Welcome to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" thread, for the week of August 10-16, 2015. The Packers finally see some live football action this week, although it's only a preseason game, and really, preseason football is about as exciting as any baseball. So why not watch some good movies instead? As always, I'm bringing you a tasteful selection of interesting movies from the past. All times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
Monday's Star in Summer Under the Stars is Joan Crawford. One of her films that I don't think I've recommended before is The Damned Don't Cry, at 11:45 PM. Crawford plays Lorna Hanson Forbes, a wealthy socialite. But she's got a secret, and that secret is about to come out when a gangster (Steve Cochran) is murdered. Flashback to several years earlier, when Lorna, under her real name Ethel, was in an unhappy marriage that ended tragically. She decided to do what Barbara Stanwyck did in Baby Face 17 years earlier, and use men to get the things she wanted. She became first a model, and then met Martin the accountant (Kent Smith). However, she's also met mobsters, and convinces Martin to work for them, which gets Ethel/Lorna in with the mob too. It's typical of the sort of melodrama Crawford made over at Warner Brothers after leaving MGM: overheated at times, but never less than entertaining.
Elsewhere on Monday, you'll have the chance to catch Buck and the Preacher, at 3:15 PM on Encore Black. (It'll be on again Sunday afternoon.) The setting is not long after the Civil War. Many of the freed slaves are finding that their lives in the south are only marginally better, so some of them decide to set out west in hopes of a new life. To do that, however, they need a wagonmaster who knows the lay of the land out west, which is the job provided by Buck (Sidney Poitier, who also directed). But it's still not an easy journey as there are a lot of white people who would like to see the journey fail, notably night rider Deshay (Cameron Mitchell). Enter the "Preacher", played by Harry Belafonte. He's actually a barely reformed con-man who joins up with Buck and the black settlers, and uses his knowledge to help the settlers stay one step ahead of Deshay and company.
On Tuesday on TCM, we get 24 hours of films with Rex Ingram in the cast. Ingram was black, so he didn't get too many chances to be a starring actor. So a lot of his roles are small ones as in A Thousand and One Nights, at 2:15 PM, which has him playing a giant. You can guess that this is an Aladdin-type story, with Aladdin here being played by Cornel Wilde. He lusts after Princess Armina (Adele Jergens), but of course a lowly guy like Aladdin can't have her. Then Aladdin finds the lamp, and out pops the genie (Evelyn Keyes). She figures out the plot against the Sultan, and eventually gets Aladdin the Princess. This is only somewhat an action movie, since unlike a lot of the other Arabian-themed movies Hollywood made back then, there's a lot of comedy in the form of Aladdin's friend Abdullah (Phil Silvers).
For Ingram in a starring role, you might want to watch The Green Pastures, at 8:00 PM Tuesday. The movie starts off in a Black Sunday school somewhere in the rural South, with the children asking the teacher about heaven. The teacher explains this and various stories from the Old Testament. But what makes this movie interesting is that it's got an all-black cast at a time when blacks didn't get good roles in the movies. That, and the stories are more or less presented as rural black children in the 1930s might have conceived things. Ingram plays God (De Lawd), as well as Adam. Eddie "Rochester" Anderson plays Noah. Some people may find the movie offensive 80 years on, especially because the people all speak in southern dialect, but as with Cabin in the Sky, that definitely wasn't the intent of the filmmakers. The result is a unique film.
Robert Mitchum is the star for Wednesday on TCM. Again, I'll mention a film I don't think I've recommended before: Blood on the Moon, at 1:15 PM. Mitchum plays Jim, a cowboy in search of work. So he gets to one of those western tropes, a dispute between ranchers and homesteaders, with his old friend Tate (Robert Preston) on the side of the homesteaders against cattleman Lufton (Tom Tully). But then things happen. First is that Jim finds out that Tate isn't all he's cracked up to be, and if Tate had his way he'd swindle both Lufton and the other homesteaders. Also, Jim meets Lufton's daughter Amy (Barbara Bel Geddes) and falls in love with her, which makes him think perhaps he should be on the rancher's side. Further complicating matters is that Amy' sister Carol (Phyllis Thaxter) has a thing for Tate. If you think it's odd for Robert Mitchum to be in a western, wait until you see Charles McGraw as one of the homesteaders.
