April 5 was the birthday of Walter Huston, but it was also Easter Sunday. So TCM decided to push off a birthday salute to the elder Huston to Monday, April 6, with a morning and afternoon of his films from the 1930s. Up first is Abraham Lincoln at 6:45 AM. Huston plays the president in a series of episodes in Lincoln's life, from his days as an office clerk in Illinois, to being a lawyer (his law partner is played by Jason Robards Sr., father of the celebrated actor generally referred to as Jason Robards although he was really a Jr.), to becoming president and getting shot by John Wilkes Booth (Ian Keith). Also there are Mary Tood (Kay Hammond) and Lincoln's first love, Ann Rutledge (Una Merkel in a decidedly non-comedic role). The film was directed by DW Griffith as one of only two talkies he made, as the movies were passing him by. The result is a movie that's not bad by the standards of 1930, and Huston is unsurprisingly quite good, but looks creaky 85 years on.
Elsewhere, FXM Retro is running the late Betty Grable musical Wabash Avenue at noon Monday and 8:45 AM Tuesday. Grable plays Ruby, a chorus girl, here in 1890s Chicago around the World's Fair. She's singing in the show at the club run by Mike (Phil Harris) when Mike's old acquaintance Andy (Victor Mature) shows up. He's a bit more of a charmer and not the most honest person out there, but he knows what he wants, and when he sees Ruby, that's what he wants. To achieve his aims, he's even willing to fake a death and make Mike believe he's committed manslaughter! Adding to the proceedings is Margaret Hamilton, formerly the evil witch from The Wizard of Oz, here playing a temperance campaigner who gets into it with Grable. Predictable, especially since it's a remake of Grable's earlier Coney Island, but a chance to see what made Grable the pin-up girl of World War II.
On Monday night, TCM will be giving us a night of busty Jane Russell, whose acting was worth watching for more than just her physical assets. One of her films that I think I haven't recommended before is The Paleface, at midnight Tuesday (ie. 11:00 PM Monday LFT). Russell plays Calamity Jane, who here is presented as having a criminal streak. She's given a conditional pardon in exchange for helping to find some gunrunners, since the men investigating are getting killed. Along the way to Indian territory she meets Bob Hope, who is playing a man fresh out of dentistry school going west because the west needs dentists. They get married and she lets him take the credit for a gunfight, which she shouldn't have done since he's really a milquetoast. It's the sort of character Hope played a lot in the 1940s and 1950s, but as happened in those other films, he gets the chance to redeem himself. And this was before he was painfully unhip in the 1960s. This movie introduced the song "Buttons and Bows".
Just before The Paleface is the short Salt Lake Diversions, at 11:50 PM Monday. James A. FitzPatrick, in doing his Traveltalks shorts, had already been to Salt Lake City, and spent his time in Utah looking at how the people of Utah spend their leisure time. There's skiing, which wouldn't become a really big deal until after the War, and floating in the Great Salt Lake. I think this is the short that shows vacationers getting served refreshments on floating trays in the lake, which seems quite bizarre but there you go.
Anthony Quinn returns on Wednesday night. One of his movies that I don't think I've mentioned before is Sinbad, the Sailor, at 3:45 AM Thursday on TCM. Not to be confused with Sinbad the crappy comedian, this film tells a story of Sinbad (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) who in the early Islamic period became wealthy by making seven voyages. The people he tells his stories to, however, want to hear a new story, so he makes this one up, regarding an alleged treasure that Alexander the Great amassed on his journey of conquest a millennium earlier, and a map to find that treasure. Along the way Sinbad rescues the Kurdish princess Shireen (Maureen O'Hara) and meets up with some other people who wnat the treasure, in the form of emir Quinn and magician Walter Slezak. A dsahing adventure yarn, filmed in gloriously vivid Technicolor.
FXM Retro is giving you a couple of chances to see the too-obscure 5 Fingers, at 1:00 PM Thursday and 4:00 AM Friday. James Mason stars as Ulysses, an Albanian-born man who is working as the valet for the British Ambasssador to Turkey during World War II. This being World War II and Turkey being neutral, there are diplomats from both sides of the war there, as well as refugees from all over the world, such as the Polish Countess Anna (Danielle Darrieux). Ulysses and Countess Anna both need money, so they hit on a plan for him to use her as a front in passing secrets to the Nazis. The British eventually suspect that something is up, and send in agent Michael Rennie to investigate. Ulysses makes his way to Istanbul and then ultimately to Rio De Janeiro, getting away with it and living high on the hog... or does he get away with it? The best thing of all is that this is based on a true story.
