Welcome to another edition of Fedya's “Movies to Tivo” Thread, for the week of April 20-26, 2020. Unfortunately, state governors, being drunk on power, are consistently extending the gulag orders under such Orwellian phrases as “safer at home”, so many of us are going to be cooped up inside for a while. Why not deal with that cabin fever by watching some good movies? Once again, I've used my good taste so select things I know you'll all like. There's more from Star of the Month Jane Russell, and interesting stuff on the other movie channels, too. As always, all times are in Eastern unless otherwise mentioned.
We get another night of Jane Russell movies on TCM on Monday night, this time including a couple of her movies she made over at Fox. One that doesn't show up all that often and shows that Russell was actually a pretty good actress is The Revolt of Mamie Stover, airing at 2:00 AM Tuesday. Russell, as you could probably guess, plays Mamie Stover, who at the start of the movie is put on a boat from San Francisco to Hawaii circa 1941 because she's a loose woman of ill reputation. On the boat she meets writer Jim Blair (Richard Egan), and the two fall in love even though he's already got a fiancée in Hawaii. She becomes a hostess at one of those clubs that entertained the military stationed there run by Bertha (Agnes Moorehead). Then World War II breaks out, Jim goes off to fight, and Mamie starts making a killing buying up real estate people have to sell before going to war. But when Jim returns from the war, he's not certain he likes how Mamie has changed.
A movie with an interesting blend of genres is 5 Card Stud, which shows up at 3:45 AM Monday on StarzEncore Westerns. As you can guess, one of the genres is the western. Dean Martin plays Van Morgan, dealer in a floating poker game in a mining town in Colorado. One of the players is caught cheating, and the other players are unsurprisingly pissed. Van tries to prevent it, but the other players wind up lynching the cheater. Nobody else lives happily ever after, as the players in the poker game other than Morgan start showing up murdered, one after the other, so we get a murder mystery in addition to a western. Morgan rather logically thinks he might be next, so he tries to figure out who's behind the killings. He might get some help from the new arrival, Rev. Rudd (Robert Mitchum), but then again Rudd might know more about what's happening than he's letting on. Watch also for Roddy McDowall and Yaphet Kotto, both surprising in a western but doing just fine here.
Murder mysteries have long been a popular movie genre, and Agatha Christie is known as one of the better writers in that genre. One of the more delightful portrayals of Christie's work is Margaret Rutherford's Miss Marple in four movies, starting with Murder She Said at 11:00 AM Tuesday on TCM. Miss Marple is taking a train from London and when she sees a train going in the opposite direction, what does she see but a woman being strangled! She tells the police but of course nobody believes her, so she finds the village librarian Mr. Stringer (Rutherford's real-life husband Stringer Davis), and the two investigate, determining that the body was dumped from the train near an Ackernthorpe Hall. So Marple decides she's going to get a job there, with Lord Ackenthorpe (James Robertson Justice) and his grandson and enough other people who could be obvious suspects. There are twists and turns and red herrings, but unsurprisingly, Marple eventually finds the killer, much to the chagrin of the detective (Charles Tingwell) who would rather she not butt in to his cases.
Another movie that reappeared on the FXM schedule recently is On the Riviera. It's going to be on the schedule again, at 6:00 AM Wednesday. Danny Kaye plays Jack Martin, a nightclub entertainer in the south of France whose stock in trade is celebrity impersonations. One night the show is interrupted by the landing of aviator Henri Duran, who has just completed his non-stop flight around the world. Jack's girlfriend Colette (Corinne Calvet) notices that Jack looks amazingly like Duran, which is no surprise since Duran is also played by Kaye. So Jack cooks up an impersonation of Duran for the gala honoring Duran, which brings him in contact with Duran and his wife Lili (Gene Tierney). Duran is having business difficulties that will take him away from the Riviera while Lili is hosting a big party where one of Duran's possible investors will attend. So Duran's partners get Jack to impersonate Duran at the big party so the investor won't know the difference. This causes complications, especially when Duran is able to return from Paris earlier than planned.
Musicals were a bit of a mess before 42nd Street. A good example of this is Flying High, running at 3:30 PM Wednesday on TCM. Bert Lahr, several years before becoming the Cowardly Lion, stars as Rusty, a man who's invented an early sort of helicopter, but needs an investor. He winds up with a couple of partners, Sport (Pat O'Brien) and Smith (Guy Kibbee), but both of them are equally broke and unable to invest. So they come up with an idea to get the money they need from a waitress named Pansy (Charlotte Greenwood and her legs), who is looking for a husband and is promised Rusty except that as with Tinder today they don't use his real photo. Perhaps Rusty should have thought ahead, as Pansy is extremely forward in her pursuit of him. The plot isn't all that much to write home about, but there are the musical numbers, choreographed by Busby Berkeley, who was still mastering the techniques he'd put to much better use starting with 42nd Street.
