SATURDAY, FERBRUARY 3 - GREAT WRITING TEAMS 5 films 8:00 p.m. (ET)/5:00 p.m. (PT) PAT AND MIKE (1952) One of the typically smart, lively pairings of legendary screen couple Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, 1952's Pat and Mike also united the unique writing talents of another romantic team, Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon. Husband and wife screenwriters Kanin and Gordon wrote Pat and Mike specifically for their actor friends, tailoring the script to the streak of devilish humor lurking beneath Tracy's solid, consummately male persona and taking advantage of Hepburn's natural athletic abilities as a superior golfer and one of the best tennis players in Hollywood. In addition to its two charismatic leads, Pat and Mike also featured cameos by a number of sports stars, from L.A. Angels player Chuck Connors, making his film debut, to lady athletes Helen Dettweiler, Betty Hicks, Babe Didrikson Zaharias and Alice Marble whose presence at times invests the film with an almost documentary- realism. Hepburn stars as Pat Pemberton, an accomplished athlete and Phys Ed instructor who excels at tennis, golf, archery and just about every other sport, but whose smothering, controlling fiance, college administrator Collier Weld (William Ching), is undermining her ability to win. When Pat meets a shady, blue collar New York sports promoter, Mike Conovan, who agrees to manage her professional tennis and golf career, Pat's luck appears to change for the better. This odd couple develops a mutual affection as they travel to each of Pat's tournaments, and nurture a winning streak only jeopardized by the reappearance of Collier with his ability to instantly jinx Pat's game. The combination of Tracy's gruff, working-class demeanor and Hepburn's ladylike, patrician bearing provides Pat and Mike with some of its best comic moments, as when Mike, watching Pat walk across a golf course green, remarks to his partner in a thick Brooklyn accent, "There's not much meat on 'er, but what there is is cherce." Such earthy humor endeared Pat and Mike to both critics and audiences and undoubtedly helped win Kanin and Gordon an Academy Award¨ nomination. Kanin and Gordon's witty script also took great advantage of the cozy, intimate rapport between Hepburn and Tracy who were an off-screen couple as well, and played upon the apparently mismatched but sizzling chemistry between the two lovers. Pat and Mike was the seventh film out of nine that Hepburn and Tracy made together and the second film scripted by Kanin and Gordon after Adam's Rib (1949),in which bickering husband and wife lawyers are stuck on opposite ends of a legal dispute. As with Adam's Rib, Pat and Mike is an honest, amusing account of the battle between the sexes, but also a celebration of male-female chemistry made all the more exciting when the romantic leads are also equals, a specialty of the Kanin-Gordon writing style. Pat and Mike's director George Cukor, considered an "actor's director" who often coaxed unforgettable performances from his stars, also richly exploited the comic potential in Kanin and Gordon's script, whose bracing mix of streetwise cool and tender sentiment mimicked Damon Runyon's storytelling style. Director: George Cukor Producer: Lawrence Weingarten Screenplay: Ruth Gordon, Garson Kanin Cinematography: William H. Daniels Art Direction: Cedric Gibbons, Uri McCleary Principle Cast: Spencer Tracy (Mike Conovan), Katharine Hepburn (Pat Pemberton), Aldo Ray (David Hucko), William Ching (Collier Weld), Sammy White (Barney Grau), George Mathews (Spec Cauley) BW-96m. Closed Captioning. Descriptive Video. By Felicia Feaster 10:00 p.m. (ET)/7:00 p.m. (PT) AUNTIE MAME (1958) Betty Comden and Adolph Green, the legendary musical-comedy writing team, departed from form to deal in straight comedy in Warner Bros.Õ Auntie Mame (1958), adapting a stage hit from another great writing team Ð Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee. The Broadway play had, in turn, been adapted from the Patrick Dennis novel and would later be a musical on both stage and screen, with Angela Lansbury and Lucille Ball among the many actresses who would follow Rosalind Russell in the role of Mame Dennis. The madcap aunt of an orphaned boy, Mame enlists her gang of eccentric friends to help teach the youngster to "live, live, live!" Russell, who originated the role with smashing success on Broadway and in the movie, was nominated for both a Tony and an Oscar¨. The film of Auntie Mame was nominated for five other Academy Awards¨, including Best Picture. Comden was born in Brooklyn in 1917, Green in the Bronx in 1915. The pair began their lifelong collaboration by performing together