Welcome to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" Thread, for the week of April 6-12, 2020. If you're sick of the panic-mongering over the Wuhan coronavirus and the bullying of people who refuse to panic, I'm here to point out a bunch of interesting movies that I know you'll all like, generally having nothing to do with contagious diseases. We've got a new Star of the Month on TCM, a tribute to a recently deceased star, a movie on FXM that's only recently shown up for the first time in years, a stinging critique of the media, and more, from as recently as 2000. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
Now that we're in the first full week of a new month, it's time for a new Star of the Month on TCM: Jane Russell, whose movies are airing every Monday in prime time. She was discovered by Howard Hughes, who immediately put her in the racy The Outlaw, which airs at 8:00 PM Monday. Thomas Mitchell plays Pat Garrett, who is sheriff of a small town in the New Mexico territory. Into town one day comes his old friend Doc Holliday (Walter Huston), who is looking for the person who stole his horse. It turns out the horse was stolen by Billy the Kid (Jack Beutel, another of Hughes' discoveries), but Doc and Billy become friends. Pat shoots Billy, wounding him, and Doc takes him to Rio (Jane Russell), whom he had recently met and who claims Billy shot her brother. He falls in love with her despite the fact that she's Doc's girlfriend, and she protects him when Pat comes looking for him and a standoff of sorts ensues. There are also Indians in the area to threaten them all. Watch for copious shots of Russell's heaving bosom, because the plot itself is a mess.
Up against The Outlaw is a movie I know QuietOne will like, Chocolat. But it's also going to be on other times in the week, such as 6:10 AM Monday on HBO Comedy. Juliette Binoche plays Vianne, a vagabond unmarried woman with a young daughter who shows up in a very conservative late-1950s French village run with an iron fist by the Mayor le Comte (Alfred Molina). Vianne decides she's going to open a chocolaterie making homemade exotic chocolates. Her presence starts to change the village, beginning with her landlord Armande (Judi Dench), and then abused wife Josephine (Lena Olin). But Vianne decided to open that shop right at the start of Lent, which is a time of deprivation, so the Comte absolutely hates the new shop and how it's going to corrupt the townsfolk. Matters get worse when a group of itinerant laborers led by Roux (Johnny Depp) come up along the river into town. Roux and Vianne fall in love, and that just may make the mayor try to drive Vianne out of town.
TCM is showing a night of noirs all from the year 1948 on Tuesday in prime time. The night kicks off with what I think is the TCM premiere of Cry of the City, at 8:00 PM. Richard Conte plays Martin Rome, an Italian-American from the tenements who unfortunately took the wrong way in life. This greatly bothers his childhood friend Lt. Candella (Victor Mature), who became a cop, especially because Martin has a kid brother who idolizes him. Martin is caught up in a cop-shooting case in which he himself was wounded, and now his lawyer Niles (Berry Kroeger) wants him to rat on an accused jewel thief. Martin, despite being wonded, is able to escape the prison hospital, going first to Mother, before seeing old girlfriend Brenda (Shelley Winters) to get her to try to help him escape. This latter involves the accomplice in the jewel robbery, a big masseuse named Rose (Hope Emerson, who was about 6'2” in real life). Candella keeps pursuing Martin relentlessly.
If you're one of those people who thinks Orson Welles could do no wrong, you'll be pleased to learn that his version of Othello is on this week. 5StarMax is running it at 8:11 AM Thursday. Based on the play by William Shakespeare, the movie stars Welles as the Moor of Venice, who is being buried together with his wife Desdemona (Suzanne Cloutier), with his ensign Iago (Micheal MacLiammoir) watching from a cage above. It turns out that Iago had been in love with Desdemona himself, hoping Roderigo (Robert Coote) would help him court Desdemona. So when he finds out that Desdemona is married, he gets insanely jealous and decides to convince Othello that Desdemona is in fact being unfaithful. This being a Shakespearean tragedy, you can probably figure out how it goes from there. It took Welles three years to make the movie in fits in starts because he was constantly running out of money, and after he was supposedly finished, there was one cut dubbed for Italy, one in the original English for Europe, and some years later a third for America. Welles' daughter led a restoration of the movie in the 1990s, although that too has its problems, although I think that's the version that's airing.
Elsewhere on Thursday, you have a chance to watch the interesting Safe in Hell, at 5:00 PM Thursday on TCM. Dorothy Mackaill plays Gilda, who lives in New Orleans and has a fiancé in Carl (Donald Cook), one of the sailors who is based in port there but is always at sea. She needs to make money while he's away, and the only way for her to do that is to engage in prostitution. Since that's really quite illegal, it puts her in all sorts of danger, and when one of her clients attacks her, she accidentally kills him in self defense but knows the authorities will never marry her. So Carl takes her to a Caribbean island that doesn't have an extradition treaty with the US, secretly marrying her and leaving her there until he can earn the money to get her back to America with him. However, since this place doesn't have that extradition treaty, it's a haven for all sorts of other fugitives from US law, all of whom are male and all of whom have a lecherous desire for Gilda.
