She Blogged By Night

Just Plain Something: Alfred Hitchcock's Rope (1948)

2012-05-18T08:36:00.001-05:00

This post is the SBBN entry for the 2012 For the Love of Film Blogathon, dedicated to raising funds to allow the 1923 film The White Shadow, much of which has recently been found in a New Zealand archive, to be shown online. More about this project can be found at This Island Rod, who is also today's gracious host of the blogathon. For more links to this year's participants, please visit his blog which will also have links to Ferdy on Film and Self-Styled Siren, who share hosting duties and who listed all the 'thon participants earlier in the week.

For a host of details about the restoration, I very much recommend The Smithsonian Magazine's article and blogathon entry here.

Please consider donating! Click here to donate or click the banner to the left. Any amount can help. Think of it as your ticket price, where your ticket buys you the chance to see the restored The White Shadow (1923) online in the comfort of your own home, eating Funyuns and clad in paint-spattered sweatpants and those adorable Snoopy socks that are comfy but, frankly, are so old they're only held together by three tenacious sock molecules who are not yet ready to die.

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And on the subject of dying we gracefully segue into tonight's episode, a sordid little tale of two young men and their intellectual curiosity which kills not a cat but a man whose lifeless corpse is tastefully hidden away in an impromptu buffet table from which his friends and family unknowingly feast.

"[Hitchcock] was like a child who's just discovered sex and thinks it's all very naughty." - Arthur Laurents, screenwriter, Rope

The immaturity of Alfred Hitchcock's attitude toward sexuality has been generally criticized, both during the years he actively worked on films as well as in modern reviews. What many consider a fault in Hitch's oeuvre is something I find fascinating, even charming. I love that the maturity shown in the control of his craft is in such bleak contrast to the immaturity of his interpersonal relationships. The messiness of his insecurity and sexual curiosity is splattered all over his films, some more obvious than others, and while it's deeply personal it also reflects the same sort of semi-hidden Puritan values many in the Western world identify with.

The relationship between upper crust university students Brandon (John Dall) and Phillip (Farley Granger) in Rope could hardly be more explicit. Their dialogue and shared looks are transparent, and there is of course the little matter of the chicken-choking anecdotes. Hume Cronyn, who adapted the play for the screen, stated that Hitchcock wanted the relationship between Phillip and Brandon to be blatant, and while overt mentions were impossible, darkly comic hints were not. Scattered amidst the jokes about Strangulation Day are less obvious jokes about sexuality.

Phillip is the one who strangles David with the titular rope at the beginning of the film. Once the guests arrive his partner Brandon, carried away with his private jokes about the murder no one else has discovered yet, tells a story about Phillip trying to strangle a chicken on an upstate farm as a teen. In 1948, this must have been a naughty pun but not likely an overt reference to the juvenile term "choking the chicken." It is so blatant now that it is almost shocking and certainly very funny, at least to someone like me who has a rather unkind and perverse sense of humor. There is a question of whether "choking the chicken" was even a slang term in 1948, though The Journal of Folklore Research notes that many languages use birds as slang terms for the penis, going back to the word for sparrow in Latin; further, the German "vögelin" means "to bird" which, in turn, means "to fuck."

Even if the specific phrase was not in use in 1948, the symbolism would have been easy to suss out. By calling attention to Phillip's history of strangling chickens, murder is bluntly equated with sex and masturbation. That is not a surprise, given the opening lines of the film are undisguised pillow talk between Brandon and Phillip immediately after David's murder. It is a surprise, though, when their former housemaster Rupert Cadell (James Stewart) reminds Phillip that he knows he is "quite a good chicken strangler." It is not the fact that the two are gay that is shocking, it's that a man obviously decades older than the teenage Phillip would abuse his position of authority so cavalierly. Yet his blithe pronouncements that some men were meant to judge humanity based on self-presumed moral superiority was abuse of power, too. Rupert metaphorically reminding Phillip of their sexual past is just another reason to believe these boys were raised, perhaps inadvertently or perhaps not, to be murderers.

What is intriguing is that, despite the relatively blatant portrayal of homosexuality, it is not used as a reason for psychopathy. After the crime is revealed, Rupert starts his nervous lecture and mentions repeatedly that Brandon and Phillip are evil, but without a single euphemism to indicate being gay is part of what made them evil. Given the script is packed to bursting with puns, darkly humorous turns of phrase and immature metaphors, there is a startling lack of such innuendo in the finale. Perhaps this is hopeless naivete on my part, but this change of tone in the script feels deliberate, to prevent any unnecessary equating of sexuality with psychopathic behavior.

