TCM Schedule for Thursday, February 24, 2022 -- TCM Guest Programmer Denis Villeneuve

[Staph]

During the daylight hours, TCM is featuring Literary Ladies, films based on books by woman authors, including Edith Wharton, Lousia May Alcott, Jane Austen, etc., etc., etc. Then in prime time, our guest programmer is French Canadien writer/director Denis Villenueve, who is up for a couple of Oscars this year for writing and producing Dune (2021). His choice of films show his eye for the grand epic -- 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Lawrence of Arabia (1962). Enjoy!


6:00 AM -- The Age of Innocence (1934)
1h 21m | Drama | TV-PG
A young attorney risks his career for love of a glamorous divorcee.
Director: Philip Moeller
Cast: Irene Dunne, John Boles, Lionel Atwill

According to a contemporary news item in Film Daily, Katharine Hepburn was considered for the role of Ellen.


7:30 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 serves in 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

Mr. Davis, the school teacher who could not bring himself to punish Amy, was portrayed both the 1933 and 1949 Little Women by the same actor, Olin Howland, apparently in the same outfit. In both movies he holds up Amy's slate with the same exact writing and cartoon drawing of the teacher, with a huge nose, with cartoon balloon stating, "YOUNG LADIES MY EYES ARE UPON YOU".


9:45 AM -- Pride and Prejudice (1940)
1h 57m | Romance | TV-PG
Jane Austen's comic classic about five sisters out to nab husbands in 19th-century England.
Director: Robert Z. Leonard
Cast: Greer Garson, Laurence Olivier, Mary Boland

Winner of an Oscar for Best Art Direction, Black-and-White -- Cedric Gibbons and Paul Groesse

According to Ann Rutherford, although the filmmakers were committed to begin shooting on a particular date, they discovered that Producer David O. Selznick had used every available reel of Technicolor film in existence to make Gone with the Wind (1939). Therefore, despite the lavish sets and opulent costumes, this movie had to be shot in black-and-white.


12:00 PM -- 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&quot . 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.


2:00 PM -- Murder She Said (1961)
1h 26m | Suspense/Mystery | TV-G
When nobody will believe she witnessed a murder, elderly sleuth Miss Marple takes a job as a maid to ferret out clues.
Director: George Pollock
Cast: Margaret Rutherford, Arthur Kennedy, Muriel Pavlow

Despite privately remaining unimpressed by this movie, Dame Agatha Christie dedicated her 1962 book "The Mirror Crack'd From Side to Side" to Dame Margaret Rutherford, "in admiration".


3:45 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, Peter Mamakos

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 the mass media 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.


6:00 PM -- Wise Blood (1979)
1h 48m | Drama | TV-14
An ambitious Southern boy tries to set himself up as a street preacher.
Director: John Huston
Cast: Brad Dourif, Dan Shor, Harry Dean Stanton

Michael Fitzgerald approached John Huston to find out if he was willing to direct an adaptation of Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood. Huston agreed if Fitzgerald could get the money together. He did, and they shot it quickly, using no big name stars on a minimal budget.



WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: PRIMETIME THEME -- GUEST PROGRAMMER DENIS VILLENEUVE



8:00 PM -- 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
2h 40m | Horror/Science-Fiction | TV-PG
Classic sci-fi epic about a mysterious monolith that seems to play a key role in human evolution.
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Cast: Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, William Sylvester

Winner of an Oscar for Best Effects, Special Visual Effects -- Stanley Kubrick (Stanley Kubrick was not present at the awards ceremony. Presenters Diahann Carroll and Burt Lancaster accepted the award on his behalf.)

Nominee for Oscars for Best Director -- Stanley Kubrick, Best Writing, Story and Screenplay - Written Directly for the Screen -- Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, and Best Art Direction-Set Decoration -- Anthony Masters, Harry Lange and Ernest Archer

The script went through many stages. In early 1965, when backing was secured for the film, Sir Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick still had no firm idea of what would happen to Bowman after the Star Gate sequence. Initially all of Discovery's astronauts were to survive the journey; by October 3, Clarke and Kubrick had decided to leave Bowman the sole survivor and have him regress to infancy. By October 17, Kubrick had come up with what Clarke called a "wild idea of robots who create a Victorian environment to put our heroes at their ease."


10:45 PM -- Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
3h 46m | Adventure | TV-14
A British military officer enlists the Arabs for desert warfare in World War I.
Director: David Lean
Cast: Peter O'Toole, Alec Guinness, Anthony Quinn

Winner of Oscars for Best Director -- David Lean, Best Cinematography, Color -- Freddie Young, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color -- John Box, John Stoll and Dario Simoni, Best Sound -- John Cox (Shepperton SSD), Best Film Editing -- Anne V. Coates, Best Music, Score - Substantially Original -- Maurice Jarre, and Best Picture

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Peter O'Toole, Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Omar Sharif, and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium -- Robert Bolt and Michael Wilson (The nomination for Wilson was granted on 26 September 1995 by the Academy Board of Directors, after research at the WGA found that the then blacklisted writer shared the screenwriting credit with Bolt.)

Throughout his career, Peter O'Toole was notorious for fluffing his lines by breaking into fits of laughter. This film, his first major starring role, was no exception. It first became evident in the key scene where he first meets Prince Faisal, played by Alec Guinness, who had a formidable reputation not only for his acting ability, but his total professionalism on stage and set. Time and again, O'Toole made his grand entrance into the Bedouin tent to act out the dramatic scene with Guinness, and time and again he burst into laughter, ruining the takes. Finally, with Guinness getting totally ticked and David Lean getting exasperated at the waste of time and footage, the famed director turned to O'Toole and told him to take a long walk and compose himself. O'Toole did so, and, mortified at his own behavior, thoroughly chastised himself during the break and returned to the set with a steely resolve to get through the scene in a professional manner. With the cameras rolling once more and everyone expecting another outburst of laughter from O'Toole, he entered the tent, approached Alec Guinness, and finally managed to get the first line out with a straight face. Alec Guinness, with his own nerves on edge in expectation of another ruined take from O'Toole, promptly burst out laughing.


2:45 AM -- The Eyes of Orson Welles (2018)
Documentary | TV-PG
Mark Cousins dives deep into the visual world of legendary director and actor Orson Welles.
Director: Mark Cousins
Cast: Mark Cousins, Jack Klaff, Beatrice Welles

Orson Welles's daughter, Beatrice Welles acted as a consultant.


4:45 AM -- The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)
1h 28m | Drama | TV-PG
A possessive son's efforts to keep his mother from remarrying threaten to destroy his family.
Director: Orson Welles
Cast: Joseph Cotten, Dolores Costello, Anne Baxter

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Agnes Moorehead, Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Stanley Cortez, Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Black-and-White -- Albert S. D'Agostino, A. Roland Fields and Darrell Silvera, and Best Picture

RKO chopped 50 minutes of the film and added a happy ending while Orson Welles was out of the country. The footage was subsequently destroyed; the only record of the removed scenes is the cutting continuity transcript. This re-cutting of this film caused a deep rift in Orson Welles' friendships with Robert Wise and Joseph Cotten. Cotten later wrote several letters of apology to Welles, and the two later reconciled. Welles and Wise, however, remained on acrimonious terms for some 42 years until Wise was invited to come to the stage by Gilbert Cates when the Directors Guild of America honored Welles with its Lifetime Achievement Award in 1984. The former rivals ended up shaking hands as the crowd rewarded them with a standing ovation.