Following the wishes of those in charge on this board I would like to start the second thread of obscure films that will pop up on cable TV stations this year, be it TCM, THIS ETC ETC. Since the first one was a very long popular one that got over I believe 10,000 views. I will be listing obscure films that will be on TV and as in the past I hope our friend BOB DIMICI will give us more fascinating info.
For those middle age and older people who might have forgotten about the dozens of low budget rock and roll films they saw in drive ins decades ago that were made in the late 50's and early 60's. Plus for the younger crowd who never knew these films existed which starred classic rock and roll singers THIS NETWORK in January for the next two weeks will show a few obscure films of that type.Here they are- ROCK AROUND THE CLOCK-56 WITH BILL HALEY- TWIST AROUND THE CLOCK-61- WITH CHUBBY CHECKER AND DION-DON'T KNOCK THE ROCK -56 WITH BILL HALEY AND DON'T KNOCK THE TWIST-61-WITH CHUBBY CHECKER.
During the Thursday-Friday overnight, at 12:45 AM, January 31, Turner Classic Movies will be presenting the 1964 Joan Crawford film DELLA. DELLA was originally a television pilot called Royal Bay. The pilot, running about 60 minutes, was directed by Robert Gist, who was an actor in the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s. Gist had gotten into television directing in 1960 with Peter Gunn and had gone on to direct episodes of Naked City and The Untouchables. Royal Bay was developed in 1964 by Four-Star and Revue Television to star TV veteran Paul Burke (Naked City) as a lawyer, and movie veteran Charles Bickford (THE SONG OF BERNADETTE, DUEL IN THE SUN among others) as his cantankerous, righteous father. The program was to be produced on location weekly and was seeking a commitment for 30 weeks. To ensure success, the producers needed a marquee name for the pilot, and the concept grew into a scant feature-length pilot when director Gist secured the services of superstar and friend Joan Crawford as guest star. The episode was to be titled "Della," after the character that was offered to Miss Crawford.
In the pilot film, Crawford plays "Della Chappell," the daughter of a California coastal town’s founder. She is an uncompromising woman who rules her home with an iron fist and exerts her influence over the town she owns so much of. The story finds a young lawyer (Burke) attempting to get Della to sell a parcel of land to a government contractor, who will bring lots of jobs to the town. Burke is invited to visit Della’s home in the middle of the night and discovers her and her daughter Jenny (Diane Baker) living in a nocturnal world, sleeping during the day and going about their business during the night hours. He finds the daughter intriguing and is lured into their world with subsequent visits. The relationship eventually takes on tragic proportions. Crawford had earlier worked with Diane Baker in 1959's THE BEST OF EVERYHING and would soon appear with her again (also as mother and daughter) in William Castle’s STRAIT-JACKET. The pilot was scored by Fred Steiner.
1964 was a banner year for Joan Crawford. She had a movie in the can (the successful STRAIT-JACKET), the script for HUSH…HUSH, SWEET CHARLOTTE on her desk, plus plans for a new book. Also, as an executive in the Pepsi-Cola company, she had planned an extended tour for the ever-growing firm during its aggressive "For Those Who Think Young" campaign in the summer months. For a sixty-year-old actress, this was a strenuous schedule, but Crawford drew strength from extensive work and fan-based activity. However, DELLA was a misfire for her and a waste of time and energy because no one ever saw it. The TV pilot was rejected, unaired, and scrapped. Subsequently, the Royal Bay pilot film was padded with additional outtake footage to make a film running about 70 minutes that was titled DELLA and was released to TV stations three years later as part of a Universal Pictures syndicated film package.
Ultimately, DELLA fell into the public domain and was rescued in the late 1980's and released on a 1988 videotape distributed by a company called International Film Forum, with misleading cover art, under the title “Fatal Confinement,” no doubt to capitalize on the success of 1987’s FATAL ATTRACTION. The title on the film remains DELLA. The second hand video tapes, which are labeled as running 70 minutes, can be found on Amazon.com.
There is an even scarcer video release of this film, re-issued in 1997 by a company called VCI/Liberty Home Video under the title DELLA. The picture on the cover is not a shot of Crawford from this movie. I believe it was taken from 1963’s THE CARETAKERS. The back cover includes a shot of Crawford from TORCH SONG.
The film was eventually released on DVD by VCI and is sold at Movies Unlimited, among other sites, listed as running 68 minutes. This is the length of the version listed by TCM.
A version of DELLA running 65:11 has been uploaded to YouTube in seven parts by annavissifan. Here is part 1:
Robert Gist continued to direct in television during the 1960s for such series as 12 O’Clock High (which co-starred Paul Burke) and The High Chaparral. He retired in 1971, only coming back once in 1982 to direct a single episode of the series Strike Force.
