Welcome to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" thread, for the week of April 29-May 5, 2019. The NFL draft is over for another year, and there's nothing really worth mentioning until training camp opens. And nobody cares about baseball or basketball. So how about some good movies instead? There's still some special programming for TCM's silver anniversary, as well as a new Star of the Month. There are also quite a few interesting movies on other channels. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
TCM's theme for Monday morning and afternoon is people who come back from the dead. One of the movies I think I haven't recommended before is Chase a Crooked Shadow, at 9:00 AM Monday. Anne Baxter stars as Kimberley, a woman living in a nice villa on the coast of Catalonia. One day, a man shows up (Richard Todd), claiming to be her brother Ward. Kimberley knows this is impossible, since Ward was killed in a car accident a year previous, and she was the one to identify the body! But "Ward" is able to provide good evidence like a passport and bank statements to corroborate his story, leading Kimberley to question her sanity. There isn't much the police, in the form of detective Vargas (Herbert Lom), can do, and it doesn't help that Ward replaces Kimberley's servants with people of his own choosing. Is this actually Ward,and even if he is, what is he up to? And can Vargas save the day? Location shooting is a plus, although it's too bad it's not in color.
I know how much you all like recent movies, so I'll give you one from the 90s, and I mean the 1990s, not the 1890s: Son in Law, at 2:45 AM Monday and 6:45 AM Tuesday on HBO Comedy. Carla Gugino plays Rebecca, who grew up on a farm in South Dakota and who, having just graduated from high school, is expected to accept a coming marriage proposal from her long-time boyfriend. She goes off to college at UCLA, and not being used to the big city, hates it at first and even thinks about dropping out. But one of the resident advisors at the dorm, Crawl (Pauly Shore), decides to help her adjust. Rebecca begins to open up thanks to the wacky but ultimately kind-hearted crawl, learning to do things she never would have done back on the farm. So Rebecca decides to take Crawl home with her for Thanksgiving. Unsurprisingly, everybody else there has no respect for him at first, but the place grows on Crawl, and they grudgingly learn to accept him. But there's still the problem of Rebecca's old boyfriend....
We're almost to the end of April, and almost to the end of TCM's silver anniversary month. There's still a special night of programming left on Monday, as TCM looks back at the Private Screenings interviews that Robert Osborne did on an irregular basis over the years. After a clip show at 8:00 PM, we get the one instance in which Osborne himself was the interviewee, questioned by Alec Baldwin, at 9:30 PM. Then there's the 20th anniversary special from the TCM Film Festival at 11:00 PM, in which Osborne was surprised in a bit of a This is Your Life-style ambush. It's a bit poignant now since the hosting duties were handled by Alex Trebek. Elsewhere in the night there are interviews with Liza Minnelli, Sophia Loren, and Norman Lloyd, who is still with us at the ripe old age of 104.
Tuesday night's lineup on TCM is a bunch of Mountie movies, including The Wild North at 10:00 PM Tuesday. In this one, Wendell Corey is miscast as the Mountie, a constable named Pedley. He has the task of finding trapper Jules Vincent (Stewart Granger) and bringing him in to stand trial for murder. Jules had gone off with a native woman (Cyd Charisse, of all people), and a man named Brody (Howard Petrie), and when Brody attacks, Jules kills him in self-defense. Still, he doesn't know if he can prove his case, so he flees to be chased by Pedley. Jules, knowing the territory well, is able to evade capture, but winter is closing in and poor Pedley gets lost and unable to find his way back to civilization. One alternative to dying is to overwinter with Jules, although that's going to present problems for both men. Each of them has grown to respect the other, however.... The movie was made if not exactly on location, at least in the Rocky Mountains of Idaho to stand in for Canada. It's also in color, but a year away from the wide vistas of Cinemascope.
A search of the site claims it's been almost four years since I mentioned The Story of Alexander Graham Bell. It's back on the FXM schedule this week, at 6:00 AM Saturday. Don Ameche plays Bell, who started off teaching the deaf and hearing-impaired, which is how he met Mabel Hubbard (Loretta Young) and her parents (Charles Coburn and Spring Byington). Bell had an interest in telegraphy and whether it would be possible to transmit a human voice over those wires and not just the dits and dahs. This of course eventually led to the invention of the telephone, with help at a key point from his assistant Watson (Henry Fonda). By this point he's married Mabel and his father-in-law is a big investor in the business, so Bell has more than just his personal honor to defend when another man claims to have developed the telephone first and files a patent infringement suit. The cast of character actors also includes Gene Lockhart as the father of a deaf boy Bell is teaching, and Harry Davenport as the judge in the patent trial.
