- Turner Classic Movies’ “TCM Spotlight: Studio Directors” series continues on Sept. 25 with the presentation of 11 titles by the likes of Joshua Logan, Fred Zinnemann, Robert Aldrich, Gordon Douglas, and other filmmakers working in Hollywood during the 1950s and early 1960s.
- This “Studio Directors” article includes a brief overview of five TCM movies: Them!, Oklahoma!, South Pacific, Ocean’s Eleven, and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?.
‘TCM Spotlight: Studio Directors’ – Sept. 25: 11 titles representing the works of Joshua Logan, Fred Zinnemann, and other Hollywood filmmakers of the 1950s and early 1960s
Turner Classic Movies’ “TCM Spotlight: Studio Directors” series continues on Wednesday, Sept. 25, with the presentation of 11 titles, most of them directed by filmmakers working at Warner Bros. and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, whose studio era output belongs to the Warner Bros. Discovery library. (See TCM’s “Studio Directors” movie schedule further below. Most titles will remain available for a while on the Watch TCM app.)
The exceptions are two widescreen musical blockbusters of the mid-to-late 1950s, Fred Zinnemann’s Oklahoma! (though RKO, whose library belongs to WB Discovery, handled the distribution of the 35 mm prints) and Joshua Logan’s South Pacific. More information further below.
Among TCM’s other “Studio Directors” titles are Richard Thorpe’s biblical epic The Prodigal, Richard Brooks’ multiple Oscar-nominated family-psychological drama Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Robert Aldrich’s Grand Guignol feast What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, and Lewis Milestone’s heist comedy Ocean’s Eleven.
Below is a brief glimpse at five of TCM’s “Studio Directors” offerings (in chronological order) on Sept. 25: Them!, Oklahoma!, South Pacific, Ocean’s Eleven, and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?.
Immediately below is TCM’s “Studio Directors” schedule.
Them! (1954)
Despite the exclamation point, Gordon Douglas’ Them! isn’t a musical. Instead, it’s a sci-fi horror thriller that, like many others of the period (Godzilla [however obliquely], The Incredible Shrinking Man), exposes the hair-raising dangers of our atomic age: Radiation can cause not only mass deaths but also mass mutations. So one day you’re outside enjoying the sunshine and before you know it you’ve been turned into a pre-packaged giant-ant snack.
Now, Them! isn’t nearly as cheesy as it sounds. Its first 15 minutes, in fact, are edge-of-your-seat creepy. After that, the movie loses some steam before recovering at the climactic humans v insects battle in the concrete spillways of what had been left of the Los Angeles River.
Writing credits: Ted Sherdeman (screenplay) and Russell S. Hughes (adaptation), from George Worthing Yates’ story.
Oklahoma! (1955)
Like William Wyler, Henry King, George Cukor, Michael Curtiz, Billy Wilder, and most other top directors of the studio era, Fred Zinnemann tried his hand at just about every movie genre out there: Suspense (The Seventh Cross), crime (Act of Violence), romance (From Here to Eternity), Western (High Noon), socially conscious drama (The Search), psychological drama (The Member of the Wedding), etc.
At least one musical in Zinnemann’s four-decade career was all but inevitable. Hence, Oklahoma!, the enormously successful big-screen transfer of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II’s 1943 Broadway phenomenon*: 2,212 performances.
Set at the dawn of the 20th century – or about a decade after the United States government expelled Native Americans from their land – in an area that looks like Jeanne Crain’s Iowa with hills, Oklahoma! stars Gordon MacRae† as a singing cowboy in love with singing farm girl Shirley Jones, who is also being courted by creepy farmhand Rod Steiger. A secondary plot features Oscar winner Gloria Grahame (The Bad and the Beautiful, 1952) as Ado Annie, whose romantic interest is played by Gene Nelson.
Oklahoma! was shot in two versions: One on the Todd-AO widescreen process owned by the Magna Theatre Corporation; the other used 35 mm CinemaScope cameras.
Alfred Drake and Joan Roberts starred in the original Broadway production, which also featured Celeste Holm as Ado Annie and Howard Da Silva as Drake’s rival.
* Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! was a musicalized version of Lynn Riggs’ 1931 play Green Grow the Lilacs.