Hitch has an obvious curiosity about sexualities he has not experienced, but he doesn't seem to think of it as "nasty" or judge with the "Victorian Catholic background" as Arthur Laurents once said, at least not in Rope; later films like Marnie and Frenzy are another matter. But perhaps Hitch simply had not been able to confront his own inner judgment on sexuality until later years and thus, in films like Rope, simply discarded the notion altogether in the final scenes rather than face it.

The man walking along the sidewalk early in the film is often credited as Hitchcock in his expected cameo, but the man does not walk like Hitch and I'm not convinced it's him. The cameo is also said to be a red neon sign in the skyline outside the apartment window, a sign which is supposed to be the famous Hitch caricature in an ad for "Reducto," the fake weight-loss product. It took quite a bit

of convincing to make me believe that was really the caricature, primarily because it is so difficult to see. Yet on this viewing I was finally convinced, and for a rather silly reason: The decorative horse-cow-thing resting on a right-hand couch cushion is moved after a reel change so that it blocks the neon sign. The sign is quite large and distracting, so obviously after it had done its job of cameo-by-proxy, it needed to be diminished but could not be removed because of continuity.

The so-called gimmickry of Rope is frequently cited as the film's main flaw. However, I find the palpable miscasting of Jimmy Stewart as Rupert Cadell to be far more damaging to the film than any technical tricks. What the performance of Rupert needs, what it so desperately desires, is an actor who can manifest all the conflicting, simultaneous emotional agendas roiling inside an ultimately selfish man. For all his alleged acknowledgement of his contribution to the crime, Rupert crucially wants only to distance himself from the murder. Like the closet sociopath he is, he's operating only on the first level of Lawrence Kohlberg's stages of moral development: Avoidance of punishment. To that end, Rupert immediately reminds the pair that he is superior to them; he may have engaged in theoretical discussions and hypotheticals but he, being a member of the human race, could never have done such a thing. Or so he claims.

What becomes clear in the finale is that Stewart does not understand, or at least cannot convey, that Rupert's imagined superiority over fellow human beings is precisely what lead that sad trio (quartet, actually; we can't forget about David) to that distancing final shot of the film. Falling back on the superiority argument only highlights that fact, but because of Stewart's take on the role, this parallel appears only in words, not in realization.

Rupert's closeness to the boys is unquestionable. We know what Rupert has taught them philosophically and sexually, and we know how flippant Rupert is on the subject of murder. That is why he cannot be convincingly played straight as a man wronged, as a father figure misunderstood who now understand the errors of his personal philosophy, but that is exactly what Stewart does.

Stewart, I think, must have known his performance did not squarely match either the rest of the ensemble or the tone of the script. He is visibly nervous toward the finish, and like the professional he is he uses it to advantage, shaking as he discloses the rope from his suit pocket and imbuing his chilling last lecture with nervous pacing energy. Jimmy Stewart flounders to find the character of Rupert just as Rupert flounders for excuses to distance himself from the murderers. But the performance is not convincing, neither as desperate self-defensive bluster nor the justifiable rage of a man wronged.

The cast of Rope is fantastic, James Stewart notwithstanding. John Dall is smug intensity personified, playing Brandon as someone who truly believes he's the charismatic center of attention, unaware that everyone else regards him from a cool, safe distance. Every hair on his head and every stitch on his suit is impeccably placed, tailored for maximum effect. Phillip is the more emotional of the two, well-groomed but without sharp-edged suits like his partner, his hair professionally mussed in that delightful late-40s way.

Sir Cedric Hardwicke is a master of understated pathos. He is subtle but quite touching as the father worried about his son, and worried about the souls of those around him who seriously discuss their moral superiority which they believe allows them to decide who lives and who dies. I really enjoyed Joan Chandler. Every time I watch this film, I wonder again why she didn't have a bigger career.

Hitch very likely approached Rope with a self-awareness of his own culpability in presenting murder as humorous and justified, exactly as Rupert does. Rope takes the metaphor of Hitchcock's movies "teaching" young people that murder is sometimes justified to a rather illogical extreme, but in doing so does draw in the audience enough so that, at least subconsciously, they began to question their own tolerance for stylized (and stylish) killings.

