Welcome to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" Thread, for the week of April 8-14, 2019. This is a very special week, since it marks the silver anniversary of everybody's favorite channel, TCM. (Well, everybody but Goldie who prefers the Hallmark an Lifetime channels. 
) There are some special programming features on TCM, some interesting movies in the daytime slots, and interesting movies on other movie channels as well, so there's definitely something for everybody's taste. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
If you want a fun little movie, you could do a lot worse than to watch Blonde Crazy, at 6:00 AM Monday on TCM. James Cagney plays Bert, a hotel bellboy who has confidence schemes on his mind, what with the Depression going on. He helps Anne (Joan Blondell) get hired as a chambermaid, and then brings her into his confidence schemes. They make a good couple, but Bert is too blind to see it and Anne winds up getting engaged to Joe (Ray Milland), a stockbroker back when the stock market was the reserve of the very wealthy. She thinks Joe's family is respectable, but of course Joe turns out to be a far bigger crook than Bert, having embezzled $30,000 (in 1931 dollars, remember) from his company. Bert comes up with a plan to make things right, but will it work? Several character actors show up here, like Guy Kibbee and Louis Calhern, and has a scene with Blondell in a bathtub that needs to be seen to be believed. Gotta love those pre-Codes!
Since the Star of the Month on TCM was multiple nights in one week, it shouldn't be surprising that the TCM Spotlight is also multiple nights in one week. That spotlight is amateur sleuths, and will air Monday through Wednesday nights. It kicks off with Agatha Christie's Miss Marple in Murder She Said at 8:00 PM Monday. Margaret Rutherford plays Miss Marple differently from how Christie envisioned her but makes the character all her own. In the opening of the movie, Marple is riding a train, and when she looks out the window, she sees a murder being committed in a train going the other direction! She tells the authorities, but they can't find any body, and since Miss Marple is an unassuming old woman, they assume she was just seeing things that didn't really exist. Marple knows otherwise, and with the help of local librarian Mr. Stringer (Rutherford's real-life husband Stringer Davis), they determine that the murder must have happened outside Ackenthorpe Hall, owned by the patriarch of the same name (James Robertson Justice). So Miss Marple gets a job as a maid there and begins to investigate.
I can't recall the last time I mentioned Midway, but it's going to be on StarzEncore Classics at 7:15 AM Tuesday. Another of those all-star epic war movies made in the 1960s and 70s, this one looks at the Battle of Midway in 1942 that was a turning point in the Pacific theater of World War II as the US routed the Japanese, confirming American naval superiority and allowing the US to continue west through the Pacific, ultimately winning the war. In the movie, the look is more of an overview, looking at the big battle through the eyes of the officers, men like Adm. Nimitz (Henry Fonda) and Adm. Halsey (Robert Mitchum), who had to have a berth or he couldn't get to sea. The Japanese side is also presented, with Toshiro Mifune as Adm. Yamamoto. I've only scratched the surface; the cast also includes Glenn Ford, Cliff Robertson, Charlton Heston, and a bunch of others. The one weak point is the sub-plot involving Heston's character and his Japanese-American girlfriend.
Another classic British detective is G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown. The character appears in the movie Father Brown (also known as The Detective), which TCM is showing at 2:15 AM Wednesday. Alec Guinness plays the priest, who is transporting a cross that supposedly was used by St. Augustine from England to Rome. In France, Fr. Brown meets Flambeau (Peter Finch), a fellow priest who turns out not to be a priest. In fact, Flambeau is a famous art thief who wants the cross for himself, so naturally he steals it. The police have been on Flambeau's case for some time, and are keen to bring him to justice. Fr. Brown, however, has other ideas, being much more worried with Flambeau's soul than with actually seeing Flambeau go to prison for his crimes, and it leads him to try to solve the case on his own, without helping the police. (Chesterton was a devout Catholic, which would explain all this.) Bernard Lee, several years before the James Bond movies, plays a police officer, while Joan Greenwood as Lady Warren helps Fr. Brown out.
The Innocents is another of those movies pulled out of the vault and put back on FXM Retro, showing up this week at 1:15 PM Wednesday. Deborah Kerr stars as Miss Giddens, a woman hired by a wealthy man (Michael Redgrave) to be governess to his niece and nephew Flora and Miles at the country estate. He's in London, so it's going to be just the three of them and the housekeeper. Flora (Pamela Franklin) and Miles (Martin Stephens) both seem so nice, which is especially surprising considering that Miles was expelled from boarding school. One problem, however, is that strange things start happening that lead Giddens to believe that the house might be haunted by the spirits of a previous governess and a valet. Worse, it's beginning to seem as though those spirits are also possessing Flora and Miles. But is that really happening, or is our novice governess just not up to the task of raising these two kids? Based on the novella The Turn of the Screw by Henry James.
