Looking for 31 Days of Oscar? Well since the Oscars are postponed until April so is TCM’s annual festival.
STAR OF THE MONTH: JOHN GARFIELD (TUESDAYS)
Before there was Brando, there was John Garfield, the original Method actor. This is Garfield’s third time as TCM’s Star of the Month and the majority of Garfield’s films will air this month.
John Garfield was born Jacob Julius Garfinkle on March 4, 1913 on the Lower East Side of Manhattan to Russian Jewish immigrants. Sometime during his childhood, Garfield contracted scarlet fever which weakened his heart forever (shades of Beth from Little Women). Nicknamed “Julie” Garfield was on his way to taking a wrong path when a teacher encouraged him to memorize speeches and deliver them in class which led to winning a statewide oratory contest. Julie became interested in acting and boxing and later won a scholarship to the Maria Ouspenskya Drama School.
Garfield made his Broadway debut in 1932 and later met the playwright Clifford Odets who invited the actor to join the Group Theater. Odets wrote his play Golden Boy with the intention for Garfield to play the leading role but both were dismayed when Garfield was cast in a supporting role. John Garfield’s dream of starring in Golden Boy wouldn’t come to fruition until the early 1950s.
John Garfield instead signed a contract with Warner Bros. making his film debut in Four Daughters (February 16 @ 12:15AM/11:15PM) as a cynical and depressed composer. Garfield was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar. The film was such a success that Warner Bros. greenlit a sequel, Four Wives (February 17 @ 2AM/1AM) which included footage of Garfield from the previous film and reunited nearly the entire cast for the similar Daughters Courageous (February 17 @ 3:45AM/2:45AM). Garfield secured top billing for the first time with Blackwell’s Island (February 3 @ 6:15AM/5:15AM) then played an important supporting role in Juarez (February 10 @ 3:30AM/2:30AM). He got to co-star with such heavyweights as Edward G. Robinson in The Sea Wolf (February 9 @ 8PM/7PM), Spencer Tracy in Tortilla Flat (February 17 @ 5:45AM/4:45AM) and Lana Turner in The Postman Always Rings Twice (February 2 @ 8PM/7PM).
The aforementioned heart issues kept Garfield out of World War II so he fought on the big screen in the Air Force (February 23 @ 12:45AM/11:45PM), under the sea in Destination: Tokyo (February 23 @ 10:15PM/9:15PM) and on the ground in The Fallen Sparrow (February 24 @ 3AM/2AM) and The Pride of the Marines (February 23 @ 8PM/7PM). John Garfield and Bette Davis co-founded the Hollywood Canteen (February 24 @ 10AM/9AM), an integrated club that provided entertainment, food and dancing for servicemen.
After John Garfield’s contract with Warner Bros. ended in 1947, he created his own production company, The Enterprise Studios. Their first film was the boxing drama Body and Soul (February 9 @ 9:45PM/8:45PM). Garfield was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar. The company’s next picture was Force of Evil (February 2 @ 10PM/9PM) with Garfield playing a crooked lawyer. John Garfield’s final three films were John Huston’s We Were Strangers (February 9 @ 11:45PM/10:45PM), Michael Curtiz’s The Breaking Point (February 10 @ 1:45AM/12:45AM) and the film noir He Ran All the Way (February 2 @ 11:45PM/10:45PM).
It was during the late 1940s and the early 1950s that John Garfield became a victim of the House on Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). The witch hunt led to Garfield getting less and less work and the strain eventually caused a fatal heart attack on May 21, 1952. John Garfield was 39 years old and the public was robbed of future John Garfield performances. A tragic case of what might have been.
