Welcome to another edition of Fedya's “Movies to Tivo” thread, for the week of December 5-11, 2016. I know most of you are disappointed that Wisconsin blew the big game, so why not deal with your disappointment by watching some good movies? Once again, I've used my impeccable taste to pick some movies I know you'll all find interesting. There's more from Star of the Month Myrna Loy, a couple of special programming blocks, and stuff on other channels besides TCM. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
We'll start the week off with a western: Jubal, on StarzEncore Westerns at 10:40 AM and 10:30 PM Monday. Glenn Ford plays Jubal, a cowhand who is discovered out in the elements nearly dead by ranch owner Shep (Ernest Borgnine), Shep offers Jubal a job, which he gratefully accepts, much to the chagrin of Pinky (Rod Steiger). So Pinky is going to try to get his revenge, which plan involves Shep's lovely but frustrated wife Mae (Valerie French). Jubal is all business, spurning anything that could be taken as an advance from Mae, but Pinky goes to work on Shep, trying to convince Shep that Jubal is actually putting the moves on Mae. In fact, Pinky is jealous because he's no longer getting Mae's attention. But it leads to negative consequences, because of course Shep is jealous enough that he doesn't want anybody pursuing his wife. And in fact Jubal has his eyes on Naomi (Felicia Farr), one of a group of pilgrims migrating west and camped on the ranch.
TCM is marking the 90th anniversary of Vitaphone on Monday. Vitaphone was the company that pioneered sound-on-disc technology for playing talking pictures, although the technology would be superseded by encoding the sound on the film itself. Still, it was Vitaphone's recording of a synchronized score for the silent Don Juan (Tuesday at 6:00 AM) that revolutionized film. Warner Bros. eventually bought Vitaphone to put out sound pictures such as The Jazz Singer (Monday at 6:00 PM), but the Vitaphone imprint made a whole bunch of shorts into the 1930s. TCM is showing mostly those shorts all day Monday. The bad news is that any time TCM programs a block of shorts, the various online schedules and the box guides never coincide. TCM will put a bunch of shots in, say, a block from 8:00 PM to 9:45 PM, but they'll all be listed as starting at 8:00 PM, and the monthly schedule will have a different running order from the weekly schedule, while the box guide will have a third running order. In that 8:00PM block, for example, you can see a short Will Hays (the guy who tried to enforce a Production Code before Joe Breen) did in conjunction with Don Juan, in which Hays talks about the new technology. Also in that block is Baby Rose Marie, and in case you're wondering, yes it's the same Rose Marie who would go on to do the Dick Van Dyke Show.
Tuesday night's prime time lineup on TCM deals with the problems of dealing with elderly parents. I think I've mentioned all of the movies before, but this week I'll give another shout out to The Trip to Bountiful, airing at 9:45 PM. Geraldine Page stars as Mrs. Watts, an elderly lady in 1940s Houston TX, without much to look forward to. She's living in a cramped apartment with her son Ludie (John Heard) and his wife Jessie Mae (Carin Glynn), who understandably resents having her mother-in-law living with her. The elder Mrs. Watts, for her part, dreams of going back to her childhood home in Bountiful, somewhere down the South Texas coast, one last time before she dies, especially because she hasn't heard from a childhood friend in some time. To that end, she tries to escape from the apartment to get on the bus, but her son and daughter-in-law keep stopping her. Until one day when she makes it onto the bus, and winds up sitting next to Thelma (Rebecca de Mornay), a wife whose husband is serving in Europe. That's pretty much all there is to the story, but the performances, especially Page's, stand out.
Wednesday is December 7, which many of you will recall is the anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. TCM is spending the day with a bunch of war movies, including the excellent Tora! Tora! Tora! at 8:00 PM. This film, a co-production between Fox and Japan's Toei Company, takes an unflinching look at the attack on Pearl Harbor, going back to well before the attack to look at the reasons why Japan felt an attack was necessary, and why the attack wound up being as successful as it was. Japan had no natural resources of its own, and trying to get them from the near abroad in East and Southeast Asia inevitably put it in conflict with other countries, including the Pacific naval power that was the US. So the military eventually concluded that if they couldn't get enough concessions diplomatically, a sneak attack on the US fleet stationed in Hawaii would knock the US out of the war. The US had the great good luck to send the aircraft carriers out on patrol so those weren't destroyed, and saving those is what eventually won the war. But it made the bases in Hawaii more vulnerable. Several prominent Hollywood supporting actors get roles as military or politicos, such as Joseph Cotten, Jason Robards, James Whitmore, and Martin Balsam.
