TCM Schedule for Fri, Jan 3, 2024 - Marion Davies tribute / Was It A Dream?

[Auggie]

Marion Davies (January 3, 1897 – September 22, 1961) was an American actress, producer, screenwriter, and philanthropist.

Educated in a religious convent, Davies fled the school to pursue a career as a chorus girl. As a teenager, she appeared in several Broadway musicals and one film, Runaway Romany (1917). She soon became a featured performer in the Ziegfeld Follies. While performing in the 1916 Follies, the nineteen-year-old Marion met the fifty-three-year-old newspaper tycoon, William Randolph Hearst, and became his mistress.

Hearst took over management of Davies' career, promoted it extensively in his newspapers, and financed her pictures, eventually creating Cosmopolitan Pictures to produce films for her.

By 1924 Davies was the number one female box office star in Hollywood as a result of the popularity of When Knighthood Was in Flower (1922) and Little Old New York (1923), which were among the biggest box-office hits of their respective years. During the zenith of the Jazz Age, Davies became renowned as the hostess of lavish soirees for Hollywood actors and political elites.

Following a decline of her career during the Great Depression, Davies retired from the screen in 1937, devoting herself to an ailing Hearst and charitable work.

Full bio: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_Davies




--- DAYTIME (EST) ---

6:00 AM | Five and Ten (1931)
A dime-store heiress elopes with a married man.
Dir: Robert Z. Leonard | Cast: Marion Davies, Leslie Howard, Richard Bennett

7:30 AM | The Bachelor Father (1931)
An aging Don Juan decides to get better acquainted with his grown children.
Dir: Robert Z. Leonard | Cast: Marion Davies, Ralph Forbes, C. Aubrey Smith

9:15 AM | Hearts Divided (1936)
Napoleon's younger brother falls for a girl from Baltimore.
Dir: Frank Borzage | Cast: Marion Davies, Dick Powell, Charles Ruggles

10:45 AM | Blondie of the Follies (1932)
Two showgirls on the road from rags to riches compete for the same man.
Dir: Edmund Goulding | Cast: Marion Davies, Robert Montgomery, Billie Dove

12:30 PM | Going Hollywood (1933)
A love-struck teacher pursues a radio singer to Hollywood.
Dir: Raoul Walsh | Cast: Marion Davies, Bing Crosby, Fifi D'orsay

2:00 PM | Ever Since Eve (1937)
A plain-jane secretary masquerades as a beauty to win her boss's heart.
Dir: Lloyd Bacon | Cast: Marion Davies, Robert Montgomery, Frank Mchugh

3:30 PM | The Florodora Girl (1930)
A turn-of-the-century chorus girl searches for romance.
Dir: Harry Beaumont | Cast: Marion Davies, Lawrence Gray, Walter Catlett

5:00 PM | Beverly of Graustark (1926)
Beverly Calhoun impersonates the Prince of Graustark while he recovers from a skiing injury.
Dir: Sidney Franklin | Cast: Marion Davies, Antonio Moreno, Creighton Hale

6:30 PM | Cain and Mabel (1936)
The publicity romance between a prizefighter and a showgirl turns into the real thing.
Dir: Lloyd Bacon | Cast: Marion Davies, Clark Gable, Allen Jenkins


--- PRIME TIME, LATE NIGHT, EARLY MORNING ---

8:00 PM | Spellbound (1945)
A psychiatrist protects the identity of an amnesiac accused of murder.
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock | Cast: Ingrid Bergman, Gregory Peck, Michael Chekhov

10:00 PM | The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
A Korean War hero doesn't realize he's been programmed to kill by the enemy.
Dir: John Frankenheimer | Cast: Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, Janet Leigh

12:15 AM | Nightmare (1956)
A musician has a nightmare about killing a man in a strange house but suspects it really happened.
Dir: Maxwell Shane | Cast: Edward G. Robinson, Kevin McCarthy, Connie Russell

2:00 AM | Murder, My Sweet (1944)
Detective Philip Marlowe's search for a two-timing woman leads him to blackmail and murder.
Dir: Edward Dmytryk | Cast: Dick Powell, Claire Trevor, Anne Shirley

3:45 AM | Stranger on the Third Floor (1940)
A newspaperman serves as key witness in a circumstantial murder case.
Dir: Boris Ingster | Cast: Peter Lorre, John McGuire, Margaret Tallichet

5:30 AM | MGM Parade Show #23 (1955)
Clip from "Anchors Aweigh"; short film about the making of "The Last Hunt."
Cast: Gene Kelly, George Murphy, Dore Schary

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Note to film noir fans: Stranger on the Third Floor is often cited as the first "true" film noir of the classic period (1940–1959).

Peter Lorre plays a good creep, too.

[rsdsharp]

1. They should play Citizen Kane, since she is supposedly the inspiration for "Rosebud."