MONDAY, APRIL 2
9:30 p.m. (ET)/6:30 p.m. (PT)
THE SPOILERS (1942)

Famous for having one of the longest and most elaborate brawls in film history, The Spoilers (1942) is probably the best version of this classic Western tale which has been filmed five times; with Tom Santschi and William Farnus in 1913, Milton Sills and Noah Beery in 1923, Gary Cooper and William Boyd in 1930, John Wayne and Randolph Scott in 1941, and Rory Calhoun and Jeff Chandler in 1955. Set in Nome, Alaska, at the turn of the century, the story pits gold miners Roy Glennister (John Wayne) and his partner, Al Dextry (Harry Carey), against gold commissioner Alexander McNamara (Randolph Scott) and a corrupt judge (Samuel S. Hinds). Marlene Dietrich stars as Cherry Malotte, the saloon hostess who takes a fancy to 'The Duke.'

The climactic fight sequence of The Spoilers, which lasts six minutes, required the services of over 30 experienced stuntmen and acrobats. It took over ten days to film the brawl which used every type of breakaway furniture imaginable and had stuntmen crashing into mirrors, sailing over balconies, slamming against walls, and breaking down doors. Needless to say, the bar where the fight begins is completely trashed by the end of the slugfest. John Wayne was particularly proud of the fact that he performed some of the stunts himself and always gave this sage advice to younger actors, "Learn to fight. Learn to hit and learn to roll with a punch. Learn to handle your body easily and smoothly. You have to make it look good. Above all, it has to be convincing."

The Duke's co-star, Randolph Scott, was rarely cast in a villainous role in Westerns but he makes an effective one here and is a formidable opponent for Wayne's character. During filming, it was reported that Scott and Wayne didn't get along, mostly due to creative differences. Scott took a more artistic approach to acting than Wayne who had a very unpretentious approach to his craft. Wayne had no trouble warming to co-star Dietrich, however, and their off-screen affair was well known in Hollywood circles. According to Ronald L. Davis, the author of Duke: The Life and Image of John Wayne, the rugged cowboy star "spent evenings at Dietrich's house, confiding his marital problems to the sympathetic actress. He was restless and bored with Josephine and spent as little time at home as possible. He confessed to Marlene that his sex life with Josie was minimal. "Four times in ten years," Duke snorted, explaining his four children. Dietrich had introduced him to more exotic sex; she made him feel like a man in bed and admired him physically. Although the dignified Josephine seemed cold by comparison, Duke continued to praise his wife as a "wonderful, religious woman" and an ideal mother."

Director: Ray Enright

Producer: Frank Lloyd, Lee Marcus (associate)

Screenplay: Lawrence Hazard, Tom Reed, Rex Beach (novel)

Cinematography: Milton R. Krasner

Music: Hans J. Salter

Art Direction: John B. Goodman, Jack Otterson

Principal Cast: Marlene Dietrich (Cherry Malotte), Randolph Scott (Alexander McNamara), John Wayne (Roy Glennister), Margaret Lindsay (Helen Chester), Harry Carey (Al Dextry), Richard Barthelmess (Bronco Kid Farrell), George Cleveland (Banty)

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By Jeff Stafford

MONDAY, APRIL 9
11:00 p.m. (ET)/8:00 p.m. (PT)
SLIM (1937)

Warner Bros., the studio most concerned with working-class characters in the Depression era, turned its attention to the hazardous career of power-company linemen in director Ray Enright's Slim (1937). Henry Fonda, in his first role for Warners, plays a gangly young farm worker hired by hard-boiled crew leader Pat O'Brien to work on high-tension power lines. In the tradition of Warners buddy movies, the two love the same woman (husky-voiced Margaret Lindsay), and the problem is resolved through melodramatic action.

The formula already had been established in films O'Brien made with James Cagney, and the plot of Slim is strikingly similar to Tiger Shark (1932), starring Edward G. Robinson as a tuna fisherman whose best friend falls for his girlfriend. But, in Slim, Fonda adds something new with the rough-hewn idealism that would find its most vivid expression three years later in The Grapes of Wrath (1940).

Enright's handling of the material impressed The New York Times critic Frank S. Nugent, who wrote, "The very romanticization of the genus lineman raises Slim above mere melodramatic classification. For the picture does grope toward the major truth that there is a nobility inherent in labor from which sparks may be struck and take lodging in the soul of even an ordinary little man. The narrative flashes along dramatically, treating in a series of heart-pounding sequences the successive stages of the lad's apprenticeship, his first trip up a skeleton steel tower, his increased mastery of the rueful art of defying the laws of gravity and building tensely to a tragic and somehow inspiring climax."

Jane Wyman, near the beginning of her 10-year Warner Bros. apprenticeship, was still considered "window dressing" by the studio at the time of Slim. Her breakthrough role as a dramatic actress came at Paramount in The Lost Weekend (1945), but she would return to Warners in triumph with her Oscar-winning role in Johnny Belinda (1948). Enright directed Wyman in five other films, but Slim marked the only occasion in which Wyman and Fonda - who would surely have made a winning co-starring team - appeared in the same movie.

