Cook's wife, Wendy was nine months pregnant when filming began. Director Bryan Forbes promised them that he would let Peter leave the set as soon as Wendy went into labor. He kept his word and Peter made it to the hospital just in time for the birth of his daughter, Daisy. Forbes, Dudley Moore, Michael Caine and Peter Sellers filled his dressing room with flowers and champagne in celebration of Daisy's birth when he returned to work.


7:30am -- Never Let Go (1960)
A cosmetic salesman sets out to prove to himself and his wife that he is not a failure.
Cast: Richard Todd, Peter Sellers, Elizabeth Sellars, Adam Faith
Dir: John Guillermin
BW-91 mins, TV-PG

When Richard Todd is talking to the police outside the run down building that houses Mervyn Johns' flat, there is a peeling poster on the wall advertising the 1955 production of the play The Remarkable Mr Pennypacker starring Nigel Patrick and Elizabeth Sellars.


9:15am -- Cabin In The Sky (1943)
God and Satan battle for the soul of a wounded gambler.
Cast: Ethel Waters, Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, Lena Horne, Louis Armstrong
Dir: Vincente Minnelli
BW-99 mins, TV-G

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Music, Original Song -- Harold Arlen (music) and E.Y. Harburg (lyrics) for the song "Happiness Is a Thing Called Joe".

Apart from the "Shine" sequence, this was Vincente Minnelli's first sole directing assignment. Minnelli had been directing on Broadway, which gave this film a feel that had nothing of the typical "Hollywood Studio System" in it.


11:00am -- I Dood It (1943)
A tailor nurses an unrequited crush on a stage star.
Cast: Red Skelton, Eleanor Powell, Richard Ainley, Patricia Dane
Dir: Vincente Minnelli
BW-103 mins, TV-G

The title of the film is from a catchphrase used by Red Skelton on his radio show when he was in character as the "Mean Widdle Kid".


12:45pm -- Mildred Pierce (1945)
A woman turns herself into a business tycoon to win her selfish daughter a place in society.
Cast: Joan Crawford, Jack Carson, Zachary Scott, Eve Arden
Dir: Michael Curtiz
BW-111 mins, TV-PG

Won an Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Joan Crawford (Joan Crawford was not present at the awards ceremony and feigned ill that night. Meanwhile she listened to the show on the radio. When she won, she ushered the press into her bedroom, where she finally accepted her Oscar.)

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Eve Arden, Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Ann Blyth, Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Ernest Haller, Best Writing, Screenplay -- Ranald MacDougall, and Best Picture

The ad slogan "Don't tell anyone what Mildred Pierce did" was parodied by a Los Angeles diner which had a sign, "For 65c we'll not only serve you a sell blue plate - we'll tell you what Mildred Pierce did."


2:45pm -- Annie Oakley (1935)
The famed female sharpshooter learns that you can't get a man with a gun when she falls for a rival marksman.
Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, Preston Foster, Melvyn Douglas, Moroni Olsen
Dir: George Stevens
BW-90 mins, TV-G

In the movie, during the European tour, Annie shoots a cigarette out of the German Kaiser's mouth. The real Annie wouldn't do that due to the danger and shot the cigarette out of his hand instead. During WWI Annie, reminisced that if she could do it over she'd let him put it in his mouth and then miss.


4:15pm -- The Outlaw (1943)
Billy the Kid and Doc Holliday fight over possession of a stallion and a sultry Mexican girl.
Cast: Jack Beutel, Thomas Mitchell, Jane Russell, Walter Huston
Dir: Howard Hawks
BW-116 mins, TV-PG

Jane Russell got the role after a nationwide search by Howard Hughes for a busty actress. Once they'd found her, Howard Hughes and his aircraft engineers designed a special cantilevered bra to enhance the appearance of her bust. Russell never wore it, but this movie was the reason the famous bra was designed.


6:15pm -- Cat Ballou (1965)
A prim schoolteacher turns outlaw queen when the railroad steals her land.
Cast: Jane Fonda, Lee Marvin, Michael Callan, Dwayne Hickman
Dir: Elliot Silverstein
C-96 mins, TV-PG

Won an Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Lee Marvin

Nominated for Oscars for Best Film Editing -- Charles Nelson, Best Music, Original Song -- Jerry Livingston (music) and Mack David (lyrics) for the song "The Ballad of Cat Ballou", Best Music, Scoring of Music, Adaptation or Treatment -- Frank De Vol, and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium -- Walter Newman and Frank Pierson

The film's horse trainer told Elliot Silverstein that the scene where a horse leans against a wall with its front legs crossed could not be shot because horses don't cross their legs, then that it might be possible if he had a couple of days. Silverstein invoked his rank as director and gave him an hour. The trainer plied the horse with sugar cubes while repeatedly pushing its leg into position, and they were able to get the shot.


8:00pm -- The Fastest Gun Alive (1956)
A reformed gunslinger's past keeps catching up with him.
Cast: Glenn Ford, Jeanne Crain, Broderick Crawford, Russ Tamblyn
Dir: Russell Rouse
BW-89 mins, TV-PG

Filmed in part in Red Rock Canyon State Park, Cantil, California.


