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Longhorn (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore | Sat Mar-08-08 10:33 AM Original message |
TCM Schedule for Wednesday, March 12 -- TONY CURTIS |
4:15am Maniac (1963)
A beautiful woman seduces a drifter so he can help free her murderous husband from an insane asylum. Cast: Kerwin Mathews, Nadia Gray, Donald Houston. Dir: Michael Carreras. BW-86 mins, TV-14 5:42am Short Film: From The Vaults: Moscow In Madrid (1965) C-4 mins 6:00am Our Dancing Daughters (1928) A flapper sets her hat for a man with a hard-drinking wife. Cast: Joan Crawford, Johnny Mack Brown, Dorothy Sebastian. Dir: Harry Beaumont. BW-84 mins, TV-G 7:30am Our Modern Maidens (1929) In this silent film, a flapper offers herself to a diplomat to advance her fiance's career. Cast: Joan Crawford, Rod La Rocque, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. Dir: Jack Conway. BW-76 mins, TV-G 8:48am Short Film: One Reel Wonders: Goofy Movies #10 (1934) BW-10 mins 9:00am Our Blushing Brides (1930) Three roommates try to land rich husbands. Cast: Joan Crawford, Anita Page, Robert Montgomery. Dir: Harry Beaumont. BW-99 mins, TV-G 10:50am Short Film: One Reel Wonders: Film Antics (1954) BW-8 mins 11:00am Man in the Vault (1956) Bank robbers force a locksmith to help them with a big heist. Cast: William Campbell, Karen Sharpe, Anita Ekberg. Dir: Andrew V. McLaglen. BW-73 mins, TV-G 12:21pm Short Film: One Reel Wonders: Cavalcade Of San Francisco (1940) C-9 mins 12:30pm Union Station (1950) A secretary gets caught up in the hunt for kidnappers. Cast: William Holden, Nancy Olson, Barry Fitzgerald. Dir: Rudolph Mate. BW-81 mins, TV-PG 2:00pm Walk a Crooked Mile (1948) The FBI and Scotland Yard join forces to stop security leaks at a nuclear power plant. Cast: Louis Hayward, Dennis O'Keefe, Louise Allbritton. Dir: Gordon Douglas. BW-91 mins, TV-G 3:32pm Short Film: One Reel Wonders: Cape Breton Island (1948) In this "Traveltalk," we learn about the history, land, and people of Cape Breton island. Cast: James A. Fitzpatrick C-9 mins 3:56pm Short Film: From The Vaults: Walter Pigeon Announcement (1955) BW-2 mins 4:00pm Pickup Alley (1957) A U.S. narcotics agent trails an international drug smuggler. Cast: Victor Mature, Anita Ekberg, Trevor Howard. Dir: John Gilling. BW-91 mins, TV-G 5:34pm Short Film: One Reel Wonders: Women In Hiding (1940) BW-22 mins 6:00pm Underworld, U.S.A. (1961) A bitter young man sets out to get back at the gangsters who murdered his father. Cast: Cliff Robertson, Dolores Dorn, Beatrice Kay. Dir: Samuel Fuller. BW-98 mins, TV-PG 7:47pm Short Film: One Reel Wonders: Domineering Male, The (1940) BW-10 mins What's On Tonight: TCM PRIME TIME FEATURE: TONY CURTIS 8:00pm Rat Race, The (1960) A musician newly arrived in New York takes in a taxi dancer. Cast: Debbie Reynolds, Tony Curtis, Don Rickles. Dir: Robert Mulligan. C-105 mins, TV-PG 10:00pm Boeing Boeing (1965) A playboy uses airline schedules to maintain "exclusive" relationships with three flight attendants at the same time. Cast: Tony Curtis, Jerry Lewis, Thelma Ritter. Dir: John Rich. C-103 mins, TV-PG 11:45pm Some Like It Hot (1959) Two musicians on the run from gangsters masquerade as members of an all-girl band. Cast: Jack Lemmon, Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis. Dir: Billy Wilder. BW-121 mins, TV-PG 2:00am Operation Petticoat (1959) During World War II, the crew of a decrepit submarine takes on a team of Navy nurses. Cast: Cary Grant, Tony Curtis, Dina Merrill. Dir: Blake Edwards. C-121 mins, TV-G 4:15am Sweet Smell Of Success (1957) A crooked press agent stoops to new depths to help an egotistical columnist break up his sister's romance. Cast: Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis, Martin Milner. Dir: Alexander Mackendrick. BW-96 mins, TV-PG |
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Longhorn (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore | Sat Mar-08-08 10:39 AM Response to Original message |
1. The Rat Race (1960) |
New York City has served as the background and, in some cases, the main star in dozens of films from King Kong (1933) to The Naked City (1948) to Manhattan (1979), and usually it is depicted as a vibrant melting pot of humanity where opportunity and chance encounters can change the course of one’s life. It can also be a place of desperation, danger and soul-crushing despair and The Rat Race (1960), based on Garson Kanin’s play and adapted by him for the screen, falls into this category. Along with such films as The Out of Towners (1970), Death Wish (1974) and Taxi Driver (1976), this tale of two innocents being beaten down by the realities of big city life comes across like a hate letter to the Big Apple, whether that was Kanin’s intentions or not. The Rat Race opens with Peter Hammond, Jr. (Tony Curtis) saying goodbye