Cinéma Inhabituel for December 1-15

A Guide to the Interesting and Unusual on TCM

By Ed Garea

It’s the Holiday season and TCM will treat us to a mixture of beloved old Holiday favorites and some others that will be sure to please.

An interesting non-TCM item is the premiere of a three-hour live musical production of Jean Shepherd’s A Christmas Story. It’s scheduled to air on December 17 from 7:00 to 10:00 pm on Fox. From what we’ve been able to learn, the role of the narrator, the adult Ralphie Parker, will be played by Matthew Broderick. Ralphie as a child will be played by 11-year old Andy Walken. Maya Rudolph and Chris Diamantopoulos are set to play Ralphie’s parents. Ana Gasteyer will play Mrs. Schwartz, the mother of Ralphie’s friend Schwartz. Jane Krakowski will play Miss Shields. New songs have been written by Oscar winners Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (La La Land). And yes, the iconic lamp will be featured.

CHRISTMAS MOVIES

December 1: After accidentally helping rustlers steal valuable horses, five children pursue them through the outback of Australia to retrieve the animals in Bush Christmas (1947) at Midnight. Following at 1:30 am, after 8-year old Margaret O’Brien learns the truth about her Aunt Susan's (Angela Lansbury) fiancé, Steve (George Murphy), she loses all faith in her family and in God. It will take nothing short of a miracle to restore Flavia's belief in Tenth Avenue Angel.

December 8: Alistair Sim is Scrooge in the 1951 version of A Christmas Carol, generally considered by critics and film historians as the best version of the classic Dickens tale, airing at 8:00 pm. Sir Seymour Hicks follows with his interpretation of Dickens’ miser in the 1935 British production, titled simply Scrooge, at 9:45 pm. It’s a faithful interpretation of the Dickens classic.

December 14: Compliments of the Season, a 1930 short from Warner Bros., airs at 1:30 pm. Eric Dressler is a recently released petty thief who saves Lenita Lane from jumping off a pier to her death on Christmas Eve. Talking to her he learns that she is destitute and forlorn because she cannot find the man she loves (Weldon Heyburn). He has moved and she is all alone. Dressler wants to buy her dinner, but he is flat broke. He decides to raise some money by robbing a passing man on the street, and in an ironic twist the man turns out to be the missing boy friend. Look for Pat O’Brien in his first role (uncredited) as the detective trailing Dressler. 

December 15: Begin at 8 pm with Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullavan as feuding co-workers who are secret anonymous romantic pen pals in Ernst Lubitsch’s incomparable 1940 The Shop Around the Corner. Following at 10 pm lovely Janet Leigh is a young widow caught between boring businessman Wendell Corey and hunky ne’er-do-well Robert Mitchum in Holiday Affair(1949).

The night continues at 11:45 pm with Don DeFore, Ann Harding, Charlie Ruggles and Victor Moore in the delightful It Happened on Fifth Avenue from Monogram (1947). And closing out the evening at 2 am, Monty Woolley disrupts an Ohio family’s Christmas in Warners’ The Man Who Came to Dinner (1941). Bette Davis got top billing as Woolley’s long-suffering secretary, but it’s Woolley’s show as he plays a thinly disguised Alexander Woollcott. Billie Burke and Grant Mitchell are the poor couple whose home Woolley takes over. Reginald Gardner is a thinly disguised Noel Coward and Jimmy Durante is along as a thinly disguised Harpo Marx. Ann Sheridan is excellent as a thinly disguised Gertrude Lawrence and Mary Wickes is memorable as Woolley’s put upon nurse. 

THE GREAT AMERICAN SONGBOOK

December 7: Tom Drake and Mickey Rooney are Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart in the sappy 1948 biopic Words and Music at 8:00 pm. Also starring Gene Kelly, Judy Garland, Lena Horne, June Allyson, Mel Torme, Vera-Ellen, Cyd Charisse and Perry Como. Highlights are Judy Garland singing “Johnny One-Note,” Lena Horne’s exuberant version of “The Lady Is a Tramp,” and Kelly and Vera-Ellen’s dance to “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue.”

Danny Thomas is songwriter Gus Kahn in the hokey 1952 biopic I’ll See You in My Dreams at 10:15 pm. Doris Day, Frank Lovejoy and James Gleason co-star.

Gene Kelly made his big screen debut as Judy Garland’s vaudeville partner in 1942’s For Me and My Gal. Kelly and Garland sing the title tune and “When You Wore a Tulip and I Wore a Big Red Rose,” while Garland warbles an excellent version of “How 'Ya Gonna Keep 'em Down on the Farm (After They've Seen Paree?).”