TCM SPOTLIGHT: KISS CONNECTION (THURSDAYS)
TCM does a “Six Degress of Separation” connecting stars by their kissing partners. The festival beings and ends with Irene Dunne. So this is how it goes: Irene Dunne kisses Cary Grant in My Favorite Wife (February 4 @ 8PM/7PM) then Cary Grant kisses Audrey Hepburn in Charade (February 4 @ 9:45PM/8:45PM) then Audrey Hepburn kisses Gary Cooper in Love in the Afternoon (February 4 @midnight/11PM) then Gary Cooper kisses Barbara Stanwyck in Ball of Fire (February 5 @ 2:30AM/1:30AM) and so on and so on…Then it closes out with Irene Dunne in Theodora Goes Wild (February 26 @ 8:30AM/7:30AM). Other stars featured include-in order-Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Rock Hudson, Doris Day, James Garner, Kim Novak, Jimmy Stewart, Grace Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Debbie Reynolds, Gene Kelly, Cyd Charisse, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Joel McCrea, Claudette Colbert, Clark Gable (who also has a daytime birthday tribute on February 1), Ava Gardner, Robert Taylor, Greta Garbo, and Melvyn Douglas.
TCM SPECIAL THEME: NOTEWORTHY AFRICAN-AMERICAN PERFORMANCES (WEDNESDAYS)
I had a photo of Canada Lee to represent TCM’s celebration of African-American film performances but then Cicely Tyson freakin’ DIED and I felt she should be honored. Ben Mankiewicz and film historian Donald Bogle look at 16 groundbreaking performances starting with a quartet of films starring February birthday boy Sidney Poitier. First is Cry, the Beloved Country (February 3 @ 8PM/7PM), also starring Canada Lee in his final film. The duo play two ministers fighting apartheid in South Africa. Sidney’s other three films include his breakthrough as a troubled teen in Blackboard Jungle (February 3 @ 12:30AM/11:30PM), playing the restless Walter Lee Younger in the film adaptation of Lorraine Hansberry’s ground breaking play A Raisin in the Sun (February 3 @ 10PM/9PM) and bitch-slapping a racist white guy in 1967s Best Picture In the Heat of the Night (February 4 @ 2:30AM/1:30AM). Cicely Tyson gets her due co-starring along with Sammy Davis Jr. in the drama A Man Called Adam (February 11 @ 2AM/1AM) and The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (February 10 @ 11:45PM/10:45PM) . Other performers include Rex Ingram in Moonrise (February 10 @ 8PM/7PM), and in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (February 10 @ 10PM/9PM), Juano Hernandez in Stars in My Crown (February 17 @ 8PM/7PM), Brock Peters and making his film debut, Morgan Freeman in The Pawnbroker (February 17 @ 9:45PM/8:45PM), Hattie McDaniel and Ernest Anderson (who should have had a bigger career) in In This Our Life (February 17 @ midnight/11PM), Ron O’Neal is Super Fly (February 18 @ 2AM/1AM), Ruby Dee and Beah Richards in Take a Giant Step (February 24 @ 8PM/7PM), Adolph Caesar, whose career was cut short by his untimely death in A Soldier’s Story (February 24 @ 10PM/9PM), Irene Cara and Lonette McKee in Sparkle (February 24 @ midnight/11PM) and Clarence Muse in Broken Strings (February 25 @ 2AM/1AM).
NOIR ALLEY
Guess what Noiristas? There’s no 31 Days of Oscar this month so here’s February’s lineup
- 1950’s The Killer That Stalked New York (February 6 & 7) starring Evelyn Keyes as a diamond thief/jilted wife and Patient Zero of a smallpox outbreak. Based off a month-long smallpox outbreak in 1947 New York City.
- No noir on Valentine’s Day weekend
- The TCM premiere of 1951’s Sangre Negra aka Native Son (February 20 & 21). Author Richard Wright played his own creation, Bigger Thomas.
- 1959’s Odds Against Tomorrow (February 27 & 28) starring Henry Belafonte, Robert Ryan and Ed Begley, Sr. as three amateur robbers who may make off with $50,000 dollars if they don’t kill each other first.
Mariah's Musings 