Welcome to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" thread, for the week of August 31-September 6, 2015. We're finally finishing up Summer Under the Stars, which means we'll be getting back to regular programming features on TCM including a new Star of the Month and an interesting spotlight. There are interesting movies on some of the other channels too. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
Our last star for Summer Under the Stars this year is Shelley Winters, who shows up starting at 6:00 AM Monday. You could do worse than to watch He Ran All the Way, which is airing at 2:30 PM. The star here is John Garfield, in his final film. He plays a bank robber who is looking for a safe place to hide out from the cops. He goes to a public swimming pool, which is where he meets working girl Shelley Winters. They strike up a conversation and he offers to walk her home, which is of course a ruse: he gets to the apartment where she still lives with her parents and kid brother, and holds the family hostage! Well, except that they're allowed to do their normal daily routine except at least one of the family members stays home to ensure nobody else snitches. Shelley Winters' character, not being married, begins to fall in love with Garfield's criminal, to the point that she's willing to help him try to escape from the cops! It's a very good movie, and a shame that Garfield died so young, since he could have done so much more.
Tuesday is September 1, and there's going to be a special spotlight on TCM on Tuesday night. Author Mark Harris wrote a book that was published in 2014 called "Five Came Back", about five Hollywood directors who served in World War II and how it changed their movies. Every Tuesday in September, Harris will be sitting down (I beleive with Ben Mankiewicz) to discuss one of the directors and then show one of that director's movies. This first Tuesday sees them discuss Frank Capra, and the film that's been selected is 1941's Meet John Doe. But what's just as interesting is all the films that come up after Meet John Doe. There are going to be a bunch of movies commissioned by the War Department (it wouldn't become the Department of Defense until after the war), from traditional documentaries like The Negro Soldier (12:45 AM Wednesday), or the more interesting Private Snafu series, starting with Coming!! Snafu at 10:00 PM. Snafu of course stands for "Situation Normal All F***ed Up", and these animated shorts look at Private Snafu, the most incompetent soldier in the services. A lot of them were done at Warner Bros. and directed by Chuck Jones, but a few coming up later in the month were done by Frank Tashlin (later to do live-action things like Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?) Oh, these are also much more risquÉ than would have been allowed in normal theaters, having been produced for the benefit of the soldiers.
For a more traditional war movie, switch over to FXM Retro, which is running The Purple Heart, at 6:00 AM Wednesday. General James Doolittle commanded a daring raid on Tokyo in early 1942, which was the subject of the book, and later movie, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo. In this film, one of the bomber crews is shot down, and put on what is basically a show-trial by the Japanese, in contravention of the rules of war. (They should have been treated as POWs, not that Japan treated its POWs well of course.) In the film, the trial is supposed to be for the benefit of ambassadors of neutral countries, including the USSR, which didn't declare war against Japan until 90 days after the Nazi surrender which if memory serves was agreed to at Yalta. The Japanese wanted to know where the attack was launched from, and to get that information, they're willing to torture the American crewmen. The Americans are led by Dana Andrews early in his career, with Farley Granger and Richard Conte also in the crew.
Norma Shearer quit Hollywood in 1942 to be with her second husband who was a ski instructor of all things. Her final film was Her Cardboard Lover, at 3:00 PM Wednesday. Shearer plays Consuelo, who's got a lover in the form of Tony (George Sanders), but it's a difficult relationship and there are a lot of times that she doesn't want to be with him. So when gambling songwriter Terry (Robert Taylor) gets into $3,000 of debt, Consuela hires him to play her pretend lover in order to make Tony jealous. There's one catch, however. Terry has always been secretly in love with Consuelo, but could never bring himself to tell her since he's only a songwriter and not in her social class at all. The film flopped at the box office since it was a remake of an old Marion Davies movie based on a 1927 play, and with the start of World War II audience tastes changed. The movie isn't as bad as is often suggested, though.
Over on Encore Westerns is a movie I don't think I've recommended before: Goin' South, at 12:10 PM Thursday. Jack Nicholson, who also directed, plays Henry Moon, a man wanted for horse rustling (a capital offense) and being chased by a posse. Worse, his horse just up and quits on him. There is a bit of luck, however: he's in a town where they have a law that unless the crime was murder, they won't extradite anybody who will marry one of the spinsters in town. One such spinster is Julia (Mary Steenburgen), and so the two get married. Of course, Henry is getting more than he bargained for in the process, as Julia owns a gold mine and needs a man to mine the gold for her. Things get more complicated when Henry's old gang (including Danny DeVito) show up in town. Christopher Lloyd and John Belushi play sheriff's deputies.
