Hedy Lamarr films on TCM: Presentations to include the scandalous Ecstasy and her first Hollywood title, Algiers
It’s Hedy Lamarr evening on Turner Classic Movies tonight, beginning at 5 p.m. PT.
TCM will be showing five Lamarr vehicles, including the scandalous Ecstasy – nudity, sex, orgasm! – made by Gustav Machatý in Czechoslovakia in 1933, five years before Lamarr’s Hollywood debut in Algiers.
There’s no nudity, sex, or orgasms in Algiers, but there’s lots of cigarette smoking – much more damaging to one’s health than orgasms. Also absent from Algiers: Charles Boyer saying “Com wheez me to ze Casbah!” Which is too bad. He should have said it. Maybe his ending would turned out differently.
Jean Gabin and Mireille Balin starred in the original French version, Pépé le Moko, released the year before – which shows that Hollywood’s penchant for remaking French movies is nothing new.
In Victor Fleming’s Tortilla Flat, Lamarr looks great and sounds all wrong as Monterey’s Dolores Ramirez – but her performance is a masterpiece of acting compared to those of fellow Hispano-Americans Spencer Tracy and John Garfield.
The one actor who delivers the goods in this misguided adaptation of John Steinbeck’s novel – and this is truly jaw-dropping – is Frank Morgan, as a buffoon he was one of the most unsubtle performers of the studio era. Now, as a social outcast attuned to animals and nature, Morgan deservedly received a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination.
In King Vidor’s H.M. Pulham, Esq. a married upper-class Bostonian is tempted to reignite an affair with a former flame turned businesswoman. Robert Young is the professionally successful but unfulfilled man feeling life pass him by, Hedy Lamarr the businesswoman (with a man’s name), and Ruth Hussey the housewife.
Hedy Lamarr films: TCM schedule (PT)
5:00 PM Algiers (1938)
Director: John Cromwell.
Cast: Charles Boyer, Hedy Lamarr, Sigrid Gurie, Joseph Calleia, Gene Lockhart, Alan Hale, Walter Kingsford, Paul Harvey, Stanley Fields, Johnny Downs, Robert Greig, Joan Woodbury, Claudia Dell.
98m7:00 PM Tortilla Flat (1942)
Director: Victor Fleming.
Cast: Spencer Tracy, Hedy Lamarr, John Garfield, Frank Morgan.
99m8:43 pm The Miracle of Sound (1940)
A behind the scenes look at how sound is produced for films.
Director: Douglas Shearer.
Cast: Jeanette MacDonald, Greer Garson, Nelson Eddy, Douglas Shearer.
11m9:00 PM White Cargo (1942)
Director: Richard Thorpe.
Cast: Walter Pidgeon, Hedy Lamarr, Frank Morgan, Richard Carlson.
89m10:45 PM H.M. Pulham, Esq. (1941)
Director: King Vidor.
Cast: Hedy Lamarr, Robert Young, Ruth Hussey, Charles Coburn, Van Heflin, Fay Holden, Bonita Granville, Douglas Wood, Charles Halton, Leif Erickson, Phil Brown, Sara Haden, Anne Revere, Ava Gardner (possibly).
120m1:00 AM Ecstasy (1933)
Director: Gustav Machatý.
Cast: Hedy Lamarr.
87m
“Hedy Lamarr Films on TCM” notes
Hedy Lamarr film schedule via the TCM website.