TCM Schedule for Wednesday, July 16 -- TCM BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE: GINGER ROGERS

[Longhorn]

5:15am Evelyn Prentice (1934)
A criminal lawyer's wife faces blackmail when she has an affair.
Cast: Myrna Loy, William Powell, Una Merkel. Dir: William K. Howard. BW-79 mins, TV-G

6:45am Rendezvous (1935)
A decoding expert tangles with enemy spies.
Cast: William Powell, Rosalind Russell, Binnie Barnes. Dir: William K. Howard. BW-94 mins, TV-PG

8:30am Never Wave at a WAC (1952)
A divorced socialite joins the Army hoping it will improve her love life.
Cast: Rosalind Russell, Paul Douglas, Marie Wilson. Dir: Norman Z. McLeod. BW-87 mins, TV-G

10:00am Tight Spot (1955)
A district attorney tries to get a hardboiled woman to testify against the mob.
Cast: Ginger Rogers, Edward G. Robinson, Brian Keith. Dir: Phil Carlson. BW-96 mins, TV-14

11:45am Short Film: From The Vaults: L.B.Mayer Ceremonies (1950)
Louis B. Mayer accepts an award for his contribution to the motion picture industry.
BW-15 mins

12:00pm It Had to Be You (1947)
A runaway bride meets her match in a handsome fireman.
Cast: Ginger Rogers, Cornel Wilde, Spring Byington. Dir: Donald Hartman, Rudolph Mate. BW-98 mins, TV-G

1:50pm Short Film: One Reel Wonders: Wild And Woolly (1931)
BW-9 mins

2:00pm Roberta (1935)
A football player inherits a chic Paris fashion house.
Cast: Irene Dunne, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers. Dir: William A. Seiter. BW-106 mins, TV-G

4:00pm Gay Divorcee, The (1934)
An unhappily married woman mistakes a suitor for the gigolo hired to end her marriage.
Cast: Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Edward Everett Horton. Dir: Mark Sandrich. BW-105 mins, TV-G

6:00pm Swing Time (1936)
To prove himself worthy of his fiancee, a dancer tries to make it big, only to fall for his dancing partner.
Cast: Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Victor Moore. Dir: George Stevens. BW-104 mins, TV-G

What's On Tonight: TCM BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE: GINGER ROGERS

7:45pm Short Film: One Reel Wonders: How To Behave (1936)
BW-10 mins

8:00pm Rhythm Romance (1939)
A carnival con artist tries to ride his girlfriend's singing talents to the big time.
Cast: Bob Hope, Shirley Ross, Una Merkel. Dir: George Archainbaud. BW-64 mins

9:15pm Ship Ahoy (1942)
A dancer sailing to Puerto Rico hides government messages in her tap routines.
Cast: Eleanor Powell, Red Skelton, Bert Lahr. Dir: Edward Buzzell. BW-95 mins, TV-G

11:00pm Cabin In The Sky (1943)
God and Satan battle for the soul of a wounded gambler.
Cast: Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, Ethel Waters, Lena Horne. Dir: Vincente Minnelli. BW-99 mins, TV-G

12:45am Bathing Beauty (1944)
A songwriter enrolls in an all-girl school to court a pretty gym teacher.
Cast: Red Skelton, Esther Williams, Basil Rathbone. Dir: George Sidney. C-101 mins, TV-G

2:30am Thousands Cheer (1943)
An egotistical acrobat joins the Army and falls in love with his commander's daughter.
Cast: Gene Kelly, Kathryn Grayson, Judy Garland. Dir: George Sidney. C-125 mins, TV-G

4:45am Short Film: Groovie Movie (1944)
In this instructional short, dancers demonstrate dance steps for 40's big band swing.
Cast: Jeanne Phelps-Veloz, Charles Saggau, Pete Smith. Dir: Will Jason. BW-9 mins

4:55am WOODY HERMAN AND HIS ORCHESTRA (1938)
In this short, Herman's Orchestra plays five tunes, while guest performers sings and dance.
Cast: Woody Herman, Lee Wiley, Hal Abbott. Dir: Roy Mack. BW-8 mins

5:05am STAN KENTON AND HIS ORCHESTRA (1947)
A brief history of Stan Kenton's musical career from taxi-dance gigs to his successful big band orchestra.
C-10 mins

5:20am Short Film: LARRY CLINTON AND HIS ORCHESTRA WITH BEA WAIN (1939)
In this short, Larry Clinton and his orchestra perform several songs with two great vocalists.
Cast: Larry Clinton, Bea Wain. Dir: Joseph Henabery. BW-10 mins

5:30am Short Film: DESI ARNAZ AND HIS ORCHESTRA (1946)
The multi-talented Desi Arnaz displays his love of music in this fun short.
Cast: Desi Arnaz Dir: Jack Scholl BW-10 mins

5:45am Short Film: MARTIN BLOCK'S MUSICAL M-G-R #3(RAY NOBLE) (1948)
In this short, radio personality Martin Block interviews to guests.
Cast: Martin Block, Ray Noble, Buddy Clark. Dir: Jack Scholl. BW-11 mins

[Longhorn]

1. Roberta (1935)

After three films together, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers officially became a team in Roberta (1935), an adaptation of the hit Broadway musical. The two had scored with a novelty number, "The Carioca," in Flying Down to Rio (1933), in which they only played supporting roles. Then the studio tried them out together as stars in The Gay Divorcee (1934), adapted from Astaire's stage hit The Gay Divorce. But their rise to become the screen's top musical duo would not be clearly established until advanced word on that film led RKO studio head Pandro S. Berman to re-shape Roberta to incorporate his two new stars.