Busby Berkeley directs Dick Powell, Rosemary and Lola Lane, Glenda Farrell and Johnnie Davis in the exuberant Hollywood Hotel at 2:15 am. The highlight of the film is the opening number, as Johnnie Davis joins Benny Goodman and his orchestra in “Hooray for Hollywood.” The film is worth watching just for that number alone and the Benny Goodman Orchestra’s vibrant version of Louis Prima’s “Sing, Sing, Sing.”    

Songwriter Harry Warren performs several of his own compositions, including "I Found a Million Dollar Baby" and "Shadow Waltz” in the 1933 Warner Bros. short, Harry Warren: America’s Foremost Composer, airing at 4:15 am.

Finally, closing out the evening at 4:30 am is Joan Blondell, Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler in the 1934 Busby Berkeley musical Dames. A must see for anyone who hasn’t caught it before.

December 14: At 8 pm Mickey Rooney romances Judy Garland in 1943’s Girl Crazy with a marvelous score by the Gershwins that includes “Fascinating Rhythm,” “Embraceable You” and “But Not for Me,” with the finale set to “I Got Rhythm.”

Tyrone Power, Alice Faye, Don Ameche, Ethel Merman and Jack Haley star in Alexander’s Ragtime Band (1938) at 10 pm. The score by Irving Berlin includes “Blue Skies,” “Easter Parade,” “Oh! How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning,”  and the title tune.

At Midnight Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly star along with Louis Armstrong in High Society (1956), a musical remake of The Philadelphia Story. The music by Cole Porter includes “True Love,” “Did You Evah?” “You're Sensational,” plus Bing and Satchmo performing “Now You Has Jazz.” 

Fred Astaire and Red Skelton star as Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby in the biopic Three Little Words (1950). The songs from the real Kalmar and Ruby include the title song, “Who's Sorry Now?” and “Thinking of You.” Debbie Reynolds plays Helen Kane, but “I Wanna Be Loved by You” is dubbed by the real Helen Kane.

And at 4:15 am Fred Astaire, Paulette Goddard, Burgess Meredith and Artie Shaw headline 1940’s Second Chorus. Astaire and Meredith play two trumpet players scheming to get into Artie Shaw’s band. Tunes by Shaw and Johnny Mercer include “Would You Like to Be the Love of My Life?”

NOTABLE

December 3: Fellini’s nostalgically tinted look about growing up in a small Italian town and how it fares under Mussolini, Amarcord (1973) is set for 3:00 am.

December 4: Robert Bresson’s taut POW drama, A Man Escaped (1956), is set to air at 2:15 am. At the late hour of 1:45 am, Barbara Stanwyck, Adolphe Menjou and William Holden Star in the rarely seen boxing drama, Golden Boy (1939).

December 6: The epic story of the original astronauts and their unique approach to the space program, The Right Stuff (1983), will be shown at  9:00 pm. With Sam Shepard as Chuck Yeager, Scott Glenn as Alan Shepard, Ed Harris as John Glenn, Dennis Quaid as Gordon Cooper and Fred Ward as Gus Grissom. Following at 12:30 am is the venerable Chariots of Fire (1981).

December 10: Two films about the darker side of science are due to air beginning at 2:00 am with  the Soviet Nine Days of One Year (1962). Two young nuclear physicists. Dmitry Gusev (Aleksey Batalov and Ilya Kulikov (Innokentiy Smoktunovskiy) are good friends, but rivals in love. Dmitry marries Lyolya (Tatyana Lavrova) and they have a happy marriage. While attempting to make fusion work in a reactor Dmitry becomes careless and exposes himself to large amounts of radioactivity and falls seriously ill. However, he has a strong spirit, and his will to live, combined with his deep passion for his work and his strong love for mankind makes it possible for him to recover. Directed by Mikhail Romm, the film is somewhat groundbreaking in admitting that carelessness in a nuclear laboratory, causes a radiation incident, something the Soviet Union was loath to admit: that nuclear accidents were possible in Russia. However, his strong socialist faith in his work and mankind enables him to lick the problem and the film ends on a hopeful note.

Following at 4:00 am is Roberto Rossellini’s 1954 drama, Fear. Irene Wagner (Ingrid Bergman) is the wife of prominent scientist Albert Wagner (Mathias Wieman). Irene, much younger than her husband, has an affair with playboy Erich Baumann (Kurt Kreuger). However, Erich's nasty former flame, Luisa (Renate Mannhardt), finds out about the affair and proceeds to blackmail Irene. Irene’s life now becomes an escalating nightmare, for with each payoff, the amount increases. How will she solve it and break free?  The last collaboration of Bergman and Rossellini, it’s easily the weakest and is really for Bergman fans only.