While Jack Nicholson's character in Goin' South is trying to get to Mexico, the people in TCM's movies on Thursday are in Mexico, starting at 6:00 AM with In Caliente. Pat O'Brien plays Larry, a critic known as much for his hard drinking as for his scathing reviews. He's about to marry Clara (Glenda Farrell), but his friend Harold (Edward Everett Horton) thinks Clara isn't right for him, so Harold gets Larry to the Mexican resort Caliente, which is where he meets Rita. Rita is a dancer and some time back Larry had written a scathing review about her dance number that was totally inaccurate. Rita was pissed because it hurt her career, and dammit, she wants to show Larry the truth. You can probably guess what happens next: Rita and Larry start to fall in love withe each other, and then Clara shows up threatening to put the kibosh on it all.
Thursday night on TCM brings a new Star of the Month: Susan Hayward. Hayward worked a lot at Fox, so I think several of the movies in her tribute will be TCM premieres. But before she was a Fox contract player, she made movies like Beau Geste, airing at 8:00 PM Thursday. The title role is played by Gary Cooper, one of three Geste brothers (the others John played by Ray Milland and Digby played by Robert Preston) who, along with cousin Isobel (Hayward) who is in love with John, live with their aunt. Unfortunately, the aunt has lost her wealth, with the exception of one gem, which she's going to auction off. Except that it gets stolen! So all three of the Geste brothers do the honorable thing and claim they were the thief who stole it, and then go off and join the Foreign Legion. They end up under the command of brutal Sergeant Markoff (Brian Donlevy) in the Sahara, and with everybody on the verge of committing mutiny, the Tuareg attack the legionnaires' fort, leading to a rousing climax. A rousing adventure film.
Saturday at 10:30 AM brings a new series to TCM. Oh, the Batman and Robin serial picks up where it left off at 10:00 AM, but come 10:30, instead of Bomba the Jungle Boy, we get Bulldog Drummond. I mentioned these movies a couple of months back when TCM ran much of the series one evening in prime time. This first Saturday in September brings Bulldog Drummond Escapes, which has Ray Milland playing the British army officer detective who makes life difficult for the regular police while in this movie saving a woman who's more or less being held hostage as part of an espionage scheme. Reginald Denny plays Drummond's assistant Algy, who here is also expecting the birth of his child. Later movies will have John Barrymore playing the Scotland Yard inspector.
And now for a short. TCM, during the "Underground" slot between about 2:00 AM and 6:00 AM Sunday morning, often runs non-traditional shorts that are laughable, but not because the filmmakers intended them to be comedic. A good example is The House in the Middle, at 5:45 AM Sunday. Produced by "The National Clean Up-Paint Up-Fix Up Bureau", this one looks at the importance of keeping one's home neat and tidy. If you don't, your home won't survive a nuclear attack! The film shows nuclear testing and the purported results on a bunch of simulated houses, some kept in good condition, and others with trash strewn about or clutter indoors. Sure enough, all that trash around the outside of the house catches fire which spreads to the house. But if you maintain your home well you won't have that problem. Of course, you'll have the bigger problem that you're dead, killed by the initial blast, but that's another story.
A movie that's returning to FXM Retro after a long absence is the historical drama The Prisoner of Shark Island, at 8:40 AM Sunday. The date is April, 1865, and the Civil War has just ended, so you know what's going to happen next: John Wilkes Booth (Francis McDonald) is going to assassinate Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theater. When he does so, he jumps down to the stage, breaking his leg in the process. He then escapes and winds up at the residence of country doctor Samuel Mudd (Warner Baxter), seeking medical assistance. Mudd has no idea what's happened, and because of the Hippocratic Oath, treats the man. Well, the authorities eventually figure out that Booth sought medical attention from Dr. Mudd, and arrest Mudd as part of a conspiracy to assassinate Lincoln. Mudd is convicted and sentenced to the federal prison on the Dry Tortugas. There, he's tortured by prison guard John Carradine, while his wife (Gloria Stuart) tries to get him a new trial.
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