Welcome to another edition of Fedya's “Movies to Tivo” Thread, for the week of November 7-13, 2016. The election will finally be over with this week, unless some state has to go to a recount. In any case, why not deal with the pain of the elections and the incompetents who think they should be our masters by watching some good movies? There's a lot of interesting stuff on various channels, much of which is quite good. As always, all times are in Eastern unless otherwise mentioned.
A classic that I haven't mentioned in some time is My Darling Clementine, airing at 1:25 AM Monday on StarzEncore Westerns. Wyatt Earp (Henry Fonda) and his brothers Virgil (Tim Holt), Morgan (Ward Bond), and James enter Tombstone, AZ, with their cattle. The cattle are rustled and James killed, which leads to Wyatt taking on the position of town marshal, with his brothers as deputies. You'd probably think this isn't such a good idea as it's going to lead to a vendetta, and that is more or less what happens. Wyatt meets the consumptive Doc Holliday (played by the not-so-consumptive Victor Mature) and begins to think the Clantons are responsible for James' death. When Wyatt has to kill Billy Clanton (John Ireland), Ike (Grant Withers) gets angry about it. This sets the stage for the fabled gunfight at the OK Corral, and you know how that ended. This particular telling of the tale is named after Clementine (Cathy Downs) a fictitious character who serves as a love interest for Doc Holliday.
The salute to documentaries continues this week on TCM. Alec Baldwin will be hosting it on Mondays and Wednesdays for the rest of the month. On Monday, there are a whole bunch of political documentaries, with the first couple dealing with actual day-to-day political campaigning, starting at 8:00 PM with Primary, which may be of interest to some of you since it deals with the Wisconsin presidential primary of 1960, focusing on John Kennedy. On Wednesday, there will be a bunch of military documentaries, with the most interesting one being December 7th (11:30 PM Wednesday), which was produced by the military for internal use, looking at the causes leading up to the war, and then winning an Oscar in a highly edited form after the military brass didn't like the conclusions. The structure has “Uncle Sam” (Walter Huston) debating a “Mr. C” (Harry Davenport) about how things got to be the way they are, and the result is quite interesting. This is the full version, not what was edited down for Academy consideration.
A movie that sharply divides reviewers' opinions is John Goldfarb, Please Come Home, which you can see on FXM Retro at 4:00 AM Tuesday. John Goldfarb, played by Richard Crenna, is an Air Force pilot who got the nickname “Wrong Way” from lady reporter Jenny (Shirley MacLaine) years ago. His latest mission is supposed to have him flying over the Soviet Union, but that “Wrong Way” nickname comes into play when his instruments go haywire and he winds up landing in the Arab oil state of Fawzia, led by King Fawz (Peter Ustinov). Meanwhile, Jenny has been sent to Fawzia to do an undercover story on Arab harems, and ends up in Fawz' harem. Meanwhile, the king's son had been studying in the US and wanted to make the football team at Notre Dame, but he was cut, so Fawz basically shanghais Goldfarb and makes him coach a football team of Fawzians that, it's hoped, can take on Notre Dame and beat them. The football finale is terribly unfunny, but perhaps the Fawzians could beat the Factory of Sadness.
One of the odder movies on this week's schedule is Clouds Over Europe (also known as Q Planes), which will be on TCM at 3:00 PM Tuesday. Imagine some of Britain's great stage actors in a spy thriller, and that's what you have here. Somebody has come up with a device that immobilizes British aircraft and makes them disappear completely (this is a quarter century before Thunderball did it with spaceships). It's up to super sleuth Hammond (Ralph Richardson) to find out what's going on, and to put a stop to it. He gets right on the case, and following close behind is his sister Kay (Valerie Hobson), who is an intrepid reporter. She'll go anywhere to get a story, and working undercover at a cafe near an airbase she meets Tony (Laurence Olivier), an RAF test pilot who is obviously also worried about what's happening to the planes. She falls in love with him, although he hates reporters. This was released just before the war began in September 1939, and at this time, it was mostly B movies that had such plots.