More natural in westerns is John Wayne, who shows up in The Train Robbers, at 4:00 PM Thursday on TCM. It's not his day, however; that honor goes to co-star Ann-Margret. (Yeah, she's in a western. Go figure.) Ann-Margret plays Mrs. Lowe, a widow who wants to clear her husband's name for her son's sake. Apparently, her husband got mixed up in a scheme to rob a shipment of gold, and the gang took $500,000 from a train south to Mexico. So Lowe hires Lane (John Wayne) to find the gold and bring it back. Lane assembles a team including Rod Taylor and Bobby Vinton(!) among others, and they set off to find the gold and get the substantial reward. Clearing Lowe's name is just an ancillary benefit. Of course they'll have to deal with the gang of thieves, as well as Pinkterton man Ricardo Montalban.
Groucho Marx is in the spotlight on Friday, although of course most of the days movies will also feature his brothers Harpo and Chico. Zeppo, the fourth Marx Brother, left the act early, but not before making Horse Feathers, which will be on at 9:30 PM. The plot, such as it is, involves Professor Wagstaff (Groucho), who is named president of Huxley University. Unfortunately, the college is facing dire financial straits, and the belief is that the best way to get out of the problems is to field a winning football team. The professor's son (Zeppo) knows some semipro football players to make ringers on the team, but Dad mistakenly hires Pinky and Baravelli (Harpo and Chico respectively) instead. Chaos ensues. Eventually, we get to the climactic football game against Darwin U., which resembles football about as much as Minnesota Vikings training camp does. 1930s comedian Thelma Todd plays the woman trying to steal Huxley's signals for Darwin president Jennings (veteran character actor David Landau).
Those of you who like such old movies will be happy to know that Saturday's honoree on TCM is Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. Among his movies, they'll be showing Success at Any Price, at 4:45 AM Sunday. Fairbanks plays Joe, a guy from the wrong side of the tracks who sees his brother gunned down by the police. Not wanting to end up like that, he goes to the big city, where he meets Sarah (Colleen Moore), who gets him a job at the bottom in the ad agency where she's a secretary. But Joe has drive, and works his way up the corporate ladder by impressing his boss Merritt (Frank Morgan), not caring about whom he steps on along the way. And then when he gets close to the top, he also finds that Merritt has a girlfriend Agnes (Genevieve Tobin) whom Joe would like, too. Never mind that she's Merritt's girl, and that he already has a girlfriend. Really, though, that can't lead to anything good, can it? An interesting premis with some interesting performances.
On Sunday, we have Patricia Neal for 24 hours on TCM. The Neal film I'll pick is The Breaking Point, at noon Sunday. John Garfield stars as Harry, a man who captains a charter boat, even though the money isn't very good, and he's got a wife (Phyllis Thaxter) who says her father can give him a better job any time. But Harry likes captaining a boat. That is, until one of his fares stiffs him in Mexico leaving him no way to get home. Well, there is a way, but it's a highly illegal way -- take some would be illegal immigrants into the US. This gets him sucked into a life of crime. Patricia Neal plays the femme fatale who may or may not lead Harry astray from his wife. John Garfield insisted that the part of his first mate be given to a black actor, so it went to underrated Juano Hernandez. If the subject material looks familiar, that's because it's based on the same Ernest Hemingway short story from which the film To Have and Have Not came.
There's not all that much new over on FXM Retro, or at least new in the sense that I haven't recommended them here in a while So I'll briefly mention a pair of them that I think it's been the longest since I've recommended.
First is Lloyd's of London, airing at 7:45 AM Thursday and again Friday morning. Tyrone Power stars as a man of relatively low birth who gets a job in the nascent insurance industry in the late 18th century and rises, eventually getting into crisis when Napoleon starts his predations against British shipping.
The other one is Three Came Home, at 9:25 AM Saturday and again Sunday morning. This is based on a true story of an American writer (Claudette Colbert) living in Malaya with her British husband (Patrick Knowles) when the Japanese invade in World War II. The Japanese inter all the westerners in POW camps, separating the men from the women.
Finally, I'll mention a couple of shorts.
The first is At Home With Joan Crawford, at 12:10 PM Monday. This is another appeal for the Jimmy Fund to raise money in the fight against pediatric cancer. If only the public knew the stories about what Crawford and Bing Crosby were supposedly doing to their children.
At about 7:38 PM Tuesday is Public Jitterbug No. 1, a short which predates Footloose by 45 years, having the government trying to stamp out the jitterbug as a menace to society. I very young Betty Hutton stars.
For those of you who love the Traveltalks shorts, you can see the Paris Exposition of 1938 in Paris on Parade, at 1:45 PM Thursday. A year earlier, James Fitzpatrick visited Copenhagen, which shows up at 1:51 AM Saturday.
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