in nightclubs in 1944. They wrote the book and lyrics for many successful Broadway musicals including the Tony-winning Wonderful Town, a 1953 musical version of My Sister Eileen starring their good friend Russell, with music by Leonard Bernstein. Among the many MGM film hits on which Comden and Green collaborated are Good News (1947), On the Town (1950), SinginÕ in the Rain (1952), The Band Wagon (1953) and Bells Are Ringing (1960). In addition to their writing accomplishments, Comden and Green have distinguished themselves as performers in concerts of their own work, TV specials and movies. Comden acted in Slaves of New York (1989) and Garbo Talks (1984) Ð playing Greta Garbo! GreenÕs film-acting credits include Simon (1980) and My Favorite Year (1982). A common misconception about the pair is that they are husband and wife; each has enjoyed happy marriages with others. Their mutual admiration has been well documented. In her 1995 autobiography Off Stage, Comden wrote, "The mythic character in my life, my partner Adolph Green, it seems to me must have sprung full-blown from his own head. There is no other head quite capable of having done the job. Only his head has the antic, manic imagination and offbeat creative erudite-plus childlike originality to conceive of such a person." Producer/Director: Morton DaCosta Screenplay: Betty Comden, Adolph Green, from the novel by Patrick Dennis and the play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Production Design: Malcolm C. Bert Cinematography: Harry Stradling Sr. Costume Design: Orry-Kelly Editing: William H. Ziegler Original Music: Bronislau Kaper Principal Cast: Rosalind Russell (Mame Dennis), Forrest Tucker (Beauregard Burnside), Coral Browne (Vera Charles), Fred Clark (Mr. Babcock), Roger Smith (Patrick Dennis, older), Patric Knowles (Lindsay Woolsey), Peggy Cass (Agnes Gooch), Jan Handzlik (Patrick Dennis, younger), Joanna Barnes (Gloria Upson), Pippa Scott (Pegeen Ryan) By Roger Fristoe 12:30 a.m. (ET)/9:30 p.m. (PT) THE COWBOYS (1972) Rancher Wil Anderson (John Wayne) has a problem; he has to get 400 head of cattle to a railhead, and all the men in the area have left for the Gold Rush. His own sons have long since turned bad and landed in trouble, so Anderson is left to hire on a group of schoolboys, the oldest of whom is fifteen. With no other recourse, Anderson must take the youngsters and shape them not only into cowhands, but men. The group faces all sorts of hardships along the way, but the biggest problem is a group of thugs (led by Bruce Dern as "Longhair") who want to take the cattle off their hands. In The Cowboys (1972), what could be a fairly routine Western is saved by the screenplay of Irving Ravetch, adapted from a novel by William Dale Jennings. Ravetch and wife Harriet Frank Jr. comprised one of HollywoodÕs great screenwriting teams, pooling their resources on such films as The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1960), Norma Rae (1979), Hud (1963) and the excellent but rarely-seen Conrack (1974). The pair showed a particular fondness for William FaulknerÕs work, turning The Long Hot Summer (1958), The Sound and the Fury (1959) and The Reivers (1969) into acclaimed screenplays. Their scripts were marked by their intelligence, believable character development and the humanity that they could bring to their characters without ever dipping into mawkish sentimentality. The Cowboys, under the directorial hand of Mark Rydell, was no exception. Though some donÕt consider WayneÕs performance to be up to his turns in Stagecoach (1939) or The Quiet Man (1952), itÕs hard to think of a seventies film where Wayne is more in his element than in The Cowboys. Roscoe Browne also excels as Nightlinger, the ragtag groupÕs cook and all-around mule skinner. RavetchÕs screenplay deftly brings WayneÕs young charges from boyhood to adult life while avoiding the cliches of many coming-of-age movies. The end result is a rousing movie that embraces many of the traditional themes of the Western, while making the point that life on the frontier was undoubtedly a lot harder and more treacherous than the Hollywood Western would have us believe. Director/Producer: Mark Rydell Screenplay: Irving Ravetch, Harriet Frank Jr., William Dale Jennings (novel) Cinematography: Robert Surtees Art Direction: William Kiernan Music: John Williams Principle Cast: John Wayne (Wil Anderson), Roscoe Lee Brown (Jedediah Nightlinger), Bruce Dern (Asa Watts), Colleen Dewhurst (Mrs. Kate Collingwood), Alfred Barker Jr. (Clyde Potter) C-128m. By Jerry Renshaw 2:45 a.m. (ET)/11:45 a.m. (PT) FATHER OF THE BRIDE (1950) For those who always thought, like Spencer TracyÕs character in Father of the Bride (1950), that marriage was a simple affair, MGMÕs hit 1950 comedy is the perfect cureÑas comical as it is all too true. The only thing simple about this story of a father reluctantly giving his daughter away was the production process, one of the smoothest in MGM history thanks to director Vincente Minnelli and a strong, very professional cast. Getting it into production, however, was another story entirely. Studio head Dore Schary thought Edward StreeterÕs best-selling comic novel was a natural for the husband-and-wife team of Francis Goodrich and Albert Hackett, who had worked magic on such simple, all-American stories as ItÕs a Wonderful Life and Easter Parade. But they took one look at the episodic novel and swore it was unadaptable. Schary was used to such reluctance on their part, and patiently led them through the first few weeks of the writing. Every time they swore they had failed, he showed them what worked in their scenes, until they came up with a screenplay that pleased everyone. Goodrich and Hackett had shaped the fatherÕs role for Spencer Tracy, the only actor Minnelli thought capable of capturing the storyÕs humor along with the heartache of a man giving up his beloved daughter. Then Jack Benny approached Schary at a party, and the studio head foolishly said he could do it. Minnelli had to test him for the part, but though he worked tirelessly to reduce BennyÕs trademarked double takes to a minimum, it was clear that the brilliant comic just didnÕt have the dramatic chops for the role. Unfortunately, when Tracy heard that another actor had tested, he turned the picture down. Minnelli got Katharine Hepburn to arrange a dinner party where he convinced Tracy that they couldnÕt make the film without him. That was just the reassurance Tracy needed to change his mind. The 17-year-old Elizabeth Taylor, MGMÕs top young actress at the time, was the only choice to play TracyÕs daughter. And just to add to the filmÕs publicity, when they announced her casting, Taylor announced her engagement to William Pawley. As she told the press, the thought of planning her own wedding and playing a young bride at the same time was "positively drooly." When Taylor got married just a few weeks before the filmÕs June 1950 release, it created a PR bonanza that helped make it one of the yearÕs top-grossing pictures. Only it wasnÕt William Pawley who met her at the end of the aisle. By the time Taylor got around to making Father of the Bride, Pawley had tired of living around her schedule, and the engagement had ended. Instead, Taylor fell for hotel heir Nicky Hilton, who became her first husband on May 6, 1950. The first rushes for Father of the Bride were so strong that MGM immediately registered the title Now IÕm a Grandfather and negotiated sequel rights with Streeter. The sequel was made a year later, under the title FatherÕs Little Dividend, and defied conventional wisdom by doing almost as well at the box office as the original. By the time of the second film, in which a happily married Taylor has her first child, TaylorÕs first marriage was over, a fact not trumpeted in the filmÕs publicity. Director: Vincente Minnelli Producer: Pandro Berman Screenplay: Edward Streeter (novel), Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett Cinematography: John Alton Art Direction: Cedric Gibbons, Leonid Vasian Music: Adolph Deutsch Principle Cast: Spencer Tracy (Stanley Banks), Joan Bennett (Ellie Banks), Elizabeth Taylor (Kay Banks), Don Taylor (Buckley Dunstan), Billie Burke (Doris Dunstan), Leo G. Carroll (Mr. Massoula) BW-93m. Closed captioning. Descriptive Video. By Frank Miller 4:30 a.m. (ET)/1:30 a.m. (PT) THE PUBLIC ENEMY (1931) Oddly enough, the role of The Public Enemy (1931) that catapulted James Cagney into the ranks of major stars almost went to another actor. The scrappy street kid Cagney was initially cast as quiet, easy-going Matt Doyle, while the part of brash, volatile Tom Powers went to the well-educated, well-spoken Edward Woods, an actor of rather genteel background. But director William Wellman had seen CagneyÕs tough performance in Doorway to Hell (1930), and after three days of shooting Ð and much urging by screenwriters John Bright and Kubec Glasmon Ð he realized a big casting mistake had been made. Luckily, producer Darryl Zanuck allowed the two actors to switch roles, otherwise film audiences would have been robbed of one of the most ferocious and iconic performances of the decade, perhaps of all Hollywood history. The Public Enemy (1931) follows the lives of two kids from the tenements of ChicagoÕs South Side, Powers and Doyle, who find a way out of desperate circumstances through a life of crime, ending with their violent deaths Ð