Assuming he doesn't die in the next two days, actor Norman Lloyd will be turning 102 on Tuesday. Lloyd was in good enough health to make it out to last spring's TCM Film Festival, and did an interview there. That interview has been turned into a special, Love from the TCM Classic Film Festival: Norman Lloyd, which will be airing at 8:00 PM Tuesday. As is often the case with TCM-produced documentaries, it will get a second showing after one feature movie for the benefit of those on the west coast; in this case that will be at 11:15 PM. In between is one of Lloyd's best-known roles, that as the bad guy in Alfred Hitchcock's Saboteur. Bob Cummings plays a aircraft factory worker in the early days of World War II when there's a fire at the plant, and Cummings winds up the chief suspect. However, he remembers seeing a strange man (Lloyd) there, and sets off on a search to find that man. The search leads him on a cross-country chase that involves all sorts of sabotage, climaxing with a scene on the Statue of Liberty. In between Cummings meets The Girl (Priscilla Lane), and there are a number of nice set pieces and typical Hitchcock black humor. This is much the same territory as The 39 Steps Hitchcock had made back in his native Britain, and the later North By Northwest, but this is my favorite of the three.
You probably know the story of Oliver Twist. It's a Dickens classic, and the story has been turned into a movie multiple times, including a stage musical-turned-movie that won the Best Picture Oscar back in the late 1960s. This week, TCM is running the 1922 version; from the date, you should be able to guess that this is a silent. Oliver (Jackie Coogan) is an orphan who gets sent away from the orphanage for wanting more porridge, winding up apprenticing to an undertaker. Oliver runs away and winds up with the Artful Dodger, who is a pickpocket working for a youth gang run by the adult Fagin (Lon Chaney). Oliver gets trained in the criminal ways, but he isn't as good at it as the other kids, which winds up with him being taken in by a kindly man and Fagin fearing Oliver may threaten the gang's activities.
Those of you who like sweaters will like The Big Lebowski, which you can catch on StarzEncore Classics at 2:55 AM Friday. Jeff Bridges plays Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski, who likes to spend time at the bowling alley with his bowling buddies, especially Walter (John Goodman). One day, he tells his bowling buddies about how two man came into his apartment and peed on his rug. Apparently they were looking for the other Jeff Lebowski (David Huddlestone), a wealthy businessman. So Jeff and his friends go off to the wealthy namesake trying to get restitution for the damage done to the Dude's rug, but they have no idea what they're getting themselves in for. There's kidnapping, pornography, and a lot more. Oh, and would anybody like a White Russian?
Last Saturday was the birthday of actor Joel McCrea. TCM is celebrating with a bunch of his movies all morning and afternoon Friday. One that I don't think I've recommended before is Rockabye, which comes on at 10:00 AM Friday. Constance Bennett plays a woman with a past who has become a successful actress and is even adopting a baby. However, her ex-boyfriend Walter Pidgeon goes on trial for bribery, and the story of her past with him comes out, at which point the adoption agency folks say no way and take the child away. So Bennett's agent (Paul Lukas) has her go over to Europe until things settle down, which is where she meets playwright McCrea. They fall in love too and he's going to marry her as soon as he can get a divorce from his estranged wife. But it turns out that the divorce isn't going to be so easy, and will that cause further scandal for Bennett? If you like your pre-Code melodrama turned up to 11, this is a movie for you.
We get another night of Natalie Wood movies on Friday night. This week, it's movies when she was in her late teens and early 20s. Among them is The Girl He Left Behind, at 4:15 AM Saturday. Natalie plays the girl, a college co-ed named Susan in love with spoiled rich boy Andy (Tab Hunter). Andy is also slacking off doing as little as possible to get through life, which means that he's a prime candidate to get drafted if he can't stay in school. So he goes off to Fort Ord, where he has to deal with drill instructor David Janssen, and commanding officer Jim Backus. Amazingly, Andy is more or less allowed to get away with the crap he pulls; you'd think he'd wind up in the brig or something. And he superiors actually try to make a man out of him. This and The Burning Hills (7:30 AM Saturday) are the ones that had the studio trying to pair Wood romantically with Hunter, giving rise to the “Natalie Wood and Tab wouldn't” line. (The two reamined friends.) Watch for a very young James Garner as one of the fellow basic trainees.
Swiss actor Marc Michel died yesterday aged 83. I mention this because of his role in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, which will be on TCM at 6:00 AM Sunday. The stars of the movie are Nino Castelnuovo as Guy, and Catherine Deneuve as Geneviève. He's a mechanic with dreams of opening his own garage; she works in an umbrella shop in Cherbourg with her mother (Anne Vernon). And then Guy gets called up into the army to serve in the civil war in Algeria. He goes MIA so her letters to him go unanswered; meanwhile the umbrella shop is failing. Roland (the aforementioned Michel) is a dealer in diamonds whom Geneviève doesn't really love, but Mom realized he would be a suitable and stable match for her. So they marry, and it turns out the Guy is alive but injured, and has returned to Cherbourg looking for his true love. The movie has the interesting conceit of having all of the dialog be sung, which can be distracting. But the story is good, and the color cinematography is excellent.