The salute to New York in the 1970s resumes on Thursday night on TCM with another set of movies set there. A lesser-known movie that I haven't recommended in some time is For Pete's Sake, which is on at 4:00 AM Friday. Barbra Streisand plays Henrietta “Henry” Robbins, a work-from-home housewife married to cabbie Pete (Michael Sarrazin) and dealing with the daily difficulties of life in New York as well as the inflation that was beginning to hit by the mid-1970s. One day, Pete overhears insider information about a possible deal in pork bellies that could make the holder of futures a killing, so Henry decides to help him by borrowing money to buy some of those futures. Unfortunately, she's borrowed from loan sharks, and the investment doesn't pay off quickly enough for Henry to pay back the interest. Henry doesn't want to worry Pete with any of this, so she accedes to the loan sharks' demands to do all sorts of crazy jobs for them to try to pay off the debt, with fairly humorous consquences. It's a rather inconsequential movie, but one that shows Streisand really could do comedy.
We've got a couple of fairly recent movies this week. The first is only a quarter-century old: While You Were Sleeping, which shows up at 9:45 AM Friday on Showtime (or three hours later if you only have the west coast feed). Peter Gallagher plays Peter, a Chicago commuter who goes through the same ticket window every day, getting his ticket from Lucy (Sandra Bullock). She's developed romantic fantasies about Peter based on that, although of course they'll just remain dreams. That is, until Peter has an accident one day and falls on the tracks. Lucy saves his life, although Peter winds up in a coma. She visits him in hospital, having saved his life, and the rest of the family thinks she's his fiancée, a lie she's happy to let them believe. The one who doesn't believe it is Peter's brother Jack (Bill Pullman). But even though he thinks she's a phony, the two also begin to fall in love as the rest of the familiy begins to accept Lucy into their family and she finds she'd like to be a part of their family too.
On Friday night, TCM is showing a trio of movies starring Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck. Of course you all know Double Indemnity (8:00 PM), but you might not be so aware of There's Always Tomorrow, which follows at 10:00 PM Friday. MacMurray plays Clifford Groves, a well-to-do toy manufacturer married to Marion (Joan Bennett) with two teenage kids Vinnie and Ellen (William Reynolds and Gigi Perreau). However, with all of them having their own lives, Dad feels relatively unappreciated. One day, however, he runs into former employee Norma Vale (Stanwyck) who left to follow her dream and became a successful dress designer in New York. The two have a chat over drinks, with Norma knowing that nothing's really going to become of it because Clifford would never leave his family. But the two keep meeting each other, until one day Vinnie happens to see one of those meetings, and suspects the worst, ultimately confronting Dad over it. Let's just say that things aren't going to be so good in this family even after the resolution of the movie.
Gene Hackman turned 90 earlier this year. He's been retired from acting for 16 years now, having made his final movie, Welcome to Mooseport, in 2004. It's on again this week, at 2:38 PM Sunday on StarzEncore Classics. Hackman plays Monroe Cole, who has just finished up two terms as US president and is going to retire to the stereotypical town of Mooseport, ME. It turns out that the town needs a new mayor, and Cole decides that he'll do his civic duty and run for the office, making for a nice human interest story. But the owner of the local hardware store, a true local named Handy Harrison (Ray Romano), has also been pushed into running, although he's a bit unsure about it. He's got a long-suffering girlfriend in Sally (Maura Tierney), and the election, which by this time has turned into a no-holds-barred battle between the two men, also ensnares Sally. Handy could lose her to Monroe. Not exactly the best movie for Hackman to bow out on, although the movie's failings aren't his fault.
Also on Sunday is The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, over on TCM at 8:00 AM. Elizabeth is Queen Elizabeth (the movie is old enough that there was not yet an Elizabeth II), played by Bette Davis. Elizabeth was known as “the Virgin Queen”, but has a series of men who would have wanted her romantically (Vincent Price in a very early role plays one of them, Sir Walter Raleigh). Essex, played by Errol Flynn, is another of those men. Essex has returned to England from a successful military operation against Spain, and is very popular. But Elizabeth feels a duty to her country that in her mind requires an iron grip on the levers of power. So even though she does love Essex, she also thinks she can't let the relationship progress past a certain point. With that in mind, she sends Essex on a doomed mission to quell a rebellion in Ireland that will ultimately give Elizabeth a reason to sentence Essex to death. Davis and Flynn didn't get along well at all during the making of the movie, but later in life when she watched the movie she admitted she was very unfair to Flynn and that he really could be a fine actor.