TCM Schedule for Monday, January 28 -- TCM PRIME TIME FEATURE: BOB'S PICKS

[Longhorn]

3:30am Barefoot Contessa, The (1954)
A Spanish dancer becomes an international star but still longs to get her feet in the dirt.
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Ava Gardner, Edmond O'Brien. Dir: Joseph L. Mankiewicz. C-130 mins, TV-G

5:41am Short Film: One Reel Wonders: Seeing Spain (1953)
C-8 mins

6:00am Thieves Fall Out (1941)
A young man tries to rescue his grandmother from kidnappers.
Cast: Jane Darwell, Eddie Albert, Joan Leslie. Dir: Ray Enright. BW-72 mins, TV-PG

7:15am Unsuspected, The (1947)
The producer of a radio crime series commits the perfect crime, then has to put the case on the air.
Cast: Claude Rains, Joan Caulfield, Constance Bennett. Dir: Michael Curtiz. BW-103 mins, TV-PG

9:00am Arnelo Affair, The (1947)
A neglected wife gets mixed up with an hypnotic charmer and murder.
Cast: George Murphy, Frances Gifford, John Hodiak. Dir: Arch Oboler. BW-87 mins, TV-PG

10:30am Crossfire (1947)
A crusading district attorney investigates the murder of a Jewish man.
Cast: Robert Young, Robert Mitchum, Robert Ryan. Dir: Edward Dmytryk. BW-86 mins, TV-PG

12:00pm Calling Bulldog Drummond (1951)
The British sleuth comes out of retirement to help catch a band of thieves armed with military weapons.
Cast: Walter Pidgeon, Margaret Leighton, David Tomlinson. Dir: Victor Saville. BW-80 mins, TV-PG

1:30pm Affair With A Stranger (1953)
A playwright and his wife search the past for the key to saving their troubled marriage.
Cast: Jean Simmons, Victor Mature, Jane Darwell. Dir: Roy Rowland. BW-87 mins, TV-G

3:00pm Handle With Care (1958)
During a mock trial, a small-town law student uncovers new evidence about a real crime.
Cast: Dean Jones, Joan O?Brien, Thomas Mitchell. Dir: David Friedkin. BW-82 mins, TV-PG

4:30pm Day They Robbed The Bank Of England, The (1960)
Turn-of-the-century Irish patriots plan to overthrow the British government.
Cast: Peter O'Toole, Aldo Ray, Elizabeth Sellars. Dir: John Guillermin. BW-85 mins, TV-G

6:00pm Please Don't Eat The Daisies (1960)
A drama critic and his family try to adjust to life in the country.
Cast: Doris Day, David Niven, Janis Paige. Dir: Charles Walters. C-111 mins, TV-G

What's On Tonight: TCM PRIME TIME FEATURE: BOB'S PICKS

8:00pm I See A Dark Stranger (1945)
An Irish woman who hates the English turns Nazi spy.
Cast: Deborah Kerr, Trevor Howard, Raymond Huntley. Dir: Frank Launder. BW-112 mins, TV-G

10:00pm That Hamilton Woman (1941)
Naval hero Lord Nelson defies convention to court a married woman of common birth.
Cast: Vivien Leigh, Laurence Olivier, Sara Allgood. Dir: Alexander Korda. BW-125 mins, TV-G

12:15am Red Pony, The (1949)
A rancher's son learns a valuable lesson when he's given a pony.
Cast: Myrna Loy, Robert Mitchum, Louis Calhern. Dir: Lewis Milestone. C-89 mins, TV-G

2:00am Squall, The (1929)
A gypsy beauty sets the men of a farming family to fighting over her favors.
Cast: Myrna Loy, Alice Joyce, Loretta Young. Dir: Alexander Korda. BW-102 mins, TV-G

4:00am Here Come The Girls (1953)
A chorus boy is used as bait to catch an attacker.
Cast: Bob Hope, Tony Martin, Arlene Dahl. Dir: Claude Binyon. C-78 mins, TV-G

5:30am Festival of Shorts #18 (1999)
TCM offers two 10-minute shorts Nostradamas (1938), produced as an "MGM Historical Mystery" and More About Nostradamas (1940), part of the "MGM Miniature" series.
BW-23 mins

[Longhorn]

1. Unsuspected, The (1947)

A longtime director at Warner Bros., Michael Curtiz already had helmed such hits as Casablanca (1942) and Mildred Pierce (1945) when he tackled The Unsuspected (1947), a murder mystery. Film noir was then at the height of its vogue and The Unsuspected has much in common with other movies of that genre, particularly Laura (1944), with its eccentric cast of suspects, most of them decadent socialites. And the film's innovative camerawork by Woody Bredell is one of its most celebrated attributes, bearing favorable comparison to the moody chiaroscuro lighting of The Killers (1946), also filmed by Bredell.