The technical aspects of Rope are the most talked-about aspects, which is a shame because the final product is far less gimmicky than its reputation suggests. Bosley Crowther of the New York Times was even more contemptuous than usual, claiming that the story was dull and bare while at the same time admitting to be frankly upset by its morbid, explicit nature. It's difficult to reconcile Crowther's feeling that a film which was "frightfully intense" was also boring.

Hitchcock apparently loved the technical challenges of filming Rope to look as though it was one single long take, and was apparently inspired by a similar technique used on the 1939 television version of the play. In the 1962 interviews with Francoise Truffaut, Hitchcock at first seems reticent to talk much about Rope, and when he does it's entirely about the technological feats achieved in filmmaking. He dismisses the technique a "nonsensical stunt," though, a "mistake" that he made again in a few scenes of Under Capricorn. He is also defensive and in denial with Truffaut, saying that Rope was generally liked by critics which is, unfortunately, not true.

Gene Siskel repeatedly stated that the movie was done to appear as one long take with no cuts which is patently untrue; there are edits in the film where the camera cuts to another area, and while movie watchers are so used to edits that we don't even react to them, if one is going to state on national television that a film uses no conventional edits then one should, perhaps, actually check to see if that is true instead of announcing it while a sidekick repeatedly chuckles condescendingly.

It is true, though, that the technical aspects of the film meant actors had to be at the top of their game, to know their lines verbatim for takes of up to 11 minutes while maneuvering through a set covered in cables and props on wheels. This was unheard of for actors. Despite the many comparisons of this movie to live plays, stage actors had more freedom of performance than what was required on Rope. Some of the behind-the-scenes publicity photos are absolutely startling:

The actors are dwarfed by the technology and outnumbered by the crew.

Hitch is right in their face during filming, almost part of the scene himself.

Cameras on tracks and cords moving from one pre-planned, marked area to another capture the feel of a single-set stage play, yet there is a lot of bounce to the camera movement, resulting in many shaky scenes. Shadows from the crew can be seen gliding over actors as the enormous camera slides in. And honestly, it seems odd that Hitch would attempt to create a film while deliberately eschewing the technical methods that define film and set it apart from other arts. He went so far as to try to reduce the color in the film to a mostly grey palette, though he also was insistent that he film in Technicolor and was excited to make his first color film.

The grey tones are effective in Rope though a bit obvious. Hitch would refine this color palette over the years, using it to much better effect in films like North By Northwest. And just as Eve Marie Saint's red rose gown stands out amongst the grey of everyone about her, Joan Chandler's intense maroon dress brings the focus on her. Perhaps Adrian had an off day or perhaps this is personal taste, but I always felt Chandler's dress was a bit of a joke, a fashion writer impeccably made up but in a gown of dubious taste. The poufy shoulders are one thing, but poufy elbows are quite another.

In Rope, appearances are more important than human beings. The characters are deliberately crafted like expensive hand-made chess pieces, the elegant apartment the playing board. The film is exciting while we watch how those pieces are played, and falls into tedium when Rupert suddenly converts to a pro-humanity stance, demanding Phillip and Brandon -- and us, by extension -- cease treating human beings as though they were objects. And had Hitchcock been as interested in the story as he was in how to film it, we might have gotten more insight into how Hitch himself reconciled his dehumanizing filmmaking techniques. Then again, this is the man who famously said that all actors should be treated like cattle. Perhaps there was never anything inside Alfred Hitchcock that needed to be reconciled at all.

There's That Word Again

2012-05-02T02:48:00.001-05:00

She Blogged By Night will be moving in the near future. I'll warn you before the actual move date, but in case something stupid or hilarious happens in the meantime and shebloggedbynight.com does not work, the direct link to SBBN is:

bloggedbynight.blogspot.com

That's where all the updates/announcements will be about the blog move. However, if neither shebloggedbynight.com or bloggedbynight.blogspot.com work, try the backup blog at:

sbbn.wordpress.com

Once everything is moved, you should be able to go to shebloggedbynight.com and be directed to the new blog, and you won't have to do anything but resubscribe to the new RSS feed when I get it set up.

While I work on moving everything, the blog will be mostly inactive again; you know, on hiatus, that word that causes everyone to roll their eyes, myself included. I won't be completely invisible since blogathon posts will still go up, and I'll be writing at Spectrum, of course.

I've also temporarily cut down on my Twitter followers and the blogs I read. This is to free up time to finish all the stuff involved in moving a 4 1/2 year old blog and the 2400 pictures posted on it. Please do not take any of the unfollowings personally, it's all temporary to keep me from being distracted.

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That's the short story. Here's the long one, if you're interested.