Producer: Hal B. Wallis
Director: Ray Enright
Screenplay: William Wister Haines
Art Direction: Ted Smith
Cinematography: Sidney Hickox
Costume Design: Howard Shoup
Editing: Owen Marks
Original Music: Max Steiner
Principal Cast: Pat O'Brien (Red Blayd), Henry Fonda (Slim), Stuart Erwin (Stumpy), Margaret Lindsay (Cally), J. Farrell MacDonald (Pop), Dick Purcell (Tom), Jane Wyman (Stumpy's Girl).
BW-86m. Close captioning.

By Roger Fristoe

MONDAY, APRIL 16
9:30 p.m. (ET)/6:30 p.m. (PT)
ALIBI IKE (1935)

The prolific Ray Enright, whose fast and furious style perfectly suited the many Warner Brothers pictures he made in the early-mid 1930s, had the best teacher: experience. Beginning as an assistant editor for Chaplin, he graduated to the Sennett studios as an idea man - before ascending to the position of studio supervising editor. His no nonsense approach to frenetic pacing and wall-to-wall action seemed tailor-made for the newly refurbished Warner Brothers company, where Enright's initial assignments were the popular Rin Tin Tin adventures - no small accomplishment, as prior to The Jazz Singer's Al Jolson, the famed German shepherd was the small Burbank organization's major star. Adapting to almost every genre, Enright proved extremely effective with musicals, helming the lavish (and now campy) all Technicolor talkie Golden Dawn in 1930. A variety of song and dance extravaganzas followed, highlighted by 1934's Busby Berkeley collaboration, Dames. Enright's gems, however, were the vigorous risque smart aleck comedy dramas such as Havana Widows (1933) and I've Got Your Number (1934). His expertise at obtaining quicksilver laughs made him an ideal director for Warner's house funnyman Joe E. Brown. Their seamless partnership in the charming 1935 adaptation of the Ring Lardner baseball rib tickler Alibi Ike (the final and best of Brown's "national pastime" trilogy, preceded by Fireman Save My Child and Elmer the Great) resulted in a re-teaming the following year for Earthworm Tractors.

Brown, whose penchant for the sport nearly won him a spot with the New York Yankees in the mid-1920s, had a clause in his contract that allowed him to form his own Warner Brothers studio team: the Joe E. Brown All-Stars. The satchel-mouthed comedian was also part owner of the Kansas City Blues, and his fanaticism to the game is evidenced by the casting of no less than 25 all-time greats throughout the picture, including Bob Meusel, Archie Campbell and Herman Bell. Enright's neat melding of howling guffaws with exciting last inning cheers (with a remarkably agile Brown doing all his own baseball action) delighted both critics and fans, and additionally served as an ideal showcase for young newcomer Olivia de Havilland, cast as Brown's sweetheart.

Upon its release, Alibi Ike's star became his studio's MVP when the New York Times' Frank Nugent likened Brown "...to Warners what Garbo is to Metro and Shirley Temple to Fox..." As for Enright, his frantic timing skills filled his future busy schedule with two other genres: the war movie (realistically utilizing his WWI tenure with the American Expeditionary Forces) and the Western. In the latter genre, he became a favorite director of Randolph Scott's after working with the actor on the 1942 remake of The Spoilers. Scott specifically requested the now tagged "action specialist" no less than a half dozen times - a successful on-going alliance ended only by the veteran director's retirement in the early 1950s.

Producer: Edward Chodorov
Director: Ray Enright
Screenplay: William Wister Haines, Ring Lardner (story)
Cinematography: Arthur L. Todd
Film Editing: Thomas Pratt
Principal Cast: Joe E. Brown (Frank X. Farrell), Olivia de Havilland (Dolly Stevens), Ruth Donnelly (Bess), Roscoe Karns (Cary), William Frawley (Cap), Eddie Shubert (Jack Mack).
BW-73m. Close captioning.

By Mel Neuhaus

MONDAY, APRIL 23
3:15 a.m. (ET)/12:15 a.m. (PT)
BLONDIE JOHNSON (1933)

Blondie Johnson (1933) was one of eight movies in which Ray Enright directed Joan Blondell at Warner Bros. during the period 1933-37. In the title role, Blondell plays a basically honest woman who becomes a gun-moll during hard times in the Depression. There's an early feminist slant to the story as Blondie aspires to become a crime boss herself but refuses to use sex to get ahead in the mob world. "Crime Doesn't Pay" is the story's theme, and Blondell is on her way to prison by film's end. But she and co-star Chester Morris enliven the moral lesson with a stream of deftly delivered wisecracks.

Blondie Johnson marked Blondell's first solo starring part at Warners, where she had signed on in 1930. The role of Blondie was created with her in mind by screenwriter Earl Baldwin. The film was later seen as an important milepost in its depiction of a tough, independent woman who doesn't depend on men to make her way in the world. "I play a feminine Little Caesar," Blondell remarked at the time.

