For mystery film lovers, not much happens on TCM until late in the week. Then some A-list thrillers heave into view. We have:

• Chinatown, a slick piece of sleaze
• Death on the Nile, a tasty piece of cheese
• Affair in Trinidad, which goes to the well once too often with its Rita Hayworth-Glenn Ford pairing
• Notorious, with Hitchcock proving just how far he could go with nothing up his sleeve
• North by Northwest, the perfect distillation of just about every Hitchcockian theme
• The Manchurian Candidate, with Angela Lansbury gaslighting somebody else for a change
• The Fortune Cookie, with Walter Matthau stealing the show
• Fourteen Hours, a noirish thriller that isn’t really noir
• Gaslight, the ultimate "let’s drive her bonkers" film
• Rear Window, in which James Stewart gets defenestrated
• Vertigo, in which Stewart nearly defenestrates himself
• and Psycho, in which Hitchcock succeeds in enlisting the viewer’s sympathy for a psychopathic killer.

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February 27th—Friday

12:15 AM—Chinatown (1974)
A Los Angeles private eye unwittingly sets up an innocent man for murder, then joins his seductive widow to unearth the corruption behind the crime.
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, Perry Lopez, John Huston
Dir: Roman Polanski
C-130 mins, TV-MA

"Let me explain something to you, Walsh. This business requires a certain amount of finesse."
———-
"I hope you don’t mind. I believe they should be served with the head."
"Fine … long as you don’t serve the chicken that way."
———-
"Either you bring the water to L.A. or you bring L.A. to the water."
———-
"You’re dumber than you think I think you are."

2:30 AM—Death on the Nile (1978)
Hercule Poirot investigates the murder of an heiress during an Egyptian tour.
Cast: Peter Ustinov, Bette Davis, Mia Farrow, Angela Lansbury
Dir: John Guillermin
C-140 mins, TV-14

"Come, Bowers, it’s time to go. This place is beginning to resemble a mortuary."
"Thank God you’ll be in one yourself before too long, you bloody old fossil!"
———-
"Frenchmen aren’t afraid of good strong sex!"

Trivia for Death on the Nile (1978):
* The movie was shot aboard the paddle steamer ‘Sudan’ (in the movie named ‘Karnak’) which was the last operating paddle steamer on the Nile as of 2004.
* Filming had to be stopped every day at noon because temperatures reached 130 degrees F at that time.
* Aboard ship, no one was allowed his or her own dressing room, so Bette Davis, Maggie Smith, and Angela Lansbury all shared a room.
[Source: TCM Movie Database]

5:00 AM—Affair in Trinidad (1952)
A nightclub singer enlists her brother-in-law to track down her husband’s killer.
Cast: Rita Hayworth, Glenn Ford, Alexander Scourby, Valerie Bettis
Dir: Vincent Sherman
BW-98 mins, TV-PG

7:00 AM—Notorious (1946)
A U.S. agent recruits a German expatriate to infiltrate a Nazi spy ring in Brazil.
Cast: Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains, Louis Calhern
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock
BW-101 mins, TV-PG

Trivia for Notorious (1946):
* Alfred Hitchcock can be seen about an hour in, drinking champagne at the party in Alexander Sebastian’s mansion.
* Hitchcock claimed that the FBI had him under surveillance for three months because the film dealt with uranium.
* Producer David O. Selznick originally wanted Vivien Leigh to play Alicia.
* Selznick sold the rights to Vanguard in order to finance part of Duel in the Sun (1946), which was over-budget and behind schedule.
* The final scene takes place on stairs.
[Source: TCM Movie Database]

9:00 AM—North by Northwest (1959)
An advertising man is mistaken for a spy, triggering a deadly cross-country chase.
Cast: Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason, Jessie Royce Landis
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock
C-136 mins, TV-PG

"What happened with your first two marriages?"
"My wives divorced me."
"Why?"
"They said I led a dull life."
———-
"And what the devil is all this about? Why was I brought here?"
"Games, must we?"
"Not that I mind a slight case of abduction now and then, but I have tickets for the theater this evening, to a show I was looking forward to an
d I get, well, kind of unreasonable about things like that."
"With such expert playacting, you make this very room a theater."
———-
"No. No, Mother, I have not been drinking. No. No. These two men, they poured a whole bottle of bourbon into me. No, they didn’t give me a chaser!"

