TCM Schedule for Friday, November 13, 2020 -- What's On Tonight: TCM Spotlight: Under the Big Top

[Staph]

In the daylight hours, TCM is a couple of weeks late with their day full of ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggedy beasties and things that go bump in the night. Then in prime time, TCM continues their month-long look at the circus. Enjoy!


6:00 AM -- While the Patient Slept (1935)
1h 5m | Mystery | TV-PG
A nurse investigates murder at a mysterious mansion.
Director: Ray Enright
Cast: Aline Macmahon, Guy Kibbee, Lyle Talbot

Warner Bros. created the advertising marketing ploy "Clue Club" to increase audiences attending its crime mystery/drama movies. Twelve titles showing the Warner Bros. "Clue Club" promo footage were released from 1935 to 1938.
Clue Club #1: The White Cockatoo (1935)
Clue Club #2: While the Patient Slept (1935)
Clue Club #3: The Florentine Dagger (1935)
Clue Club #4: The Case of the Curious Bride (1935)
Clue Club #5: The Case of the Lucky Legs (1935)
Clue Club #6: The Murder of Dr. Harrigan (1936)
Clue Club #7: Murder by an Aristocrat (1936)
Clue Club #8: The Case of the Velvet Claws (1936)
Clue Club #9: The Case of the Black Cat (1936)
Clue Club #10: The Case of the Stuttering Bishop (1937)
Clue Club #11: The Patient in Room 18 (1938)
Clue Club #12: Mystery House (1938)


7:15 AM -- Their Big Moment (1934)
1h 8m | Comedy | TV-G
A phony psychic conjures up a real ghost who asks her to solve his murder.
Director: James Cruze
Cast: Zasu Pitts, Slim Summerville, William Gaxton

Walter C. Hackett's play, "Afterwards," opened in London on 7 November 1933. It had no Broadway production.


8:30 AM -- Spooks Run Wild (1941)
1h 9m | Comedy | TV-PG
A group of delinquents on their way to summer camp get stuck in a haunted house.
Director: Phil Rosen
Cast: Bela Lugosi, Leo Gorcey, Bobby Jordan

Last feature film of Donald Haines (Skinny). He enlisted in the USAAF as an aviation cadet in December, 1941 and attained the rank of first lieutenant before being killed in action in the North African theater.


9:45 AM -- The Secret Garden (1949)
1h 32m | Drama | TV-G
An orphaned girl changes the lives of those she encounters at a remote estate.
Director: Fred M. Wilcox
Cast: Margaret O'brien, Herbert Marshall, Dean Stockwell

British writer Noel Streatfeild (1895-1986), author of children's classic "Ballet Shoes", was on an extended vacation to California in 1947 and spent several weeks observing the filming of the movie, paying especial attention to the younger actors. In a magazine serial in 1948 and then as a book the following year, she published "The Painted Garden" (US: Movie Shoes). It concerns an English girl who reluctantly has to spend the summer in the States where she is spotted as a potential lead for an adaptation of "The Secret Garden", describing the process of film-making from a child's perspective.


11:30 AM -- You'll Find Out (1940)
1h 37m | Comedy | TV-G
Kay Kyser and his band fight to save a young girl trapped in a haunted mansion.
Director: David Butler
Cast: Kay Kyser, Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Music, Original Song -- Jimmy McHugh (music) and Johnny Mercer (lyrics) for the song "I'd Know You Anywhere"

Filmed August 8-October 11 1940, the 7th of 8 features to star Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, and the only time that fellow Hungarians Lugosi and Peter Lorre ever shared the screen.


1:15 PM -- The Smiling Ghost (1941)
1h 11m | Comedy | TV-PG
A newswoman investigates a haunted house.
Director: Lewis Seiler
Cast: Wayne Morris, Brenda Marshall, Alexis Smith

From an original story by Stuart Palmer, author of the mystery novels about amateur crime-solver Hildegarde Withers.


2:30 PM -- Two on a Guillotine (1965)
1h 47m | Horror | TV-PG
A magician's estranged daughter must stay in his mansion for seven nights alone to inherit his fortune.
Director: William Conrad
Cast: Connie Stevens, Dean Jones, Cesar Romero

Some of the set interiors (particularly the hallway with the stairs and the study) are recycled from "My Fair Lady" (1964). The wallpaper is distinctive, as well as the lower landing of the staircase.