We've got a couple of remakes this week. One of them is One Fatal Hour (also known as Two Against the World), which is on at 1:30 PM Friday on TCM. Humphrey Bogart, early in his career, stars as Sherry Scott, manager of a radio network that has flagging ratings. The boss wants a new hit program, and comes up with the idea of doing a dramatization of a murder case that was a big deal 20 years ago, revealing the current identity of the lady defendant at the end of the series. It turns out that the woman, Martha Carstairs (Helen McKellar) remarried into a higher social class and has a daughter Edith (Linda Perry) who is all grown up and is engaged to be married into the upper-crust Sims family, Carlyle Moore playing the fiancé. Edith doesn't know about her mother's past, and Mom certainly doesn't want the information to come out as the Simses won't let Edith marry their son. Sherry is on Martha's side, but the boss calls the shots.... This is a remake moved to radio of the excellent newspaper drama Five Star Final.
Up against One Fatal Hour is Mister Scoutmaster, which is on FXM at 1:30 PM Friday, but again at 11:25 AM Saturday if you want to watch then. Clifton Webb plays another of his father figure roles, this time as Robert Jordan, a TV star whose show is flagging in the ratings and whose chief sponsor wants to know why the show isn't connecting with the young audience. So Jordan and his wife Helen (Frances Dee) go to their church, led by pastor Dr. Stone (Edmund Gwenn). His church has been sponsoring a Boy Scout troop, but the last Scoutmaster left because the kids are a bit, well, tough at times. Perhaps Mr. Jordan could take over the troop, which would work for Dr. Stone, and also allow Jordan to get in touch with young people and learn about them for the benefit of his show's sponsor. Of course, Jordan isn't quite up to the task at first, this being a light comedy. And one of the kids, Mike Marshall (George “Foghorn” Winslow) is a particularly tough nut to crack, in part because of his aunt (Veda Ann Borg) who is his guardian.
We get another pair of Peter Bogdanovich movies on Saturday night, including What's Up, Doc? at 8:00 PM. Ryan O'Neal plays Howard Bannister, a musicologist visiting San Francisco with his fiancée Eunice (Madeline Kahn) to try to get a grant at a conference. Unfortunately, his overnight bag is identical to that of a Mr. Smith, who is in the same hotel as an apparent whistleblower to transfer government secrets. Mrs. Van Hoskins has a third identical bag, hers filled with jewels. Then there's Judy Maxwell (Barbra Streisand). She's got the fourth identical bag, but she brings chaos with her wherever she goes. As you can guess, all four of the bags are going to get mixed up, with all sorts of consequences. This is especially true for Howard, for whom Judy seems to be a stalker. She's in love with him, but as you can guess he might just fall in love with her. This is often, and rightly, compared to Bringing Up Baby, and although Streisand's character is as obnoxious as Katharine Hepburn's, the movie is terribly funny.
Max von Sydow died last month at the age of 90. We've got a couple of his movies this week, including the 1991 remake of A Kiss Before Dying, which shows up at 4:55 AM Saturday on Cinemax (and three hours later if you have the west coast feed). Von Sydow plays wealthy industrialist Thor Carlsson, who has a daughter in Dorothy (Sean Young). She falls in love with Jonathan (Matt Dillon), a college student of rather modest means. But Jonathan gets Dorothy knocked up, and instead of having a shotgun wedding, decides to kill Dorothy instead and make it look like suicide. Afterwards he meets Dorothy's twin sister Ellen (obviously also played by Young), who's a blonde like Kim Novak in Vertigo. She's falling in love with Jonathan, too, but begins to suspect that something is wrong with the story of how Dorothy died – especially when people who might be able to shed light on the mystery wind up killed. This one completely changes the tone and pacing of the original, and not always for the better.
Sunday is Easter. FXM is celebrating the day with several airings of The Robe, while TCM has a broader ranger of relevant movies. I'll mention The Greatest Story Ever Told, which airs at 4:00 PM Sunday. That's because this one stars the recently deceased Max von Sydow as Jesus Christ in, well, and epic retelling of many of the events from the Gospels. as befits a movie of this scope, it also has an all-star cast, starting with Dorothy McGuire as Jesus' mom, the Virgin Mary. Charlton Heston, no stranger to biblical epics, plays John the Baptist, and Claude Rains is King Herod. Ultimately we get to the Crucifixion. Telly Savalas(!) plays Pontius Pilate; Sidney Poitier helps Jesus carry the cross on the way to Calvary; Richard Conte is Barabbas, the thief pardoned so Jesus can take his place on the cross, and John Wayne is badly miscast as a Roman centurion who witnesses the crucifixion. In and around all these you can find Shelley Winters, Van Heflin, Martin Landau, Pat Boone, and many others.