TCM Schedule for Thursday, March 3, 2022 -- 31 Days of Oscar: 1960s Winners

[Staph]

It's one of the months when we movie junkies get our fix -- 31 Days of Oscar! And this year, TCM has promised us that all the films are not just nominees but winners. Today's films are all winners from the 1960s, including one of my favorite movies of all time, A Lion in Winter (1968), with Katharine Hepburn and Peter O'Toole. Enjoy!


8:15 AM -- Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)
3h 10m | Drama | TV-14
An aging American judge presides over the trial of Nazi war criminals.
Director: Stanley Kramer
Cast: Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark

Winner of Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Maximilian Schell, and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium -- Abby Mann

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Spencer Tracy, Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Montgomery Clift, Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Judy Garland, Best Director -- Stanley Kramer, Best Cinematography, Black-and-White -- Ernest Laszlo, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White -- Rudolph Sternad and George Milo, Best Costume Design, Black-and-White -- Jean Louis, Best Film Editing -- Frederic Knudtson, and Best Picture

Montgomery Clift had difficulty with his lines, cues, and timing. He told Stanley Kramer he didn't know if he could actually get through the scene. Kramer did his best to reassure him, but it was Spencer Tracy who eventually helped Clift through it. Perhaps drawing on his own years of alcoholism, Tracy spoke to the younger actor with sympathy but with firmness, even relaxing his own dictum about sticking strictly to the script: "Just look into my eyes and do it. You're a great actor and you understand this guy. Stanley doesn't care if you throw aside the precise lines. Just do it into my eyes and you'll be magnificent." Clift spent four days getting through the seven-minute sequence, stumbling through and performing each take differently. At the end of his last take, the set broke out into spontaneous applause. "Monty's condition gave the performance an aura as though it were being shot through muslin, the way the words tumbled out and the disjointed, sudden bursts of lucidity out of a mumble," Kramer said later. "It was classic! It was one of the best moments in the film!" Some film historians and critics have since suggested that Kramer knew exactly what he was doing by casting such broken and erratic performers as Judy Garland and Clift in roles that called for expressions of pain, embarrassment, and terror.


11:30 AM -- The Lion in Winter (1968)
2h 14m | Drama | TV-14
England's Henry II and his estranged queen battle over the choice of an heir.
Director: Anthony Harvey
Cast: Peter O'Toole, Katharine Hepburn, Jane Merrow

Winner of Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Katharine Hepburn (Tied with Barbra Streisand for Funny Girl (1968). Hepburn became the third performer to win consecutive awards, and the first to win three awards for lead roles. Anthony Harvey, the film's director, accepted the award on her behalf.), Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium -- James Goldman, and Best Music, Original Score for a Motion Picture (not a Musical) -- John Barry

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Peter O'Toole (O'Toole became the second actor (after Bing Crosby) to be twice nominated for an Oscar for portraying the same character; he had previously portrayed King Henry II in Becket (1964).), Best Director -- Anthony Harvey, Best Costume Design -- Margaret Furse, and Best Picture

In the scene where Eleanor of Aquitaine (Katharine Hepburn) asks for the love of Prince Richard (Sir Anthony Hopkins), Prince Richard remarks that he has seen pictures of Eleanor at the height of her beauty. Ironically, other than her tomb effigy, no images of Queen Eleanor have survived. The two images traditionally assumed to be her are unconfirmed. (Naturally, the fictional Richard might have been referring to portraits later lost to history.) While there are several written descriptions praising her beauty, none of them actually record such basic features as her eyes or hair color. Based on descriptions of her sons, all of whom were said to resemble her, we may assume she was very tall, slim, and had a very strong chin, gray or blue eyes, and wavy reddish-gold hair, not unlike her descendant, Katharine Hepburn.


2:00 PM -- BUtterfield 8 (1960)
1h 49m | Drama | TV-PG
A beautiful New York model and socialite moonlights as a call-girl, but all things change when she falls for a married man.
Director: Daniel Mann
Cast: Elizabeth Taylor, Laurence Harvey, Eddie Fisher

Winner of an Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Elizabeth Taylor

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Cinematography, Color -- Joseph Ruttenberg and Charles Harten

Dame Elizabeth Taylor and her husband, Mike Todd, had planned for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) to be her final movie, as she intended to retire from the screen. Todd had made a verbal agreement about this with MGM, but after his death, MGM forced Taylor to make this movie in order to fulfill the terms of her studio contract. As a result, Taylor refused to speak to director Daniel Mann for the entire production and hated this movie.


4:00 PM -- Never on Sunday (1960)
1h 31m | Comedy | TV-14
An American scholar in Greece tries to reform a local prostitute.
Director: Jules Dassin
Cast: Melina Mercouri, Jules Dassin, George Foundas

Winner of an Oscar for Best Music, Original Song -- Manos Hatzidakis (For Ta paidia tou Peiraia (Never on Sunday). Manos Hatzidakis was not present. The Academy accepted the Oscar on his behalf.)