to his father and boarding a bus bound for New York City where he dreams of becoming a successful and famous saxophone player in a jazz band. As he journeys from Milwaukee toward his destination over the opening credits of the film, we are treated to a montage of evocative roadside Americana circa 1960 set to a stirring jazz score by Elmer Bernstein. When Pete arrives in New York, we catch glimpses of the Greyhound Bus terminal, Dempsey’s Restaurant (it closed in 1974) and the Dixie Hotel (now called Hotel Carter Manhattan and once ranked as the dirtiest hotel in America) before the film transitions into the Paramount studio sets that reveal the movie’s stage origins. Most of the story unfolds in a cramped one room apartment that Pete offers to share with a down-on-her-luck taxi dancer named Peggy (Debbie Reynolds). The arrangement is strictly non-romantic and decisive at first with Pete and Peggy being slowly drawn together by the bad luck and hard knocks they both endure in their daily struggle to survive in this hostile urban environment. Pete is ripped off by street vendors and later a gang of thieves posing as jazz musicians – they invite him to a “fake” audition where he is set up – while Peggy sinks deeper and deeper into debt by borrowing money from her sleazy nightclub boss Nellie (Don Rickles) who, sooner or later, will come to collect the loan in full or else. For Debbie Reynolds, The Rat Race offered a refreshing change of pace from the young ingénue roles she had been typecast in such as Tammy and the Bachelor (1957) and The Mating Game (1959). In her biography Debbie: My Life, the actress wrote, “The Rat Race was going to be a departure for me. I had to play a young girl who has been in New York for five years trying to break into show business. To keep from starving, she models at whatever she can get daytimes, and at night works in a dance hall. I decided I‘d do some research on that kind of life before I started the picture. One night some publicity people from Paramount took me to a dance joint on West Forty-Sixth Street in Manhattan. It was a seedy rundown place with a group of very voluptuous girls and a few dozen guys, mainly older men – a deadbeat-looking crew. They were polite but standoffish. I couldn’t get to know them under the circumstances.” Reynolds decided to approach the taxi dancers on her own later after dressing in a strapless dress and blond wig she bought in a cheap Times Square shop. The working girls were only too happy to give Reynolds pointers on how to dress and “play” their male customers for extra tips without resorting to sexual favors. Reynolds recalled, “The most important thing was to keep a guy dancing, because if a man became interested in one girl, he was apt to spend fifteen or twenty dollars on her in one night. The only man I seemed to shock into showing interest was a little Italian deli owner named Joe. Joe and I started dancing. He reeked of Parmesan and pepperoni. The top of his head came up to my nose. Almost instantly he was kissing my shoulder and saying “I go for you baby.” It broke me up. Joe was not pleased but I couldn’t help it. When he left me on the side of the dance floor, Veronica Reynolds’ after-hours research proved to be valuable training because she gives a convincing performance as a hard-bitten but resilient character who hasn’t completely given in to total cynicism and despair, even though she is one step away from prostitution. Tony Curtis, on the other hand, was at the peak of his stardom when he made The Rat Race and his portrayal of the guileless Pete, while believable, lacks the dramatic impact of his earlier work in Sweet Smell of Success (1957) and The Defiant Ones (1958). Another problem is that Curtis was 35 years old when he made this film, but his naïve character suggests he is barely past the age of a college graduate. Even in his own autobiography, the film had little resonance for him as his recollections proved faulty when describing his role as “a jazz musician trying to make it in a sleazy club run by Don Rickles.” Reynolds is the one in the film working for Rickles and Curtis never even visits the club. Curtis did note, however, that he “had to learn how to play the saxophone for The Rat Race and that he enjoyed working with director Robert Mulligan and co-star Debbie Reynolds. “When we wrapped the film,” Curtis wrote, “she Although Curtis and Reynolds garnered plenty of publicity for their roles in The Rat Race, the film was not a success with their fans who didn’t want to see them in such a relentlessly downbeat drama that offered very little romance but plenty of urban angst. Even by today’s standards, the film is unusually bleak, allowing for very few breaks in the claustrophobic atmosphere due to its theatrical origins. Yet, the film is still well worth seeing for Elmer Bernstein’s pulsating score and