Dick Powell is in the TCM spotlight on Monday. Powell spent the first half of his career doing light musical comedy like 42nd Street (1:00 PM), but in the mid-1940s started taking on more serious, darker work, as can be seen in films such as Pitfall, at 4:15 PM. Powell plays John Forbes, a happily married insurance investigator married to Sue (Jane Wyatt) with a son and suburban house. One day, he's put on the case of Mona Stevens (Lizabeth Scott), who was the girlfriend of a convicted embezzler (Byron Barr) who used that money to buy things for his girlfriend. So the insurance company wants to recoup its money by repossessing Mona's gifts. But that's not the real story, of course. John spends a day cataloguing Mona's gifts, and spending all the time with her makes him begin to fall in love with her. This is a problem because the sleazy private investigator who brought the case to the insurance company (Raymond Burr in his bad-guy period before he started playing Perry Mason) also has his eyes on Mona, and will stop at nothing to make life difficult for Mr. Forbes.
Unfortunately, TCM's schedule only lists the shorts through Tuesday, but if you stay around after [b[Pitfall[/b], you can see some Headline Bands, around 5:50 PM. This is a short full of clips from older stuff showing some bands from the 30s -- you might recognize the names Jimmy Dorsey and Woody Herman. You may not know second-rate bandleader Vincent Lopez, but there's a young Betty Hutton sincing with his orchestra.
The lovely Sophia Loren graces TCM's programming for a full day on Tuesday. You could watch her Oscar-winning role in Two Women at 8:00 PM, but one of her movies that I don't think I've recommended before is Brass Targer, at 4:00 PM. General George Patton (played here by George Kennedy) died in a car accident in December 1945. Conspiracy theorists would claim that he was in fact assassinated. This thoroughly fictitious film posits as the reasons behind his assassination that he was getting too close to finding who stole a huge shipment of gold from the Reichsbank that Patton was trying to keep from being looted. Robert Vaughan plays the leader of the group doing the looting; John Cassavetes an intelligence officer who is called in to investigate. When he realizes that people may be trying to assassinate the general, he tries to prevent it. Sophia Loren actually gets top billing although she's got a minor role in this one.
Edmond O'Brien is the star of the day on TCM on Wednesday, and as with Sophia Loren, I'll point out a film I don't think I've recommended before: An Act of Murder, at 9:30 PM. The actual star is Fredric March, playing a small-town Pennsylvania judge living happily with his wife (played by real-life wife Florence Eldridge) and daughter (Geraldine Brooks). The daughter is dating the local defense attorney (O'Brien), which doesn't quite make March happy, but there you are. This happiness, of course, is about to be shattered when the missus is diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor. Not only is she going to die; she's going to die a particularly horrible death. So husband and wife have one final weekend of pleasure together before March engages in a mercy killing. Naturally there's a trial, and sure enough, our leading man winds up with Edmond O'Brien as his defense attorney.
One of the lesser-known stars in this month's Summer Under the Stars is Arlene Dahl, who gets a day of her movies on Thursday on TCM. Dahl is Wicked As They Come, at 10:30 PM. This movie may remind you of Barbara Stanwyck's Baby Face: Dahl plays a woman with a terrible relationship with her father, so she runs off and goes to London, trying to make a better life for herself. Fairly quickly, she starts using men to try to advance her social and economic standing. One man who sees right through her is advertising man Philip Carey, but she goes right on with her ways, eventually getting involved with his boss (Herbert Marshall). The only problem is that his wife is the daughter of the ad agency's owner. There's eventually marriage, murder, and a moral lesson for all that honesty is probably the best policy.
