TCM Schedule for Sunday, October 28 -- PRACTICE WHAT YOU PREACH

[Longhorn]

4:00am Green Mansions (1959)
A young adventurer falls in love with a mystical woman in the South American jungle.
Cast: Audrey Hepburn, Anthony Perkins, Lee J. Cobb. Dir: Mel Ferrer. C-104 mins, TV-PG

5:46am Short Film: One Reel Wonders: Poet And Peasant Waltz (1954)
The MGM Symphony Orchestra perfoms the Poet and Peasant Overture.
Cast: MGM Symphony Orchestra Dir: George Sidney C-9 mins

6:00am White Cliffs Of Dover, The (1944)
An American woman with a British husband fights to keep her family together through two world wars.
Cast: Irene Dunne, Van Johnson, Roddy McDowall. Dir: Clarence Brown. BW-126 mins, TV-PG

8:07am Short Film: One Reel Wonders: London Can Take It! (1940)
Despite the nightly Nazi air raids, London's citizens are shown to be courageous and determined.
Cast: Quentin Reynolds BW-9 mins

8:30am Adam Had Four Sons (1941)
A governess becomes the center of a wealthy family after her employer's wife dies.
Cast: Ingrid Bergman, Warner Baxter, Susan Hayward. Dir: Gregory Ratoff. C-80 mins, TV-G

10:00am Postman Always Rings Twice, The (1946)
Illicit lovers plot to kill the woman's older husband.
Cast: Lana Turner, John Garfield, Cecil Kellaway. Dir: Tay Garnett. BW-113 mins, TV-PG

12:00pm Cincinnati Kid, The (1965)
Card sharps try to deal with personal problems during a big game in New Orleans.
Cast: Steve McQueen, Ann-Margret, Edward G. Robinson. Dir: Norman Jewison. C-103 mins, TV-14

1:47pm Short Film: From The Vaults: Cincinnati Kid Plays According To Hoyle, The (1965)
BW-6 mins

2:00pm Take The Money And Run (1969)
An incompetent criminal becomes the subject of a documentary.
Cast: Woody Allen, Janet Margolin, Marcel Hillaire. Dir: Woody Allen. C-85 mins, TV-14

3:30pm Lilies of the Field (1963)
An itinerant handyman in the Southwest gets a new outlook on life when he helps a group of German nuns build a chapel.
Cast: Sidney Poitier, Lilia Skala, Lisa Mann. Dir: Ralph Nelson. BW-95 mins, TV-PG

5:15pm Short Film: One Reel Wonders: Let'S Ask Nostradamus (1953)
BW-11 mins

5:30pm Sense and Sensibility (1995)
Jane Austen's classic tale of two sisters with different romantic notions.
Cast: Hugh Grant, Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet. Dir: Ang Lee. C-136 mins, TV-PG

What's On Tonight: TCM PRIME TIME FEATURE: PRACTICE WHAT YOU PREACH

8:00pm Elmer Gantry (1960)
A young drifter finds success as a traveling preacher until his past catches up with him.
Cast: Burt Lancaster, Jean Simmons, Shirley Jones. Dir: Richard Brooks. C-147 mins, TV-PG

10:30pm Miracle Woman, The (1931)
A phony faith healer fights the temptation to go straight when she falls for a blind man.
Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, David Manners, Beryl Mercer. Dir: Frank Capra. BW-90 mins, TV-PG

12:15am Mr. Wu (1927)
In this silent film, a Chinese patriarch goes mad when his daughter falls for an Englishman.
Cast: Lon Chaney, Louise Dresser, Anna May Wong. Dir: William Nigh. BW-91 mins, TV-PG

2:00am Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell (1968)
Alien creatures turn plane crash survivors into vampires.
Cast: Teruo Yoshida, Tomomi Sato, Eizo Kitamura. Dir: Hajime Sato. C-84 mins, TV-14

[Longhorn]

1. Miracle Woman, The (1931)

The Miracle Woman (1931) was the second of five movies Barbara Stanwyck made for Frank Capra, the director who made her a star in Ladies of Leisure (1930). Capra, who confessed in his autobiography that he had fallen in love with Stanwyck, understood exactly how to handle his young star who was still in her mid-twenties when their association began. Fresh from the Broadway stage, Stanwyck was an instinctive actress who had yet to learn the formidable film technique that became the hallmark of her later performances. But at the time she gave her all on the first take, so Capra arranged to have her shot by multiple cameras, instructing her to keep going with the scene no matter what errors were made or what the other actors did. With this technique he could recapture Stanwyck's fresh reactions in the editing room.

The Miracle Woman, produced at Columbia Pictures from a play called Bless You Sister, was obviously inspired by the most headline-grabbing evangelist of the day, Aimee Simple MacPherson. Stanwyck plays Sister Fallon, a young woman with a gift for religious oratory who gains fame through the efforts of an unsavory promoter who stages phony "faith healings" during her services. "Religion is great if you can sell it, no good if you give it away," he tells her. Sister Fallon eventually finds redemption through the love of a man (David Manners) who believes she can cure his blindness. Before that happens, however, the two walk through a cage of lions as a test of faith.

Since this was before the days of process screens, Stanwyck and Manners had to work with live animals. "The lions were only an invisible netting away from us," Manners later recalled. "I could smell their breath. Barbara's cool made me brave!" Capra added, however, that it was all acting on Stanwyck's part; underneath her bravado, "she was scared to death." Another frightening scene for Stanwyck was the tabernacle fire that serves as the film's climax. Again, little fakery was used and the actress was obliged to stand amid blazing fires, swirling smoke and falling timbers. Capra remembered that, when he reached Stanwyck to carry her out of the inferno, her heart was pounding. He was sure, however, that her dedication was such that she would have stayed until the scene was completed no matter what.

Producer: Harry Cohn
Director: Frank Capra
Screenplay: Jo Swerling, Dorothy Howell (continuity) from play Bless You Sister by John Meehan and Robert Riskin
Cinematography: Joseph Walker
Editing: Maurice Wright
Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Florence "Faith" Fallon), David Manners (John Carson), Sam Hardy (Bob Hornsby), Beryl Mercer (Mrs. Higgins), Russell Hopton (Dan Welford)
BW-91m.

by Roger Fristoe