3 Movies / June 29 starting at 8 p.m.
Actor, writer and director Andrew McCarthy joins host Dave Karger for a special night as a guest programmer where McCarthy will discuss some of his favorite movies. Best known for the so-called Brat Pack movies of the 1980s, McCarthy has since forged a successful career behind the camera on such shows as Orange Is the New Black and as an award-winning travel writer while continuing to appear in film and television roles.
The evening starts with the film Charles Chaplin called “the greatest movie ever made about America.” Based on Theodore Dreiser’s 1925 novel “An American Tragedy,” itself inspired by a notorious 1906 murder and trial, A Place in the Sun (1951) stars two of the period’s most glamorous and sought-after young stars. Montgomery Clift plays a poor young man desperate to move out of his humble beginnings and live a privileged high life. His determination is fueled by his mounting desire and love for a beautiful young debutante, played by Elizabeth Taylor (and in 1951, society women didn’t come much more beautiful and desirable). His climb up the corporate and social ladder, however, is complicated by his own moral confusion, not least over an affair with a dowdy factory worker (Shelley Winters, abandoning her early bombshell appeal to whine and snivel her way to her first Academy Award nomination).
Troubled, wayward youth is also the focus of McCarthy’s second pick, East of Eden (1955), featuring a typically intense performance from James Dean, establishing himself quickly as a star and acting force in his first major feature. Money also plays a major role in this plot, as Dean seeks to win his stern father’s approval by capitalizing on the U.S. entry into World War I with a scheme to make a fortune growing beans on their failing farm.
The story is based loosely on the fourth and final part of John Steinbeck’s sprawling 1952 best seller. Elia Kazan, fresh off his success with On the Waterfront (1954), directs a sterling cast that also includes Raymond Massey, Julie Harris, Richard Davalos and Jo Van Fleet, who won the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for her role as Dean’s “scarlet woman” mother.
Returning to high society glamour for the final screening of the night, McCarthy picks The Philadelphia Story (1940), George Cukor’s adaptation of Philip Barry’s long-running Broadway sensation. That was the play Katharine Hepburn went East to star in after she was declared “box office poison” and left her RKO contract. When MGM sought the screen rights, the studio found Hepburn owned them and, although reluctant to cast her, they couldn’t make it without her. To hedge their bets, they cast two of the biggest male stars of the time to support her: Cary Grant and James Stewart. Hepburn reportedly wanted Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy, who were otherwise committed. In any case, her co-stars were no slouches; Stewart won an Oscar for his performance. Her first teaming with Tracy would have to wait until her next picture, Woman of the Year (1942).
