TCM Schedule for Friday, April 9, 2021 -- TCM Spotlight: Oscars From A to Z

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TCM continues their salute to the Oscars, beginning today with one of the first feature films with a Black cast -- Hallelujah (1929), and wrapping up with a James Cagney comedy, Here Comes the Navy (1934). Enjoy!


6:15 AM -- Hallelujah (1929)
1h 49m | Drama | TV-G
A black laborer becomes a preacher after accidentally killing a man.
Director: King Vidor
Cast: Daniel L. Haynes, Nina Mae McKinney, William E. Fountaine

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Director -- King Vidor

Although this film is frequently touted as the first black-cast film produced in Hollywood, it is actually predated by the more obscure Hearts in Dixie (1929).


8:00 AM -- The Hanging Tree (1959)
1h 46m | Western | TV-PG
A doctor saves a man from a hanging then tries to run his life.
Director: Delmer Daves
Cast: Gary Cooper, Maria Schell, Karl Malden

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Music, Original Song -- Jerry Livingston (music) and Mack David (lyrics) for the song "The Hanging Tree"

Gary Cooper had a full face-lift and other cosmetic surgery on 16 April 1958, two months before filming began. The procedure was carried out at the Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital by Dr John Converse, one of the leading plastic surgeons in the United States. Newspaper articles commenting on the effects of the operation said Cooper's face now looked quite different and the procedure had not been successful.


10:00 AM -- Hangmen Also Die! (1943)
2h 11m | Drama | TV-14
When a Nazi officer is assassinated, Czech patriots band together to protect his killer.
Director: Fritz Lang
Cast: H. H. V. Twardowski, Brian Donlevy, Walter Brennan

Nominee for Oscars for Best Sound, Recording -- Jack Whitney (Sound Service Inc.), and Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture -- Hanns Eisler

During the Joseph McCarthy-inspired "Red Scare" era in the 1950s, this was one of the films labeled "subversive" by the HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee) because it was alleged to have contained dialog that might be construed as pro-communist. Writer John Wexley was even "blacklisted". It wasn't seen again in the United States until the mid-'70s.


12:30 PM -- A Hard Day's Night (1964)
1h 32m | Comedy | TV-PG
A rock and roll mockumentary that follows "a day in the life" of those four lads from Liverpool.
Director: Richard Lester
Cast: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison

Nominee for Oscars for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay - Written Directly for the Screen -- Alun Owen, and Best Music, Scoring of Music, Adaptation or Treatment -- George Martin

In the train scene early in the film, John Lennon appears to perform a "nasal inhaler" sight gag. He holds a bottle of Pepsi-Cola under one nostril and sniffs while holding the opposite nostril closed. A few seconds later he repeats the sniffing action with the other hand and nostril. Since it was a Pepsi, he wasn't snorting "coke."


2:00 PM -- Harvey (1950)
1h 44m | Comedy | TV-G
A wealthy eccentric prefers the company of an invisible six-foot rabbit to his family.
Director: Henry Koster
Cast: James Stewart, Josephine Hull, Cecil Kellaway

Winner of an Oscar for Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Josephine Hull

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- James Stewart

Author of the original play and screenplay Mary Chase had the idea that film audiences should actually see Harvey at the end of the film because she "didn't want anybody to go out of the theater thinking Elwood is just a lush. He believes in Harvey...and I think the audience ought to believe in Harvey, too." The studio reportedly considered this and experimented with how to show him to the audience, including his appearance in silhouette, and even by attaching a rabbit tail to the taxi driver at the film's conclusion. In the end, however, the studio won out and wisely decided NOT to ruin the illusion. Only once had a giant rabbit actually appeared on stage in the play of Harvey, and the results were disastrous. Theatrical Producer Brock Pemberton recalled in a 1945 interview that at that performance in Boston, "a chill descended on the gathering, which never quite thawed out afterwards."


4:00 PM -- The Harvey Girls (1946)
1h 41m | Comedy | TV-G
Straitlaced waitresses battle saloon girls to win the West for domesticity.
Director: George Sidney
Cast: Judy Garland, John Hodiak, Ray Bolger

Winner of an Oscar for Best Music, Original Song -- Harry Warren (music) and Johnny Mercer (lyrics) for the song "On the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe"

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture -- Lennie Hayton

The Harvey House restaurants were established by Fred Harvey in 1870 to provide good, inexpensive food and lodging in clean, elegant surroundings for travellers in the western United States. At the chain's peak, there were around eighty-four Harvey Houses throughout seven states, all operated in conjunction with the Santa Fe Railroad.