A movie that may not be to everybody's taste is on FXM Retro this week: Fire Sale, at 3:30 AM and 7:55 AM Wednesday. Vincent Gardenia is Benny Fikus, the patriarch of a very dysfunctional family. He owns a failing department store where one son Russel (Rob Reiner) works, and another son Ezra (Alan Arkin) who used to work there except that he'd rather be a basketball coach. Ezra is a failure at that, much to his wife's (Anjanette Comer) chagrin; she wants a child. And Benny's wife Ruth (Key Medford) is, well, by turns obnoxious and insane. Her brother Sherman (Sid Caesar) lost a leg in World War II and still believes the war is on, so Benny is planning to use Sherman to burn down the store since it's failing, shades of Arsenic and Old Lace here. The ideas are interesting, but the execution may leave a lot to be desired. If you like something like the TV show Arrested Development, this may be for you; otherwise you may find it a bit of a slog.
You've all read these threads long enough to know that Lucille Ball really could act, and that she wasn't just ditzy Lucy Ricardo. A good example of her true acting ability is in Dance, Girl, Dance, airing at 8:15 AM Thursday on TCM. Lucy plays Bubbles, a burlesque dancer who could have big things if only she could get to New York. Part of the troupe is Judy (Maureen O'Hara), who is in the troupe because it's a paycheck; she really wants to do serious ballet. The two do get to New York (separately), but they meet again and wind up facing off against one another both for the affections of the same man (Louis Hayward) – Judy loves him; Bubbles loves his bank account – and professionally when Judy gets hired as the stooge for Bubbles' (now renamed Tiger Lily) act. Meanwhile, experimental choreographer Steve (Ralph Bellamy) had a chance to give Judy a tryout but it ended tragically; Steve sees Judy again and realizes she's really the dancer he wants.
Old time Hollywood actress Gloria DeHaven died earlier this year aged 91. One of her final films was Out to Sea, which will be on Starz Comedy at 11:10 AM Thursday and 8:00 AM Friday. Jack Lemmon plays Herb, a widower who gets a surprise gift from his brother-in-law Charlie (Walter Matthau): an all-expenses paid cruise! Well, of course there's a catch: Charlie signed the two of them on as dance partners, so they actually have to work during the cruise. And their immediate boss Gil (Lt. Data, er, Brent Spiner) is a hoot of a martinet. Charlie had motives beyond trying to cheer up his brother-in-law; he wants to meet a rich woman and marry her to solve his financial problems. He does meet Liz (Dyan Cannon), on the cruise with her widowed mother Mavis (Elaine Stritch), but neither side knows that the other side isn't well-off. As for DeHaven, she plays Vivian, who winds up becoming Herb's love interest. Hal Linden and Donald O'Connor play fellow dance partners working the cruise, and O'Connor gets to do a dance number showing he's still got the moves.
You've probably all played the board game Clue before. (Prof. Plum did it in the conservatory with Col. Mustard.) Some of you may recall that the board game was turned into a movie back in the mid-80s. StarzEncore Classics is showing that movie at 3:30 PM Friday. If you remember the rules, the murder victim in the game is actually named “Mr. Boddy”, and here Boddy has brought the six main characters together because apparently their personal and profssional lives intertwine and Boddy has blackmail material on all of them. But he says it's really the butler (Tim Curry) who did it. The butler begs to differ and claims it was Boddy. Each of our six main characters gets a murder weapon, and all hell breaks loose at the mansion. Eileen Brennan plays Mrs. Peacock; Christopher Lloyd Prof Plum; Madeline Kahn Mrs. White; and Martin Mull Col. Mustard.
Up against Clue over on TCM is New Morals for Old, at 3:15 PM Friday. Who thought families lived like this in the 1930s? A very wealthy family, the Thomases (with parents played by Lewis Stone and Laura Hope Crews) have two adult children, Ralph (Robert Young) and Phyl (Margaret Perry). Ralph works for the family business, but he'd rather be an artist, and if the opportunity presented itself he'd sail off to Paris to study art. Phyl, for her part, has started seeing Duff (David Newell). The only thing is, Duff is married with no plans to divorce his wife. Yet Phyl is willing to set up house with him! And the parents don't seem too overly fazed by all of this! Ralph eventually does go off to Paris, and has a one-night stand with Star of the Month Myrna Loy. But circumstances call both Ralph and Phyl back home, and they realize that perhaps living by their parents' old moral code isn't such a bad thing after all.
Finally, if you enjoyed last week's mention of Brainstorm, I think you'll like The Sorcerers, on at 4:15 AM Sunday. Boris Karloff stars as Prof. Monserrat, a disgraced psychology professor/hypnotist living in a shabby London flat with his wife (Catherine Lacey). However, he's developed a great new machine, and needs a subject to test it on. So he finds Mike (Ian Ogilvy), looking for new experiences. It turns out this machine allows people to view the world through somebody else's eyes. Not just their eyes, though, but all the other senses. The good professor thinks this will be a boon to shut-ins and their fellow elderly stuck in nursing homes. The wife, however, would rather use the device for her own personal benefit, leading her to fight with the professor, and to get Mike to commit crimes, because these things excite her! A preposterous plot, but it turns out to be a pretty interesting movie.