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Melina Mercouri, Best Director -- Jules Dassin, Best Writing, Story and Screenplay - Written Directly for the Screen -- Jules Dassin, and Best Costume Design, Black-and-White -- Theoni V. Aldredge

About 20 minutes in, Homer (Jules Dassin) says "Homer Thrace, of Middletown, Connecticut" to himself; That's the town where Jules Dassin was born.


5:45 PM -- Sweet Bird of Youth (1962)
2h | Drama | TV-PG
Adaptation of Tennessee Williams' play about a young man dreaming of stardom who meets up with a faded film star.
Director: Richard Brooks
Cast: Paul Newman, Geraldine Page, Shirley Knight

Winner of an Oscar for Best Actor in a Supporting Role -- Ed Begley

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Geraldine Page, and Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Shirley Knight

Longtime MGM hair stylist Sydney Guilaroff appears in the movie, uncredited, doing Geraldine Page's hair. He was extremely well respected, serving as chief hair stylist at MGM from 1934 until the late 1970s. Although he did not receive onscreen credit, he designed Judy Garland's hair styles for The Wizard of Oz (1939), and dyed Lucille Ball's hair red for Du Barry Was a Lady (1943), the color she kept for the rest of her life.



WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: 31 DAYS OF OSCAR -- 1960s WINNERS



8:00 PM -- The Apartment (1960)
2h 5m | Comedy | TV-PG
A Manhattan insurance clerk tries to rise in his company by letting its executives use his apartment for trysts, but complications and a romance of his own ensue.
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)

Billy Wilder originally thought of the idea for the film after seeing Brief Encounter (1945) and wondering about the plight of a character unseen in that film -- the person who lends his apartment for an extramarital tryst. Shirley MacLaine was only given forty pages of the script because Wilder didn't want her to know how the story would turn out. She thought it was because the script wasn't finished.


10:15 PM -- The Graduate (1967)
1h 45m | Comedy | TV-MA
A disillusioned college graduate finds himself torn between his older lover and her daughter.
Director: Mike Nichols
Cast: Anne Bancroft, Dustin Hoffman, Katharine Ross

Winner of an Oscar for Best Director -- Mike Nichols

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Dustin Hoffman, Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Anne Bancroft, Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Katharine Ross, Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium -- Calder Willingham and Buck Henry, Best Cinematography -- Robert Surtees, and Best Picture

In security consultant Gavin de Becker's book "The Gift of Fear," which is about how to predict violent behaviour in people, there is a chapter about stalking. In that chapter, de Becker specifically takes this film to task for the fact that Benjamin Braddock stalks Elaine Robinson and refuses to accept her statements that she is not interested in him - and that Benjamin's persistence and stalking eventually win her over. De Becker writes that this sends the dangerous message that stalking and persistence are legitimate and efficacious ways to make someone fall in love with you--that if you want to be in a relationship with someone, you then should not take no for an answer and that women should not be listened to.


12:15 AM -- Bullitt (1968)
1h 54m | Crime | TV-14
An all-guts, no-glory San Francisco cop becomes determined to find the underworld kingpin that killed the witness in his protection.
Director: Peter Yates
Cast: Steve McQueen, Robert Vaughn, Jacqueline Bisset

Winner of an Oscar for Best Film Editing -- Frank P. Keller

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Sound -- Warner Bros./Seven Arts with recipient: Warner Bros.-Seven Arts Studio Sound Department

The film proved to be highly influential on many cop dramas for year to come. It's templates for scene set-ups, visual style and characterization influenced the look of future films such as Dirty Harry (1971), The French Connection (1971), and many others. It's influence can even be seen well into the 1990s with some key scenes being paid homage in The Fugitive (1993) and Heat (1995).


2:15 AM -- 8 1/2 (1963)
2h 20m | Drama | TV-PG
A harried movie director retreats into his memories and fantasies.
Director: Federico Fellini
Cast: Marcello Mastroianni, Anouk Aimée, Claudia Cardinale

Winner of Oscars for Best Costume Design, Black-and-White -- Piero Gherardi, and Best Foreign Language Film -- Italy

Nominee for Oscars for Best Director -- Federico Fellini, Best Writing, Story and Screenplay - Written Directly for the Screen -- Federico Fellini, Ennio Flaiano, Tullio Pinelli and Brunello Rondi, and Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White -- Piero Gherardi

8½ was shot, like almost all Italian movies at the time, completely without sound recording on set. All dialogue was dubbed during post production. Fellini was known for shouting direction at his actors during shooting, and for rewriting dialogue afterwards, making a lot of the dialogue in the movie appear out-of-sync. (Source: High-def Digest)


4:45 AM -- Amarcord (1974)
2h 5m | Comedy | TV-MA
A series of comedic and nostalgic vignettes set in a 1930s Italian coastal town.
Director: Federico Fellini
Cast: Magali Noel, Bruno Zanin, Pupella Maggio

Winner of an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film -- Italy

Nominee for Oscars for Best Director -- Federico Fellini, and Best Writing, Original Screenplay -- Federico Fellini and Tonino Guerra

The title is the phonetic translation of the words "Mi ricordo" (I remember) as spelled in the dialect of Rimini, the town in which the director Federico Fellini was born, and where the film is set. The correct spelling should be "A m'arcord".