Director Enright understood how to make the most of the new star's appeal, summed up by film historian David Shipman as the combination of "reliability and versatility with an overall attractive personality: to anyone believing that professionalism is the greatest of show business virtues it is difficult to over praise her." Blondell sustained that professionalism through more than 90 movies, evolving from a favorite in madcap Busby Berkeley musicals to an Oscar-nominated character actress.

Director: Ray Enright
Screenplay: Earl Baldwin
Art Direction: Esdras Hartley
Cinematography: Tony Gaudio
Costume Design: Orry-Kelly
Editing: George Marks
Principal Cast: Joan Blondell (Blondie Johnson), Chester Morris (Danny), Allen Jenkins (Louis), Earle Foxe (Scannel), Claire Dodd (Gladys), Mae Busch (Mae), Sterling Holloway (Red).
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By Roger Fristoe

 MONDAY, APRIL 30
8:00 p.m. (ET)/5:00 p.m. (PT)
NAUGHTY BUT NICE (1939)

One Warner Bros. career ended while another rose in Naughty But Nice (1939), a light-hearted musical that spelled the end of Dick Powell's contract as a boy crooner and the start of Ann Sheridan's rise to the top as the studio's resident "Oomph" girl. And if the film reflected none of the melancholy of Powell's fall from grace but all of the energy of Sheridan's growing presence, credit Ray Enright, one of Warner's most dependable directors of the '30s.

Powell had come to Warner Bros. from a career as a big band vocalist, making his screen debut appropriately enough as a singer mixed up with gossip columnist Lee Tracy in Warner's Blessed Event (1932). He became a star when he sang love songs to Ruby Keeler in a series of Busby Berkeley musicals including 42nd Street, Gold Diggers of 1933 and Footlight Parade (all 1933). By the late '30s, however, his star had begun to fall as audiences tired of the studio's backstage musicals. Naughty But Nice was his last film under contract to Warner Bros., and his role as a small-town music composer whose songs are stolen by a group of Tin Pan Alley types showed how resistant Warners was to changing his image. Tired of typecasting, he refused to sign a new contract with the studio, which retaliated by putting his last film there on the shelf. Powell would bounce back in 1945, when he reinvented himself as a tough leading man in the classic film noir Murder, My Sweet.

What prompted Warners to release Naughty But Nice a year later was the growing publicity for the film's second female lead, Ann Sheridan, cast as the sexy songbird who helps steal Powell's songs and tries to take him from his lyricist-girlfriend, Gale Page. Sheridan had been as green as they come when she arrived in Hollywood in 1933, one of six winners of Paramount Pictures' "Search for Beauty" contest. She learned fast and was the only contest winner to last longer than six months at the studio. Working her way through small roles and low-budget films, she picked up enough camera savvy to land a contract with Warner Bros. in 1936. She was gradually moving into better roles there when gossip columnist Walter Winchell labeled a publicity shot of her "umphy." Warner's publicity head Bob Taplinger changed the spelling and staged an "Oomph Dinner" at which a group of journalists and Warners employees officially voted her "The Oomph Girl." Warners took advantage of the publicity by finally releasing Naughty But Nice, with Sheridan promoted to star billing. For her part, Sheridan was grateful for the chance to play better roles, but never quite understood the label. As she told film historian John Kobal (People Will Talk), "it always reminded me of a fat man bending down to tie his shoelaces."

That Naughty But Nice survived its life on the shelf and late release, was due largely to Enright's breezy direction. The one-time editor and gag man for Mack Sennett had helped make hits out of Dames and Twenty Million Sweethearts (both 1934; both starring Powell). Unlike Powell, Enright survived the decline of the Warners musical by moving into action films, eventually signing with Universal, where he directed John Wayne, Randolph Scott and Marlene Dietrich in the 1942 re-make of The Spoilers.

Like most Warner Bros. films of the '30s, Naughty But Nice is a treat for fans of the studio's contract players, featuring memorable bits by Allen Jenkins, Maxie Rosenbloom and the young Ronald Reagan. Mystery fans will get a special charge out of the casting of Helen Broderick and ZaSu Pitts as Powell's supportive aunts. Each had previously played Stuart Palmer's crime-solving school teacher Hildegarde Withers. Broderick was the first to succeed Miss Wither's original interpreter, Edna Mae Oliver, when she starred in Murder on a Bridle Path (1936), while Pitts finished out the series in Forty Naughty Girls (1937).

Director: Ray Enright
Producer: Samuel Bischoff
Screenplay: Richard Macaulay, Jerry Wald
Based on the Story "Always Leave Them Laughing" by Macaulay and Wald
Cinematography: Arthur Todd
Art Direction: Max Parker
Music: Leo F. Forbstein
Principal Cast: Ann Sheridan (Zelda Manion), Dick Powell (Prof. Hardwick), Gale Page (Linda McKay), Helen Broderick (Aunt Martha), Allen Jenkins (Joe Dirk), ZaSu Pitts (Aunt Penelope), Ronald Reagan (Ed Clark).
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By Frank Miller