TCM Schedule for Monday, March 24 -- TCM BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE: JOAN CRAWFORD

[Longhorn]

4:27am Short Film: One Reel Wonders: Wild And Woolly (1931) (1931)
BW-9 mins

4:45am Dancing Lady (1933)
A musical star is torn between a millionaire playboy and her stage manager.
Cast: Joan Crawford, Clark Gable, Fred Astaire. Dir: Robert Z. Leonard. BW-92 mins, TV-G

5:03am Short Film: One Reel Wonders: Dancing On The Ceiling (1937)
BW-9 mins

6:30am Sadie McKee (1934)
A working girl suffers through three troubled relationships on her road to prosperity.
Cast: Joan Crawford, Franchot Tone, Gene Raymond. Dir: Clarence Brown. BW-93 mins, TV-G

8:15am Last Of Mrs. Cheyney, The (1937)
A chic jewel thief in England falls in love with one of her marks.
Cast: Joan Crawford, Robert Montgomery, William Powell. Dir: Richard Boleslawski. BW-98 mins, TV-G

10:00am Women, The (1939)
A happily married woman lets her catty friends talk her into divorce when her husband strays.
Cast: Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell. Dir: George Cukor. BW-133 mins, TV-PG

12:15pm Woman's Face, A (1941)
Plastic surgery gives a scarred female criminal a new outlook on life.
Cast: Joan Crawford, Melvyn Douglas, Conrad Veidt. Dir: George Cukor. BW-106 mins, TV-PG

2:15pm They All Kissed the Bride (1942)
A woman running a trucking company falls for the reporter out to expose her business practices.
Cast: Joan Crawford, Melvyn Douglas, Roland Young. Dir: Alexander Hall. BW-87 mins, TV-PG

3:45pm Humoresque (1946)
A classical musician from the slums is sidetracked by his love for a wealthy neurotic.
Cast: Joan Crawford, John Garfield, Oscar Levant. Dir: Jean Negulesco. BW-125 mins, TV-PG

6:00pm Harriet Craig (1950)
A woman's devotion to her home drives away friends and family.
Cast: Joan Crawford, Wendell Corey, Lucile Watson. Dir: Vincent Sherman. BW-94 mins, TV-PG

What's On Tonight: TCM BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE: JOAN CRAWFORD

7:44pm Short Film: One Reel Wonders: Trader Hound (1931)
BW-15 mins

8:00pm Trader Horn (1931)
An African trader and a white jungle goddess join forces against a hostile tribe.
Cast: Harry Carey, Edwina Booth, Duncan Renaldo. Dir: W.S. Van Dyke II. BW-122 mins, TV-G

10:15pm King Solomon's Mines (1950)
A spirited widow hires a daredevil jungle scout to find a lost treasure in diamonds.
Cast: Deborah Kerr, Stewart Granger, Richard Carlson. Dir: Compton Bennett, Andrew Marton. C-103 mins, TV-PG

12:00am Adam and Evelyne (1949)
When a friend dies, a gambler adopts his daughter.
Cast: Deborah Kerr, Stewart Granger, Richard Carlson. Dir: Harold French. BW-93 mins, TV-G

1:30am Mikado, The (1939)
The Mikado's son flees to avoid an unwanted marriage, only to fall in love with an engaged woman.
Cast: Kenny Baker, Martyn Green, Sydney Granville Dir: Victor Schertzinger C-91 mins, TV-G

3:15am Harvey Girls, The (1946)
Straitlaced waitresses battle saloon girls to win the West for domesticity.
Cast: Judy Garland, John Hodiak, Angela Lansbury. Dir: George Sidney. C-101 mins, TV-G

5:00am Private Screenings: Angela Lansbury (2006)
Angela Lansbury discusses her life and career with TCM host Robert Osborne.
BW-56 mins, TV-PG

[Longhorn]

1. Harriet Craig (1950)

Harriet Craig is, quite literally, a housewife - married to her house, a monster of control who cares more about her home and her possessions than she cares about her marriage. Because of her domestic obsession, she alienates friends and family. George Kelly's Pulitzer Prize-winning play Craig's Wife (1925) was filmed three times: as a silent in 1928, starring Irene Rich and Warner Baxter, directed by William de Mille; in 1936, starring Rosalind Russell and John Boles, directed by Dorothy Arzner; and as Harriet Craig (1950), starring Joan Crawford and Wendell Corey, directed by Vincent Sherman.