For The Unsuspected, Claude Rains' mellifluous voice was perfectly put to use in an atypical leading role as Victor Grandison, the host of a true-crime radio program. Following the mysterious death of an employee at his mansion, Rains becomes embroiled in an elaborate plot involving impersonation, blackmail and murder. Things begin to unravel when an enigmatic young man appears on his doorstep and attempts to solve the killing in the Grandison home.

Rains had worked with director Curtiz on nine other films, including Casablanca, and the Errol Flynn vehicles, The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) and The Sea Hawk (1940). As for Curtiz, The Unsuspected marked his first venture as an independent producer.

Originally seeking Orson Welles for the part that eventually went to Rains, Curtiz also was forced to bypass his initial choice of Jennifer Jones (and then Joan Fontaine) for the part of Rains' niece. Instead he cast Audrey Totter, a rising starlet featured in several notable noirs, including The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) and Lady in the Lake (1947), opposite Robert Montgomery. Although Curtiz could be a tyrant on the set, Totter got along well with him and later admitted (in Dark City Dames by Eddie Muller), "He liked my work, and wanted to put me under personal contract. He'd started his own company and Doris Day was the only other one he'd signed up. But Metro wouldn't let him have me. I'm glad they didn't, because his company didn't pan out, and was folded into Warners. Bette Davis was there, Ida Lupino - people who would have played my parts."

Totter recalled the shoot as a pleasant experience, although Curtiz was a workaholic who demanded the same from his cast and crew. His wife claimed that, although he slept only five hours a night, he often talked in his sleep about films. While shooting The Unsuspected, the director once commandeered guests at his own dinner party, rearranging food and seating arrangements to try out different set-ups for the shoot of the dinner-party sequence in the film.

Yet, even with Curtiz's skilled direction, Bredell's evocative cinematography, sharp dialogue, and a first-rate cast including Constance Bennett in a notable supporting role, The Unsuspected was not an immediate hit with critics. The New Yorker labeled it "a seedy mystery in which the corpses of murdered people are piled around like buns in a bakery's day-old shop." Even Curtiz later admitted, "It looks as though I tried to make a great picture out of a story that wasn't basically a great story." However, Curtiz scored an immediate box office hit with the other film he directed in 1947, the acclaimed portrait of family life in turn-of-the-century New York City, Life With Father.

In recent years The Unsuspected has been singled out as an underrated example of the genre and is chock full of quintessential noir scenes like this one described by Carl Macek in Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style: Jack Lambert as the blackmailed killer lies in bed smoking. The radio is on and Victor Grandison is detailing the story of his particular crime. The only source of illumination in this dingy hotel room comes from a partially obscured flashing neon sign. The letters that are visible through the window seem to echo the thoughts of the uncomfortable murderer as it keeps blinking "Kill...Kill...Kill."

Director: Michael Curtiz
Producer: Charles Hoffman Screenplay: Ranald MacDougall, Bess Meredyth, based on the novel by Charlotte Armstrong
Art Direction: Anton Grot
Cinematography: Woody Bredell
Costume Design: Milo Anderson
Film Editing: Frederick Richards
Original Music: Franz Waxman
Principal Cast: Joan Caulfield (Matilda Frazier), Claude Rains (Victor Grandison), Audrey Totter (Althea Keane), Constance Bennett (Jane Moynihan), Hurd Hatfield (Oliver Keane), Fred Clark (Richard Donovan), Jack Lambert (Mr. Press).
BW-104m. Closed captioning.

by Genevieve McGillicuddy

[Matilda]

2. Let Me Recommend "I See A Dark Stranger".

Early Deborah Kerr - not a great film, but quite delightful to watch.
An Irish girl who hates the British volunteers to become a spy for the
Nazis, but gets in over her head and ends up being pursued by both the
British and the Germans.

[CBHagman]

3. AKA "The Adventuress."

Those of you in the States who have Leonard Maltin's guide to movies on DVD and VHS will probably have to look it up under that plot summary.

You can also get it from Netflix, under the title I See a Dark Stranger.

I'm pretty certain it's a relatively new addition to the TCM line-up, and well worth catching.