Welcome to another edition of Fedya's “Movies to Tivo” Thread, for the week of June 5-11, 2017. Once again, I've used my good taste and erudition to pick out a bunch of movies that will definitely appeal to the members of x4. This week sees a new Star of the Month on TCM, as well as this month's Guest Programmer; more on those later. And, of course, there are some interesting movies on the other cable channels. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
We're into the first full week of a new month, which means we get a new TCM Star of the Month, that being Audrey Hepburn. Her movies will show up on Mondays in prime time, starting with the movie that won Hepburn the Oscar: Roman Holiday at 8:00 PM Monday. Hepburn plays Princess Ann, on a royal visit to Rome and bored out of her gourd. She'd rather be doing almost anything but her royal engagements, but to make certain Ann stays compliant, her handlers drug her (nice handlers). Still she escapes and passes out, to be picked up by Joe (Gregory Peck) and taken back to his apartment. He's an American journalist in Rome, desperate for the big story. And when there's no news of Ann from the royal visit, Joe knows he's got a big story on his hands. He and his photographer colleague Irving (Eddie Albert) take Ann around the city (you'd think somebody would recognize her) and have a series of adventures with her. But Joe begins to fall for her, and starts to think that maybe revealing the truth of what he's done to Ann would be wrong. A delightful romantic comedy.
If you want an enjoyable pre-Code melodrama, you could do worse than to watch Midnight Mary, which will be on TCM at 12:30 PM Tuesday. Loretta Young plays Mary, who at the beginning of the movie is on trial for murder and seemingly unwilling to defend herself. So of course we're going to get a flashback as to just how she wound up on trial for murder. It turns out that Mary has had a tough life: she's a poor orphan who winds up in reform school after she's wrongly accused of shoplifting. She's “rescued” from reform school by gangster Leo (Ricardo Cortez), and becomes his moll, sometimes used as a decoy in crimes. But as a stylish moll, she's able to get into classier locations which is where she meets society lawyer Tom (Franchot Tone). She falls for him, and the feeling is definitely mutual. But then that killing happens, and there's the possibility that Tom is going to get caught up in scandal, something that Mary definitely doesn't want….
A movie that's back on FXM Retro after a long absence is Zorba the Greek, which will be on at 3:30 AM and 8:40 AM Tuesday. Alan Bates plays Basil, a British man who has inherited some land with a mine on it from the Greek side of his family on one of the Greek islands. So he goes to Greece in order to inspet the property and see if any money can be made off of it. It's there that Basil meets Alexis Zorba (Anthony Quinn), whom Basil hires to oversee the mine. The two men have completely different outlooks on life: Basil is hidebound and stereotypically British, while Alexis wishes to live life to the fullest. Alexis' attitude slowly changes Basil's outlook, helped in part by Basil's relationship with two women on the island. There's the ex-prostitute Hortense (Lila Kedrova), and the widow (Irene Papas). Zorba's “dance” isn't really much of a dance, in part because Anthony Quinn had broken a bone in his foot during filming, and couldn't do a real dance.
On Tuesday night, TCM is showing a bunch of Edgar Ulmer movies. Detour, at 2:15 AM Wednesday, is probably Ulmer's best-remembered, about a man who hitches rides on his way west only to find one of his drivers dying on him and then dealing with the ultimate femme fatale. But I'll mention the following movie, Her Sister's Secret, which will be on at 3:45 AM Wednesday. Nancy Coleman plays Toni, a young woman living with her sick father in New Orleans, while her wealthy sister (Margaret Lindsay) lives up north with her husband (Regis Toomey). During Mardi Gras, Toni meets a soldier on leave before about to ship out. The two obviously have an affair because Toni gets knocked up. But she's unmarried and Dad dies, so what to do? The sister has the bright idea of having Toni give the kid up for adoption to her and her husband! Time goes by and the Allies win World War II, and the soldier comes back to New Orleans looking for the girl he left behind. Toni, meanwhile, would like to see her child although the sister says the child must never know his true origins.
If you wonder who can it be knocking at your door, you might want to watch Men at Work, at 3:45 PM Wednesday on StarzEncore Classics. Emilio Estevez plays James, who's a New York City garbage man along with his partner on the route Carl (real-life brother Charlie Sheen). One day, the find in a garbage can the body of a man who's been murdered! Obviously the two are afraid that if they go to the police, they're going to be the ones who are implicated in the murder, so they get the brilliant idea to hide the body and try to solve the murder case themselves. It's probably a good thing that they didn't go to the police, since it's a murder case that has political implications and accusing a couple of outsiders would be oh-so convenient for the police. Thankfully, they're helped in their investigation by a crazy Vietnam vet (David Keith), and get into several comic adventures along the way. Emilio Estevez not only stars, he directed, too.