December 11: In Withnail & I (12:15 am) it’s 1969 London. Withnail (Richard E. Grant) and Marwood (Paul McGann), two unemployed – and unemployable – actors, fed up with everything, decide to leave their squalid flat for what they think will be an idyllic holiday in the countryside, courtesy of Withnail's uncle Monty’s (Richard Griffiths) country cottage. But when they get there, they find it’s far less thank they imagined: it continually rains and there is no food, a situation that is beyond their limited survival skills. To make matters worse, Uncle Monty arrives and displays a rather uncomfortable interest in Marwood. A dismal flop when it premiered in 1987, it is regarded today as one of the best British comedies ever made. Despite its largely English humor, Withnail & I is a very accessible film, and one of the best films about friendship. 

FRITZ LANG

December 5: The morning and afternoon is devoted to the films of the noted German emigre director with his classic M (1931) leading off at 6:00 am. The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933) follows at 8:00 am. Then Spencer Tracy stars in Lang’s first American film, Fury (1936) at 10:15 am. Hangmen Also Die, the 1943 drama about the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, airs at Noon. Clash By Night (1952), with Barbara Stanwyck, Robert Ryan and Paul Douglas is shown at 2:30 pm. Following at 4:30 pm is 1955’s Moonfleet, with Stewart Granger, George Sanders and Joan Greenwood, and finally, at 6:15 pm, reporters led by Dana Andrews, George Sanders, Thomas Mitchell and Ida Lupino are after a serial killer in the 1956 drama While the City Sleeps.

CARMEN

December 3: Beginning at 8:00 pm, TCM is running two films based on George Bizet’s famous opera, Carmen. First up is The Loves of Carmen (1948), a non-musical version starring Glenn Ford and Rita Hayworth. Following at 10:00 pm is Otto Preminger’s 1954 Carmen Jones, with Harry Belafonte, Pearl Bailey, Diahann Carroll and Dorothy Dandridge as the ultimate femme fatale, Carmen Jones. Oscar Hammerstein II adapted the film’s music from Bizet's opera, but it’s Dandridge’s exciting and earthy performance that makes this one to catch. 

PRE-CODE

December 9: The original 1931 version of The Maltese Falcon, with Ricardo Cortez as Sam Spade, Bebe Daniels as Ruth Wonderly, Dudley Digges as Caspar Gutman and Dwight Frye as Wilmer can be seen at 6:30 am. 

December 11: Dipso director Lowell Sherman makes a star out of waitress Constance Bennett in What Price Hollywood? (1932) at 6 am. 

At 2:30 am, Horse Feathers, the hilarious Marx Brothers comedy from 1932, is scheduled to air. As film buffs know, the movie has been rather badly edited over the years. It has recently been restored, and it will be interesting to see if TCM shows the restored version or just repeats the shredded version. 

December 12: A morning and afternoon of Edward G. Robinson kicks off at 6:30 am with Robinson and James Cagney in Smart Money (1931). At 8 am it’s Eddie G. donning yellowface in The Hatchet Man (1932), followed at 9:30 by Silver Dollar (1932). Eddie G. is a farmer who strikes it rich with a silver mine and dumps his loyal wife Aline MacMahon for the flashy Bebe Daniels. At 11 am Eddie G. is a condemned murderer who, in the last moments of his life, relieves the events that led him to the electric chair in the 1932 drama Two Seconds. Read our review of it here. At 12:15 pm, Robinson is a bootlegger who quits the rackets and tries to break into high society with the end of Prohibition in the 1933 comedy The Little Giant. Mary Astor co-stars in this frequently funny comedy. Finally, at 1:45 pm, Robinson is a compulsive gambler who loses everything in 1934’s Dark Hazard.

COLIN CLIVE

December 2: TCM is honoring the English actor with four of his films, beginning with the James Whale directed The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) at 8:00 pm. Following at 9:30 pm Clive stars with Diana Wynyard in another film directed by Whale, One More River (1934). At 11:15 pm Clive is a classical pianist who has the hands of a murderer grafted onto his wrists by mad doctor Peter Lorre in Karl Freund’s 1935 Mad Love. Finally, at 12:30 am, aviatrix Katharine Hepburn sacrifices all for Married man Clive in 1933’s Christopher Strong.  

PSYCHOTRONICA AND THE B-HIVE

December 7: The classic 1932 version of The Mummy, directed by Karl Freund and starring Boris Karloff with Zita Johann, will be shown at 6:30 pm. Over the years since it premiered it’s been imitated, but never duplicated, let alone topped.

December 10: Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind airs at 8:00 pm, followed at 10:30 by Richard Carlson and Barbara Rush in Jack Arnold’s 1953 sci-fi classic, It Came From Outer Space.