During the Thursday-Friday overnight, at 12:45 AM, January 31, Turner Classic Movies will be presenting the 1964 Joan Crawford film DELLA. DELLA was originally a television pilot called Royal Bay. The pilot, running about 60 minutes, was directed by Robert Gist, who was an actor in the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s. Gist had gotten into television directing in 1960 with Peter Gunn and had gone on to direct episodes of Naked City and The Untouchables. Royal Bay was developed in 1964 by Four-Star and Revue Television to star TV veteran Paul Burke (Naked City) as a lawyer, and movie veteran Charles Bickford (THE SONG OF BERNADETTE, DUEL IN THE SUN among others) as his cantankerous, righteous father. The program was to be produced on location weekly and was seeking a commitment for 30 weeks. To ensure success, the producers needed a marquee name for the pilot, and the concept grew into a scant feature-length pilot when director Gist secured the services of superstar and friend Joan Crawford as guest star. The episode was to be titled "Della," after the character that was offered to Miss Crawford.
In the pilot film, Crawford plays "Della Chappell," the daughter of a California coastal town’s founder. She is an uncompromising woman who rules her home with an iron fist and exerts her influence over the town she owns so much of. The story finds a young lawyer (Burke) attempting to get Della to sell a parcel of land to a government contractor, who will bring lots of jobs to the town. Burke is invited to visit Della’s home in the middle of the night and discovers her and her daughter Jenny (Diane Baker) living in a nocturnal world, sleeping during the day and going about their business during the night hours. He finds the daughter intriguing and is lured into their world with subsequent visits. The relationship eventually takes on tragic proportions. Crawford had earlier worked with Diane Baker in 1959's THE BEST OF EVERYHING and would soon appear with her again (also as mother and daughter) in William Castle’s STRAIT-JACKET. The pilot was scored by Fred Steiner.
1964 was a banner year for Joan Crawford. She had a movie in the can (the successful STRAIT-JACKET), the script for HUSH…HUSH, SWEET CHARLOTTE on her desk, plus plans for a new book. Also, as an executive in the Pepsi-Cola company, she had planned an extended tour for the ever-growing firm during its aggressive "For Those Who Think Young" campaign in the summer months. For a sixty-year-old actress, this was a strenuous schedule, but Crawford drew strength from extensive work and fan-based activity. However, DELLA was a misfire for her and a waste of time and energy because no one ever saw it. The TV pilot was rejected, unaired, and scrapped. Subsequently, the Royal Bay pilot film was padded with additional outtake footage to make a film running about 70 minutes that was titled DELLA and was released to TV stations three years later as part of a Universal Pictures syndicated film package.
Ultimately, DELLA fell into the public domain and was rescued in the late 1980's and released on a 1988 videotape distributed by a company called International Film Forum, with misleading cover art, under the title “Fatal Confinement,” no doubt to capitalize on the success of 1987’s FATAL ATTRACTION. The title on the film remains DELLA. The second hand video tapes, which are labeled as running 70 minutes, can be found on Amazon.com.
There is an even scarcer video release of this film, re-issued in 1997 by a company called VCI/Liberty Home Video under the title DELLA. The picture on the cover is not a shot of Crawford from this movie. I believe it was taken from 1963’s THE CARETAKERS. The back cover includes a shot of Crawford from TORCH SONG.
The film was eventually released on DVD by VCI and is sold at Movies Unlimited, among other sites, listed as running 68 minutes. This is the length of the version listed by TCM.
A version of DELLA running 65:11 has been uploaded to YouTube in seven parts by annavissifan. Here is part 1:
Robert Gist continued to direct in television during the 1960s for such series as 12 O’Clock High (which co-starred Paul Burke) and The High Chaparral. He retired in 1971, only coming back once in 1982 to direct a single episode of the series Strike Force.
Robert Gist is also the only one to have acted and directed episodes of "The Untouchables" (he appeared in Pt. 2 of "The Unhired Assassin" and directed several episodes of the series).
On Thursday, February 13th, at 2:45 A.M., Turner Classic Movies will be showing the hard-to-see 1975 French romantic comedy COUSIN COUSINE. The film was nominated for three Academy Awards: Best Foreign Film, Best Actress (Marie-Christine Barrault), and Best Original Screenplay.
COUSIN COUSINE has never been on Region 1 DVD, and is only available on an expensive imported Blu-ray.
Please let me know if anyone sees that they're going to re-broadcast either "Sheila Levine Is Dead And Living In New York" (from director Sydney J. Furie) or "Something For Everyone" (from Harold Prince). Thanks!
One I'd like to see again someday is ME, NATALIE with Patty Duke. I think the last time I saw this might have been on CineMax back around '90/'91. Duke is wonderful, great Mancini score (although the Rod McKuen songs go down pretty hard), and containing a beautiful supporting role for Salome Jens and the film debut of Al Pacino (the jerk at the dance.)
This was a CBS/Cinema Center film and I get the impression they don't show up too often.
One I'd like to see again someday is ME, NATALIE with Patty Duke. I think the last time I saw this might have been on CineMax back around '90/'91. Duke is wonderful, great Mancini score (although the Rod McKuen songs go down pretty hard), and containing a beautiful supporting role for Salome Jens and the film debut of Al Pacino (the jerk at the dance.)
This was a CBS/Cinema Center film and I get the impression they don't show up too often.