This week sees another Guest Programmer come to TCM. This time it's Billy Bob Thornton, actor and former Mr. Angelina Jolie. He sat down with Ben Mankiewicz to present three of his favorite movies, and those movies with the intros will air on Wednesday in prime time. The movies are:
The Man With the Golden Arm at 8:00 PM, starring Frank Sinatra as a man with a heroin addiction;
Giant at 10:15 PM, a sprawling story of a Texas ranching family (Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor) and the guy who discovers oil on their land (James Dean); and
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid at 2:00 AM Thursday, a stylized biopic of some of the old west's famous gangsters.
TCM is running a bunch of Alexis Smith movies on Thursday, and one of the most interesting might be Split Second, at 8:45 AM. Keith Andes plays Larry, a journalist in Nevada sent to cover a nuke test. Well, it turns out that at about the same time a couple of convicts escape from jail, and Larry has to cover that story instead. Sam (Stephen McNally) and Bart (Paul Kelly) haven't just escaped, they've started taking hostages via carjacking, first picking up Mrs. Garven (Alexis Smith) and boyfriend (Robert Page) and then also taking Larry and his passenger, ex-prostitute Dottie (Jan Sterling). Sam's plan is to be picked up in a ghost town overnight, but that ghost town happens to be right in the middle of the atomic test area, and if they can't get out in time they're in big trouble. It turns out that Mrs. Garven's estranged husband is a doctor, so the prisoners try to bully him into treating one of the prisoners who's been injured. But it's really all about the suspense as the appointed time for the bomb blast approaches.
It's been a while since I've recommended Fog Over Frisco, but it's so fun that it's worth another recommendation. It'll be on TCM at 1:30 PM Friday. Bette Davis plays Arlene, one of two daughters of a wealthy San Franciscan. She's engaged to be married to stockbroker Spencer (Lyle Talbot), but she really wants a more exciting life than that, visiting dive bars and cavorting with the underworld. That cavorting gets her involved in a scheme to steal a bunch of securities, with her fiancé being the dupe – Arlene has no intention of marrying Spencer. But things don't work out so well for Arlene was she winds up missing. So it's up to her half-sister Val (Margaret Lindsay) to figure out what happened to Arlene, which she sets out to do with the help of an enterprising reporter Tony (Donald Woods). It's fast-paced and fun, as well as interesting when you think the filmmakers didn't quite realize what they had in Bette Davis, or they would have given her a bigger role rather than having her disappear fairly early.
Another movie I haven't recommended in a while is A Man For All Seasons, which TCM will be showing at 4:00 PM Saturday. This one is based on the life of Thomas More (Paul Scofield), Lord Chancellor under English King Henry VIII (Robert Shaw). However, Henry wants to divorce Catherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn since Catherine has only bore him daughters and he wants a male heir. Well, that and he probably had the hots for Anne. But England is still Catholic, and the Catholic Church frowns upon divorce. So Henry wants his Chancellor to come up with an excuse that will make the divorce possible. Thomas More refuses, because his conscience won't let him break up a perfectly good marriage. Henry leaves the Catholic Church and takes all of England with him, except that there are people who won't swear to the new Anglican confession, and More is one of those people. So trumped-up charges are brought against him. This one has a great cast, including Orson Welles as Cardinal Woolsey; Wendy Barrie and Susannah York as More's wife and daughter; and John Hurt as Richard Rich, who isn't the richest kid in the world but is willing to dump More to advance his own career.
If you think of old-time Hollywood actors who wouldn't fit in in a western, a good choice might be Wendell Corey. And yet there he is in The Great Missouri Raid, at 4:56 AM Saturday on StarzEncore Westerns. This time he's playing Frank James, older brother of Jesse (played here by Macdonald Carey). As you know from watching a whole bunch of movies on the subject, the Jameses got their start along with the Younger brothers during the Civil War in southwestern Missouri, maintaining their grievances after the war and becoming outlaws for it. Ward Bond plays the equivalent of Allan Pinkerton here, the former Union soldier turned private security man who winds up becoming obsessed with capturing the James brothers after one of their raids causes the death of his brother. Ellen Drew plays Jesse's love interest. The history is no more accurate or inaccurate than the average movie on the James gang, but the cinematography is lovely is the movie is more than adequate.