Welcome to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" Thread, for the week of May 2-8, 2022. We've got a TCM programming salute to actress Yvette Mimieux on Wednesday evening, as well as a new Star of the Month. And this coming Sunday is Mother's Day. So now that the search for new boyfriends for Goldie, better known as the NFL Draft, is over for another season and there's nothing left to do but bitch about Brian Gutekunst not finding the right boyfriends, why not watch some of these interesting movies? As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
Now that we're into a new month, it's time for a new Star of the Month on TCM. This month, that is Anna May Wong, the beautiful Chinese-American actress whose movies will be airing on Thursdays in prime time. The first week starts off with Toll of the Sea, at 8:00 PM Thursday. Wong plays Lotus Flower, who lives in a part of China near the seacoast. A westerner washes ashore one day, and Lotus Flower saves the man's life. That man is Allen Carver (Kenneth Harlan), an American, and the two fall in love, even having a sort of Chinese wedding. But it's clear that Allen is going to go back to America by himself when he grows tired of life in China, leaving poor naïve Lotus Flower alone. Eventually, Allen returns from America, with a wife Barbara (Beatrice Bentley), who knows about the past with Lotus Flower, although neither of the Americans realize that the relationship resulted in a child, leading to the film's final tragedy. The movie is one of the earliest features made in the original two-strip Technicolor process, and looks surprisingly good for a movie that's now 100 years old. However, the final reel was lost, and restorers had to find a working two-strip camera to film coastal scenes to recreate a finale.
Toll of the Sea may be an old movie, but we're going to go back millions of years for our next choice, The Lost World, on FXM at 3:10 AM Wednesday. Claude Rains plays Dr. Challenger, who has just returned from the Amazon with a startling revelation that there's a section of the rainforest that has remained impervious to the evolution of the rest of the earth. However, all of the equipment (and thus evidence) was destroyed, so Challenger wants to go back to the Amazon and get that evidence. However, he needs money. Ed Malone (David Hedison) is a reporter whose newspaper publisher boss might be willing to put up the money because he wants a good story. The publisher's daughter Jennifer (Jill St. John) wants to go, and winds up in the party even though she's woefully unprepared for it. And then there's the mysterious Lord Roxton (Michael Rennie), who has his own reasons for wanting in. Entertaining enough, as long as you can suspend disbelief and not think about those plot holes.
If you want to hate on those evil Russkies and get your Cold War vibe on, try watching Never Let Me Go at 7:15 AM Monday on TCM. Clark Gable plays Philip Sutherland, an American journalist who was stationed in Moscow back in World War II, when the two countries were nominal allies and the Roosevelt administration was encouraging retch-inducing propaganda overlooking the evil of Joseph Stalin. While in Moscow, he saw ballerina Marya Lamarkina (Gene Tierney), and immediately fell for her beauty. She, meanwhile, wanted to meet Philip so she could improve her English skill. They get married. But when the war ends, Philip wants to go home, and understandably wants to take his wife with him. The Soviets, however, consider prima ballerinas like Marya a national treasure, so there's no way they're giving her an exit visa since they know she won't return. When Philip's visa expires, he has to leave the country without Marya. But he has plans to smuggle Marya out of the country. Dangerous plans, no less....
Kenny Rogers told us that we gotta know when to hold 'em and know when to fold 'em, but our next movie was made before the Rogers song. It's the 1974 version of The Gambler, and you can see it at 8:00 PM Monday on Showtime Extreme. James Caan plays Axel Freed, a literature professor at a college in New York City who seems to be well-liked by his students. But outside of academia, his life is a mess. Despite having a girlfriend in Billie (Lauren Hutton) and good relationships with his family, he's taken to gambling. And there not being legal gambling in Atlantic City yet, this means Axel is betting with bookies like Hipps (Paul Sorvino). And he's gotten into a rather big debt that Hipps' bosses would really like to see paid back, to the point that Hipps is suggesting Axel stop gambling. It eventually leads to sports wagering and, as a college professor, being asked to do the unthinkable, and get one of his students to fix a basketball game. Remade in 2014, and the listings sites seem to list both versions as being on at various points over the next week.
A movie that I'm always thrilled to see on the TCM schedule is The Clock. This week, that showing is at 2:00 PM Tuesday. Robert Walker plays Joe Allen, a soldier heading off to Europe who has a couple days' leave in New York and wants to see the town since he may not get another chance. At Penn Station he runs into shop-girl Alice Mayberry (Judy Garland) -- literally, as the collision accidentally breaks the heel of Alice's shoe. She spends some time with him, and they agree to meet again that evening. Unfortunately, they miss the last bus home and wind up getting a ride from a friendly milkman, Al Henry (James Gleason). When he gets punched by a drunk (Keenan Wynn), Alice and Joe have to complete Al's milk route, and they fall in love along the way, deciding to get married before Joe has to leave for Europe. But can they get married in time? Al's wife in the movie is played by Lucile Gleason, his real-life wife of 40-some years, and the movie was directed by Judy's real-life husband, Vincente Minnelli. Judy also has no singing or dancing, and shows she could actually act.
