TCM Schedule for Thu, May 1, 2025: Director Stanley Kramer / Special Theme: Westerns
April's special theme, Acts of Faith, ends with a 6:00 am airing of The Green Pastures.
The special theme for May, Westerns, kicks off in prime time with a series of silent films that are probably seldom seen anywhere these days.
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Stanley Kramer (September 29, 1913 – February 19, 2001) was an American film director and producer, responsible for making many of Hollywood's most famous "message films" (he called his movies heavy dramas).
As an independent producer and director, he brought attention to topical social issues that most studios avoided. Among the subjects covered in his films were racism (The Defiant Ones and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner), nuclear war (On the Beach), greed (It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World), creationism vs. evolution (Inherit the Wind), and the causes and effects of fascism (Judgment at Nuremberg). His other films included High Noon (1952, as producer), The Caine Mutiny (1954, as producer), and Ship of Fools (1965).
Director Steven Spielberg described him as an "incredibly talented visionary" and "one of four great filmmakers, not just for the art and passion he put on screen, but for the impact he has made on the conscience of the world."
Kramer was recognized for his fierce independence as a producer-director, with author Victor Navasky writing that "among the independents...none seemed more vocal, more liberal, more pugnacious than young Stanley Kramer."
Despite uneven critical reception, both then and now, Kramer's body of work has received many awards, including 16 Academy Awards and 80 nominations, and he was nominated nine times as either producer or director.
He received the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award in 1961. In 1963 he was a member of the jury at the 3rd Moscow International Film Festival. In 1998 he was awarded the first NAACP Vanguard Award in recognition of "the strong social themes that ran through his body of work". In 2002 the Stanley Kramer Award was created to be awarded to recipients whose work "dramatically illustrates provocative social issues".
FULL BIO: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Kramer
Still from It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963)
DAYTIME: (EST)
6:00 AM | The Green Pastures (1936)
The human race is tested in this reenactment of Bible stories set in the world of black American folklore.
Dir: Marc Connelly | Cast: Rex Ingram, Oscar Polk, Eddie Anderson
8:00 AM | MGM Parade Show #26 (1955)
Clips from "Broadway Melody" and "Captains Courageous."
Cast: George Murphy, Eleanor Powell, Spencer Tracy
8:30 AM | It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963)
A random group of motorists tear up Southern California in a slapstick search of stolen money.
Dir: Stanley Kramer | Cast: Spencer Tracy, Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Mickey Rooney
11:30 AM | Inherit the Wind (1960)
True story of a 1925 Tennessee schoolteacher on trial for teaching Darwin's theories.
Dir: Stanley Kramer | Cast: Spencer Tracy, Fredric March, Gene Kelly
2:00 PM | Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967)
The daughter of a white family announces her intentions of marrying a black physician.
Dir: Stanley Kramer | Cast: Spencer Tracy, Sidney Poitier, Katharine Hepburn
4:00 PM | The Defiant Ones (1958)
Two chained-together escaped convicts, one white and one black, must get along to elude capture.
Dir: Stanley Kramer | Cast: Tony Curtis, Sidney Poitier, Theodore Bikel
6:00 PM | AFI Life Achievement Award: 50th Anniversary Special (2023)
Ben Mankiewicz hosts a retrospective of the AFI Life Achievement Award.
Dir: Chris Merrill | Cast: Gregory Peck, Bette Davis, Meryl Streep
PRIME TIME, LATE NIGHT, EARLY MORNING
8:00 PM | The Great Train Robbery (1903)
In this pioneering silent short, a group of bandits stage a brazen train hold-up.
Dir: Edwin S. Porter | Cast: Gilbert M. 'Broncho Billy' Anderson, A.C. Abadie, George Barnes
8:15 PM | The Invaders (1912)
War ensues when a group of surveyors trespass on Native American land.
Dir: Francis Ford, Thomas H. Ince | Cast: Francis Ford, Ethel Grandin, Ann Little
9:00 PM | The Squaw Man (1914)
In this silent film, a wrongly accused man escapes to the West and takes an Native American bride.
Dir: Oscar C. Apfel | Cast: Dustin Farnum, Monroe Salisbury
10:30 PM | The Iron Horse (1924)
A pony express rider honors his father's memory by helping build the transcontinental railway.
Dir: John Ford | Cast: George O'Brien, Madge Bellamy, Cyril Chadwick
1:15 AM | Tumbleweeds (1925)
The reign of cowboys and cattle on the open range dwindle in the land rush of 1893.
Dir: King Baggot, William S. Hart | Cast: William S. Hart, Barbara Bedford, Lucien Littlefield
2:45 AM | The Winning of Barbara Worth (1926)
A plan to irrigate the Western desert is complicated by a romantic triangle.
Dir: Henry King | Cast: Ronald Colman, Vilma Banky, Charles Lane
4:30 AM | Sky High (1922)
A government agent infiltrates a gang of Chinese immigrant smugglers in the Southwestern desert.
Dir: Lynn Reynolds | Cast: Tom Mix, J. Farrell MacDonald, Eva Novak
5:30 AM | Musical Movieland (1944) Short
A group of tourists are given a studio tour of several locations of famous movie musicals.
Dir: LeRoy Prinz | Cast: Richard Erdman, Lottie Williams, Harold Miller