December 2007
Saturday December 1
10:00 AM Stranger on the Third Floor (Ingster, 1940) - BW-64 mins. - I’ve seen this referenced as one of the first examples of film noir so that immediately makes it interesting to me. Peter Lorre is given top billing, but IMDB says he only worked on the film two days. Elisha Cook, Jr. also stars, as a man convicted of murder following key testimony by a young reporter. Boris Ingster only has three film credits as director, this being his first, and wrote the story for Fritz Lang’s Cloak and Dagger. Screenwriter and novelist Nathanael West, of Miss Lonelyhearts and The Day of the Locust notoriety, apparently provided uncredited work on the script. Made for RKO, this film is unavailable on DVD with rights held by Warner Bros.
11:15 AM The Tattooed Stranger (Montagne, 1953) - BW-64 mins. - This was included in Film Forum’s “NYC Noir” series this past summer, but I didn’t get a chance to see it. So aside from its setting, I know next to nothing. The story’s about a female corpse found in Central Park with a Marine Corps tattoo. The director, writer, and major cast have surprisingly few credits of interest, but the premise and short running time are intriguing enough to merit a watch. No DVD yet, this was also an RKO film and should be owned by Warner Bros. now.
Sunday December 2
6:00 AM The Front Page (Milestone, 1931) - BW-101 mins. - The first film version of Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur’s play about a newspaper editor and his star reporter. Howard Hawks switched the reporter’s gender and sped up the dialogue for his much better version His Girl Friday and Billy Wilder was more faithful to the original material while still slightly besting it with his Jack Lemmon-Walter Matthau vehicle in 1974. Adolphe Menjou and Pat O’Brien star here as editor and reporter, respectively. I’ve never seen a decent presentation and I’m thinking TCM probably doesn’t have a good print either, but anything’s possible. The DVD situation is similarly dire because the film is in the public domain and any versions out there are sure to be in bad shape. A restoration is definitely needed here.
8:00 PM The Shop Around the Corner (Lubitsch, 1940) - BW-99 mins. - Anyone looking for a great Christmas movie (though not dependent on the holiday certainly) and a perfect introduction to Lubitsch should find it here. Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullavan star as co-workers at a Budapest gift shop who strongly dislike each other, but are secretly in love even though they don’t realize it themselves. Stewart carried an unrequited torch for Sullavan in real life and it shows here. TCM shows this film every December, frequently closer to Christmas, and every year it’s worth watching. Warner Bros. released it on DVD in R1 (in the dreaded snapper case).
Tuesday December 4
10:45 AM 20,000 Years in Sing Sing (Curtiz, 1932) - BW-78 mins. - Do I pick too many Michael Curtiz films? He was so prolific for Warner Bros. and so much of his work remains unreleased on DVD, including this one starring Spencer Tracy and Bette Davis in their only pairing. He’s a gangster (!) sentenced to prison at New York’s Sing Sing and she’s his girlfriend. Improbably, the warden lets Tracy out when Davis is hurt on the condition that Tracy promises to return, but a fresh killing complicates things.
4:15 PM Ladies They Talk About (Bretherton, Keighley, 1933) - BW-70 mins. - There’s a definite focus on prison movies on TCM today and this early Barbara Stanwyck vehicle continues the theme. Stanwyck is a bank robber sent to the big house where she becomes cell block boss. It looked like this film would be in the WB’s Forbidden Hollywood Vol. 2 set, but it isn’t. Maybe Vol. 3. Many more 1930s Stanwyck films are scheduled for TCM’s December tribute to director William Wellman and will definitely be mentioned here.
Wednesday December 5
8:00 PM The Men Who Made the Movies: William Wellman (Schickel, 2006) - BW&C-60 mins. - Speaking of Wellman, that monthlong look at the director (34 films worth) starts here with Richard Schickel’s updated biography. Schickel made a series of these for PBS in the 1970s and many have resurfaced with restored video clips and new narration either on TCM or in Warner Bros. DVD releases. Also repeated at midnight. Wild Boys of the Road, from 1933 and not on DVD, follows.
Thursday December 6
6:15 AM So Big (Wellman, 1932) - BW-81 mins. - Here’s one of those Wellman-Stanwyck films. She falls for a Dutch farmer, who dies and leaves her to take care of their son. Bette Davis is the son’s love interest. Stanwyck has to age throughout the film since she was in her early twenties when it was made and she was only a year older than Davis. Another film without a DVD, it was made for Warner Bros.