† James Dean and Paul Newman reportedly tested for the role of Curly McLain, which ultimately went to Gordon MacRae. Maybe the logic was that if Edmund Purdom could star in The Student Prince (with Mario Lanza providing his singing voice), Dean or Newman could have starred in Oklahoma! with somebody else doing the vocals. That’s how it would be with Deborah Kerr (singing by Marni Nixon) in Walter Lang’s 1956 big-screen transfer of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The King and I.
South Pacific (1958)
A collaboration between the behind-the-scenes talent, the Magna Theatre Corporation, and 20th Century Fox (which also owns partial rights to Oklahoma!), Joshua Logan’s South Pacific (no exclamation point) was, like Oklahoma! (and The King and I), one of the biggest box office hits of the 1950s.
Shot in Todd-AO (which by then could be reformatted to regular 35 and 70 mm prints), South Pacific is the big-screen transfer of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II’s 1949 Broadway hit – with book* co-written by Logan, the production’s director.
Italian Rossano Brazzi (also seen in TCM’s “Studio Directors” entry Rome Adventure) stars as a French plantation owner on a South Pacific island where he falls for U.S. Navy nurse Mitzi Gaynor, who also does care for him. Well, if only he didn’t have two mixed-race children from a previous relationship with a Polynesian woman.
Now, while watching South Pacific you may feel inclined to pray the gay away with all your might. But it won’t matter. You will fail. Nothing – nothing – will ever erase from your mind all those dozens of shaved and shiny male bodies. (Note: Unless we’ve missed a reliable source for them, stories about director Joshua Logan being gay or bisexual should be taken with a healthy degree of skepticism.)
Something else you will not be able to erase from your mind after you finish watching South Pacific: Black American actress-singer Juanita Hall (from the Broadway production) as a Pacific Islander known as Bloody Mary belting out “Happy Talk” (dubbed by Muriel Smith) to handsome white American John Kerr and lovely Pacific Islander France Nuyen (actually part-Southeast Asian [possibly ethnic Chinese], part-Romani French). Make sure to feel deeply offended by her performance.
By the way, both Mitzi Gaynor and France Nuyen are still around. The former is 93; the latter is 85. And so is Oklahoma!‘s Shirley Jones at age 90.
One final thing to keep in mind: Despite their impressive box office take, neither Oklahoma! nor South Pacific were shortlisted for Academy Awards in the Best Picture, Best Director, or Best Adapted Screenplay categories. Their performers were also totally bypassed.
Ezio Pinza and Mary Martin were the two leads in the Broadway original.
* The musical South Pacific was based on James A. Michener’s 1947 short story collection Tales of the South Pacific.
Ocean’s Eleven (1960)
Starring Frank Sinatra as the titular Ocean (neither Atlantic nor Pacific, but Danny), the most interesting thing about Lewis Milestone’s lame Rat Pack heist comedy Ocean’s Eleven is that it was directed by someone who had been making movies since the late 1910s. (And who happened to be the only filmmaker to be handed an Academy Award for Best Comedy Direction.*)
Stop and think about it: How many Hollywood stars from the 1910s were still getting cast in lead roles in the early 1960s? The answer would be: Zero.
If you’re easily amused, you may also enjoy spotting the likes of Shirley MacLaine and George Raft in cameos.
Starring George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt, and Matt Damon, Steven Soderbergh’s slick and hugely successful reboot came out in 2001.
* At the first Academy Awards (1927–1928), for Two Arabian Nights. Lewis Milestone would win again two years later – as Best Director – for the very dramatic antiwar drama All Quiet on the Western Front.
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)
Robert Aldrich’s What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? was a marked departure for the Vera Cruz, Attack, and Ten Seconds to Hell filmmaker, as this classic Gothic melodrama revolves around two female characters*: The titular former child star, played by Bette Davis, and her former Hollywood star sibling, played by Joan Crawford.
Indeed, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? has no male leads. The closest to it is Best Supporting Actor Oscar nominee Victor Buono.
A sizable box office hit upon its release, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? deservedly earned Bette Davis her tenth (and final) Best Actress nomination. Joan Crawford, however, was absurdly bypassed.