Crawford, then in her middle forties, was in yet another phase of her remarkably resilient career, which had taken her from flapper to proletarian working girl to fur-swathed MGM glamour queen to steely, against-all-odds survivor in her Oscar®-winning Mildred Pierce (1945) at her new studio, Warner Bros. Her subsequent roles were even fiercer. In his 1983 book, Joan Crawford: The Ultimate Star, Alexander Walker writes that Flamingo Road (1949), The Damned Don't Cry (1950), and Harriet Craig "all feel like darkening admonitions of a neurotic descent into Crawford's 'panic period,' in which the roles are fashioned to exploit her emotional dependence."

Harriet Craig was Sherman's second of three films with Crawford. During their previous collaboration, The Damned Don't Cry, the married Sherman had begun an affair with his star that would continue through Goodbye, My Fancy (1951). As production on The Damned Don't Cry was wrapping up, Columbia Pictures asked Crawford to star in a remake of Craig's Wife, to be called Lady of the House. She asked Sherman's opinion, and he told her he thought it was dated and wouldn't work, so she turned it down. Soon after, Warner Bros. loaned out Sherman to Columbia for a film with Margaret Sullavan, which he agreed to, not realizing that the film would be Lady of the House. When he found out, he protested, but Columbia chief Harry Cohn insisted. When Crawford heard about it, she called producer William Dozier and told him that she would do the film after all. Sherman was the first, but not the last, to see the similarities between Harriet Craig and Joan Crawford. As he recalled in his 1996 autobiography, Studio Affairs, "I realized that in many ways, she was the embodiment of Harriet Craig...in her obsessive attitude toward her home; her distrust of men and her desire to control; her power of manipulation; and her concept of the proper way for a man to behave toward his wife." Years later, when Crawford's daughter Christina published her tell-all memoir, Mommie Dearest, it was not difficult to see those same parallels in her daughter's description of Crawford's compulsive housekeeping.

Sherman was not happy about making Harriet Craig, but he worked with screenwriter James Gunn to revise the screenplay, and recalled the production of the film as a rewarding experience. He especially enjoyed his creative collaboration with cinematographer Joseph Walker and editor Viola Lawrence, one of a handful women editors in Hollywood at that time.

K.T. Stevens played the role of Harriet's niece, whose romance Harriet tries to destroy, precipitating a showdown between Harriet and her husband Walter. Born Gloria Wood, Stevens was the daughter of director Sam Wood. She made her film debut at the age of two in her father's film Peck's Bad Boy (1921), and changed her name as a young theater actress in the late 1930s, so she would not be accused of exploiting her father's name. She appeared in a few films throughout the 1940s, including Kitty Foyle (1940), directed by her father, but never became a big star. In the 1950s, she began a long and successful career in television, including a four-year stint in the soap opera, The Young and the Restless in the 1970s. She died in 1994.

Crawford's performance in Harriet Craig earned her some of her best reviews since Mildred Pierce. "Joan Crawford does a prime job of putting over the selfish title-character, equipping it with enough sock to cloak the obviousness that motivates the dramatics," according to Variety. Otis Guernsey, Jr. of the New York Herald Tribune agreed. "The film gives authentic movie star Joan Crawford an opportunity to command the camera's attention through an authentic star role. She remains, as always, a stylish performer in her clear and forceful characterization....Her vehicle may be somewhat laborious but it is steady enough to carry Miss Crawford's act."

Director: Vincent Sherman (
Producer: William Dozier
Screenplay: Anne Froelich, James Gunn, based on the play Craig's Wife, by George Kelly
Cinematography: Joseph Walker
Editor: Viola Lawrence
Costume Design: Sheila O'Brien
Art Direction: Walter Holscher
Music: George Duning
Cast: Joan Crawford (Harriet Craig), Wendell Corey (Walter Craig), Lucile Watson (Celia Fenwick), Allyn Joslyn (Billy Birkmire), William Bishop (Wes Miller), K.T. Stevens (Clare Raymond), Viola Roache (Mrs. Harold), Raymond Greenleaf (Henry Fenwick), Ellen Corby (Lottie).
BW-94m.

by Margarita Landazuri

[kskiska]

2. Watched Torch Song the other night

Joan in blackface!!! Incredible!