5 Fingers isn't the only real-life World War II spy film airing this week. Back on TCM, there's I Was an American Spy, at 5:00 PM Thursday. Claire Phillips (Ann Dvorak) is an American woman who was living in Manila with her Filipina daughter, when the Japanese arrived at the end of 1941. She wound up a widow and trapped in the Philippines, so she did the best she could, which was to start a high-class club to serve the Japanese soldiers. In fact, the club was a front for spying and resistance operations, earning her the nickname "High Pockets". She'd survive the war an be declared a hero in America afterwards, and wrote a book about her experiences, from which this movie is taken. There are dramatic licenses taken, of course (the club probably wasn't so classy in real life), but the movie is still an interesting one.
TCM is spending Thursday night with Troy Donahue, a heartthrob of the 1960s. I don't think I've recommended My Blood Runs Cold before; that kicks off the evening at 8:00 PM. Joey Heatherton, another 1960s looker, plays Julie, an heiress who lives a wild lifestyle (Nicole Hilton anybody?). One day, she nearly runs into Ben (that's our boy Troy) while he's on his motorcycle. Here the story gets weird. Ben starts calling Julie "Barbara". It turns out that Barbara was the name of Julie's great-great-grandmother, and that she got knoced up by a Benjam with the same last name as the Ben who was on the motorcycle. And modern-day Ben says he believes the two young people are reincarnations of the two lovers from four generations ago! Is he nuts, or just trying to pull one over on Julie? Watch for Julie's aunt, played by Jeanette Nolan; Nolan gets some of the most ghastly 1960s hairstyles you'll ever see. And the movie was directed by William Conrad, the actor who would later star as Cannon and in Jake and the Fatman on TV.
The Friday night spotlight on TCM this month looks at MGM's special effects artist A. Arnold Gillespie. Modern-day visual effects artist Craig Barron and sound designer Ben Burtt are sitting down with Ben Mankiewicz to tell us how they came up with the effects back in the day, and from the first week's movies, the two are doing an excellent job presenting the movies. This week starts off with Test Pilot at 8:00 PM Friday. Clark Gable plays Jim, the titular test pilot, who at the start of the movie is on a cross-country flight in an experimental new aircraft. He has to make an emergency landing on a farm, which is where he meets Ann (Myrna Loy). The two fall for each other and get married quickly, although whether the marriage can last is a good quiestion. The thing is, Jim's work is very dangerous, and Ann worries every time he goes up in a plane that it might be the last and he won't come down alive. Also worried about Jim, but in a different way, is Gunner (Spencer Tracy), who is Jim's mechanic and best friend, and worries whether marriage will soften Jim. The fact that Jim is hard-living on the ground and jot just in the air complicates matters.
Those of you who like more recent movies will be thrilled to see that American Anthem is coming up this Saturday at 6:30 AM and 3:05 PM on Encore Classic. Mitch Gaylord, a star of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics in gymnastics, plays Steve, a gymnast who, having done his thing at the Olympics, retires to go into the family business. And then Julie (Janet Jones, before she married Wayne Gretzky) shows up in town training at the gym that Steve used to train at. So Steve gets the idea of going back into training for the next Olympics, and along the way falls in love with Julie. Can they make the Olympic team again? If you're a fan of movies that will havie you laughing at how unbelievably lousy they are, sit back with a bowl of popcorn and watch this one with your friends hurling insults at the TV MST3K style. And remember that Mary Lou Retton won an Oscar in Naked Gun 33-1/3.
Our final feature this week comes from near the end of Cary Grant's career: Charade, at 4:00 PM Sunday. The real star here is Audrey Hepburn, playing Regina, a French woman who's married ot an American and spends her days wearing Givenchy and being glamorous. That is, until her husband is killed by being thrown from a train. Cary Grant plays Peter, an American she met at an Alpine resort just before her husband's death, and he tries to console her. Then three strange men (James Coburn, George Kennedy, and Ned Glass) show up at the husband's funeral, and Regina gets a letter from an officer at the American embassy (Walter Matthau) saying that her husband was involved in the theft of $250,000 during World War II, and the American government wants it back. Peter tries to help Regina, but it seems like he knows a lot more than he's letting on. The story winds up being fun if not quite realistic, and there's a lot of great scenery of Paris. The one big problem is that with Cary Grant's presence in the cast, you know he's not going to be the big villain regardless of what the plot is trying to have you believe.