Wednesday is the first of May, and with a new month comes a new Star of the Month on TCM. For May, that's going to be Paul Newman, whose films are going to be airing every Wednesday in May in prime time. The first Wednesday in May has several of Newman's earlier pictures, including The Rack at 10:00 PM. Newman plays Captain Edward Hall, Jr., a Korean War veteran who was taken POW and spent a couple of years in a camp where the Chinese and North Koreans used psychological torture tactics on him to try to get him to break. He's been released and returned home from the war, but has to face a court-martial for treason for having aided and abetted the Chinese. This is especially distressing to his father, Edward Hall Sr. (Walter Pidgeon), a career colonel who already lost another son in the war and faces losing this one. Wendell Corey plays the JAG prosecuting the case and Edmond O'Brien plays Newman's defense counsel. Oh, and Lee Marvin plays the chief witness for the prosecution.
It's been a while since I've mentioned Cause for Alarm!, which is going to be on TCM at 11:00 AM Thursday. Loretta Young plays Ellen Jones, a housewife married to George (Barry Sullivan), whom she realizes only too late has a bit of a manipulative streak in him. He's been ill for some time with a bad heart, being treated by Dr. Grahame (Bruce Cowling). The doctor had been a former boyfriend of Ellen's, and now George has gotten it into his head that with him being ill, his wife is having an affair with the doctor. Not only that, but that the two are trying to kill him! He's mistaken, but still he's going to get back at them by writing a letter to the DA about his suspicions. Just after sending the letter off he tells his wife what was in it, he dies of a heart attack. Ellen knows she's innocent, but can she prove it? She just has to get that letter back before the DA gets it, even if interfering with the mail is a federal offense. One of Young's last movies before she left for TV.
Next up is Broadcast News, at 1:50 AM Thursday on StarzEncore Classics. Holly Hunter plays Jane Craig, the producer at a TV network's Washington news bureau. One of her best journalists is Aaron Altman (Albert Brooks), who I owe his stuff, but is considered not to have the right qualities (ie. a telegenic nature) to be an anchor. Both of them hate the idea that news is becoming more style over substance, a trend which has of course continued in the 30 years since this movie was released. Aaron is in love with Jane, but she only has a professional relationship with him. Into all this comes Tom (William Hurt), the pretty boy who was in the sports department but is being groomed for an anchor role because he has the qualities that Aaron doesn't. Tom knows he's not quite right for the job, and wants Jane to mentor him; unsurprisingly he falls in love with her along the way. But of course, she hates that he represents everything she feels is wrong with TV news.
We've got two interesting westerns this week, the first of which is The Baron of Arizona, which TCM has on the schedule at 2:45 PM Friday. Vincent Price plays James Reavis, a Confederate Civil War veteran who has migrated west to the Arizona Territory, where he's learned a bit about history that after the US defeated Mexico in the Mexican-American War and signed the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, the US intends to honor the old Spanish land claims. So Reavis came up with an elaborate scheme to create false documents giving a certain old Spanish nobleman title to most of Arizona, with Reavis marrying into the family by marrying a fake "Baroness" (Ellen Drew). To carry out the scheme, Reavis spends years in Spain getting access to the library where the old deeds are kept, learning how the old inks were created. The scheme has the potential to earn Reavis millions, except that somebody suspects the claim might be bogus. The scheme does sound nuts, but the movie is actually based on a real case.
If you've ever wanted to see the skipper in a western, you have your chance this week. StarzEncore Westerns is running The Long Rope, at 1:40 AM Saturday. Alan Hale, Jr. plays Millard, the sheriff of a small town in the New Mexico territory. Into town comes Jonas Stone, a circuit judge who goes from town to town presiding over trials as the need arises. In this case, wealthy rancher Ben Matthews (Robert Wilke) suffered the loss of a kid brother, who was shot at a barn owned by a Mexican family. The son Manuel's (John Alonzo) gun was the murder weapon, so he's the natural suspect. But as Judge Stone hears the evidence at trial, he begins to get the suspicious feeling that this isn't such an open-and-shut case. That feeling isn't assuaged by the fact that another of Ben's brothers would be perfectly willing to lead a lynch mob against Manuel. Could it have been Ben himself? Or somebody else entirely?
Finally, TCM is bringing back The Essentials, with the premiere of the new season being this Saturday at 8:00 PM. Ben Mankiewicz sat down with filmmaker Ava Duvernay to discuss a bunch of films that any well-informed movie buff should see, along with a couple lesser-known films that especially influenced her. The season kicks off with Marty, the film that won Ernest Borgnine an Oscar as an aging bachelor who thinks he'll never find love, until he's put on a blind date with a teacher in a similar bind (Betsy Blair).