2:45 PM Jessica (Negulesco, Palella, 1962) - C-112 mins. - I think the TCM description sums it up best: “When a sexy midwife comes to town, the local women abstain from sex rather than risk having her deliver their babies.” Maurice Chevalier and Angie Dickinson (as the title character) star. The film’s tag line, according to IMDB, was ” She’s a Honeyhaired Dish of Dynamite - Who Explodes Joy On the Screen!” A French-Italian production, United Artists is listed as the U.S. distributor, meaning MGM owns the DVD rights.
1:45 AM Thirteen Women (Archainbaud, 1932) - BW-60 mins. - TCM also celebrates actress Irene Dunne this month with 28 films, many not on DVD including this one. My knowledge of her is limited mostly to a couple of comedies she made with Cary Grant, but this film at least sounds interesting. The plot is basically Myrna Loy as a “Eurasian” who tries to murder the classmates she felt ostracized by years earlier. IMDB lists the original running time as 73 minutes, with the film being cut maybe even before its premiere. Part of the cuts apparently eliminated a couple of the title women making the movie actually only about eleven women. RKO released it originally, and Warner Bros. controls home video rights.
Saturday December 8
11:15 AM Roadblock (Daniels, 1951) - BW-74 mins. - A noirish tale set in Los Angeles and concerning an insurance agent who turns to crime because of a woman. It’s not a remake of Double Indemnity though. Any movie starring Charles McGraw deserves to be seen and this sounds intriguing. It was made for RKO, indicating Warner Bros. controls home video rights, and is not on DVD.
2:15 PM Two Rode Together (Ford, 1961) - C-110 mins. - Working from a screenplay by Frank Nugent, who wrote The Searchers and The Quiet Man among other Ford pictures, the director paired James Stewart and Richard Widmark as men who clash over how to deal with Comanche-kidnapped hostages. Stewart gets a rare antagonist role. The Encore Westerns channel likes to show this as well, but they never preserve the theatrical aspect ratio by letterboxing. TCM will. Surprisingly, there’s no (R1) DVD release for one of Ford’s last pictures. Unsurprisingly, the company not releasing it is Sony.
Sunday December 9
10:00 AM Knock on Any Door (Ray, 1949) - BW-100 mins. - Humphrey Bogart directed by Nicholas Ray, but with much more modest results than In a Lonely Place, their second collaboration. Bogart is a lawyer defending a young John Derek who’s accused of killing a cop. At times way too dramatic, but Ray’s characteristic humanity makes it worth a look for fans of the director. There are shreds of a good movie here, but I’m afraid it doesn’t work as a whole. Made for Columbia and with DVD rights owned by Sony, the film is unavailable on DVD. There is a Japanese release that appears to be of good quality, roughly the same print used by TCM.
12:00 AM The Iron Horse (Ford, 1924) - BW-133 mins. - Released for the first time on DVD last Tuesday in R1, John Ford’s acclaimed silent epic about the building of the transcontinental railroad is generally considered a milestone in early filmmaking. There’s an international and a U.S. version of the film, but I’m not sure which will be shown here. The following two nights, the 10th and 11th, are dedicated to Ford’s work at Fox and feature films included in the massive “Ford at Fox” DVD set. Of note, The Prisoner of Shark Island will be airing at 9:45 PM on the 10th. It was released in R2 by Eureka’s Masters of Cinema label a couple of years ago, but the new Fox transfer (presumably what will be shown by TCM as well) looks to be a substantial improvement imagewise.
Tuesday December 11
6:00 AM Autumn Leaves (Aldrich, 1956) - BW-107 mins. - Great for fans of Aldrich and Joan Crawford. A few years before What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, director and actress teamed for this interesting look at mental illness. Crawford is a lonely writer who’s just about given up on marriage when she meets the much younger Cliff Robertson. They quickly get married, but she learns his past isn’t what he’s been telling her. Another Sony property, it hasn’t been released on DVD.
9:45 AM The Young Stranger (Frankenheimer, 1957) - BW-85 mins. - This was Frankenheimer’s first theatrical film. It’s about the teenage son of a movie producer who gets in some trouble and can’t convince his father that his actions were in self-defense. James MacArthur and Kim Hunter star. I’ll be tuning in for the Saul Bass opening titles. There’s a DVD release in R2, but not in R1. It looks like Universal (?) may control the rights.
Wednesday December 12
9:15 PM The Purchase Price (Wellman, 1932) - BW-68 mins. - More Wellman and Stanwyck. She’s the nightclub singer girlfriend of a hood who decides to flee to the North Dakota countryside as a mail-order bride. This was made prior to the Production Code and released on VHS by MGM in their Forbidden Hollywood series. Warner Bros. now have the rights and the film might turn up in a future pre-code set, but isn’t on DVD yet. Night Nurse, another Wellman-Stanwyck pre-code movie, airs just previous at 8:00 PM and will be released in the Forbidden Hollywood Vol. 2 set next March.