Roberta had been a stage success in 1933, before the Astaire-Rogers team was even born. In fact, Berman bought the Jerome Kern show as a vehicle for the studio's reigning star, Irene Dunne. Despite a recent decision to cut expenses, he outbid MGM and Paramount for the screen rights to the tune of $65,000. Dunne was set to play a Russian princess who has carved a new career as a fashion designer in Paris when she falls for the bumptious American nephew of her elderly employer. With strong advance word on The Gay Divorcee, Berman got to work developing a new vehicle for the Astaire-Rogers team. Meanwhile, he combined two supporting roles from the stage version of Roberta to create a stronger part for Astaire (He combined the bandleader character originally played by Bob Hope with the dancer played on the stage by George Murphy). For Rogers, he transformed the bogus Polish countess played by Lyda Roberti from a minor romantic complication for the leads to a new love interest for Astaire. Jane Murfin, who had crafted many of RKO's most successful women's pictures, was assigned to shape the romantic story, while Sam Mintz, Glenn Tryon and Allan Scott were hired to punch up the gags. Scott would go on to contribute dialogue and scenes for the next five Astaire-Rogers films at RKO.

The film retained four numbers from the original Jerome Kern score, including "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," which would provide both a vocal solo for Dunne and a dazzling dance duet for Rogers and Astaire, and "I'll Be Hard to Handle," a comic number that provided the dancers with their first big number in the film. That duet was a rarity in the team's films together. It's improvisational nature, with the two trading steps as the band rehearses the song in the background, presented them as equally skilled dancers, something that occurs in only one other Astaire-Rogers musical (The Barkleys of Broadway, 1949). In most of their films together, Astaire is always presented as the better of the two. To keep the number's improvisational feel, they recorded the music live on film (as opposed to pre-recording it and playing it back while shooting the sequence without sound). Although some of the taps aren't as crisp as in other numbers, the live sound retains Rogers' spontaneous yelps of joy as they trade steps.

The score also included two Kern numbers not heard in the stage version. For the fashion show, he wrote "Lovely to Look At," teaming with lyricist, Dorothy Fields for the first time. They would win an Oscar® nomination for Best Song and go on to several successful collaborations, including the Oscar®-winning "The Way You Look Tonight," written for Astaire and Rogers a year later for Swing Time. Also new to the film was "I Won't Dance," though the number had been around for a few years. Originally, Kern had written it with Oscar Hammerstein, Jr. for The Three Sisters, a musical that had flopped in London. Fields supplied new lyrics, including a reference to the earlier Astaire-Rogers dance hit, "The Continental," and it provided Astaire with a dazzling dance solo.

RKO produced Roberta on a lavish scale with a budget of $750,000, a good portion of which went to the film's costumes. In addition to the picture's climactic fashion show -- which includes a very young, very blonde Lucille Ball in her first on-screen close-ups -- Roberta featured a $6,000 fur coat worn by Dunne. Press releases revealed to viewers that the star had to be followed around the lot by a fireman to protect one highly flammable haute couture creation.

The extravagance paid off when Roberta opened at the Radio City Music Hall to rave reviews and socko box office. But for decades, those 1935 audiences and a few art-museum patrons were the only ones lucky enough to see the film. MGM bought re-make rights in the mid-'40s, though it took them until 1952 to release their own version, Lovely to Look At. The re-make stars Kathryn Grayson in Irene Dunne's role, with Red Skelton and Ann Miller as the bandleader and his dancing girlfriend. To protect their investment, MGM kept Roberta in the vaults for decades except for occasional screenings at art museums. The picture was not sold to television until the '70s.

Producer: Pandro S. Berman
Director: William A. Seiter
Screenplay: Jane Murfin, Sam Mintz, Allan Scott, Glenn Tryon
Based on the Musical by Jerome Kern and Otto Harbach and the novel Gowns By Roberta by Alice Duer Miller
Cinematography: Edward Cronjager
Art Direction: Van Nest Polglase, Carroll Clark
Music: Max Steiner
Principal Cast: Irene Dunne (Stephanie), Fred Astaire (Huck Haines), Ginger Rogers (Countess Scharwenka/Lizzie Gatz), Randolph Scott (John Kent), Helen Westley (Roberta/Aunt Minnie), Victor Varconi (Ladislaw), Claire Dodd (Sophie), Luis Alberni (Voyda), Lucille Ball (Mannequin).
BW-106m. Closed captioning.

by Frank Miller

[grasswire]

2. I got to see three of them...

....and it sure was fun. Seeing Bob Hope and Red Skelton was like seeing old friends of the family. And dayum, Eleanor Powell had the most sparkling face of the era.