I haven't been a very active blogger since October, with only a handful of solid posts over the last six months, but there has been a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes. During the next couple of months, I need to finish everything up so I can actually blog again with only the usual distractions rather than these new, improved, high-impact distractions. During the downtime, this is what I'll be doing:

1. Moving all the photos on SBBN to another webhost. Since some photos I posted way back in 2007 were tiny -- and by "tiny" I mean 110px or something stupid like that -- I just didn't bother moving them. Also, some pics will just not be moved either through oversight or lack of time. There are roughly 2400 photos to move and it has to be done manually, which is so completely not fun I cannot describe it.

2. Switching from Blogger to WordPress. Blogger's platform is impossible to work with. I cannot keep wasting my time with workarounds because Blogger can't be arsed to fix their product, and I'm not convinced the broken parts are so much broken as they are things which have been deliberately changed so they will only function properly in Chrome. The Blogger help forums are useless; all the helpers are volunteers, with the good volunteers overwhelmed with requests and the bad volunteers acting like unmitigated assholes. I had links to some really interesting examples of assholery, but Blogger recently wiped their old help forums clean so I can't show you any of the super happy fun times I've had over there recently. On the old forums, if I asked about a broken widget I would be told "you're selfish for wanting the widgets fixed." I ask about the widgets on the new help forums and get no answer at all except "switch to Chrome."

On Twitter, writer/comedian Bill Corbett joked that March 1 was the day Google quietly scratched the word "don't" from their company motto. Turns out, it wasn't a joke. Google's recent insanity is surely a deliberate move to force people to sign up for Google+ and use Chrome. What I've been hearing in the grapevine is pretty scary, honestly, and time will tell if the horror stories are true or merely rumor. What I do know, though, is Google makes its money by providing free services in exchange for our information. That's the trade off; they don't give us blogs and email out of the kindness of their hearts. Google already had tons of my info via my email, RSS Reader, my blog, all my photos, Google Payments, and all the searches I do that they keep track of even though I don't want them to. That wasn't enough for them, apparently, and now they want me to rely on them more heavily while providing a sub-par product. That's a big ol' red flag to me, and it's time to de-Google my life.

3. Because there's always a health issue going on, I also wanted to mention that the chronic sinus infection issues I've had since I was about 10 years old are getting slowly worse, resulting in a lot of interesting prescriptions and medical procedures. On the one hand, it's just a sinus infection, but on the other hand, HOLY SHIT INFECTION RIGHT NEXT TO MY BRAIN. Outpatient surgery is a certainty at this point, so that is taking quite a bit of my time.

4. I have two lengthy posts to finish and a blogathon to organize. I'll post more details on that in about a month, though it might not happen until the fall.

5. I unfollowed a bunch of people on Twitter and unsubscribed to a lot of blogs. This is temporary, because I spend a whole fucking lot of time reading what you all write and link to. I love doing that, it's how I learn things (I can learn!) but it takes up far more time than I have right now. Once everything is set up on the new blog I will return to following and reading as usual.

6. My Tumblr will be updated sporadically. Eventually I hope to have all my "picture posts" over on Tumblr rather than on SBBN proper.

I've lost a lot of readers over the last few months, which is to be expected because people will only take so much boredom before leaving for more colorful, entertaining sites. That's fine, actually, and I hope I haven't irritated anyone too much. I think SBBN will ultimately end up being a different kind of blog, probably a better one, and it's time to start anew.

For those of you who have stayed around, thank you so much. I love you all and owe you a Coke, or an Orange Crush if I happen to have any in the house, but be quick because that shit doesn't last long around here.

May Movies to Watch For

2012-04-29T08:53:00.003-05:00

Here are some movies coming up on Sundance, TCM and FMC next month that you might want to check out.

All times Eastern. As a reminder, some of these movies may end up being edited, time compressed, in the wrong aspect ratio, or contain subliminal messages that cause you to consume an overabundance of Twinkies and Mountain Dew. You know how it is.

TCM

I Bury The Living (1958)
May 2, 3:30 PM
Richard Boone and Theodore Bikel star in this horror flick about the caretaker of a cemetery who believes he can somehow cause people who have pre-purchased graves at the cemetery to die mysteriously. Directed by Howard Band, father of noted B-grade horror movie director Charles Band.

