Welcome to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" thread, for the week of April 28-May 4, 2014. We're going into the beginning of a new month, but the new Star of the Month won't be until the beginning of next week. There is, however, a new Friday night spotlight on TCM, but more on that in a bit. There are a couple of remakes, and some fun shorts. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
We're going to start off with this week's Silent Sunday Nights feature: The Viking, at midnight Monday (or 11:00 PM tonoight LFT). This has nothing to do with fading football players trying to find a restaurant better than Applebee's, but about the Norse Vikings of a 1000 or more years ago. Donald Crisp, who would go on to win an Oscar for How Green Was My Valley, made a lot of silents, and is the lead here as Leif Ericsson, leading the Viking voyage of discovery that left Greenland and discovered Vinland, which is modern day Newfoundland. One subplot involves a Saxon Englishman who was captured in a Viking raid, and bought by the Norsewoman Helga (Pauline Starke) presumably to be her husband. But Leif and another Viking also want Helga (there's no HÄgar here). The other subplot involves Erik the Red not liking that his son Leif has converted to Christianity. This movie was made in two-strip Technicolor, and the print has survived, in surprisingly good condition.
The Barrymore brothers are showing up separately in several movies on Monday morning and afternoon. But they show up together in Night Flight, at 3:30 PM. John Barrymore plays the head of a South American air transit company, in the days when air transit was a risky proposition -- for example, you couldn't just fly over the Andes, because there wasn't enough oxygen at altitude. Instead, you had to go through the passes relatively close to the ground. And flying in weather was a white-knuckle experience. The climax involves trying to get a bunch of serum to fight polio from Santiago to where the outbreak is in Rio de Janeiro. Before that, though, there's a lot of tough flying for the pilots, who include Clark Gable and Robert Montgomery, and the wives of the pilots who wait at home worrying they'll never see their men again; these include Helen Hayes and Myrna Loy. Lionel Barrymore plays John's subordinate.
A month back I mentioned the silent film The Racket. The movie was remade in the early 1950s, and TCM is showing the 1951 remake of The Racket at 12:15 AM Tuesday as part of a night of Robert Mitchum movies. This time, Mitchum plays the unabashedly good guy, that of police Capt. McQuigg, who seems to be the only person in the corrupt police force willing to go after the gang led by Scanlon (Robert Ryan, who's so good at playing the bad guys you can see why Mitchum got the good-guy part), who seems to have bought everybody else. Eventually, Scanlon's brother falls in love with the girl (Lizabeth Scott) and gets in trouble in McQuigg's precinct, which gives McQuigg an opportunity to go after Scanlon, who is now trying to buy a judgeship for the crooked district attorney. A pretty good remake overall.
The other remake is Nancy Goes to Rio, at 3:15 PM Wednesday on TCM. In this one, Nancy, played by Jane Powell, is a girl of about 18 who wants to follow in her mother's (Ann Sothern) footsteps as a star of musicals. On a ship down to Rio, Nancy is practicing lines for a play, which draws the attention of Barry Sullivan. Complications ensue when Mom unwittingly tries for the same play and also draws the attention of Sullivan. Carmen Miranda is on hand as well to provide musical numbers in ridiculous costumes, while Louis Calhern shows up as Nancy's grandfather. This is a remake of It's a Date, which I mentioned because it's also on the schedule this week, at 2:15 AM Thursday on TCM as part of a night of "Bob's Picks". The juvenile role is played in the original by Deanna Durbin, Mom is played by Kay Francis, and the love interest is handled by Walter Pidgeon. Walter Pidgeon romantically involved with Deanna Durbin? Yikes.
Going back to Tuesday, TCM is honoring director Sam Fuller, even though his birthday is in August. There's a whole morning and afternoon of Fuller's movies, such as The Steel Helmet, at 10:30 AM. Made in 1951, this was one of the first movies about the Korean War. Sgt. Zack survives an ambush, and then meets up with some other American soldiers who also survived one incident or another, to become a makeshift platoon. They then get sent forward to set up an observation post looking at the North Korean lines, and do so in an abandoned Buddhist monastery, only to find up that they're actually up against a much larger number of North Korean soldiers, and have to try to survive. Made on a very low budget, the lack of major studio backing gave Fuller the ability to take risks other directors and writers (he also wrote the screenplay) couldn't, such as incisive commenta about race relations..