There may be hope for ME, NATALIE yet. Just a month ago, Paramount released three Cinema Center Films that had not previously been on DVD:
The April Fools (1969) Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why Is he Saying Those Terrible Things About Me? (1971) The War Between Men and Women (1972)
And last October, Paramount released the Cinema Center Film "Something Big" (1971).
As for me, the Cinema Center Film that I want is THE REVENGERS (1972).
On Friday, March 7th, at 5 PM ET, Turner Classic Movies will be showing the 1953 crime drama COUNT THE HOURS, starring Teresa Wright and MacDonald Carey. The film was an early directorial assignment for Don Siegel. Benedict Bogeaus and MacDonald Carey produced the film independently, and it was originally slated to be released by United Artists. Prior to the film's release, however, Bogeaus bought out Carey's share of the production for $50,000 and then sold the film to RKO head Howard Hughes. COUNT THE HOURS has never been released in the U.S. on any home video format.
Please let me know if anyone sees that they're going to re-broadcast either "Sheila Levine Is Dead And Living In New York" (from director Sydney J. Furie) or "Something For Everyone" (from Harold Prince). Thanks!
I worked at The Paris Theater where Something For Everyone premiered back in the early Seventies. Must have seen it, or parts thereof, over fifty times. It's such a one-of-a-kind movie. Still have the opening night program, too. A lot of famous people stopped by to see the film, even Joan Fontaine who was staying across the street at The Plaza Hotel
On Tuesday, March 11, at 12:30 PM ET, Turner Classic Movies will be showing a film that is torn from today’s headlines—BENGAZI. This 1955 adventure stars Richard Conte and Victor Mclaglen and was directed by John Brahm (HANGOVER SQUARE). Desert scenes for the film were actually shot in the Yuma Desert in Arizona, where an Arab mosque was constructed. Roy Webb scored the film, which has never had a video release on any format. TCM is promising a showing in the film’s original widescreen Superscope format.
TO EUGENE- Sheila Levine is dead and living in New York-75- can be seen on VUDU[CHECK COMPUTER] for $2.99-Something for everyone-70- can be seen in 4 parts on YOU TUBE.
In the early 1950s, Austria-Hungarian émigré Irving Allen and American Albert "Cubby" Broccoli partnered to form Warwick Films, which set up shop in England to take advantage of a filmmaking subsidy offered by the British government. Through the 1950s, they each became known as one of the best independent film producers of the day, as the two would sometimes work in tandem, but more often than not on independent projects for their joint enterprise, producing multiple projects in a given year. As the first of their films, the two jointly produced 1953’s PARATROOPER, a World War II adventure starring Alan Ladd and Leo Genn.
Turner Classic Movies will be showing PARATROOPER on Tuesday, March 11, at 6:30 PM ET. Terence Young directed the film, and John Addison provided the score. The film was based upon a 1950 British novel called “The Red Beret” by Hilary St. George Saunders. The producing partners originally thought about having initial distributor RKO participate in the production as well, but the partners and RKO mutually suspended their contract, and the film was released through Columbia Pictures instead, thus beginning the long relationship between Warwick Films and Columbia. PARATROOPER has never been issued in the U.S. on any home video format.
After a string of successful films throughout the 1950s (SAFARI, ZARAK, FIRE DOWN BELOW), Allen and Broccoli came to a disagreement over the film potential of the James Bond novel series. Broccoli was very interested, believing the novels could lead to a high quality series of films, and Allen was not, preferring to stick with older established forms. The pair met separately with Bond author Ian Fleming in 1957, Broccoli from New York where he'd retreated to care for his ailing wife. In the London meeting with Fleming, Allen all but insulted Fleming, declaring that his novels weren't even "good enough for television".
In 1959, captivated by the historical importance and a good script, Warwick Films undertook the risky project of producing, funding, and distributing the controversial film THE TRIALS OF OSCAR WILDE, which was released in 1960. Ahead of the times in its frank unprejudiced depiction of homosexual issues, the film ran into a stone wall in the United States, all but preventing any sort of advertising, and the company lost its large investment. Broccoli and Allen fell out, and the partnership became moribund, being dissolved officially in a 1961 bankruptcy liquidation.
Thus the two partners each turned into solo producers in late 1960. Broccoli decided to make a deal with Fleming to make DR. NO, as the first film project by Eon Productions. Along with Harry Saltzman, Broccoli began the Bond films on a shoestring budget. Allen would produce historical epics such as GENGHIS KHAN and THE LONG SHIPS.
Some years later, Allen, with egg on his face, cast about for his own spy series. He acquired the rights to Donald Hamilton's Matt Helm series. Allen was responsible for producing THE SILENCERS (1966), MURDERERS’ ROW (1966), THE AMBUSHERS (1967) and THE WRECKING CREW (1969).
Allen's Helm series had one major effect on Broccoli's Bond movies. To get Dean Martin on board as Matt Helm, Allen had to make the actor a partner in the enterprise. Dean Martin ended up making more money on THE SILENCERS than Sean Connery made on THUNDERBALL (1965). This did not go unnoticed by Connery.