cameo appearances by jazz musicians Gerry Mulligan and Sam Butera. The color cinematography of Robert Burks also perfectly captures the milieu of Curtis and Reynolds’ apartment life in the same manner as Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954), which Burks also filmed. Best of all is Don Rickles as the loathsome Nellie who sweats profusely throughout the entire film while radiating malice and contempt for everyone. His big scene where he berates Reynolds after she has come to him for yet another loan is an early indication of his future as the king of the insult comics. In his tirade, he says “You know what I think you’re trouble is, nervous. You know how I can tell? Cause what I call nervous is someone who makes other people nervous and you make me. You’re here, you’re there. You’ve got a Mexican jumping bean mind!” When The Rat Race opened at theatres, the reviews were generally positive with only some minor reservations. The New York Times deemed it “Brisk, believable and entertaining….a clear-eyed, pungently atmospheric view of two youngsters caught in the savage, frenetic business of storming our town’s slightly tarnished artistic and commercial towers….As a result, The Rat Race maintains a sort of wonderama approach to the sordid.” The New York Herald Tribune proclaimed it “a generally jazzy, smart, sometimes violent movie…Although it does have strokes of humor, it generally stays grim, although it is a somewhat lush Technicolor grimness.” And the Variety review noted that “The film is sturdier in its parts than as a whole, but when it’s good it’s very good, thanks mostly to Kanin's witty, adult dialog and Robert Mulligan’s perceptive direction.” One of the few dissenters was the Time magazine reviewer who wrote “The Rat Race is something for the rubbernecks who think New York is a great place to visit but would hate to live there – and never get tired of saying so….The villain of the piece is the great big city, a sort of cold-water Sodom populated by pimps, prostitutes, land pirates, tourist trappers, gay young switchblades, soft-hearted bartenders and hardnosed landlords.” After The Rat Race, Debbie Reynolds would return to the romantic comedy genre with The Pleasure of His Company and The Second Time Around (both 1961) and Tony Curtis would go on to another career highpoint, opposite Kirk Douglas, in Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus (1960). Producers: William Perlberg, George Seaton Director: Robert Mulligan Screenplay: John Michael Hayes (uncredited); Garson Kanin (play) Cinematography: Robert Burks Art Direction: Tambi Larsen, Hal Pereira Music: Elmer Bernstein Film Editing: Alma Macrorie Cast: Tony Curtis (Pete Hammond, Jr.), Debbie Reynolds (Peggy Brown), Jack Oakie (Mac), Kay Medford (Mrs. ‘Soda’ Gallo), Don Rickles (Nellie), Marjorie Bennett (Mrs. Edie Kerry), Hal K. Dawson (Bo Kerry), Norman Fell (Telephone Repairman), Lisa Drake (Toni) C-105m. Letterboxed. by Jeff Stafford Sources: Filmfacts Debbie: My Life by Debbie Reynolds Tony Curtis, the Autobiography by Tony Curtis & Barry Paris afi.com IMDB |
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lavenderdiva (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore | Tue Mar-11-08 07:39 PM Response to Original message |
2. 'Some Like It Hot', a masterpiece! |
What can I even say about this wonderful film? Too many wonderful performances, and the writing is perfection! Here's TCM's background on it:
Why Some Like It Hot is Essential When Jack Lemmon died on June 27, 2001, he left behind a legacy of more than 60 film roles, including some of the most indelible portraits of the modern American male ever committed to celluloid. But even given his Oscar®-winning roles in Mister Roberts (1955) and Save the Tiger (1973), one of the images that will forever pop into people's heads is Lemmon in blonde wig, bee-stung lips, and a sequenced flapper dress. In fact, when Lemmon and Tony Curtis appeared together in 1999 for a Vanity Fair photo spread about Hollywood, they did it partially in drag since their roles as Daphne and Josephine in Some Like It Hot are forever linked in the memories of film lovers everywhere. Running the gamut from broad slapstick to sly sexual innuendo, Some Like It Hot was considered a risky venture when it was released in 1959. This was due to its outrageous sense of humor, which had the potential to offend viewers and risk being viewed as an exercise in bad taste. Yet it was also one of the most successful films of the year and continues to elicit wild laughter, even after repeated viewings. It is certainly the funniest movie ever made by Billy Wilder, a director who was best known (at that time) for dark dramas like Double Indemnit (1944) and Sunset Boulevard (1950). With dead-on performances from Lemmon, Curtis (who also does a perfect Cary Grant imitation) and Marilyn