10:00pm -- State Fair (1945)
An Iowa family finds romance and adventure at the yearly state fair.
Cast: Jeanne Crain, Dana Andrews, Dick Haymes, Vivian Blaine
Dir: Walter Lang
C-101 mins, TV-G

Won an Oscar for Best Music, Original Song -- Richard Rodgers (music) and Oscar Hammerstein II (lyrics) for the song "It Might as Well Be Spring"

Nominated for an Oscar for Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture -- Charles Henderson and Alfred Newman

Dana Andrews was a trained opera singer but did not actually sing in the movie. Instead his voice was dubbed because the studio was unaware he was a trained singer. He later explained that he didn't correct their mistake because he felt the singer dubbing him probably needed the money and he didn't want to put anyone out of work.


12:00am -- Pinky (1949)
A light-skinned black woman returns home after passing for white in nursing school.
Cast: Jeanne Crain, Ethel Barrymore, Ethel Waters, William Lundigan
Dir: Elia Kazan
BW-102 mins, TV-PG

Nominated for Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Jeanne Crain, Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Ethel Barrymore, and Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Ethel Waters

Lena Horne initially campaigned to play the title role in this movie (she was light enough to photograph "white"), but in the end, the movie studio felt white American audiences would feel more comfortable with a white actress, especially since love scenes with a white actor were involved.


2:00am -- Snapshot (1978)
A sports photographer tires to steal his best friend's girl.
Cast: Jim Henshaw, Susan Petrie, Susan Hogan, Peter Jobin
Dir: Allan Eastman
C-100 mins

Filmed in Toronto.


3:30am -- Model Shop (1969)
A young drifter falls for a beautiful model.
Cast: Anouk Aimée, Gary Lockwood, Alexandra Hay, Carol Cole
Dir: Jacques Demy
C-97 mins, TV-14

Harrison Ford was Jacques Demy's first choice for the main character instead of Gary Lockwood, but Columbia didn't want Ford, saying he wouldn't make any money. Demy's wife Agnès Varda shot a screen test of Ford, clips of which are included in her documentary The Beaches of Agnès (2008).


5:15am -- Short Film: RFD Greenwich Village (1969)
A couple tours around New York in this promotional short for corduroy clothing.
C-11 mins, TV-G


5:30am -- Short Film: Wonderful World of Tupperware (1959)
Industrial film showing the making of Tupperware.
C-29 mins, TV-G

[Staph]

1. Jeanne Crain Profile

With her natural beauty and unaffected charm, the young Jeanne Crain was a breath of fresh air in 20th Century Fox films of the 1940s. Her looks and manner became somewhat brittle as she matured, but she remained a top leading lady at Fox into the early '50s. The high point of her career was an Oscar nomination as Best Actress for Pinky (1949), in which she plays a light-skinned black woman who can "pass" for white. Although director Eliza Kazan later wrote that he found her emotionally impassive as an actress, her performance remains a moving one.

She was born Elizabeth Jeanne Crain in Barstow, Calif., on May 25, 1925, and grew up in Los Angeles. She studied drama at UCLA and signed with Fox at the age of 18, making her debut in an uncredited bit in The Gang's All Here (1943). She first attracted favorable attention as Lon McCallister's tomboyish love interest in Home in Indiana (1944), a horse-racing story that became a big hit. After achieving star billing she had an even bigger success in State Fair (1945), a musical with an original Rodgers and Hammerstein score. Dubbed by Louanne Hogan (who would regularly provide her singing voice in Fox films), Crain performed "It Might as Well Be Spring" and other songs.

She was the "good girl" to Gene Tierney's evil schemer in another hit, the classic melodrama Leave Her to Heaven (1945), and was dubbed again by Hogan in the Jerome Kern musical Centennial Summer (1946). She gave an especially engaging performance in Apartment for Peggy (1948) as the pregnant bride of an ex-GI played by William Holden. 1949 was a good year for Crain; in addition to Pinky she acted in A Letter to Three Wives, with Oscar®-winning script and direction by Joseph L. Mankiewicz (who reportedly also disliked her as an actress); and played Lady Windermere in The Fan, an adaptation of a comedy of manners by Oscar Wilde, with a script co-written by no less than Dorothy Parker.

Among Crain's 23 films under her Fox contract, other notable entries included the nostalgic comedy Cheaper by the Dozen (1950) and its sequel, Belles on Their Toes (1952), in both of which she is the eldest daughter of a very large family; People Will Talk (1951), a thoughtful comedy of manners in which she is again directed by Mankiewicz and sparkles opposite Cary Grant; and The Model and the Marriage Broker (1951), in which she is at her most beautiful and, under the sensitive direction of George Cukor, enjoys charming byplay with outstanding character actress Thelma Ritter. Crain's final film before leaving the studio was Vicki (1953), a remake of the 1941 mystery I Wake Up Screaming.

Crain's follow-up films included two Westerns, Universal's Man Without a Star (1955), opposite Kirk Douglas; and MGM's The Fastest Gun Alive (1956), opposite Glenn Ford; and a pair of 1955 musicals, the well-received The Second Greatest Sex for Universal and the poorly received Gentlemen Marry Brunettes for United Artists. In the MGM biopic The Joker Is Wild (1957), she is one of the women in the life of singer/comedian Joe E. Lewis as played by Frank Sinatra. Crain's final feature film was Skyjacked (1972).

She fleshed out her later career on television, landing the choice role of Daisy Buchanan in a Playhouse 90 production of The Great Gatsby before settling in to make appearances in various series. Sprinkled in were a couple of minor film epics made in Europe. Crain was married to Paul Brinkman and they had seven children together. She died a few months after Brinkman's death in 2003.

by Roger Fristoe