Precodes starting early morning May 3rd:
4:15 AM Bed of Roses (1933)
5:30 AM Kept Husbands (1931)
7:00 AM Dynamite (1929)
9:15 AM One Man's Journey (1933)
10:30 AM Chance at Heaven (1934)

They Live (1988)
May 4, 2:00 AM
Cult classic directed by John Carpenter, starring Roddy Piper, Keith David and Meg Foster. Makes a great double feature with...

Escape From New York (1981)
May 4, 3:45 AM
Another Carpenter cult classic starring Kurt Russell, Ernie Borgie, Lee Van Cleef, Isaac Hayes, Adrienne Barbeau, and Donald Pleasance. The first time I saw this movie was about 5 months ago, and I am still kicking myself for not watching it sooner. It was famously filmed in the ruins of East St. Louis several years after a fire had destroyed much of the area, but since then landmarks used in the film, such as the Union Station, Old Chain of Rocks Bridge, and St. Louis Brewery Building, have been renovated.

AFI's Master Class - The Art of Collaboration: Russell-Wahlberg (2012)
May 8, 10:00 PM and again at 1:15 AM
TCM is showing two of the AFI Master Class events today, both this one and the Spielberg-Williams later that night:

AFI's Master Class - The Art of Collaboration: Spielberg-Williams (2011)
May 8, 2:15 AM (early morning the 9th)

The Most Dangerous Game (1932)
May 9, 8:00 PM
It's Joel McCrea month on TCM and there are a lot of terrific movies, but this is one of the best. My husband and I caught it on a lark on TCM a few years ago and absolutely loved it. It's a fun precode and surprisingly influential. McCrea is great, but Leslie Banks' performance as Zaroff is woefully underrated. Criterion has put out a lovely version as well.

Precodes on May 10:
9:45 AM The Animal Kingdom (1932)
11:15 AM Ace of Aces (1933)
12:45 PM After Tonight (1933)

Boxcar Bertha (1972)
May 10, 4:00 AM (early morning May 11)
Early Scorsese film heavily influenced by his time spent working with Roger Corman. Starring Barbara Hershey and David Carradine.

How To Murder Your Wife (1965)
May 11, 2:00 PM
Welcome to my mini-essay on this month's Official SBBN What The Shit Is This Selection. How To Murder Your Wife purports to be a comedy, but I find it mean-spirited and poorly conceived. It's a product of the peculiarly overt sexism of the mid 1960s, a sexism framed in such a way that a man was not urbane and sophisticated unless he treated women poorly. Jack Lemmon was one of the most popular actors to embody that playboy-asshole type, his characters often a combination of boy-next-door and serial date-rapist, and this was supposed to be funny.

Coming after the already revolting one-two punch of Under the Yum Yum Tree and Good Neighbor Sam, it's impossible to think of How To Murder Your Wife as a separate, unrelated entity, but rather as another entry in a hating-on-women genre. It is perhaps no coincidence that Lemmon himself apparently disliked all three films to varying degrees.

In How To Murder Your Wife, Lemmon's character drunkenly marries an Italian woman he met only hours earlier when she burst half-nude out of a large novelty cake at a stag party. He wakes up the next morning and immediately dislikes the married life, especially the part where his wife wants sex all the time. Frankly, the sex-weary hetero white man is a comedic trope I've never understood.

Lemmon's character is a cartoonist, and he uses his nationally syndicated cartoon strip to work out his frustrations by showing how a husband can commit the perfect murder of his wife. The cartoon mirrors his own life in many ways, so when his wife ends up missing, he's arrested. He gets off when he convinces the all-male jury that murdering your wife -- any wife -- is justified, sticking it to all the wives in the film who deserve a comeuppance for being bitch hag shrews, which is what all wives are by nature.

The most bothersome thing about How To Murder Your Wife to me is that the woman he marries is so undeniably powerless. She's an immigrant whose family lives on another continent and she's made fun of for not being American. She was forced into a demeaning job and is routinely disrespected because she's female. Further, the jokes do not work in this film unless certain facts, for want of a better word, are understood: Women are secondary citizens, women are greedy, men are oppressed if they are not allowed to be polyamorous, the wives are forbidden from being polyamorous (and have no interest in it anyway), and husbands hate their wives because of a variety of heinous faults that are native to the human female. To pretend to murder your wife and dump her corpse in cement and then convince a jury you're innocent because all women deserve this treatment just isn't funny, given the context.

Check out the caricature of Peter Sellers on the bottom right. Doesn't he look exactly like Geoffrey Rush in The Life and Death of Peter Sellers?