With Cinco de Mayo this week, TCM has quite a few Latin-themed movies, including Flying Down to Rio at 1:30 PM Wednesday. This is the movie that brought Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers together, but they're not the stars. Instead the male lead is played by Gene Raymond, as bandleader Roger Bond. Fred is assistant bandleader Fred Ayres, and Ginger is the band's singer, Honey Hales. They're all in Miami, which is where Roger sees the lovely Belinha (Dolores del Rio) in the audience. He immediately falls for her, not realizing that she's already engaged, and tries to pursue her, so her chaperone gets the band fired. Roger then follows Belinha down to her home town of Rio de Janeiro, and things get more complicated when it turns out that Belinha's dad owns the hotel where Roger is trying to get a gig for the band. Worse, the place is technically not allowed to host live entertainment on the premises, leading to the idea for the wacky finale that a bunch of chorus girls should do the dance on the wings of airplanes!
We flew down to Rio earlier; now we're going to fly across Canada, as we watch Zero Hour! at 10:15 PM. Dana Andrews plays Ted Stryker, a World War II pilot traumatized by that service and living in Winnipeg with his wife Ellen (Linda Darnell) and son. Well, at least for now, as she's decided to file for divorce and move to Vancouver. So Ted rushes off to get on the same flight as Ellen and try to reconcile with her. Unfortunately, when the in-flight meals are served, the fish has gone bad, and everybody who had the fish as their choice starts getting violently ill. Ted had the meat, but both the pilot and co-pilot had the fish. So the plane can stay on autopilot until it gets to Vancouver, but there is nobody to land it. Well, except Ted, the only person on the plane with any piloting experience. Perhaps his old commander Treleaven (Sterling Hayden) can come to the airport in Vancouver and help Ted land the plane. This is actually a pretty good movie, but in 1980, the plot was taken to make the spoof movie Airplane!, and that's what most people are going to think about while watching the movie.
Just before Zero Hour!, you can catch Sliver, at 8:14 PM Friday on Thriller Max. The title refers to a type of skyscraper that has a very narrow frontage, in this case being an apartment building in Manhattan. Carly Norris (Sharon Stone) is an editor who moves in to the building an apartment that had formerly been inhabited by Naomi, who unfortunately fell to her death from her balcony. Indeed, other residents of the building think Carly looks quite a bit like Naomi. Among those residents are Zeke (William Baldwin), who designs video games for a living; he and Carly fall in love and quickly start having sex. Jack (Tom Berenger), on the other hand, thinks that's not such a healthy relationship for Carly to be in, and he starts to warn Carly about Zeke. Not that Jack is much better, as he seems to be stalking Carly. And the police think that there might just be a serial killer in the building. The movie was notorious on release in the early 90s for having to be edited down to get an R rating, as well as giving us UB40's horrible rendition of "Can't Help Falling in Love":
Our second 1990s movie is Nothing But Trouble, at 9:37 AM Saturday on Movie Max. Chevy Chase plays publisher Chris Thorne, a wealthy man living in a Manhattan penthouse. He meets lawyer Diane (Demi Moore) and the two plan to go to Atlantic City on a business trip, with a couple of Brazilians joining the car pool. They take a detour and wind up in what is presumably the Pine Barrens, in the small town of Valkenvania, where they commit a traffic violation that earns them the ire of the town judge, Alvin Valkenheiser (Dan Aykroyd). The courthouse is more of one of those horror houses you'd see in a bad teen horror flick, and the four are held in a secret room in the basement. Obviously, they try to escape, but the judge's grandson, policeman Chris (John Candy), has something to say about that, making matters worse for the New Yorkers. Candy and Aykroyd have dual roles as other of the judge's grandchildren.
Sunday is Mother's Day, and TCM is programming some appropriate movies for the day. Surprisingly, Mildred Pierce is not among them. Instead, we get one of the many versions of Madame X -- specifically the 1966 version -- at 6:00 PM Sunday. Working girl Holly Parker (Lana Turner) falls in love with rich Clayton Anderson (John Forsythe) and getting married against his mom Estelle's (Constance Bennett) wishes. The marriage turns sour, with Holly having an affair with Phil Benton (Ricardo Montalban) that ends with him falling to his death in a way that looks like Holly might have done it, forcing her to fake her death and leave for Europe. Two decades later, she's an aging alcoholic stuck in Mexico, where a blackmailer find her, having figured out who she really is. She shoots the guy dead before collapsing, refusing to reveal who she is. Since she seemingly doesn't have any money, she's given a public defender, and that's Clayton Anderson Jr. (Keir Dullea). Needless to say, he doesn't realize he's defending his own mother.
Finally, I'll briefly mention a couple of film-related documentaries on TCM this week. First, at 4:45 AM Tuesday, there's Scandal: The Trial of Mary Astor. In the mid-1930s, at the time Mary Astor was making Dodsworth, she was in the middle of a divorce and custody case with her ex-husband. Both of them were being unfaithful, but her hubby found her diary, and threatened to use that in court since it was incredibly revealing. (The diary was ultimately destroyed.) The trial was held in the evenings, after shooting on Dodsworth wrapped for the day.
Two lesser-known Hollywood figures show up in Harold and Lillian: A Hollywood Love Story, at 2:15 AM Sunday. Harold Michelson was a World War II veteran with a talent for art, so after the war he went to Hollywood and became a storyboard artist, which involves drawing comic book-like illustrations to show how it might look if a director shoots a scene in a certain way. (Apparently Michelson came up with the image of Anne Bancroft's leg in The Graduate.) Lillian basically eloped to marry Harold, and after having three children and in need of stimulation, she got a job as a research librarian, charged with making things in Hollywood movies more authentic. She wound up with a retiring colleague's research library, which grew and grew as she became one of the most sought-after researchers.