TCM Schedule for Wednesday, July 9 -- BIG BANDS IN THE MOVIES

[Longhorn]

5:00am Night Is Young, The (1935)
A European nobleman falls for a ballerina.
Cast: Evelyn Laye, Ramon Novarro, Una Merkel. Dir: Dudley Murphy. BW-81 mins, TV-G

6:30am West Point Of The Air (1935)
An army sergeant inspires his son to become an ace flyer.
Cast: Wallace Beery, Robert Young, Maureen O'Sullivan. Dir: Richard Rosson. BW-89 mins, TV-G

8:00am MGM Parade Show #8 (1955)
Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant perform in a clip from "The Philadelphia Story"; George Murphy introduces a clip from "The Tender Trap." Hosted by George Murphy.
BW-26 mins, TV-G

8:30am Killers of Kilimanjaro (1959)
An American engineer fights to build the first railroad through East Africa.
Cast: Robert Taylor, Anthony Newley, Anne Aubrey. Dir: Richard Thorpe. C-91 mins, TV-PG

10:15am Mountain Road, The (1960)
An American officer helps villiagers against the Japanese during WWII.
Cast: James Stewart, Lisa Lu, Henry Morgan. Dir: Daniel Mann. BW-102 mins, TV-PG

12:00pm Surprise Package (1960)
A deported gangster sends back to the U.S. for money, but his corrupt associates send him a beautiful woman instead.
Cast: Yul Brynner, Mitzi Gaynor, Bill Nagy. Dir: Stanley Donen. BW-99 mins, TV-PG

1:45pm Who Was That Lady? (1960)
A cheating husband convinces his wife his flirtations are actually spy missions.
Cast: Tony Curtis, Janet Leigh, Dean Martin. Dir: George Sidney. BW-114 mins, TV-G

3:45pm Cry for Happy (1961)
Army photographers on leave in Japan take over a geisha house.
Cast: Glenn Ford, Donald O'Connor, Miyoshi Umeki. Dir: George Marshall. C-110 mins, TV-PG

5:45pm Everything's Ducky (1961)
Two sailors think they've struck it rich when they find a talking duck.
Cast: Buddy Hackett, Mickey Rooney, Jackie Cooper. Dir: Don Taylor. BW-80 mins, TV-PG

7:15pm Private Screenings: Mickey Rooney (1997)
Mickey Rooney discusses his life and career with TCM host Robert Osborne.
Cast: Robert Osborne C-41 mins, TV-G

What's On Tonight: TCM SPOTLIGHT: BIG BANDS IN THE MOVIES

8:00pm Song Is Born, A (1948)
A group of music professors takes in a singer on the run from her gangster boyfriend.
Cast: Danny Kaye, Virginia Mayo, Benny Goodman. Dir: Howard Hawks. C-113 mins, TV-G

10:00pm I Dood It (1943)
A tailor nurses an unrequited crush on a stage star.
Cast: Red Skelton, Eleanor Powell, Lena Horne. Dir: Vincente Minnelli. BW-102 mins, TV-G

12:00am Two Girls And A Sailor (1944)
Singing sisters create a World War II canteen and become rivals for the same man.
Cast: June Allyson, Van Johnson, Gloria DeHaven. Dir: Richard Thorpe. BW-124 mins, TV-G

2:15am That's Right--You're Wrong (1940)
A band leader has to overcome a film studio head's hatred to make it on the big screen.
Cast: Kay Kyser, Adolphe Menjou, Lucille Ball. Dir: David Butler. BW-94 mins, TV-G

4:00am Fabulous Dorseys, The (1947)
Two bandleaders rise to the top then split up the act over sibling rivalry.
Cast: Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy Dorsey, Janet Blair. Dir: Alfred E. Green. BW-89 mins, TV-G

5:30am Short Film: Rita Rio and Her Orchestra (1939)
The famous female bandleader and her all-girl orchestra are highlighted in this short.
Cast: Rita Rio. BW-10 mins