* Robert Aldrich’s 1956 melodrama Autumn Leaves also stars Joan Crawford, but Cliff Robertson’s role is just as central to the narrative.
Immediately below is TCM’s “Studio Directors” movie schedule.
‘Studio Directors’ movies: TCM schedule (EDT) – Sept. 25
6:30 AM The Outriders (1950)
Director: Roy Rowland.
Cast: Joel McCrea, Arlene Dahl, Barry Sullivan, Claude Jarman Jr., James Whitmore, Ramon Novarro, Jeff Corey, Ted de Corsia, Martin Garralaga.
93 min. Western.8:15 AM The Prodigal (1955)
Director: Richard Thorpe.
Cast: Lana Turner, Edmund Purdom, Louis Calhern, Audrey Dalton, James Mitchell, Neville Brand, Walter Hampden, Taina Elg, Francis L. Sullivan, Joseph Wiseman, John Dehner, Sandy Descher, Cecil Kellaway, Philip Tonge, Henry Daniell, Paul Cavanagh, Jay Novello, Dorothy Adams.
114 min. Epic.10:15 AM Them! (1954)
Director: Gordon Douglas.
Cast: James Whitmore, Edmund Gwenn, Joan Weldon, James Arness.
94 min. Horror | Science-Fiction.12:15 PM Bad Day at Black Rock (1955)
Director: John Sturges.
Cast: Spencer Tracy, Robert Ryan, Anne Francis, Dean Jagger, Walter Brennan, John Ericson, Ernest Borgnine, Lee Marvin, Russell Collins, Walter Sande.
81 min. Suspense | Mystery.1:45 PM Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958)
Director: Richard Brooks.
Cast: Elizabeth Taylor, Paul Newman, Burl Ives, Jack Carson, Judith Anderson, Madeleine Sherwood, Larry Gates, Vaughn Taylor.
108 min. Drama.3:45 PM Rome Adventure (1962)
Director: Delmer Daves.
Cast: Troy Donahue, Suzanne Pleshette, Angie Dickinson, Rossano Brazzi, Hampton Fancher, Constance Ford, Al Hirt, Iphigenie Castiglioni, Chad Everett, Gertrude Flynn, Pamela Austin.
119 min. Romance.6:00 PM The Gazebo (1959)
Director: George Marshall.
Cast: Glenn Ford, Debbie Reynolds, Carl Reiner.
100 min. Comedy.8:00 PM Oklahoma! (1955)
Director: Fred Zinnemann.
Cast: Gordon MacRae, Shirley Jones, Gloria Grahame, Gene Nelson, Charlotte Greenwood, Eddie Albert, James Whitmore, Rod Steiger, Barbara Lawrence, Jay C. Flippen, Roy Barcroft, James Mitchell, Kelly Brown, Marc Platt.
148 min. Musical.10:45 PM South Pacific (1958)
Director: Joshua Logan.
Cast: Rossano Brazzi, Mitzi Gaynor, John Kerr, France Nuyen, Ray Walston, Juanita Hall, Russ Brown, Jack Mullaney, Ken Clark, Floyd Simmons, Candace Lee, Warren Hsieh, Tom Laughlin, Archie Savage.
171 min. Musical.1:30 AM What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)
Director: Robert Aldrich.
Cast: Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Victor Buono, Wesley Addy, Julie Allred, Marjorie Bennett, Bert Freed, Anna Lee, Maidie Norman, Russ Conway, Maxine Cooper, Bobs Watson.
132 min. Gothic Horror.4:00 AM Ocean’s Eleven (1960)
Director: Lewis Milestone.
Cast: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Peter Lawford, Sammy Davis Jr., Angie Dickinson, Richard Conte, Cesar Romero, Patrice Wymore, Joey Bishop, Akim Tamiroff, Henry Silva, Ilka Chase, Buddy Lester, Richard Benedict, Jean Willes, Norman Fell.
Cameos: Shirley MacLaine, Red Skelton, George Raft.
127 min. Comedy.
Endnotes
“Studio Directors” movie schedule via the TCM website.
Joshua Logan image: 20th Century Fox.
“Studio Directors Joshua Logan, Fred Zinnemann: 2 Musical Blockbusters” last updated in September 2024.