Thursday, May 1, marks the birth anniversary of actor Glenn Ford. So TCM is marking the occasion with a couple of his films, including the light comedy It Started With a Kiss, at 4:15 PM. Glenn Ford plays a poor Air Force Man who meets lovely model Debbie Reynolds, and thye have a quickie wedding. Ford gets transferred to Spain, and Reynolds writes him, telling him she'll be following him and she has a surprise. That surprise is the prototype for the Batmobile, or a luxury car that Ford won in a raffle that in real life would later be refurbished to portray the Batmobile in the 60s TV series. The marriage is not a match made in heaven, which is one complication, and Ford has to do something about the tax liability he won. This atracts some of the rich and famous to the couple, with a bullfighter going for Debbie and Eva Gabor pursuing Glenn Ford. Watch for several future TV stars in this one, which is a pleasant enough comedy, if nothing great.
Over on FXM/FMC, the beginning of a new month also means a movie or two that haven't been out of the vaults in some time. The best of the returnees is probably Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Friday at 8:15 AM, and again at 6:00 AM Sunday. Shirley Temple stars as Rebecca, a young girl living an itinerant life with stepdad William Demarest, a would be performer who unfortunately runs out of money and has to leave Rebecca with her aunt Miranda (Helen Westley) who lives on a farm with Gloria Stuart. However, before all of this happens, radio programmer Randolph Scott hears Rebecca sing and wants her for his radio show, only to be unable to find her. Luckily, he's got a farm next to the one owned by Aunt Miranda, so he finds her there, but Aunt Miranda only took Rebecca in on the agreement that she not be around "show people" any longer -- it's just not good for the kids. Shirley Temple gets to sing songs, dance with Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, and play off a bunch of great comedic character actors. What's not to like?
On Friday night on TCM, we get the Friday Night Spotlight for May: Australian cinema. Actress Jacki Weaver, who was Oscar-nominated for playing the evil matriarch in 2010's Animal Kingdom (which will be on Encore Mystery at 5:10 PM Friday and again at 4:25 AM Saturday), presents a lineup consisting mostly of films from the 1970s and 1980s. One of the most famous Australian directors is Peter Weir, who shows up several times this month, such as with Gallipoli, at 10:00 PM Friday. You've probably heard about the Gallipoli offensive, espeically since last week was the anniversary of it and it's a holiday (Anzac Day) in Australian and New Zealand. Australian and New Zealand soldiers went off to war in World War I, and many of them more or less wound up becoming cannon fodder at Gallipoli, at the south end of the Sea of Marmara in present-day Turkey. Gallipoli the movie spends the first half or so looking at some of the young men who would go off to fight, but before they joined the army, making their deaths all the more tragic. A young Mel Gibson is in the cast.
The final feature I'm mentioning this week is Queen Christina, Sunday at 8:00 AM on TCM. As you can guess from the title, this is a biopic loosely based on the life of Queen Christina, and with Greta Garbo playing the role, you'd be right to guess it's Queen Chrstina of Sweden, who ruled in the mid-17th century. Christina was an unconventioan queen, and eventually abdicated the throne to convert to Catholicism, Sweden being a Protestant country and having fought the Thirty Years' War to remain Protestant.. Antonio (John Gilbert) is based on a real person, although in real life the two of them didn't have an affair, something which was bound to happen in the movie since Garbo and Gilbert had been such a popular screen team in the silent days. Garbo's Queen Christina dresses in men's clothes and climbs into bed with both men and women, something which did supposedly happen in real life, although out of convenience. But so what if it's not fully accurate? Garbo is enjoyable here, and that's all that matters.
And now for the shorts, which this time means several Traveltalks shorts. The Friday Night Spotlight is Australian cinema, but we get so see Australia circa 1939 courtesy of Glimpses of Australia, at about 10:15 PM Monday on TCM, or following The Sundowners at 8:00 PM -- which is conveniently set in Australia. After the outbreak of World War II in Europe, James FitzPatrick spent most of his time in the western hemisphere where he could travel more freely, visiting Mexico several times, such as to make Mexican Police on Parade, which as you can guess was filmed in Mexico and shows a police orchestra marching on parade. Well, there are some other shows the police put on for FitzPatrick as well. It's on at about 11:50 PM Wednesday, or just after Man Hunt (10:00 PM, 102 min), and just before Holiday in Mexico.
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