TCM Schedule for Friday, December 25, 2020 -- What's On Tonight: Holidays with the Hepburns

[Staph]

In the daylight hours, it's the last of the TCM Class Christmas Marathon. Then in prime time, we've got a bracing change from the serious and saccharine with a selection of films by the two Hepburns, Katharine and Audrey. Enjoy!


7:15 AM -- Little Women (1933)
1h 55m | Drama | TV-G
The four March sisters fight to keep their family together and find love while their father is off fighting the Civil War.
Director: George Cukor
Cast: Katharine Hepburn, Joan Bennett, Paul Lukas

Winner of an Oscar for Best Writing, Adaptation -- Victor Heerman and Sarah Y. Mason

Nominee for Oscars for Best Director -- George Cukor, and Best Picture

Costume designer Walter Plunkett was forced to rapidly redesign Joan Bennett's (Amy March) costumes in order to disguise her advancing pregnancy, something that she had hidden from George Cukor at the time of her casting.


9:15 AM -- The Great Rupert (1950)
1h 26m | Comedy | TV-G
A squirrel becomes the guardian angel for an impoverished family.
Director: Irving Pichel
Cast: Jimmy Durante, Terry Moore, Tom Drake

The stop-motion animation used in creating the illusion of a dancing squirrel (Rupert) was so realistic that director George Pal received many inquiries as to where he got a squirrel that was trained to dance.


10:45 AM -- Babes in Toyland (1934)
1h 13m | Comedy | TV-G
Two employees of a toy maker try to borrow money from their employer to pay off the mortgage on Mother Peep's shoe.
Director: Gus Meins
Cast: Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Virginia Karns

Hal Roach signed Henry Brandon to play Barnaby after seeing him play the evil old Lawyer Cribbs in the long-running Los Angeles stage melodrama "The Drunkard". Roach wasn't aware that Brandon was only 21 at the time, and demanded to know where the old man was when Brandon appeared at his office. Heavy makeup made Brandon credible as the old Barnaby, a role he repeated in Our Gang Follies of 1938 (1937).


12:15 PM -- Susan Slept Here (1954)
1h 38m | Comedy | TV-PG
A Hollywood screenwriter takes in a runaway girl who's more woman than he can handle.
Director: Frank Tashlin
Cast: Dick Powell, Debbie Reynolds, Anne Francis

Nominee for Oscars for Best Sound, Recording -- John Aalberg (RKO Radio), and Best Music, Original Song -- Jack Lawrence and Richard Myers for the song "Hold My Hand"

In addition to being Dick Powell's final film, this was also the only colour film in which he appeared.


2:00 PM -- The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942)
1h 52m | Comedy | TV-G
An acerbic critic wreaks havoc when a hip injury forces him to move in with a Midwestern family.
Director: William Keighley
Cast: Bette Davis, Ann Sheridan, Monty Woolley

Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman, authors of the play from which this film was adapted, were good friends with Alexander Woollcott, a famous critic, radio personality, and lecturer at the time. Woollcott requested that they write a play FOR him, but they never came up with a plot. One day Woollcott came to visit Hart unexpectedly and turned his house upside down, taking over the master bedroom, ordering Hart's staff around and making a general nuisance of himself. When Hart told Kaufman of the visit, he asked, "Imagine what would have happened if he broke his leg and had to stay?" They looked at each other and knew they had a play. The authors asked Alexander Woollcott if he would like to play the part of Whiteside when the play opened on Broadway. He declined. The authors then approached Monty Woolley, who at that time was a professor at Yale. They wrote him "would it amuse you to play the part of Whiteside?" to which Woolley replied "it would amuse everyone."


4:00 PM -- Holiday Affair (1949)
1h 27m | Comedy | TV-G
A young widow is torn between a boring businessman and a romantic ne'er-do-well.
Director: Don Hartman
Cast: Robert Mitchum, Janet Leigh, Wendell Corey

In the kitchen scene, Mitcham gives Leigh a "Merry Christmas Kiss". Janet Leigh was to say later, "The expression that is on my face of being overwhelmed was for real". Mitcham was later to say, "I wanted to make the kiss memorable, as though the characters were never going to see each other again. The Perks of being an actor are at times not bad".