A movie that's back in the FXM rotation that I don't think I've recommended recently is The Dark Corner, which is coming up a couple of times this week, at 10:05 AM Thursday and 7:15 AM Friday. Mark Stevens plays Brad, a private eye who was framed by his old partner Tony (Kurt Kreuger) on a manslaughter charge out in California and, recently having gotten out of jail, has gone east to New York and hired Kathleen (Lucille Ball) as his secretary. Brad realizes he's being followed by William Bendix, who tells Brad he was hired by Tony, who is now working for the art dealer Hardy Cathcart (Clifton Webb). And then Brad finds Tony murdered in his apartment, and it's clear that somebody is setting up Brad yet again. But whom? And will Brad be able to get himself out of trouble with Kathleen's help? The police lieutenant who shows up from time to time to check on Brad is played by Reed Hadley, who provided the stentorian narration for several of Fox's docudramas of the era.
On Friday, it's Joseph Cotten who will get 24 hours of his movies on TCM, starting at 6:00 AM with Lydia. Lydia, played by Merle Oberon, is a spinster who at the beginning of the movie is being given an honor for all the great charity work she did during the course of her life. One of the people who hears about this is a Dr. Fitzpatrick (Cotten), and he decides to meet Lydia at her apartment after the ceremony. There, he reminisces about their love, which it turns out wasn't the only love in Lydia's life. There were three others. The good doctor invites Lydia over to his place, which will give him time to round up those other three loves: George Reeves was the dashing young hunk of the lovers; Hans Jaray was a blind pianist, and Alan Marshal plays a sailor who doesn't show up at Fitzpatrick's place when the other two do. So Lydia and three of her loves discuss their lives in flashback, waiting for the fourth love to return. But will he? This was also the final film for Edna May Oliver, playing Lydia's irascible grandmother.
Betty Grable graces TCM on Saturday. Last week, you got a chance to see her wake up screaming over on FXM Retro; this week you can catch I Wake Up Screaming at 11:45 PM Saturday on TCM. So it goes without saying that instead I'll mention one of Grable's movies that I haven't recommended before: The Dolly Sisters, at 4:00 PM Saturday. Yansci "Jenny" Dolly (played by Grable) and her sister Rose (played by June Haver) were a pair of sisters who actually existed (although in real life they were identical twins), being born in Hungary in 1892 and emigrating to the US in 1905. They become successful dancers shortly thereafter and eventually movie actresses. The movie, however, takes quite a few liberties with their careers and their stormy personal lives, although it does show the serious car accident Jenny had which ultimately led to the depression that caused her to commit suicide in 1941. John Payne plays Harry Fox, Jenny's first husband.
For those of you who have the Showtime package, you have a couple of chances to catch the 1973 original version of The Wicker Man: at 10:35 PM Saturday and 1:40 AM Sunday for those of you with the east coast feed, repeated three hours later on the west coast feed. Edward Woodward plays Sgt. Howie, a devoutly Christian police detective who is sent to a remote island off the Scottish coast to investigate the disappearance of a girl. However, he gets there, and everybody claims no such girl existed. Howie investigates further, and gets the distinct impression that everybody is lying to him. Worse, they have some bizarre pagan rituals that horrify our Chtistian cop, especially the fertility ritual involving a topless Britt Ekland. Christopher Lee, a member of the peerage who owns the island, tells Howie there's nothing wrong, but he begins to get the distinct impression that the missing girl was actually a victim of human sacrifice!
So Howie stays to continue his investigation to its shocking conclusion.Sunday on TCM is given over to a day of Alan Ladd's movies, and it's also the day for the final installment in this season's Essentials Jr.: Shane, at 8:00 PM Sunday. The scene is Wyoming, back in the homseteading days. The Starretts (Jean Arthur, Van Heflin, and son Brandon de Wilde) are one of several homesteading farming families who have a problem: there's a pair of rancher brothers who need land to graze their cattle, and they'd been using the land that now belongs to the homseteaders, so they want the homseteaders off that land. And they've even hired a gunslinger named Wilson (Jack Palance, when he was stil using his real first name Walter) to get the farmers off their land. Into all of this rides Shane (Alan Ladd), wearing that buckskin shirt with the fringed jacket. He was a gunslinger, but he wants to settle down, and takes up with the Starretts. But the kid learns Shane was a gunfighter and idolizes him, while the farmers could use a gunfighter of their own to deal with the ranchers....