Welcome to another edition of Fedya's “Movies to Tivo” Thread, for the week of April 24-30, 2017. The NFL Draft is this week, when Ted Thompson picks a new batch of players for Dom Capers to misuse. While we wait for that, why not spend the time watching some good movies? Once again I've used my discerning taste and erudition to select a batch of movies I know you'll all be interested in. (Well, Goalline bitched last week, but does anyone care what he thinks, anyway? 
) As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
We'll start off this week with a movie airing on StarzEncore Westerns: Apache Drums, at 4:14 AM Monday. Sam Leeds (Stephen McNally) is a gambler who comes to the town of Spanish Boot in the Arizona territory. He gets into a fight and another man attacks him, forcing him to kill that man in self defense. The town's mayor Madden (Willard Parker) isn't having any of this, and also because the town wants to clean up its image, Madden orders Sam to leave, along with the women working the saloon. Sam goes after the women, only to find that they've been massacred by the Apaches! So Sam decides to return to town to tell the townsfolk that they're in imminent danger, but can he get the town to believe him? Oh, they'll believe him after they lock themselves in the church and the Apaches are besieging the church. This was the final movie directed by Val Lewton, known for his horror movies over at RKO such as Cat People.
TCM is spending Monday morning and afternoon with Shirley MacLaine since it's her 83rd birthday. Among her movies is Around the World in 80 Days, which will be on at 11:00 AM. You probably know the story. With the advance of technology, London gentleman Phineas Fogg has figured that it's possible to do a circumnavigation of the globe in 80 days. And to that effect, he's willing to make a substantial wager: £20,000 with the members of his gentlemen's club that he can do it. They take him up on the offer, and so Fogg and his man Friday, Passepartout (Cantinflas) take off on a trip around the world. Of course, it's not going to be easy as all sorts of things happen to cause delays and glitches in connections getting from one place to the next. And Fogg ends up with another travel partner in the form of princess Aouda (MacLaine), whom he rescues somewhere around Persia. The movie is one of the first with “a cast of thousands”, having all sorts of stars make brief cameos since most of the characters are only needed for a scene or two what with the action moving from one locale to the next. And related to nothing else, I don't recall any hot-air balloons in the book.
Oh boy, Sleeping With the Enemy is back on StarzEncore Classics, at 1:02 AM Tuesday. Julia Roberts plays Laura, a Boston wife in a marriage that to the world outside looks happy. But in reality she's got the husband from hell in Martin (Patrick Bergin), who not only beats her; he's a control freak in all sorts of ways. Look at those towels and kitchen cabinets; they're an important plot point. Anyhow, Martin takes Laura out on the ocean with a couple of friends, despite her being deathly afraid of the water. Well, except that she no longer is, since she's been taking swimming classes as part of an attempt to escape. She goes overboard and swims to shore while everybody else thinks she's drowned, and then flees to a new life in Iowa, where she meets kindly Ben (Kevin Anderson). But can she fall in love with another man? And is it possible that Martin has figured out she's not dead at all, but is looking for her? Martin's control freakery is so over the top that it winds up becoming unintentionally hilarious.
TCM on Tuesday shines a light on Dean Martin, even though it's not his birthday. One of Martin's films I don't think I've recommended before is Marriage on the Rocks, which will be on at 5:45 PM Tuesday. Dean plays Ernie, co-worker and best friend of Dan (Frank Sinatra), who is married to Valerie (Deborah Kerr) and has two children (including Frank's real-life daughter Nancy). Dan and Valerie go to Mexico to celebrate their anniversary, but due to a mix-up they wind up getting a quickie Mexican divorce! So Dan decides to make it up to Valerie by having Ernie go to Mexico and explain things to Valerie. But when he tries, he winds up getting in a quickie wedding with Valerie! So now Ernie is stepfather to his best friend's daughters. Yeah right, if you can believe any of this. For better or worse, neither Dean nor Frank sing. And you wish more effort had been put into the movie considering the cast.
A couple of movies worth mentioning over on FXM Retro this week. First is one that I've recommended a couple of times, Love Nest, at 6:00 AM Thursday. June Haver plays Connie, a woman whose husband Jim (William Lundigan) has been serving overseas in the military. To try to make some extra money, and to have some money coming in for when he returns home, she decided to invest in an apartment building. They can pay off the mortgage from the rents and live in the basement apartment; it's a win-win situation for everybody! Yeah right. Of course, the building turns out to be a fixer-upper, and Jim isn't as well-suited to fix things as Connie might think. There are also problems with the tenants, most notably Charley (Frank Fay), who romances women, and may not have the best of intentions in so doing. Further problems ensue when one of Jim's army co-workers, Bobbie, shows up. Bobbie is a she, and played by Marilyn Monroe, and you can understand why Connie would think sparks might have flown between Jim and Bobbie. It's a fairly lightweight comedy, but more than adequate.