Another pre-Code worth mentioning this week is Dance, Fools, Dance, at 7:15 AM Thursday on TCM. Joan Crawford stars as Bonney, an idle rich girl in the late 1920s, just before the stock market crash wipes her family out. Worse, the failure gives her father a fatal heart attack, so Bonney and her prodigal brother Rodney (William Bakewell) have to go out and actually work. Bonney, unsurprisingly, is able to get an honest job as a reporter at the big-city newspaper, but Rodney winds up going to work for bootlegger Jake (Clark Gable), although one could argue Prohibition shouldn't have been a thing. Anyhow, one of Bonney's colleagues hears too much at a speakeasy, for which Jake has the guy shot. Bonney decides to do some investigate journalism by getting a job at said speakeasy and investigating from the inside. Rodney, of course, is going to discover that his sister is working at one of his bowel clubs, which causes all sorts of problems. There's also the chance to see some of Joan's early 30s dancing, at least for some values of dancing.
I know I've recommended it several times before, but Too Many Girls is going to be on again, at 6:00 PM Friday on TCM. Lucille Ball plays Connie, the willful daughter of a wealthy man who has decided she's going to leave finishing school to follow he writer boyfriend out to New Mexico, where she plans to enroll in college. Her dad, being overprotective, hires four football players (including Desi Arnaz as Manuelito, a running back from the Argentine) to follow Connie out to New Mexico and watch her. The four eventually join the school's football team, turning its fortunes around, but complications ensue when one of them, Clint (Richard Carlson), falls in love with. Connie. Connie decides to scupper everybody's plans by heading back east the night before the big game, threatening to ruin the team's season. Desk gets to play his bongo drums in the finale, while Eddie Bracken, playing another of the players, gets to dance with Ann Miller. The movie has absolutely no bearing in reality, but boy is it fun.
It's baseball season, which means some of you may be thinking about The Texas Rangers. Or maybe not, since the movie has nothing to do with the baseball team. In any case, the movie will be on StarzEncore Westerns at 12:44 AM Saturday. Fred MacMurray plays Jim Hawkins, who is part of a band of outlaws with his friend Wahoo (Jack Oakie, obviously here to provide comic relief). They're looking to find old "Polka Dot" McGee (Lloyd Nolan) and rejoin him. However, they wind up joining the famed Texas Rangers police force instead. At first they think about using the inside information to help Polka Dot, but thanks in part to Jim's meeting and falling in love with the commissioner's (Edward Ellis) daughter (Jean Peters), they decide to go straight and try to take down Polka Dot and his gang. Light but enjoyable enough 30s western. If it sounds familiar, that's because it was remade as The Streets of Laredo, which I recommended back in June 2017.
For another western, you could try Ride, Vaquero!, which TCM is showing at noon Saturday. It's just after the end of the Civil War, and more people are beginning to settle west Texas, which bothers people like the outlaw Esqueda (Anthony Quinn) because they know this means law and order is not far behind. He's got a stepbrother in Rio (Robert Taylor), so when some more people start settling the land, Esqueda sends Rio to stop them. Unfortunately, this gets Rio into potential legal trouble, and the settler King Cameron (Howard Keel, in a rare role that doesn't have him singing) gives Rio a choice: either face trial and likely prison, or come work for me. By this time, Rio has met Cameron's wife Cordelia (Ava Gardner) and fallen in love with her, so he decides on the latter course of action. The fact that Cordelia is already married is one problem, but having to deal with Esqueda not liking him becoming a turncoat is another.
This weekend marks that actual 25th anniversary of TCM, which signed on on April 14, 1994. TCM is marking it all through April with a bunch of special themes. I haven't yet mentioned that they're running old installments of The Essentials on Saturday nights, which is a chance to see Robert Osborne again. Quite a few years back he co-hosted with film critic Molly Haskell, and their wraparounds for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington will be airing this Saturday night at 10:00 PM. (The other movie is Singin' in the Rain at 8:00 PM, with a 2017 introduction from Alec Baldwin and Tina Fey.)
For the actual anniversary on Sunday, April 14, they'll be running Gone With the Wind at 8:00 PM. This was the first movie the channel ran 25 years ago, and it wouldn't surprise me if they bring out Robert Osborne's introduction from that day.