The Wrong Box (1966)
May 11, 19:00 PM
Now this is funny. A host of rich old men who, decades earlier, signed into a tontine, die in hilarious ways. The final two survivors and their greedy relatives engage in wacky shenanigans to get the money. Features a host of wonderful actors and plenty of cameos, including one from my favorite pretend boyfriend Tony Hancock.

Let's Scare Jessica To Death (1971)
May 11, 2:00 AM (late night the 12th)
I caught this the last time it was on Underground and quite liked it. It's a low-budget thriller where the emotional and mental status of a woman is called into question as she becomes more frightened by the hostility around her. It very much evokes the period of the early 1970s when hippie culture was waning but some facets were still sticking around the cultural consciousness. Zorah Lampert gives a fabulous performance.

Diabolique (1955)
May 12, 8:00 PM
If you haven't seen this before, see it. I'm not going to tell you a thing about it except it's a mystery/thriller and it's terrific.

Saratoga Trunk (1945)
May 14, 7:30 AM
I saw this delicious bit of weirdness many years ago on one of the first Bob's Picks I ever watched. Robert Osborne said it was his favorite Ingrid Bergman film, which I think he probably said just to get people to watch it, but maybe not. It's a strange flick with some skewed Tod Browning-esque overtones and a perfectly horrible performance by Gary Cooper. Of course, I never thought the man could act his way out of a parking ticket, but I know I'm in the minority. In Saratoga Trunk, he seems confused and upset. Check this film out if you haven't seen it before.

Gun Crazy (1949)
May 16, 8:00 PM
Speaking of Bob's Picks, Gun Crazy is one of this months' choices. A great noir flick with Peggy Cummins and John Dall.

Midnight Mary (1933)
May 15, 4:15 AM (early morning the 16th)
An unbelievably salacious precode. Loretta Young was so offended that scenes from her precodes were being used for "naughty" reasons in Myra Breckinridge that she threatened to sue; Midnight Mary, to my mind, proves Young was in deep, heavy denial. There is a scene where she's in the back seat of a car with Ricardo Cortez that must be seen to be believed.

The Hatchet Man (1932)
May 16, 5:30 AM
William Wellman precode starring a whole bunch o' white people in yellowface.

Robert Montgomery Precodes on May 21:
6:45 AM Faithless (1932)
8:15 AM Another Language (1933)
9:45 AM When Ladies Meet (1933)

SUNDANCE

Pageant (2008)
May 7, 9:15 AM and 2:15 PM
Documentary about the 34th annual Miss Gay America pageant in Memphis.

Scott Walker: 30 Century Man (2006)
May 8, 7:15 AM and six more times this month
Documentary about the 3reclusive former pop star Scott Walker who became an avant-garde musician. Contains lots of interviews, history, and plenty of his experimental songs.

FOX MOVIE CHANNEL

S*P*Y*S (1974)
May 1, 1:30 PM and again on the 16th
Action comedy starring Elliott Gould and Donald Sutherland as spies to get on the wrong side of both the KGB and the CIA. I haven't seen it and it gets terrible ratings online, so it might be actually bad and not so-bad-it's-good.

The Girl Can't Help It (1956)
May 2, 6:00 AM
An agent is hired to make a gangster's moll a singing sensation. I've never seen it, but a movie with Fats Domino, Julie London and Little Richard is probably my kinda movie.

A Royal Scandal (1945)
May 5, 9:10 AM
Tallulah as Catherine the Great in this sexy comedy directed by Otto Preminger about the queen's affair with a very young soldier. Bankhead's biographer Lee Israel famously disliked this film, but I personally loved it. Charles Coburn as the yes man navigating a turbulent political world is perfect, with his expeditious side-steps so quick you might not even catch them on the first viewing.

Three Came Home (1950)
May 8, 6:00 AM
Based on the autobiography of Agnes Newton Keith, a nurse interred in a Japanese war camp in WWII. Stars Claudette Colbert, Florence Desmond and Sessue Hayakawa.

The Fury (1978)
May 8, 4:00 AM (early morning the 9th)
The government creates then kidnaps psychic teenagers. A Brian de Palma flick, so you know what you're getting here. Starring John Cassavetes, Kirk Douglas, Carrie Snodgress, Charles Durning, Andrew Stevens, and Amy Irving. A very satisfying ending.

Mel Brooks Marathon on May 16th
8:00 AM Silent Movie (1976)
9:30 AM High Anxiety (1977)
11:10 AM Young Frankenstein (1974)
1:00 PM Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993)

And if anyone has any other movies on any channel they would like to mention, feel free to leave a comment!