Near the beginning of his career, Frank Capra directed the interesting The Younger Generation, which TCM is showing at 8:00 AM Thursday. This one was conceived as a silent, but then talking pictures came along and the movie was converted into a partial talkie. The Goldfishes are a Jewish family living in the tenements on the East Side of Manhattan, where Dad (Jean Hersholt) sells things from a push-cart, while son Morris (Ricardo Cortez) is starting out for himself, trying to make a buck any way he can. There's also a sister Birdie in love with Eddie. Eventually Morris makes good with a thriving antiques business. But having made good, he wants to fit into “polite” (read: Gentile) society, moving his family uptown, changing his name to Fish, and generally trying to run the lives of the rest of the family. Morris doesn't even approve of Birdie's marriage to Eddie. The rest of the family realizes they can be happy without giving up their roots; can they get Morris to recognize that, too?
Many of you, especially the older members of the board, have probably heard of the TV series Our Miss Brooks. Shortly after the series was cancelled, a movie version of the show was made, and that movie will be on TCM at 10:15 PM Thursday. Eve Arden returns as Connie Brooks, the English teach at Madison High. She lives in a rented room taken from landlady Mrs. Davis (Jane Morgan), deals with Principal Conklin (Gale Gordon), riding to school with student Walter (Richard Crenna), and trying to put the moves on biology teacher Mr. Boynton (Robert Rockwell). Meanwhile, the principal doesn't like the fact that his daughter is feeling a romantic interest in Walter (who was constantly getting in trouble in the TV series), while there's another subplot involving a father and son and an alleged romantic interest in Miss Brooks. The odd thing is that most of these characters had been written out of the last season of the TV series.
One on FXM Retro that I'm not certain I've recommended before is Me and My Gal, which you can catch at 7:05 AM Friday. Spencer Tracy is the star here; it's easy to forget that he was a contract player at Fox before moving to MGM, since his Fox movies are so rarely shown. Here, Tracy plays Danny Dolan, a New York policeman who gets waterfront duty, which is where he meets hash-slinger Helen (Joan Bennett). Helen has a sister Kate (Marion Burns), who is at heart a nice woman with a good job at a bank, except that she's been stupid enough to fall in love with a gangster Duke (George Walsh). He goes to jail and she marries another man, but of course Duke gets out of jail and tries to put the moves on Kate to become the inside girl in the plan Duke and his gang have to rob a bank. It's up to Danny to foil the plot, although he is helped by Kate's wheelchair-bound father-in-law (Henry B. Walthall). The stars and director of this movie would all go on to better things.
For some good steamy melodramatic fun, you could do far worse than watch A Summer Place, on TCM at 10:45 AM Friday. The Hunters (Arthur Kennedy and Dorothy McGuire) own a big summer place on an island off the coast of Maine where a collection of rich people come every year, and have a teenage son Johnny (Troy Donahue). Ken Jorgenson (Richard Egan) worked there 20 years ago as a lifeguard, and now he's visiting with his wife (Constance Ford) and teenage daughter Molly (Sandra Dee). Johnny and Molly fall in love, which absolutely pisses Mrs. Jorgenson off since she wants everything to be oh so perfect, to the point that she's made Ken's life a living hell. Meanwhile, where Ken was formerly poor, now it's the Hunters who have fallen on hard times, with Mr. Hunter reduced to drinking. Mr. Jorgenson and Mrs. Hunter eventually run off together, which is the sort of thing that would have caused a scandal back in those days. And Johnny and Molly would like to do the same thing, and don't understand why they aren't supposed to.
He Walked By Night is back on TCM after a long absence, at 10:00 AM Sunday as part of Noir Alley. To me, this isn't really a noir as much as it is a dark police procedural and docudrama. In fact, it's based on a real case, that of “Machine Gun” Walker. Renamed Roy and played by Richard Basehart, the character is a former GI demobbed after the war who became a police dispatcher. However, he also engaged in petty crime, and shot and killed a cop in one incident. So of course the cops go nuts since ke killed one of their own. But Roy seems to keep evading them (that experience as a police dispatcher comes in handy). Until Roy is connected to some stolen electronics equipment, in a time when electronics was a new field. Slowly the noose tightens on Roy…. Watch also for a scene of him having to extract a bullet from his own shoulder. The film was made largely on location, and young Jack Webb has a small role, with this movie giving him the idea for Dragnet.