5:45 PM -- The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1968)
2h 3m | Drama | TV-PG
A deaf mute changes the lives of all he meets.
Director: Robert Ellis Miller
Cast: Alan Arkin, Chuck McCann, Sondra Locke

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Alan Arkin, and Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Sondra Locke

To conceal her age, Sondra Locke falsified her birth year more times than such notorieties as Joan Crawford, Mae West or Zsa Zsa Gabor. When Heart was being made in 1967, the late actress (born Sandra Smith in May 1944) was 23 years old, but an international press release said she was 17. Nashville Tennessean theater critic Clara Hieronymus called her out on the lie almost right away, but it took decades for syndicated publications to catch on. At the time of the movie's 1968 premiere, Locke claimed to be 21 but was in fact 24. While promoting The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) eight years later, the then 32-year-old gave her age as 20. Various news outlets wrongly reported Locke as being 29 in 1978 (when she was 34); 26 in 1979 (35 then); and 30 in 1980 (actually 36). Her real age was finally confirmed by her maternal half-brother, Donald Locke, in an exclusive interview with The Tennessean in 1989. Sondra Locke was 45 in 1989, but her publicist claimed 42. Locke never came clean about her age, even lying about it in her autobiography. In a 2015 podcast interview, the 71-year-old former star said that she "was just graduating high school" when she started work on this film. Locke graduated high school in May 1962 at age 18 - more than five years before she was cast in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter.



WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: DAYTIME & PRIMETIME THEME -- OSCARS FROM A TO Z



8:00 PM -- The Heiress (1949)
1h 55m | Drama | TV-PG
A plain young woman's wealth makes her prey to fortune hunters.
Director: William Wyler
Cast: Olivia De Havilland, Montgomery Clift, Ralph Richardson

Winner of Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Olivia de Havilland, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White -- John Meehan, Harry Horner and Emile Kuri, Best Costume Design, Black-and-White -- Edith Head and Gile Steele, and Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture -- Aaron Copland

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Ralph Richardson, Best Director -- William Wyler, Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Leo Tover, and Best Picture

According to the opening title card, the movie takes place around 1849. In the story, Olivia de Havilland's character gets a $10,000 a year inheritance from her deceased mother. In 2019, that is equivalent, due to inflation, in buying power to $332,653 a year. Adding the $20,000 a year she would obtain after her father's death, her inheritance in 2019 dollars would by nearly a million a year.


10:15 PM -- Hell's Angels (1930)
2h 15m | War | TV-PG
Two buddies take on World War I flying aces and a seductive blonde.
Director: Howard Hughes
Cast: Ben Lyon, Jean Harlow

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Cinematography -- Tony Gaudio and Harry Perry

All color prints of the movie were thought to be lost until a print was found in John Wayne's personal vault in 1989, ten years after the actor's death, by his son Michael Wayne. That explains why the younger Wayne's name appears on the credits of the restored version. It is possible that Wayne received the print from the film's producer/director, Howard Hughes. The actor starred in Jet Pilot (1957) for Hughes in 1949, but the film was not released until 1957 because Hughes continued to have the flying sequences re-shot, a situation not unlike this film.


12:45 AM -- Henry V (1944)
2h 16m | Drama | TV-PG
Shakespeare's tale of the warrior king who learns the meaning of heroism during a daring invasion of France.
Director: Laurence Olivier
Cast: Laurence Olivier, Robert Newton, Renee Asherson

Winner of an Honorary Oscar Award for Laurence Olivier for his outstanding achievement as actor, producer and director in bringing 'Henry V' to the screen.

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Laurence Olivier, Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Color -- Paul Sheriff and Carmen Dillon, Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture -- William Walton, and Best Picture

Part of the reason Ireland was chosen as a location was that it was a neutral power during World War II, thus outdoor shooting would not be disturbed by aerial warfare. However, there was one day during which the imaginary war had to be put on hold as an R.A.F. squadron flew overhead on their way to battle.


3:15 AM -- Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941)
1h 33m | Comedy | TV-G
A prizefighter who died before his time is reincarnated as a tycoon with a murderous wife.
Director: Alexander Hall
Cast: Robert Montgomery, Evelyn Keyes, Claude Rains

Winner of Oscars for Best Writing, Original Story -- Harry Segall, and Best Writing, Screenplay -- Sidney Buchman and Seton I. Miller

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Robert Montgomery, Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- James Gleason, Best Director -- Alexander Hall, Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Joseph Walker, and Best Picture

Columbia chief Harry Cohn had serious misgivings about this adaptation of Harry Segall's minor stage play. He preferred to reserve his more lavish budgets for surefire successes (i.e., anything featuring the studio's biggest star, Rita Hayworth). However, Sidney Buchman was eventually able to talk Cohn into forking out for costly celestial sets and Farnsworth's elaborate mansion and also into hiring Robert Montgomery on loan-out from MGM. Buchman was also able to convince Cohn that he had a better appreciation of what the public would pay to see than the Wall Street bankers who Cohn answered to.


5:00 AM -- Here Comes the Navy (1934)
1h 26m | Comedy | TV-PG
A cocky naval cadet clashes with an old friend serving with him.
Director: Lloyd Bacon
Cast: James Cagney, Pat O'Brien, Gloria Stuart

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Picture

The movie was filmed in the spring of 1934 on the U.S.S. Arizona, which was sunk on 7 December 1941 at Pearl Harbor.