4:30 PM -- House on Haunted Hill (1958)
1h 15m | Horror | TV-14
The owner of a supposedly haunted mansion offers $10,000 to anyone dumb enough to attempt to spend the night.
Director: William Castle
Cast: Vincent Price, Carol Ohmart, Richard Long

The large grosses for this film were noticed by Alfred Hitchcock. This led him to create his own low-budget horror film - Psycho (1960).


6:00 PM -- The Haunting (1963)
1h 52m | Drama | TV-PG
A professor experimenting in parapsychology brings along two women with ESP talents to investigate a haunted house.
Director: Robert Wise
Cast: Julie Harris, Claire Bloom, Richard Johnson

To make Thedora appear more bohemian, beatnik clothing designer Mary Quant was hired to design mod clothing specifically for Claire Bloom.


8:00 PM -- Freaks (1932)
1h 30m | Horror | TV-PG
A lady trapeze artist violates the code of the side show when she plots to murder her midget husband.
Director: Tod Browning
Cast: Wallace Ford, Leila Hyams, Olga Baclanova

Although production chief Irving Thalberg decided to re-cut the picture immediately after the disastrous test screening, he could not cancel the world premiere on January 28, 1932 at the 3,000-seat Fox Theatre in San Diego. This is the only venue at which the uncut version of "Freaks" is known to have played. Ironically, the unexpurgated "Freaks" was a major box-office success. Crowds lined up around the block to see the picture, which broke the theatre's house record. By the end of the run, word had spread that "Freaks" was about to be butchered, and the theatre advertised, "Your last opportunity to see 'Freaks' in its uncensored form!"


9:15 PM -- Carnival Story (1954)
1h 35m | Romance | TV-PG
A trapeze act is torn apart by jealousy when the partners take in a starving girl.
Director: Kurt Neumann
Cast: Anne Baxter, Steve Cochran, Lyle Bettger

This was filmed simultaneously in a German language version, Circus of Love (1954). The cast of the German version can be seen in uncredited cameo appearances in the English language version, and vice versa.


11:00 PM -- Berserk (1967)
1h 36m | Horror | TV-PG
A lady ringmaster milks the publicity from a string of murders.
Director: Jim O'connolly
Cast: Joan Crawford, Ty Hardin, Diana Dors

Joan Crawford supplied her own wardrobe for the film, with the exception of the leotard which was designed by Edith Head.


12:45 AM -- He Who Gets Slapped (1924)
1h 16m | Drama | TV-G
In this silent film, a scientist flees his tragic past to become a circus clown.
Director: Victor Seastrom
Cast: Lon Chaney, Norma Shearer, John Gilbert

The first film to feature Leo the Lion roaring as MGM's logo. Designed by Howard Dietz, the logo was first used for the Goldwyn Pictures Corporation film Polly of the Circus (1917) and passed to MGM when Goldwyn merged with two other companies to form MGM. Fittingly and somewhat ironically, a real lion plays a key plot point in the film's story.


2:15 AM -- Times Square (1980)
1h 51m | Drama | TV-MA
Two runaway teenage girls, from opposite sides of the track, become media stars and develop their own rock band through their connection with a Times Square radio disc jockey.
Director: Edward Bianchi
Cast: Pamela Cotlin, Anna Maria Horsford, Sean Hurst

This movie was inspired by a diary that writer and director Allan Moyle found in a secondhand couch that he bought. The diary was from a young mentally disturbed woman that featured words and drawings about her life on the streets.


4:15 AM -- Rich Kids (1979)
1h 36m | Comedy
12-year-old Trini Alvarado is going through a tough time because her parents are divorcing.
Director: Robert M Young
Cast: Jeremy Levy, John Lithgow, Trini Alvarado

Paul Dooley was Oscar-nominated the year he made Rich Kids, but his nomination did not come for this film. He was nominated for Breaking Away (1979). (A point of personal privilege - Paul Dooley is an old family friend. He and my dad attended West Virginia University together, and when Paul returned to Morgantown in the the 1960s, he stayed with our family. Decades later, in the 2010s, I ran into him in the Charleston, WV, airport. We stood at baggage claim and talked for nearly two hours. A very nice man!)