5:45 PM -- The Apartment (1960)
2h 5m | Comedy | TV-PG
An aspiring executive lets his bosses use his apartment for assignations, only to fall for the big chief's mistress.
Director: Billy Wilder
Cast: Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Fred MacMurray

Winner of Oscars for Best Director -- Billy Wilder, Best Writing, Story and Screenplay - Written Directly for the Screen -- Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White -- Alexandre Trauner and Edward G. Boyle, Best Film Editing -- Daniel Mandell, and Best Picture

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Jack Lemmon, Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Shirley MacLaine, Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Jack Kruschen, Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Joseph LaShelle, and Best Sound -- Gordon Sawyer (Samuel Goldwyn SSD)

The office Christmas party scene was actually filmed on December 23, 1959, so as to catch everybody in the proper holiday mood. Billy Wilder filmed almost all of it on the first take, stating to an observer, "I wish it were always this easy. Today, I can just shout 'action' and stand back."



WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: PRIMETIME THEME -- HOLIDAYS WITH THE HEPBURNS



8:00 PM -- Sabrina (1954)
1h 53m | Comedy | TV-G
Two wealthy brothers fall for the chauffeur's daughter.
Director: Billy Wilder
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Audrey Hepburn, William Holden

Winner of an Oscar for Best Costume Design, Black-and-White -- Edith Head

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Audrey Hepburn, Best Director -- Billy Wilder, Best Writing, Screenplay -- Billy Wilder, Samuel A. Taylor and Ernest Lehman, Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Charles Lang, and Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White -- Hal Pereira, Walter H. Tyler, Sam Comer and Ray Moyer

The film began a lifelong association between costume designer Hubert de Givenchy and Audrey Hepburn. Givenchy originally thought he would be providing wardrobe for Katharine Hepburn, as he had never heard of Audrey Hepburn before they were introduced.


10:00 PM -- The African Queen (1951)
1h 45m | Romance | TV-PG
A grizzled skipper and a spirited missionary take on the Germans in Africa during World War I.
Director: John Huston
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Katharine Hepburn, Robert Morley

Winner of an Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Humphrey Bogart

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Katharine Hepburn, Best Director -- John Huston, and Best Writing, Screenplay -- James Agee

To show her disgust with the amount of alcohol that John Huston and Humphrey Bogart consumed during filming, Katharine Hepburn drank only water. As a result, she suffered a severe bout of dysentery. According to cameraman Jack Cardiff, Katharine Hepburn was so sick with dysentery during shooting of the church scene that a bucket was placed off camera because she vomited constantly between takes. Cardiff called her "a real trooper."


12:00 AM -- My Fair Lady (1964)
2h 50m | Comedy | TV-G
A phonetics instructor bets that he can pass a street urchin off as a lady.
Director: George Cukor
Cast: Audrey Hepburn, Rex Harrison, Stanley Holloway

Winner of Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Rex Harrison (Rex Harrison dedicated his Oscar to "two fair ladies": Julie Andrews and Audrey Hepburn.), Best Director -- George Cukor, Best Cinematography, Color -- Harry Stradling Sr., Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color -- Gene Allen, Cecil Beaton and George James Hopkins, Best Costume Design, Color -- Cecil Beaton, Best Sound -- George Groves (Warner Bros. SSD), Best Music, Scoring of Music, Adaptation or Treatment -- André Previn, and Best Picture

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Stanley Holloway, Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Gladys Cooper, Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium -- Alan Jay Lerner, and Best Film Editing -- William H. Ziegler

At Audrey Hepburn's insistence, director George Cukor shot all of her scenes in sequence so that she could grow into the role and hold her own against Sir Rex Harrison and Stanley Holloway, who had both done the play for several years. It also allowed her to do the most difficult scenes first, those before Eliza's transformation, while she was still fresh.


3:00 AM -- Holiday (1938)
1h 35m | Comedy | TV-G
An unhappy heiress falls in love with her stodgy sister's freethinking fiance.
Director: George Cukor
Cast: Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Doris Nolan

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Art Direction -- Stephen Goosson and Lionel Banks

Katharine Hepburn understudied the role of Linda Seton (played by Hope Williams) in the original Broadway play. She also performed a scene from Holiday for her first screen test, which led to her first film role.


4:45 AM -- Two for the Road (1967)
1h 52m | Comedy | TV-PG
A married couple travels in Europe at four different stages in their relationship.
Director: Stanley Donen
Cast: Audrey Hepburn, Albert Finney, Eleanor Bron

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay - Written Directly for the Screen -- Frederic Raphael

Audrey Hepburn does not wear her trademark designer clothes by Givenchy in this film. Director Stanley Donen insisted that it was essential for her character that she wear clothes that could be bought in a store.