TCM Schedule for Sunday, December 9 -- CHRISTMAS DOUBLE FEATURE

[Longhorn]

4:30am Four Daughters (1938)
A small-town family's peaceful life is shattered when one daughter falls for a rebellious musician.
Cast: Claude Rains, John Garfield, Priscilla Lane. Dir: Michael Curtiz. BW-90 mins, TV-G

6:00am Period Of Adjustment (1962)
A newlywed couple's honeymoon is disrupted by their friends' marital problems.
Cast: Tony Franciosa, Jane Fonda, Jim Hutton. Dir: George Roy Hill. BW-112 mins, TV-PG

8:00am Island In The Sky (1953)
A WWII transport plane crashes in the Canadian wilderness.
Cast: John Wayne, Lloyd Nolan, Walter Abel. Dir: William A. Wellman. BW-110 mins, TV-PG

10:00am Knock On Any Door (1949)
A crusading lawyer fights to save a juvenile delinquent charged with murder.
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, John Derek, George Macready. Dir: Nicholas Ray. BW-100 mins, TV-PG

11:50am Short Film: One Reel Wonders: Beautiful Brazil (1951)
C-9 mins

12:00pm Ace In the Hole (1951)
A small-town reporter milks a local disaster to get back into the big time.
Cast: Kirk Douglas, Jan Sterling, Robert Arthur. Dir: Billy Wilder. BW-111 mins, TV-14

2:00pm Heroes of Telemark, The (1965)
Norwegian resistance fighters try to stop Nazi experiments in nuclear warfare.
Cast: Kirk Douglas, Richard Harris, Ulla Jacobsson. Dir: Anthony Mann. C-130 mins, TV-14

4:15pm On the Town (1949)
Three sailors wreak havoc as they search for love during a whirlwind 24-hour leave in New York City.
Cast: Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Vera-Ellen. Dir: Gene Kelly, Stanley Donen. C-98 mins, TV-G

6:00pm High Society (1956)
In this musical version of The Philadelphia Story, tabloid reporters invade a society wedding.
Cast: Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly, Frank Sinatra. Dir: Charles Walters. C-107 mins, TV-PG

What's On Tonight: TCM PRIME TIME FEATURE: CHRISTMAS DOUBLE FEATURE

8:00pm Christmas Carol, A (1938)
In this adaptation of Charles Dickens' classic tale, an elderly miser learns the error of his ways on Christmas Eve.
Cast: Reginald Owen, Gene Lockhart, Kathleen Lockhart. Dir: Edwin L. Marin. BW-69 mins, TV-G

9:20pm Short Film: One Reel Wonders: Night Before Christmas, The (1941)
C-9 mins

9:30pm Meet John Doe (1941)
A reporter's fraudulent story turns a tramp into a national hero and makes him a pawn of big business.
Cast: Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward Arnold. Dir: Frank Capra. BW-122 mins, TV-G

11:36pm Short Film: One Reel Wonders: Star In The Night (1945)
BW-22 mins

12:00am Iron Horse, The (1924)
A pony express rider honors his father's memory by helping build the transcontinental railway.
Cast: George O'Brien, Madge Bellamy, Charles Edward Bull. Dir: John Ford. BW-133 mins

2:30am Testament des Dr. Mabuse, Das (1933)
A criminal mastermind uses hypnosis to rule the rackets after death.
Cast: Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Otto Wernicke, Gustav Diessl. Dir: Fritz Lang. BW-121 mins, TV-PG

4:45am King Of The Zombies (1941)
A mad scientist raises the dead to fight for Hitler in World War II.
Cast: Dick Purcell, Joan Woodbury, Mantan Moreland. Dir: Jean Yarbrough. BW-67 mins, TV-PG

[Longhorn]

1. Four Daughters (1938)

By 1938, Michael Curtiz was one of Warner Brothers' top directors, who got first crack at all the "A" projects. And Four Daughters (1938) started out with "A" credentials. That it ended up with them was something of a miracle.

The film was based on Sister Act, a novel by Fannie Hurst, about four musical sisters and their widowed father. A script had been written by Lenore Coffee, and promptly forgotten. Then, in 1937, Rosemary and Priscilla Mullican, the younger sisters of a minor actress named Lola Lane, came to Warner Brothers' attention. Taking Lola's stage surname, Rosemary and Priscilla Lane had some success in a couple of Warners programmers. The studio liked the sister act, and had writer Julius Epstein revise Coffee's script for the trio, plus a young actress named Gale Page. To give the film importance, Errol Flynn was assigned to play the musician adored by all the girls, and Michael Curtiz, who had just directed Flynn in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), was assigned to direct. But when the role was not beefed up to Flynn's satisfaction, he dropped out. Jeffrey Lynn replaced him, and without a major star, the "A" project dropped to "B" status, to Curtiz's dismay.

