TCM Schedule for Monday, April 14 -- GUEST PROGRAMMER: ALEX TREBEK

[Longhorn]

4:00am Gregory's Girl (1981)
A schoolboy falls for a girl who wins a place on his school's soccer team.
Cast: John Gordon Sinclair, Dee Hepburn, Jake D'Arcy. Dir: Bill Forsyth. C-91 mins, TV-14

5:39am Short Film: One Reel Wonders: Mgm Song Writers Revue (1930)
This short showcases composers and lyricists of songs that are now considered standards of American popular music.
Dir: Sammy Lee BW-20 mins

6:00am Singin' In The Rain (1952)
A silent-screen swashbuckler finds love while trying to adjust to the coming of sound.
Cast: Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds, Donald O'Connor. Dir: Gene Kelly, Stanley Donen. C-103 mins, TV-G

7:45am North By Northwest (1959)
An advertising man is mistaken for a spy, triggering a deadly cross-country chase.
Cast: Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason. Dir: Alfred Hitchcock. C-136 mins, TV-PG

10:03am Short Film: One Reel Wonders: Northwest Hounded Police (1946)
C-7 mins

10:15am Maltese Falcon, The (1941)
Hard-boiled detective Sam Spade gets caught up in the murderous search for a priceless statue.
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Sydney Greenstreet. Dir: John Huston. BW-101 mins, TV-PG

12:00pm Casablanca (1942)
An American saloon owner in North Africa is drawn into World War II when his lost love turns up.
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid. Dir: Michael Curtiz. BW-103 mins, TV-PG

2:00pm Philadelphia Story, The (1940)
Tabloid reporters crash a society marriage.
Cast: Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, James Stewart. Dir: George Cukor. BW-112 mins, TV-G

4:00pm Citizen Kane (1941)
The investigation of a publishing tycoon's dying words reveals conflicting stories about his scandalous life.
Cast: Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Agnes Moorehead. Dir: Orson Welles. BW-120 mins, TV-PG

6:00pm Adventures of Robin Hood, The (1938)
The bandit king of Sherwood Forest leads his Merry Men in a battle against the corrupt Prince John.
Cast: Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Basil Rathbone. Dir: William Keighley, Michael Curtiz. C-102 mins, TV-G

7:44pm Short Film: One Reel Wonders: Cavalcade Of Archery (1945)
C-8 mins

What's On Tonight: TCM GUEST PROGRAMMER: ALEX TREBEK

8:00pm Professionals, The (1966)
A corrupt rancher hires four soldiers of fortune to rescue his wife from kidnappers.
Cast: Burt Lancaster, Lee Marvin, Robert Ryan. Dir: Richard Brooks. C-118 mins, TV-MA

10:15pm Wuthering Heights (1939)
A married noblewoman fights her lifelong attraction to a charismatic gypsy.
Cast: Laurence Olivier, Merle Oberon, Geraldine Fitzgerald. Dir: William Wyler. BW-104 mins, TV-PG

12:15am Lonely Are The Brave (1962)
A modern-day cowboy defies the law in order to live a free man.
Cast: Kirk Douglas, Gena Rowlands, Walter Matthau. Dir: David Miller. BW-107 mins, TV-PG

2:15am Little Big Man (1970)
An American pioneer raised by Indians ends up fighting alongside General Custer.
Cast: Dustin Hoffman, Faye Dunaway, Chief Dan George. Dir: Arthur Penn. C-140 mins, TV-14

[Longhorn]

1. Lonely Are The Brave (1962)

A cowboy asleep on his bedroll is awakened by a sound and pauses to smile wryly as a jet zooms overhead. So begins Lonely Are The Brave (1962), Kirk Douglas' favorite of all his films.

In 1960, Douglas read a paperback copy of the source novel, The Brave Cowboy: An Old Tale In A New Time by author Edward Abbey (The Monkey Wrench Gang). He fell in love with the story and demanded that Universal allow him to make it into a film. He explained, "It happens to be a point of view I love. This is what attracted me to the story - the difficulty of being an individual today."

In the film, Jack Burns (Kirk Douglas) rides freely throughout modern New Mexico, even if it means cutting his way through barbed-wire fences. His friend and fellow iconoclast Michael Kane (Paul Bondi) has been imprisoned for helping Mexicans cross the U.S. border illegally (in the original novel he was a draft resister). Burns comes up with a scheme to get himself thrown into the same jail so he can help his friend break out. It leads to a chase across the desert by police cars and helicopters pursuing a cowboy on horseback.

The studio may have thought it would be getting just another Western, but Douglas recruited top talent such as Academy-Award winning writer Dalton Trumbo, who had written Spartacus (1960) two years before, and cinematographer Philip Lathrop (Point Blank, 1967) for a crisp documentary-style look. Walter Matthau, later famous for playing fast-talking big-city roles, is here cast against type as Sheriff Morry Johnson, a man charged with capturing Burns despite his growing respect for him. An actress better known for urban roles, Gena Rowlands, also makes a rare foray into Westerns as the wife of the jailed friend. Making their major film debuts are two actors later to become famous on television; Bill Bixby (The Incredible Hulk) as an airman in the helicopter and Carroll O'Connor (All In The Family) as a truck driver. Another newcomer, Jerry Goldsmith (The Omen, 1976) wrote the score. He credited friend Alfred Newman with getting him his first major studio assignment on Lonely Are The Brave.

The title was a major point of contention between Douglas and the studio. Douglas wanted to call it "The Last Cowboy" and release the film slowly in art-movie houses, allowing it to build through word-of-mouth. Universal overruled him, slapped on the title "Lonely Are The Brave" and dumped it in theaters as if it were another run-of-the-mill Western. Despite its rough handling, Lonely Are The Brave achieved cult status and is often listed as one of the best Westerns ever made.

Producer: Edward Lewis
Director: David Miller
Screenplay: Dalton Trumbo, based on the novel by Edward Abbey
Cinematography: Philip H. Lathrop
Film Editing: Leon Barsha, Edward Mann
Original Music: Jerry Goldsmith
Principal Cast: Kirk Douglas (Jack Burns), Gena Rowlands (Jerri Bondi), Walter Matthau (Sheriff Johnson), Michael Kane (Paul Bondi), Carroll O'Connor (Hinton), William Schallert (Harry), George Kennedy (Deputy Sheriff Gutierrez), Karl Swenson (Rev. Hoskins).
BW-107m.

by Brian Cady