Monroe, Wilder mixed black comedy, nostalgia for the silent era, over-the-top physical humor, and a fine sense of period detail to turn what might have been a smutty one-joke chase movie into a classic of the American screen. Perhaps because it was so fast and funny, audiences and arbiters of taste and morals didn't notice all the winks toward free love, homosexuality, and reversal of gender roles. Or maybe they were ready for it. In any case, besides producing a film whose humor holds up more than 40 years later, Wilder also prefigured contemporary tastes by presenting the story of two men who cross-dress reluctantly at first but end up discovering entirely new sides to their personalities. In the process, they develop a greater sensitivity toward women but also contemplate their own stereotypical male behavior. Luckily Wilder and his cast and crew had confidence the film would work, despite some evidence to the contrary. It previewed disastrously in a Pacific Palisades theater in December 1958 on the same bill as Suddenly Last Summer (1959), Tennessee Williams' perverse tale of taboo sexual urges, lobotomy, and cannibalism. Not exactly a laugh-riot opening feature for Wilder's comedy. In the entire audience of 800 people, only one person laughed; it turned out to be comic and TV host Steve Allen. Yet, according to Jack Lemmon, in an interview with TCM host Robert Osborne, Wilder cut only one scene, a brief bit between Curtis and Monroe that had no effect on the overall structure, plot, or humor. The movie was previewed again, this time in Westwood. The audience began laughing at the very first scene and never let up for the entire two-hour running time. They've been laughing ever since. The inspiration for the film was a German movie musical entitled Fanfares of Love in which two unemployed musicians constantly change costumes in order to get work with different types of bands. In one sequence, the two musicians dress up as girls to play in a women's orchestra and it was this scene which writer/director Billy Wilder lifted as his central premise, adding a gangster subplot which keeps the two musicians on the run. (They accidentally witness the St. Valentine's Day Massacre and are stalked by the killers). Initially, director Billy Wilder envisioned Danny Kaye and Bob Hope as the two male leads. Over time, he dropped this casting idea and toyed with the idea of using two lesser-known but promising young actors: Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis. Wilder had just seen Lemmon, a relative newcomer, in the comedy, Operation Mad Ball (1957), and thought he would make a great Jerry/Daphne. Curtis, on the other hand, had been acting in films since 1949 but finally proved he was a real actor in Sweet Smell of Success (1957). Wilder thought Curtis might be just right for Joe/Josephine and Curtis jumped at the opportunity to work with the director. Then, Frank Sinatra expressed an interest in playing the Jerry/Daphne role and the Lemmon-Curtis teaming was put on hold. Wilder needed a major star for box office insurance and Sinatra was his ace in the hole. At the same time, Mitzi Gaynor was being pursued for the role of Sugar, the female bandleader, until Marilyn Monroe began campaigning for the part. As luck would have it, Sinatra passed on the project but Monroe officially signed on for the film, giving Wilder the superstar he needed for studio financing and clearing the way for Lemmon and Curtis as the male leads. As soon as the contracts were signed, doubts and problems arose. Jack Lemmon said, "A lot of people thought Billy was crazy to attempt such a film. Friends told me I could be ruined because the audience would think I was faggy or had a yen to be a transvestite. There was no getting around one thing; the picture was a minefield for actors. I finally decided the real trap was to ever think of the trap. If one began to worry about that fine line, to fret over audience reaction, it could be disastrous. The only way to play it was to let it all hang out and just go, trusting that Wilder would say, 'Cut,' if it got out of bounds. I saw this character I was to play as a nut from the moon who never really stopped to think once in his life...How else was it possible to justify a guy who, because he's dressed like a woman, delivers a line like: 'If those gangsters come in here and kill us, and we're taken to the morgue dressed like this I'll die of embarrassment.'" Tony Curtis had a much more difficult time adjusting to the cross-dressing aspect of his character. According to Wilder, "When we were testing costumes and the boys got into their dresses and wigs, Jack came out of his room floating ten feet high, completely normal and natural. Tony didn't dare to come out, he was so embarrassed by the whole thing. Lemmon had to take him by the hand and drag him out. It was natural to the one; there