not at the hands of police (who are rarely seen) but by rival criminals. Along with Warner Brothers' earlier hit Little Caesar (1930), this movie set the tone for the popular gangster dramas of the Depression period, gritty and brutally realistic, and CagneyÕs performance established him as the essence of the ruthless, hair-trigger hoodlum. That image was indelibly stamped on him in a scene that is remembered and imitated even today Ð the shocking grapefruit-in-the-face moment that stunned audiences and had womenÕs groups protesting the treatment of the hard-luck moll played by Mae Clarke. Bright and Glasmon based the scene on a real-life incident. The two learned that Chicago gangster Earl "Hymie" Weiss had once slammed an omelet into the face of his jabbering girlfriend. Wellman liked the idea but thought the omelet would be too messy, so he came up with the notion of using half a grapefruit. What happened next depends on who tells the story. Clarke said Cagney was only supposed to yell at her in the scene and that the actor surprised her with his impulsive use of the breakfast food. Cagney claimed the grapefruit had been decided on beforehand but that it was supposed to brush past her at an angle that would only appear to be a bona fide attack. Whatever the truth, when the time came to get the shot, Cagney smashed the grapefruit directly (and painfully, the actress said) into her face, and ClarkeÕs very real look of horror and surprise was recorded for posterity. While it certainly stamped him with an unforgettable image, Cagney later came to regret the action. For years after, whenever the actor dined out somewhere, fans would have waiters bring him half a grapefruit with his meal. Clarke became equally weary of references to the scene, although she must have gotten a bit of satisfaction from a similar shot that caught Cagney on the receiving end of some violence. Donald Cook, who played Tom PowersÕs war-shattered brother in the film, was supposed to explode in fury with a hard sock to CagneyÕs jaw. In his autobiography, Cagney said he was sure Wellman had urged Cook to let his co-star really have it. Instead of faking it for the camera, Cook hauled off and belted Cagney right in the face, sending him flying across the set and breaking a tooth. Fortunately no such mishaps took place during the filmÕs most dangerous scenes: the use of real bullets in some of the shooting sequences. The grapefruit incident wasnÕt the only memorable scene concocted by Bright and Glasmon, who adapted the screen story from their novel, Beer and Blood. The two provided Cagney with a concise and powerful moment of self-realization. In a heavy downpour, Cagney is riddled with bullets and falls into the gutter. As his blood mingles with the flowing rainwater, he mutters, "I ainÕt so tough," a line that has become almost as familiar as Edward G. RobinsonÕs "Is this the end of Rico?" Elements like these earned Bright and Glasmon an Academy Award¨ nomination for their work. As successful as the picture was for its leading actor, writers and director, it was nearly a disaster for another rising young star, Jean Harlow. Under contract to Howard Hughes, Harlow was actually a good-natured, middle-class girl most often cast as vulgar blond floozies. In The Public Enemy, she played a slumming society dame who briefly becomes Tom PowersÕs mistress. The picture was hailed as a sensation, with praise going to the entire cast Ð except Harlow. Critics slammed her for ruining the scenes she appeared in, having a voice desperately in need of training, and delivering the only uninteresting acting in the film. Although she later became a major star at MGM, hailed for her earthy comic performances, the mishandling of her talents by agents and directors in early roles like this one could have buried her career completely if not for the public interest in what was considered her greatest asset in this Pre-Code eraÐa freewheeling sexuality and an enticing body clad in revealing, usually bra-less, costumes. Her fascinating "traits" even caught the attention of her very-married leading man. On the set one day, Cagney stared at her cleavage and asked, likely in perfect innocence and good humor, "How do you keep those things up?" "I ice them," Harlow said, before trotting off to her dressing room to do just that. Director: William Wellman Producer: Darryl F. Zanuck Screenplay: John Bright and Kubec Glasmon (with Harvey Thew) Cinematography: Dev Jennings Art Direction: Max Parker Music: David Mendoza Cast: James Cagney (Tom Powers), Edward Woods (Matt Doyle), Jean Harlow (Gwen Allen), Mae Clarke (Kitty), Joan Blondell (Mamie), Donald Cook (Mike Powers) BW-84m. Closed captioning. By Rob Nixon