Welcome to another edition of Fedya's “Movies to Tivo” Thread, for the week of May 8-14, 2017. Once again, I've used my erudition and discerning taste to select a bunch of movies I know you'll all like. There's more from Star of the Month Clark Gable, another Creature Feature, and interesting stuff on other channels as well. And this Sunday is Mothers' Day, which brings up yet another chance to catch Mildred Pierce. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
We could start and end this week with another version of The Virginian, on StarzEncore Westerns at 1:57 AM Monday and apparently on plain old StarzEncore at 9:58 AM Sunday. Based on the classic book by Owen Wister, the story tells of the Virginians (Joel McCrea), a cowboy who meets new schoolteacher Molly (Barbara Britton) and falls in love with her, even though the feeling isn't mutual at first. Meanwhile, the Virginian has a good friend in fellow cowboy Steve (Sonny Tufts). Except that Steve has stupidly gotten himself mixed up with a bunch of cattle rustlers, led by Trampas (Brian Donlevy). And since this is unorganized territory, the Virginian is going to have to take the law into his own hands in order to deal with the cattle rustlers, since people can't just let cattle rustlers get away with it. Several movie versions of the story have been made, but this is the first in Technicolor. If you think the characters are tropes, however, just remember that the characters Wister created became the tropes.
TCM is giving you a chance to Go Into Your Dance, at 8:45 AM Monday. Al Jolson stars with his real-life wife Ruby Keeler for the only time in their careers. Al is a former success on Broadway, with the emphasis on former because his temperamental ways are making it difficult for him to get work – the producers think he's going to up and do his own thing. His sister Molly (Glenda Farrell) gets him a job working with Dorothy's (that's Ruby Keeler) club act out in Chicago, and it all goes swimmingly, to the point where Al decides he's going to go back to New York and produce a show of his own, with Dorothy as the star. Of course, producing a show takes money that Al doesn't have, so he gets the money from the gangster Duke (Barton MacLane). That in itself would cause complications, but to make things worse Duke's girlfriend Luana (tragic Helen Morgan) gets all googly-eyed for Al, and trying to take a gangster's girl away from him is a surefire recipe for disaster. Al Jolson's stage presence and Ruby Keeler's dancing are both sui generis, so seeing them together is interesting.
I don't recall if I've recommended The Last Sunset before; you can watch that one at 2:15 AM Tuesday on TCM. Kirk Douglas plays Brendan O'Malley, who goes south to Mexico to escape the law, and finds old flame Belle (Dorothy Malone) there. Unfortunately, Belle has since gotten married to John (Joseph Cotten). Still, Brendan is willing to work for John, who has a bunch of cattle he wants driven back to Texas. Of course, that means going back into American jurisdiction, and it also turns out that sheriff Dana Stribling (Rock Hudson) has followed Brendan into Mexico with a warrant for Brendan's arrest, even though that warrant carries no weight in Mexico. So Dana decides that he's going to go to work for John and the cattle drive, so that once the drive crosses the Rio Grande back into America he can arrest Brendan. Well, at least if Brendan doesn't shoot him first. And the sheriff is getting the hots for Belle while Brendan is becoming attracted to Belle's adult daughter Melissa (Carol Lynley)….
One of the movies that's back on FXM Retro is Drums Along the Mohawk, at 1:15 PM Wednesday and 7:30 AM Thursday. Henry Fonda plays Gilbert a farmer who's settled new (to white people) land in the Mohawk Valley of central New York in the 1770s. He's joined by his new wife Lana (Claudette Colbert), but unfortunately for them historical events are about to overtake them. The American colonists declare their independence from Britain, and after the French and Indian War the British had promised that their colonists wouldn't settle this area. So unsurprisingly the Iroquois are mighty unhappy, and attack the settlers, encouraged by the British, what with the war on. It all culminates in the Battle of Oriskany, with many of the settlers banding together to fight under Gen. Herkimer (Roger Imhof), which turned out to be one of the pivotal battles of the Revolutionary War. John Carradine plays the British commander, and Edna May Oliver provides the comic relief. The movie is shot in lovely Technicolor, although it doesn't look like any place in New York was used for location shooting.
TCM Star of the Month Clark Gable played a lot of gangsters early in his career. A good example of this is Dance, Fools, Dance, which will be on TCM at 11:30 PM Tuesday. Gable isn't the star here; that honor goes to Joan Crawford. She plays Bonney, daughter in a family that's wealthy because the father has invested well. However, it's 1929, which means the stock market crash, so those investments aren't such a good thing and the family goes broke while poor Dad suffers a fatal heart attack at his family's descent into penury. So Bonnie and brother Rodney (William Bakewell) actually have to work. Bonnie becomes a reporter; Rodney works for Jake (Gable), who is the local gangster. Needles to say the stories are going to collide, after Jake's men kill one of Bonnie's colleagues at the paper. So she decides to go undercover at a club that's a front for Jake and get the scoop that way! Of course it also means we get to see Joan Crawford dancing, which is an interesting sight since she might be an even worse dancer than Ruby Keeler.