—————

February 28th—Saturday

12:15 AM—The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
A Korean War hero doesn’t realize he’s been programmed to kill by the enemy.
Cast: Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, Janet Leigh, Angela Lansbury
Dir: John Frankenheimer
BW-127 mins, TV-PG

"It’s a terrible thing to hate your mother. But I didn’t always hate her. When I was a child, I only kind of disliked her."
———-
"There are two kinds of people in this world: Those that enter a room and turn the television set on, and those that enter a room and turn the television set off."
———-
"Congratulations, son. How do you feel?"
"Like Captain Idiot in Astounding Science comics."

Trivia for The Manchurian Candidate (1962):
* Senator Iselin’s plane in real life was owned by Frank Sinatra.
* One scene was filmed at the Bar and Grill that Frank Sinatra’s friend Jilly Rizzo owned in New York City.
* Sinatra broke one of his fingers in the fight sequence with Henry Silva.
* Angela Lansbury, who was only 37 at the time, was only three years older than Laurence Harvey, who played her son.
* All the members of the platoon in Korea are named after cast and crew of The Phil Silvers Show.
[Source: TCM Movie Database]

(Repeat: March 28th.)

8:00 AM—The Fortune Cookie (1966)
A crooked lawyer trumps up an insurance case for a cameraman injured at a pro football game.
Cast: Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, Ron Rich, Cliff Osmond
Dir: Billy Wilder
BW-126 mins, TV-PG

Trivia for The Fortune Cookie (1966):
* Lemmon’s wheelchair ballet "You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To" lasts 3 1/4 minutes and was completed in one take.
* For the scene in which he motors through the city searching for Ron Rich (a.k.a "Boom Boom") Lemmon also served as a driver cinematographer and gaffer.
* This film marked the first pairing of Lemmon and Matthau, who subsequently worked together on nine additional films.
* Jack Lemmon originally had two other actors proposed to star with him. They were Frank Sinatra and Jackie Gleason, but Lemmon insisted that he do the picture with Walter Matthau.
* Production was halted for weeks after Matthau had a heart attack. He had slimmed from 190 to 160 pounds by the time filming was completed, and had to wear a heavy black coat to conceal the weight loss.
[Source: TCM Movie Database]

—————

March 1st—Sunday

9:30 AM—Fourteen Hours (1951)
A policeman tries to talk a desperate young man off the ledge of a New York skyscraper.
Cast: Paul Douglas, Richard Basehart, Barbara Bel Geddes, Debra Paget
Dir: Henry Hathaway
BW-92 mins

(Repeat: March 20th.)

11:15 AM—Gaslight (1944)
A newlywed fears she’s going mad when strange things start happening at the family mansion.
Cast: Charles Boyer, Ingrid Bergman, Joseph Cotten, Dame May Whitty
Dir: George Cukor
BW-114 mins, TV-PG

"If I were not mad, I could have helped you. Whatever you had done, I could have pitied and protected you. But because I am mad, I hate you. Because I am mad, I have betrayed you. And because I’m mad, I’m rejoicing in my heart, without a shred of pity, without a shred of regret, watching you go with glory in my heart!"

Trivia for Gaslight (1944):
* When this film was produced, the studio attempted to have all prints of the previous 1940 version destroyed. These efforts were ultimately unsuccessful, though the first film was rarely seen for the next few decades.
[Source: TCM Movie Database]

1:15 PM—Rear Window (1954)
A photographer with a broken leg uncovers a murder while spying on the neighbors in a nearby apartment building.
Cast: James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Wendell Corey, Thelma Ritter
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock
C-114 mins, TV-PG

3:15 PM—Vertigo (1958)
A detective falls for the mysterious woman he’s been hired to tail.
Cast: James Stewart, Kim Novak, Barbara Bel Geddes, Tom Helmore
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock
C-130 mins, TV-PG

10:00 PM—Psycho (1960)
A woman on the run gets mixed up with a repressed young man and his violent mother.
Cast: Anthony Perkins, Vera Miles, John Gavin, Martin Balsam
Dir: Alfred Hitchcock
BW-109 mins, TV-PG

(Repeat: April 6th.)