TCM Schedule for Sunday, May 11 -- STAR OF THE MONTH: FRANK SINATRA

[Longhorn]

5:30am Festival of Shorts #23 (1999)
TCM promotes two 10-minute shorts from 1950 entitled "Screen Actors" and "Moments in Music". This series spotlighted the various arts, crafts, and sciences employed in the making of a motion picture.
BW-21 mins

6:00am Lady For A Day (1933)
A gangster helps an old apple-vendor pose as a society woman to fool her visiting daughter.
Cast: May Robson, Warren William, Guy Kibbee. Dir: Frank Capra. BW-96 mins, TV-G

7:45am Catered Affair, The (1956)
A working-class mother fights to give her daughter a big wedding whether the girl wants it or not.
Cast: Bette Davis, Ernest Borgnine, Debbie Reynolds. Dir: Richard Brooks. BW-94 mins, TV-G

9:30am Great Lie, The (1941)
Believing her husband to be dead, a flyer's wife bargains with his former love to adopt the woman's baby.
Cast: Bette Davis, Mary Astor, George Brent. Dir: Edmund Goulding. BW-108 mins, TV-PG

11:30am Bundle Of Joy (1956)
A shop girl is mistaken for the mother of a foundling.
Cast: Eddie Fisher ,Debbie Reynolds, Adolphe Menjou. Dir: Norman Taurog. C-98 mins, TV-PG

1:12pm Short Film: One Reel Wonders: Day At Santa Anita, A (1937)
C-18 mins

1:30pm Mildred Pierce (1945)
A woman turns herself into a business tycoon to win her selfish daughter a place in society.
Cast: Joan Crawford, Ann Blyth, Jack Carson. Dir: Michael Curtiz. BW-111 mins, TV-PG

3:30pm Mating Season, The (1950)
A woman pretends to be a cleaning lady to get to know her son's high-society in-laws.
Cast: Gene Tierney, John Lund, Thelma Ritter. Dir: Mitchell Leisen. BW-101 mins, TV-G

5:20pm Short Film: One Reel Wonders: Cavalcade Of San Francisco (1940)
C-9 mins

5:30pm I Remember Mama (1948)
Norwegian immigrants face the trials of family life in turn-of-the-century San Francisco.
Cast: Irene Dunne, Barbara Bel Geddes, Oscar Homolka. Dir: George Stevens. BW-134 mins, TV-G

What's On Tonight: STAR OF THE MONTH: FRANK SINATRA

8:00pm Frank Sinatra: A Man and His Music, part 2 (1966)
Frank Sinatra, joined by his daughter Nancy, performs a set of classics.
Cast: Frank Sinatra, Nancy Sinatra. Dir: Dwight Hemion. C-51 mins, TV-G

9:00pm It Happened In Brooklyn (1947)
A returning GI and his friends try to make it in the music business.
Cast: Frank Sinatra, Jimmy Durante, Kathryn Grayson. Dir: Richard Whorf. BW-103 mins, TV-G

11:00pm Frank Sinatra: A Man and His Music, part 2 (1966)
Frank Sinatra, joined by his daughter Nancy, performs a set of classics.
Cast: Frank Sinatra, Nancy Sinatra. Dir: Dwight Hemion. C-51 mins, TV-G

12:00am Guys And Dolls (1955)
A big-city gambler bets that he can seduce a Salvation Army girl.
Cast: Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra, Jean Simmons. Dir: Joseph L. Mankiewicz. C-149 mins, TV-G

2:45am Kissing Bandit, The (1948)
A timid young man is forced to follow in his father's footsteps as a notorious masked bandit.
Cast: Frank Sinatra, Kathryn Grayson, J. Carrol Naish. Dir: Laslo Benedek. C-100 mins, TV-G

[Longhorn]

1. Great Lie, The (1941)

The Oscar® for Best Supporting Actress of 1941 went to a Hollywood veteran, Mary Astor, for her performance as a selfish concert pianist who steals Bette Davis' boyfriend in The Great Lie (1941). Director Edmund Goulding, Astor said, gave her the key to the character: "A piano, brandy, and men. In that order."

Astor had begun her career in silent films, at the age of 15. By the time she made The Great Lie, she'd undergone career ups and downs, and survived a major scandal in her private life. Astor was in her mid-thirties, and had finally hit her stride playing a series of brittle sophisticates. The movie year of 1941, in fact, was a good one for her. Besides The Great Lie, she also co-starred with Humphrey Bogart as the treacherous Brigid O'Shaughnessy in The Maltese Falcon (1941).

The Great Lie was a typical "woman's picture" of the era, a not-very-credible story of romantic travails. Davis had approved the casting of Astor as her rival, not only because she admired Astor as an actress, but because Astor had studied the piano and would be believable playing a Tchaikovsky sonata. In a Bette Davis film, it was usually Davis who provided the bad-girl fireworks, but in The Great Lie, Astor had the more flamboyant part. That would have been fine with Davis, as long as the characters and relationships worked. But Davis hated the script. "It's soap opera drivel and it stinks in all departments!" she complained, and enlisted Astor to help her rewrite the script.

The two women re-worked scenes to add substance and conflict. They gleefully improvised dialogue and situations. Director Goulding was delighted with their inventions, and couldn't wait to see what they'd come up with next. Rumors from the set said that Astor was "stealing the picture" from Davis, but both actresses denied it. "She handed The Great Lie to me on a silver platter," Astor said later. The result was a film that overcame its soap-opera limitations and crackled with wit. When she won her Oscar®, Astor thanked two people: Bette Davis and Tchaikovsky.

Director: Edmund Goulding
Producer: Henry Blanke
Screenplay: Lenore Coffee, based on the novel, January Heights, by Polan Banks
Editor: Ralph Dawson
Cinematography: Tony Gaudio
Art Direction: Carl Jules Weyl
Music: Max Steiner
Cast: Bette Davis (Maggie Patterson), George Brent (Pete Van Allen), Mary Astor (Sandra Kovak), Lucile Watson (Aunt Ada), Hattie McDaniel (Violet)
BW-108m. Closed captioning.

by Margarita Landazari