It's been a while since I've recommended Miranda; you can catch it again at 11:30 AM Thursday on TCM. Dr. Martin (Griffith Jones) is a newlywed who goes out on the ocean one day for a day out fishing. However, he catches Miranda (Glynis Johns), who takes him overboard. Miranda, it turns out, is a mermaid, and wants a human man for companionship. It won't do for Dr. Martin to be stuck in Miranda's lair, so she decides that she'll let him go if he takes her with him back to his home in London and shows her the finer points of human life in the big city. Of course, as we mentioned, Dr. Martin is a newlywed, and having a female companion with him – especially one who has to stay in a bathtub and eat lots of fish – presents all sorts of problems with Mrs. Martin (Googie Withers). Dr. Martin claims shes a paralytic patient, and hires Margaret Rutherford to be the nurse, but certainly the real truth is bound to come out. This is a delightful little British comedy.
Dennis Miller is presenting another night of Creature Features on TCM on Thursday night. If you liked last week's Japanese selection, you get another one this week in the form of Rodan, at 8:00 PM Thursday. You probably know about Rodan, the giant pterodactyl, but in this, his first appearance, he doesn't show up until late. The main story, at least at first, centers on a small Japanese mining village, where the miners start disappearing. An investigation is carried out, and one of the survivors reports what seems like giant insects. This isn't possible in real life since the exoskeletons would crush insects to death beyond a certain size, but in those early atomic days, there was the fear of radiation and what it would do to make mutant creatures. Anyhow, the mining also winds up bring Rodan back to life, and Rodan at least eats insects. But Rodan can cause more damage than the insects ever could. (Wait until winter, when cold-blooded animals should just freeze to death.) Based on the running time, it looks like we're getting the version edited for American audiences, and not the Japanese version.
If you like military movies with more intelligence than action, then perhaps you might enjoy The Dogs of War, which will be on StarzEncore Classics at 1:15 AM Friday. Christoper Walken plays Jim Shannon, a mercenary who is hired not to fight, but to gather intelligence on an African country to determine whether its dictator could be taken out in a coup d'état so foreign interests can get at the mineral wealth. He goes and gathers that information, but also gets caught by the dictator's secret police and detained, and in prison he meets some locals who also oppose the regime. Eventually he gets deported and his paymasters decide that coup could in fact succeed, so Shannon is asked if he'd like to go back and fight in the coup. He agrees, although he also has ulterior motives. Tom Berenger plays another of the mercenaries. The movie is based on a book by Frederick Forsythe, probably best known for The Day of the Jackal.
Another movie I'm not certain if I've ever recommended before is The Cotton Club, which will be airing on ThrillerMax (part of the Cinemax HD package) at 6:50 AM Saturday. This is based on Harlem's legendary Cotton Club, run by white gangsters with black entertainment for a while clientèle. The owner here is Owney Madden (Bob Hoskins), who runs it with assistant Frenchy (Fred Gwynne). Meanwhile, Madden is having to deal with other gangsters who want to muscle in on his turf. Gregory Hines and his real life brother Maurice play a pair of real-life dancers. One black guy who's not part of the entertainment (at least, not in the traditional sense of the word) is Bumpy (Laurence Fishburne), who's running the numbers racket for Madden. And there's also white musician Dixie (Richard Gere), who falls in love with rival gangster Dutch Schultz's girlfriend (Diane Lane). The film is a visual treat, although there are so many plot threads that the plot can get a bit muddled at times.
There's no Johnny Cash, but you can still get an interesting Ring of Fire, at 12:15 PM Saturday on TCM. Three young hoodlums (Frank Gorshin, James Johnson, and Joyce Taylor) hold up a gas station but get caught and brought into town. While waiting to be booked, they see a chance for escape, and overpower a sheriff's deputy (David Janssen) and carjack him, making him take them someplace the authorities won't find them. Since this is Oregon, that means the forests that surround the logging town. But the deputy is the only one of them who knows the trails and can find a way back out of the forest. And he's also trying to figure out a way to escape from the criminals and sow dissension in their ranks. Meanwhile, the area has been suffering a severe drought, the the point that the forest is becoming a tinderbox. And sure enough, the idiot hoodlums decide that smoking in the forest would be a brilliant idea. As you can probably guess, a forest fire starts, and that fire threatens to destroy the whole town. There's lovely location shooting, or it would be lovely if TCM showed a wide-screen print.