were inhibitions in the other." But whatever reservations either actor may have had about their roles, they are both hilarious and unforgettable in the film. The real stumbling block to the movie's shooting schedule was Marilyn Monroe. Her personal problems and doubts about her own acting abilities played havoc with the production. She fought with Wilder over creative aspects (She wanted the film to be shot in color because she didn't like the way she looked in black and white), would arrive late to the set, and demanded constant retakes. Wilder said, "Sometimes this stretched out to three days something that we could have completed in an hour, because after every bad take Marilyn began to cry, and there would have to be new makeup applied." In addition, Marilyn often didn't know her lines and her dialogue had to be written on cue cards or taped on props. A simple line like "Where is that bourbon" might take as many as forty takes. Yet, somehow Monroe successfully completed the film and you'd never suspect from watching her delightful performance that she was a total nightmare on the set. Some Like It Hot was nominated for six Academy Awards® including Best Actor (Jack Lemmon - he lost to Charlton Heston in Ben-Hur), Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, and Best Costume Design. But on the night of the Awards ceremony, it only won one Oscar® - for Best Costume Design by Orry-Kelly, the famous gown fashioner who was a favorite of Bette Davis and other actresses. (He also won Best Costume Design Oscars for An American in Paris (1951) and Les Girl, 1957). In retrospect, some of the Oscar® nominations that year seem unjustified - Doris Day for Best Actress in Pillow Talk? Operation Petticoat for Best Screenplay? But time is the great leveler. Some Like It Hot has developed a hard-core cult audience that grows with each passing year. by Rob Nixon & Jeff Stafford |
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CBHagman (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore | Tue Mar-11-08 09:53 PM Response to Reply #2 |
3. What a great background story! |
Edited on Tue Mar-11-08 09:54 PM by CBHagman
It's amazing to think people told Jack Lemmon his career would be ruined by his drag turn in Some Like It Hot. There are few actors who have had such a long and varied career, excelling at comedy and drama. I can't imagine American film without him!
And when the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., made Lemmon one of its annual honorees, the salute included men in drag singing "They Can't Take That Away from Me." I think they were from the Hasty Pudding Club at Harvard, of which Lemmon was an alumnus, but obviously the nod was to SLIH. |
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lavenderdiva (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore | Tue Mar-11-08 10:12 PM Response to Reply #3 |
4. I can't believe the Oscars that year... what were they thinking??? |
Doris Day for best actress?? come on. I love me some Doris Day, in 'On Moonlight Bay', 'April In Paris', 'By The Light Of The Silvery Moon', 'Love Me Or Leave Me', and of course, 'The Man Who Knew Too Much'. There's so many more to name and appreciate, but these are some of my favorites. But really. Best Actress?
'Operation Petticoat' won for Best Screenplay OVER the amazingly written 'Some Like It Hot'??? go figure. :hi: |
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CBHagman (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore | Tue Mar-11-08 11:08 PM Response to Reply #4 |
5. Apropos of that, lavenderdiva... |
Edited on Tue Mar-11-08 11:08 PM by CBHagman
...one of the things that always amazes me about the message boards at the Internet Movie Database is how many people, ordinary Janes and Joes posting messages, regard themselves as so much more adept and insightful than highly regarded directors, screenwriters, and casting directors. From the genius who thought it would be a good idea to remake Arsenic and Old Lace with Jim Carrey (I wish I were making that one up!) to the expert who lambasted the screenplay for Ball of Fire as having too many characters, mad beings wander the message boards. Isn't it nice to know there are people out there who think they could do a better job than Billy Wilder? It's enough to make me lock my windows and doors.
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Longhorn (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore | Wed Mar-12-08 09:09 AM Response to Reply #5 |
6. Those people are just plain hostile, too! |
I'd say they're as bad as GD-P except then y'all would know I was exaggerating. ;)
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lavenderdiva (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore | Wed Mar-12-08 08:47 PM Response to Reply #5 |
7. ... yup ... |
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