Car-Racing Movies on TCM: Grand Prix, To Please a Lady

Dorothy Malone doesn’t pay attention to speed limits in Douglas Sirk’s Written on the Wind. Rock Hudson is the unhappy passenger.

Car racing movies on TCM: John Frankenheimer’s Grand Prix, Clarence Brown’s To Please a Lady

May 8 highlights on Turner Classic Movies:

John Frankenheimer’s car racing epic, Grand Prix, boasts an all-star cast, split screens, lots of noise, and one excellent performance, courtesy of the always reliable Eva Marie Saint.

Bachelor Mother is a bit disappointing considering its reputation, but Charles Coburn is outstanding as the patriarch who doesn’t care if his son (David Niven) is the father of Ginger Rogers’ baby – as long as he (Coburn) is the grandfather.

Written on the Wind is an overblown Douglas Sirk melodrama about sex, sin, and psychotic siblings that deservedly earned Dorothy Malone the year’s Best Supporting Actress Oscar. Although not exactly a performance for the ages, Malone’s oil-family brat with an insatiable sexual appetite is is one of the decade’s most memorable characterizations. The rest of the stellar cast, however, doesn’t fare as well, though Best Supporting Actor nominee Robert Stack does have his moments.

A ripoff of René Clair’s superior À Nous la Liberté, Modern Times may be Charles Chaplin’s film, but its scene-stealer is Paulette Goddard.

Some consider Laurence Olivier’s Academy Award-nominated performance in The Entertainer one of the greatest ever committed to film. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. Either way, it’s surely one of the hammiest.

Car racing movies: TCM schedule (PT)

1:30 AM Wings for the Eagle (1942)
Director: Lloyd Bacon.
Cast: Ann Sheridan, Dennis Morgan, Jack Carson.
84m

3:00 AM Modern Times (1936)
Director: Charles Chaplin.
Cast: Charles Chaplin, Paulette Goddard, Henry Bergman.
83m

4:30 AM Bachelor Mother (1939)
Director: Garson Kanin.
Cast: Ginger Rogers, David Niven, Charles Coburn, Frank Albertson.
82m

6:00 AM Task Force (1949)
Director: Delmer Daves.
Cast: Gary Cooper, Jane Wyatt, Wayne Morris, Walter Brennan, Julie London, Bruce Bennett, Jack Holt, Stanley Ridges, John Ridgely, Richard Rober, Art Baker, Moroni Olsen, Ray Montgomery, Harlan Warde.
117m

8:00 AM Love Crazy (1941)
Director: Jack Conway.
Cast: William Powell, Myrna Loy, Jack Carson, Gail Patrick, Florence Bates.
99m

9:45 AM Written on the Wind (1956)
Director: Douglas Sirk.
Cast: Rock Hudson, Lauren Bacall, Robert Stack, Dorothy Malone.
99m

11:30 AM The Buccaneer (1958)
Director: Anthony Quinn.
Cast: Yul Brynner, Charlton Heston, Claire Bloom.
120m

1:30 PM Thunder Road (1958)
Director: Arthur Ripley.
Cast: Robert Mitchum, Gene Barry, Keely Smith.
93m

3:15 PM The Entertainer (1960)
Director: Tony Richardson.
Cast: Laurence Olivier, Brenda de Banzie, Roger Livesey, Joan Plowright, Alan Bates, Daniel Massey, Shirley Anne Field, Thora Hird, Albert Finney, Charles Gray.
104m

5:00 PM Grand Prix (1966)
Director: John Frankenheimer.
Cast: James Garner, Eva Marie Saint, Yves Montand, Toshiro Mifune, Brian Bedford, Jessica Walter, Antonio Sabato, Françoise Hardy, Adolfo Celi, Claude Dauphin, Albert Rémy, Jack Watson, Donald O’Brien, Enzo Fiermonte, Geneviève Page, Rachel Kempson, Ralph Michael.
176m

8:00 PM The Green Helmet (1961)
Director: Michael Forlong.
Cast: Bill Travers, Ed Begley, Sidney James.
89m

9:45 PM To Please a Lady (1950)
Director: Clarence Brown.
Cast: Clark Gable, Barbara Stanwyck, Adolphe Menjou, Will Geer, Roland Winters, Emory Parnell, Frank Jenks.
92m

11:30 PM The Crowd Roars (1932)
Director: Howard Hawks.
Cast: James Cagney, Joan Blondell, Ann Dvorak, Eric Linden, Frank McHugh, Guy Kibbee.
70m

1:00 AM Corvette Summer (1978)
Director: Matthew Robbins.
Cast: Mark Hamill, Annie Potts, Eugene Roche.
105m