5:40am Short Film: CAB CALLOWAY in "HI DE HO" (1937)
In this short, a gypsy sees Cab and his orchestra performing in her tea leaves.
Cast: Cab Calloway. Dir: Roy Mack. BW-11 mins

[Longhorn]

1. Two Girls And A Sailor (1944)

During World War II, Hollywood contributed to morale with a string of patriotic all-star musicals with formulaic plots. Since MGM had "more stars than there are in heaven," their all-star musicals were starrier than most. And no producer did them better than the Hungarian-born Joe Pasternak.

Two Girls and a Sailor (1944), one of the year's most profitable musicals, was a typical Pasternak extravaganza. It was a pastiche of classical piano by Jose Iturbi, the big band sounds of Harry James, Xavier Cugat's Latin rhythms, comedy from Jimmy Durante and Gracie Allen, plus assorted cameos and appealing young newcomers in the leading roles. June Allyson and Gloria DeHaven play a sister song-and-dance team who open up a servicemen's canteen filled with big-name musical acts. Along the way, they get involved with sailor Van Johnson and soldier Tom Drake, and romantic complications ensue before each girl gets the right boy. The plot was MGM's second remake of the backstage story, The Broadway Melody (1929).

June Allyson had appeared in a few film shorts in the late 1930's, but it wasn't until she had a featured role in the Broadway show Best Foot Forward (1941) that MGM signed her to a one-year contract and brought her to Hollywood to appear in the 1943 film version of that show. After six months, unimpressed studio boss Louis B. Mayer was about to drop Allyson, when producer Joe Pasternak came to her rescue. According to Allyson, Pasternak urged Mayer to look at her screen test. "Look at her eyes and listen to her voice. Don't pay attention to anything else about her. Those are distractions we can iron out." Mayer did, and was convinced. After a couple of featured roles in other films, Allyson was given one of the leads in Two Girls and a Sailor. Allyson claims in her autobiography that she was originally supposed to play the glamorous sister, but that her boyfriend (and later husband) Dick Powell told her to ask to play the plain sister, since it was a better part. It was good advice because the film made her a star.

Like Allyson, Gloria DeHaven was also being groomed for stardom though she would never become as popular. The two actresses had already appeared together in two films, Best Foot Forward and Thousands Cheer (1943). But they were similar types, and whether it was the roles they played in Two Girls and a Sailor, or some indefinable quality, most critics agreed with Bosley Crowther in the New York Times that "It's a tossup ...as to which is the lovelier girl. But since Miss Allyson is made the more appealing - and makes herself so - she deserved the favored nod."

Van Johnson, a former chorus boy who had also been in Best Foot Forward on Broadway, was the studio's newest leading man, having just scored a big hit in A Guy Named Joe (1943). With Two Girls and a Sailor, he began an on-screen romance with June Allyson which would last through five films. They were the ideal couple, the boy next door and the girl next door. Nearly 60 years later, Johnson and Allyson, along with fellow MGM alumna Gloria DeHaven, remain close friends. And Two Girls and a Sailor remains a delightful (and for all its star power, unpretentious) time capsule of the top musical entertainment of the era.

Director: Richard Thorpe
Producer: Joe Pasternak
Screenplay: Richard Connell, Gladys Lehman
Editor: George Boemler
Cinematography: Robert Surtees
Costume Design: Irene, Kay Dean
Art Direction: Cedric Gibbons, Paul Groesse
Musical Director: Georgie Stoll
Principal Cast: Van Johnson (John Brown III), June Allyson (Patsy Deyo), Gloria DeHaven (Jean Deyo), Jimmy Durante (Billy Kipp), Tom Drake (Frank Miller), Henry Stephenson (John Brown I), Henry O'Neill (John Brown II).
BW-125m. Closed captioning.

by Margarita Landazuri