3:45 AM Other Men’s Women (Wellman, 1931) - BW-70 mins. - A railroad employee falls for the wife of his friend and co-worker, played by Mary Astor. James Cagney has a prominent role, not as either of the main characters though, and Joan Blondell is featured as well. This same year Wellman helmed Cagney’s breakthrough film The Public Enemy. I love how the featured IMDB review mentions the dialogue is a bit “racy” at times. There are several more early 1930s Wellman films airing tonight, all currently unavailable on DVD including this one. All are also owned by Warner Bros., and would fit nicely in a pre-code Wellman set.
Friday December 14
7:00 AM Virtue (Buzzell, 1932) - BW-68 mins. - Two things worth noting here: (1) the film stars Carole Lombard, as beautiful a presence as Hollywood has ever seen, and (2) the screenplay was written by Robert Riskin. Riskin wrote many of Frank Capra’s early successes, everything from The Miracle Woman and Lady for a Day to It Happened One Night and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. Lombard is a con woman in New York and Pat O’Brien is the cabbie in love with her. This is a Sony/Columbia title, and without a DVD release.
12:15 PM Rafter Romance (Seiter, 1933) - BW-73 mins. - I think Ginger Rogers is winning me over. Here she’s a salesgirl who falls for a night watchman. The catch is that they live in the same apartment without knowing it, each occupying the place from 8 to 8. Goofy for sure, but I’m hoping Ginger makes it work. An RKO release, with Warner Bros. in control of DVD rights and not yet putting it out.
Sunday December 16
2:00 AM Kameradschaft (Pabst, 1931) - BW-87 mins. - TCM aired another Pabst film back in September, Westfront 1918, and, like that one, this pops up every so often on the channel and is a Janus Films property. Until Criterion release these films on DVD, this is the easiest way to watch them. Plotwise, the movie concerns post-WWI German miners who defiantly rescue French miners trapped beneath the new border. A DVD release in Germany exists, but I’ve no idea on the quality. IMDB puts the runtime at 93 minutes, but TCM is scheduled to show a truncated version. Also, they apparently show a compromised full frame aspect ratio, taken from the Janus VHS print, instead of the original 1.20:1. We can’t have everything, I suppose.
3:30 AM Black Fury (Curtiz, 1935) - BW-95 mins. - Paul Muni stars as an accented coal miner involved in a mob-influenced labor dispute. Muni finished second in the Academy Awards for this performance, but wasn’t technically nominated. He was a write-in candidate and, during this time, the Academy didn’t keep the order of finish secret. Originally released by RKO, the film is now controlled by Warner Bros. and unavailable on DVD.
Monday December 17
10:oo PM Man of the West (Mann, 1958) - C-100 mins. - Gary Cooper steps into Jimmy Stewart’s shoes as the protagonist of Anthony Mann’s psychological western. This character is certainly different than the ones Stewart played for Mann, but the murky past that can’t be forgotten is still here. I can’t help but wonder how Stewart would have handled the role and his absence makes me prefer the Mann films they did together, but this film has its share of fans who feel the opposite. There are releases in France (non-anamorphic) and the UK (no extras) (comparison here), but nothing so far in R1. I probably shouldn’t continue to stubbornly hold out for MGM to release it here, but I am nonetheless.
Tuesday December 18
3:15 PM Vivacious Lady (Stevens, 1937) - BW-91 mins. - George Stevens would have been 103 today and TCM is honoring him by showing seven of his films, including some lesser-known ones. This comedy stars real-life couple James Stewart and Ginger Rogers as a professor and a singer who must adjust to their new lives and each other when they marry shortly after meeting for the first time. I can’t believe I’ve never seen this, probably because it’s unavailable on DVD. It was made for RKO and Warner Bros. most likely controls DVD rights. They’re probably deciding whether to include the film in a Ginger Rogers set or a second Stewart box.
Wednesday December 19
6:00 AM The Clairvoyant (Elvey, 1935) - BW-81 mins. - Claude Rains and Fay Wray in a movie about a fake psychic who seems to really develop paranormal powers. The whole thing sounds promising enough and it was adapted by Charles Bennett, the screenwriter of several early Hitchcock films. IMDB lists multiple companies for this British thriller, originally made for Gaumont, so I’m not sure where the R1 rights lie, but it’s unavailable on DVD (everywhere, I believe).
8:00 PM Nothing Sacred (Wellman, 1937) - C-74 mins. - I don’t believe I’ve ever picked four movies for a single day, but these Wellman pictures TCM are showing this month are worth spotlighting. The theme tonight is “Romance” and first up is Carole Lombard (in color!) and Fredric March as a girl diagnosed with a rare disease and the newspaper reporter who exploits the story. The plot description doesn’t make the film seem like a comedy, but it apparently is. As a result of being in the public domain, the DVD releases are fairly bad. I’d love for TCM to surprise me with a good-looking print, but I’m cautious.