Meanwhile, an actor from the socially conscious Group Theater in New York, recently signed by Warner Brothers, was waiting for his first film assignment. John Garfield got a look at the script for Four Daughters, and liked the secondary part of a cynical pianist who falls for Priscilla Lane's character. Michael Curtiz would later claim credit for getting Warners to sign Garfield, and choosing him for the part of Mickey Borden in Four Daughters. Other sources say Garfield was already under contract, and pestered Curtiz and the producers for the part, even though they wanted Eddie Albert. However it happened, Garfield was cast as Mickey, and played him brilliantly.

Four Daughters was a surprise hit, due largely to Garfield's portrayal of a brand-new screen type - the Rebel Hero. Garfield became an overnight star, and earned an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actor. The film was also nominated for best picture, director, screenplay, and sound recording. The success of Four Daughters would not only inspire three sequels (two of them directed by Curtiz), but an immediate follow-up, Daughters Courageous (1939), featuring the same cast and a similar story, but with a different setting and different names for the characters.

Director: Michael Curtiz
Producer: Hal B. Wallis
Screenplay: Julius J. Epstein, Lenore Coffee, based on the novel Sister Act, by Fannie Hurst
Editor: Ralph Dawson
Cinematography: Ernest Haller
Art Direction: John Hughes
Music: Max Steiner
Principal Cast: Claude Rains (Adam Lemp), May Robson (Aunt Etta), Priscilla Lane (Ann Lemp), Lola Lane (Thea Lemp), Rosemary Lane (Kay Lemp) Gale Page (Emma Lemp), Jeffrey Lynn (Felix Deitz), John Garfield (Mickey Borden).
BW-91m. Closed captioning.

by Margarita Landazuri

[CBHagman]

2. It took me a while to "get" Garfield.

I think I first saw Four Daughters on Canadian TV back in the '80s, and for some reason I had a hard time warming to Garfield as the outsider, the hard-luck guy who longs for the luminous Priscilla Lane. But when I saw TCM's documentary on Garfield, I finally appreciated him for what he was: an electrifying screen presence, a major talent who somehow missed out on being an icon (sort of like Barbara Stanwyck -- great but not easily classifiable). And of course De Niro, Pacino, Hoffman, and many others stand on the man's shoulders.

By the way, Daughters Courageous has some interesting plot twists I didn't see coming (especially the conclusion). It is not a remake of Four Daughters as much as it is another exercise for the winning cast. Check out the Claude Rains-John Garfield interplay in DC the next time it airs.

[Longhorn]

3. Garfield died fairly young.

I wonder if he would have hit his stride as an icon if he had lived longer.

I've never seen Four Daughters, which is one reason I was interested in the article. But it will be recorded! :)

[Matilda]

4. A victim of the McCarthy witch hunts.

His friend Hildegarde Knef, in her autobiography, had no doubt that his
death from heart failure was due to his stress over lack of work after
being called in to testify to HUAC.

I think he possibly would have become one of those stalwarts of the
screen in time - he was the sort of character actor who can just go on
and on because he relied on talent rather than conventional good looks.

[CBHagman]

5. Agreed.

Oh, I think if Garfield had lived, Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese would have been sending scripts his way well into the man's golden years.

[Longhorn]

6. I knew this sounded familiar!

I'm watching my recording of Four Daughters right now and I'm thinking, Wait a minute! I've seen this movie only it starred Doris Day and Frank Sinatra! I checked IMDB and sure enough, Young at Heart was a remake of this movie in 1954. It also features Gig Young, Ethel Barrymore, and Dorothy Malone. John Garfield's character has just shown up in the version I'm watching so I'll have to see if the later movie followed the plot very closely.

[Longhorn]

7. They definitely changed things up in the remake at the end! Spoiler Alert

Frankly, I prefer the newer ending for many reasons, not just because I like happy endings. :) First, I didn't really believe that Ann loved Alex. If she did, I don't think she would have broken off her marriage to him. When she said yes, I think she was more in love with the idea of getting married. She was affectionate toward him but no spark or passion.

In the newer version, when she and Barney come home for the first time at Christmas, she is pregnant but she hasn't told Barney. There was no issue that I recall about Barney running off to South America without Ann, at least not permanently. Their issues revolved around his pessimism and lack of confidence that he deserved to be successful and loved. At the Christmas party, he sees Alex and Ann share a tender but platonic moment but Barney thinks she's still in love with Alex. When Alex gives him the money to help them out, I think he comes to the conclusion that Ann and Alex should be together and that's why he tries to commit suicide. I'm glad he didn't die because Ann finally convinces him that she loves him and tells him about the baby, giving him something to live for. By then, Alex had already hooked up with the other sister that was in love with him so everyone was happy. :D