TCM Schedule for Friday, November 20, 2020 -- What's On Tonight: TCM Spotlight: Under the Big Top

[Staph]

In the daylight hours, it's mostly brilliant butlering. Then in prime time, TCM continues their month-long look at the circus. Enjoy!


6:00 AM -- Broadway Hostess (1935)
1h 8m | Drama | TV-G
A small-town girl rises to night-club stardom.
Director: Frank Mcdonald
Cast: Winifred Shaw, Genevieve Tobin, Lyle Talbot

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Dance Direction -- Bobby Connolly for "Playboy of Paree"

First feature film for director Frank McDonald, who went on to do a lot of television in the 1950s and 1960s.


7:15 AM -- Woman Wanted (1935)
1h 10m | Comedy | TV-G
An innocent woman is chased by both gangsters and the police.
Director: George B. Seitz
Cast: Maureen O'Sullivan, Joel McCrea, Lewis Stone

According to contemporary articles in The Hollywood Reporter, Franchot Tone and Wallace Beery were considered for the male lead.


8:30 AM -- The Animal Kingdom (1932)
1h 25m | Comedy | TV-G
An intellectual publisher can't choose between his society wife and his free-thinking former love.
Director: Edward H. Griffith
Cast: Ann Harding, Leslie Howard, Myrna Loy

This film was considered lost for many years. In the early 1980's, film historian Ronald Haver was searching for missing material for the restoration of A STAR IS BORN (1954) when he came across a long forgotten print and negative in the Warner Bros. vaults. The studio had purchased the remake rights for THE ANIMAL KINGDOM from RKO sometime in the mid-1940's and due to unreliable book-keeping misplaced the print and negative in their vaults.


10:00 AM -- Nothing But Trouble (1944)
1h 9m | Comedy | TV-PG
A pair of dimwits get jobs as servants to a boy king whose life is in danger.
Director: Sam Taylor
Cast: Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Mary Boland

According to the "Laurel & Hardy Encyclopedia", Buster Keaton worked as a gag writer on this film, at the request of his good friend Stan Laurel.


11:15 AM -- Make Your Own Bed (1944)
1h 22m | Comedy | TV-G
Detectives masquerade as a butler and maid to get the goods on a crook.
Director: Peter Godfrey
Cast: Jack Carson, Jane Wyman, Irene Manning

At the beginning of the film, Walter Whirtle's car has a "C" gas rationing sticker on the windshield. It was red in color and was the largest such gas rationing sticker as underneath the letter is a check-box list of 17 different professions entitled to use it - such as physicians, ministers, construction workers, and even embalmers.


12:45 PM -- One Night at Susie's (1930)
1h 25m | Drama | TV-G
A boarding house keeper's gangster tenants step in to help when her son is framed for murder.
Director: John Francis Dillon
Cast: Billie Dove, Douglas Fairbanks, Helen Ware

Mary shows Susie the bankbook of her earnings in Dick's name with a balance of $12,945.24. That would be the equivalent of about $186,225 in 2016.


2:00 PM -- Breakfast for Two (1937)
1h 5m | Comedy | TV-G
A Texas heiress competes with a gold digger for the love of a playboy.
Director: Alfred Santell
Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, Herbert Marshall, Glenda Farrell

This features one of the earliest uses of both air quotes and the term "pub-crawling"--both of which have to be explained to the other characters.


3:15 PM -- A Successful Calamity (1932)
1h 12m | Comedy | TV-G
A family pulls together to help a member in financial trouble.
Director: John G. Adolfi
Cast: George Arliss, Mary Astor, Evalyn Knapp

The play by Clare Kummer originally opened on Broadway at the Booth Theatre on 5 February 1917, and ran for 144 performances before closing for the summer (there was no air conditioning in those days). It then reopened on 10 October 1917 at the Plymouth Theatre. The opening night cast included Katharine Alexander, William Gillette, Estelle Winwood and Roland Young.