12:30 AM Small Town Girl (Wellman, 1936) - BW-106 mins. - Janet Gaynor stars as the woman of the title who falls for rich and drunk playboy Robert Taylor one night. They marry, but he regrets it the next morning. Barbara Stanwyck would feel Janet’s pain a few years later. Jimmy Stewart pops up in an early supporting part as a character named Elmer Clampett. An MGM film, not on DVD and with rights controlled by Warner Bros.
4:15 AM Lady of Burlesque (Wellman, 1943) - BW-91 mins. - Speaking of Ms. Stanwyck, here she is playing a night club performer for the second time in three years, following 1941’s Ball of Fire. Based on a novel by the infamous Gypsy Rose Lee, this is a movie that dares to combine the rare trio of comedy, music and murder. Also another public domain title and released by Image in a now out-of-print edition that hilariously tacked on the accurate but misleading title of the original novel, “The G-String Murders,” to the film’s name. I can imagine the many disappointed customers who purchased on false pretenses. Another release, from the Roan Group, is still in print and I’ve read that it’s an okay edition.
Thursday December 20
10:00 PM Theodora Goes Wild (Boleslawski, 1936) - BW-94 mins. - Despite my constant mentioning of Barbara Stanwyck lately, Irene Dunne is the official December star of the month on TCM and a night of her comedies is scheduled here. Anyone who hasn’t seen The Awful Truth, airing right afterwards at 11:45 PM, should make a point of watching it, but I’m going to try to catch this one also. Dunne got an Oscar nomination for playing a woman who lives a double life as both a scandalous romance novelist and a normal small-town resident. Melvyn Douglas co-stars as a book jacket artist. Director Richard Boleslawski had a short career in Hollywood, this being his penultimate picture, before dying the following year. I know of him only by reputation and that he made early versions of Les Miserables, The Painted Veil, and Three Godfathers. Theodora Goes Wild was made for Columbia and has not been released on DVD.
Friday December 21
12:00 PM Night Must Fall (Reisz, 1964) - BW-102 mins. - I’ve seen the 1937 version of this story with Robert Montgomery as the murderous lead, but not the remake TCM will show here. This reunited Albert Finney with his Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (which follows at 2:00 PM) director Karel Reisz and cinematographer Freddie Francis. Neither version of this film is available on DVD. MGM released both originally, placing Warner Bros. as the current rights holder. A host of other 1960s British films air this afternoon as well, including Lindsay Anderson’s This Sporting Life at 5:45 PM.
Saturday December 29
8:30 AM On Dangerous Ground (Ray, 1951) - BW-82 mins. - Ray’s vivisection of a troubled city cop (Robert Ryan) sent to the country to cool off and help crack a murder indirectly involving a blind woman (Ida Lupino) is simply one of the decade’s best films. This and Robert Wise’s The Set-Up are Ryan’s two best roles, both flawed good guy parts, and show how great and underrated an actor he was. Not released individually in R1 and only available in the Film Noir Classic Collection, Volume 3 from Warner Bros., the DVD is a disappointingly muddy affair. The French release seems to look even worse. The movie is great though and a must-see.
Sunday December 30
2:00 PM The Spanish Main (Borzage, 1945) - C-101 mins. - I still don’t know very much about director Frank Borzage, and that’s mostly due to a severe lack of availability of his films on DVD, including this one. With Maureen O’Hara, Paul Henreid, and Oscar-nominated color (RKO’s first in a decade) cinematography, this pirate tale might be worth a look. Citizen Kane co-writer Herman J. Mankiewicz shares a screenplay credit, one of his last. Another French DVD release of an RKO film, but unavailable elsewhere, I believe.
2:00 AM The Wild Child (Truffaut, 1970) - BW-85 mins. - Truffaut’s film about the true story of a boy who had been isolated from society and the doctor who educated him. Truffaut takes on the role of the doctor as well. The French language film is available on DVD in both R1 and R2, from MGM, but I can’t speak to the quality of either.
Monday December 31
8:3o AM A Song Is Born (Hawks, 1948) - C-113 mins. - Director Howard Hawks remade his own Ball of Fire, co-written by Billy Wilder, and substituted Danny Kaye for Gary Cooper and Virginia Mayo for Barbara Stanwyck. The music is probably the real star here though, with Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, and Louis Armstrong among the featured players. It’s a little out of the ordinary for one of Hawks’ later films to be unavailable on DVD as this is, especially since it was made in the same year as his great western Red River. Like Ball of Fire, this appears to have been made for Samuel Goldwyn and might be controlled currently by MGM.
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