4:30 PM -- The Last of Mrs. Cheyney (1937)
1h 38m | Comedy | TV-G
A chic jewel thief in England falls in love with one of her marks.
Director: Richard Boleslawski
Cast: Joan Crawford, William Powell, Robert Montgomery

Dorothy Arzner was the third director for this film. George Fitzmaurice took over directing when Richard Boleslawski died suddenly. When Fitzmaurice became ill, Arzner finished directing it.


6:15 PM -- Paradise Lagoon (1957)
1h 33m | Comedy | TV-PG
When a family is shipwrecked on a desert island, their butler comes to the rescue.
Director: Lewis Gilbert
Cast: Kenneth More, Diane Cilento, Cecil Parker

Based on the play The Admirable Crichton by J.M. Barrie, and released under that name outside the U.S. The distributors feared that if they used the original J.M. Barrie title the public would think the film was about a naval officer.



WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: TCM SPOTLIGHT -- UNDER THE BIG TOP



8:00 PM -- Man on a Tightrope (1953)
1h 45m | Drama | TV-PG
Karel Cernik is the owner of a small Czech circus that's been in his family for generations.
Director: Elia Kazan
Cast: Fredric March, Terry Moore, Gloria Grahame

Cirkus Cernik is a fictionalized version of the Circus Brumbach, who escaped from East Germany in 1950. They play the circus performers in the movie.


10:00 PM -- Merry Andrew (1958)
1h 43m | Comedy | TV-G
An archaeologist's search for Roman treasure gets him mixed up with a circus troupe.
Director: Michael Kidd
Cast: Danny Kaye, Pier Angeli, Baccaloni

The first and only film directed by choreographer Michael Kidd.


12:00 AM -- La Strada (1954)
1h 55m | Drama | TV-PG
A traveling strongman buys a peasant girl to be his wife and co-star.
Director: Federico Fellini
Cast: Giulietta Masina, Anthony Quinn, Richard Basehart

Winner of an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film -- Dino De Laurentiis and Carlo Ponti for Italy

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Writing, Best Screenplay - Original -- Federico Fellini

Anthony Quinn was working on a film with Giulietta Masina when she introduced him to her husband, Federico Fellini. Fellini was immediately convinced that the Mexican-born actor would make the perfect Zampanò the strongman in his new film, which was to become (La Strada (1954), and implored him to accept the role. The nonplussed actor, who had no idea who Fellini was, initially turned him down, but Fellini was persistent, pestering him for days about the project. Shortly thereafter, Quinn spent the evening with Ingrid Bergman and her husband, director Roberto Rossellini. After dinner, the three watched Fellini's most recent film, the comedy-drama (I Vitelloni (1953), and Quinn realized with astonishment that the crazy Italian filmmaker who had been hounding him for days was a genius.


2:00 AM -- Earth Girls Are Easy (1988)
1h 40m | Comedy | TV-14
Valley girls cruise Southern California with Mac, Wiploc and Zebo from the planet Jhazzala.
Director: Julien Temple
Cast: Geena Davis, Jim Carrey, Jeff Goldblum, Damon Wayans

Jim Carrey was later considered for the role of Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park, which ended up going to Jeff Goldblum. Carrey parodied that role in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. He parodied Goldblum yet again decades later while playing Joe Biden on Saturday Night Live, in a sketch in while Biden becomes a fly that landed on Mike Pence's hair.


3:45 AM -- Alien From L.A. (1988)
1h 27m | Comedy | TV-14
A nerdy teen-age girl goes looking for her missing archaeologist father, and stumbles into a strange subterranean civilization.
Director: Albert Pyun
Cast: Kathy Ireland, Thom Mathews, Don Michael Paul

The background music that plays when Wanda (Kathy Ireland) and Gus (William R. Moses) first meet is an almost note for note recreation of "Yoda's theme" by John Williams. Most likely the original music was used as a temp track during the editing process and the composers were encouraged to create a similar theme.


5:30 AM -- When You Grow Up (1973)
11m | Documentary | TV-G
In this short film, children learn about the world of fun that awaits them when they grow up and go to work.
Director: Jerry Kurtz
Cast: Robert Babcock, Linda Gries, Ingvar Grimsgaard