Welcome to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" thread, for the week of August 26-September 1, 2013. This week marks the end of August, and the end of this year's Summer Under the Stars, but we've still got six days to go. It's also Labor Day weekend. With darkness coming so much earlier than even a few weeks ago, there's more time to stay inside and curl up with some good movies. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
Monday's star in Summer Under the Stars is Jeanne Crain. She did much of her work at Fox, and there are several Fox movies showing up throughout the day on Monday. One of her movies not made at Fos is The Fastedst Gun Alive, kicking off the day at 6:00 AM Monday on TCM. Glenn Ford plays a man in an isloated Arizona town who is running the dry goods store, trying to forget his past, in which he was that "fastest gun alive". But the townsfolk have heard of him by reputation if not by sight, which leads to him breaking down and revealing his true identity. He knows the news is going to travel far and wide, and to complicate things a gang led by Broderick Crawford, who himself claims to be the fastest man alive, shows up in town. And when he hears the news about somebody else claiming to be fastest, he wants to fight that guy. Jeanne Crain plays Glenn Ford's long-suffering wife; Russ Tamblyn shows up to do a dance number of all things.
Jeanne Crain's day ends Tuesday at 4:00 AM on TCM with Skyjacked. As you can probably guess from the title, this is a movie about an airplane hijacking. What the titlle doesn't give away is that this is one of those all-star movies that were the rage in the 1970s. Charlton Heston is flying the plane, and part of a love triangle with stewardess Yvette Mimieux and co-pilot Mike Henry. James Brolin, playing a Vietnam vet, shows up to hijack the plane and demands it be flown to Moscow. Crain plays one of the first-class passengers, a married woman having to move again because of her husband's job transfer; she gets to help pregnant Mariette Hartley deliver the baby. Walter Pidgeon is a US Senator; Susan Dey shows up in her Partridge Family days; and football player Rosie Grier plays a jazz musician. A saving grace of this film is that it's about a half hour shorter than most of the all-star disaster films of the era.
Following Jeanne Crain in the TCM spotlight is Martin Balsam. Balsam played the private detective hired to investigate Janet Leigh's disappearance in Psycho (which will be airing not on Tuesday, but at 10:00 PM Sunday), as well as winning an Oscar for A Thousand Clowns, which is surprisingly not airing on Tuesday. So instead, I'd like to recommend The Anderson Tapes, at 8:00 PM Tuesday. Anderson is played by Sean Connery. He's a master thief who's just been released from prison after serving a long spell for robbery. After getting out, he goes to see his girlfriend (Dyan Cannon), who is now a high-priced call girl living in a swanky apartment overlooking Central Park. So, Anderson gets the brilliant idea to try to rob the other units in his girl's apartment building! He assembles a team including Balsam (a flamboyant art dealer) and Christopher Walken in his first role. Although he sees that surveillance camera have come into common use since he went into prison, he doesn't realize the rest of his gang is also being surveilled for other reasons.
TCM goes from Balsam to something completely different on Wednesday: Shirley Jones. Jones won a Supporting Actress Oscar for Elmer Gantry, which is on at 3:00 PM. But I'd like to mention a different film: The Cheyenne Social Club, which is on at 1:30 AM Thursday. James Stewart plays a cowboy in Texas who gets a letter that, because of Stewart's nomadic life, has taken some time to reach him. The letter states that a brother died in Cheyenne, WY, and bequeathed Stewart a business: the titular Cheyenne Social Club. So Stewart and his best friend (Henry Fonda) get on their horses and ride to Cheyenne, whereupon they discover that this "Social Club" is actually... a bordello! Managed in the interim by Shirley Jones, it's become quite the going concern. Stewart doesn't like the idea of owning a bordello and wants to close it down, making him unpopular. But one of the girls gets smacked around by stereotypical western bad guy Robert Wilke, and he decides to help her, which is going to run him afoul of Wilke's family.
On Thursday, TCM's star for the day is Glenda Farrell. Farrell was one of the great wisecracking blondes of the 1930s, although she never really got to star in the big movies. Either she was a supporting player, as in Little Caesar at 6:00 AM, or she was the lead in a B-movie, as in the seven Torchy Blane films, which are running back-to-back from Fly Away Baby at 12:45 PM to Smart Blonde at 8:00 PM. A combination of the both is I've Got Your Number, at 7:30 AM. Joan Blondell is actually the female lead here, playing a telephone operator who is friends with telephone repairmen Pat O'Brien and Allen Jenkins. Blondell has lost her job with the phone company because of something involving a gangster boyfriend committing wire fraud. O'Brien gets Blondell a job with a millionaire, but the boyfriend shows up to try to bilk the millionaire out of a bunch of bonds; it's the telephone company and all its repairmen to the rescue! Farrell plays the "other" blonde, showing up in a scene or two with Jenkins.
On of the more interesting, if flawed, movies, that you'll see is over on the Fox Movie Channel: The Day the Fish Came Out, Thursday at 11:15 AM. Released in 1967 but set in the recent future of 1972, the movie involves a British bomber plane armed with three nuclear devices that runs into trouble off a Greek island, forcing the pilots (Tom Courtenay and Colin Blakely) to dump their cargo and eject. They, knowing the international incident that would ensue if the bombs are discovered, try to find and hide the bombs themselves while figuring out a way to get in touch with the British military, which presents problems since the pilots washed ashore in just their tighty-whities. The British authorities, for their part, sent a special ops team (led by Sam Wanamaker), disguising them as a tourist company that wants to buy part of the island to build a resort -- presumably for gay couples, since their disguise involves everybody dressing like they just came from a 1970s pride march or something. While trying to build a road to the phony hotel, the locals find an ancient artifact, bringing tons of tourists as well as archeologist Candice Bergen. Meanwhile, a local goatherd and his wife found the third weapon, not knowing what's inside the lead container. The movie is part thriller, part spoof, and part Dr. Strangelove-style dark comedy, which unfortunately makes the movie a bit of a mess at times.
Friday brings 24 hours of movies starring Kirk Douglas to TCM. One of Douglas' films that I don't think I've recommended before is Along the Great Divide at 4:30 AM Saturday. Douglas plays Marshal Merrick, who rescues "Pop" Keith (Walter Brennan) from a lynch mob when he's believed to be rustling cattle. The Marshal plans to take Pop to court, but doing so means crossing the desert. Also complicating things is that in the incident, there was also a man killed, and the rancher who was the father of the dead man wants to see Pop hanged. Without the benefit of the law if that's what it takes. If all that isn't enough, Pop's daughter Ann is along with the party taking her father to court, and she's going to try to get Pop free from the Marshal if she can. Even if it means trying to woo Douglas. This is the first western Kirk Douglas made, and it's not bad, although he did better westerns later in his career.
For our last star in this year's Summer Under the Stars, Saturday is a full day of Rex Harrison movies. Harrison started off in Britain, making movies like the delightful Storm in a Teacup, airing at 7:45 AM Saturday on TCM. Sara Allgood (perhaps best known as the mother in How Green Was My Valley) plays a woman in a Scottish town who loves her dog, but unfortunately can't afford to pay for the dog license. So the Provost (roughly mayor) of the town (Cecil Parker), who has ambitions of higher office, orders that the dog be rounded up and put down. (Michael Vick would approve.) Rex Harrison is a journalist who's come up from London to take a job at the local newspaper in this small town. When he hears about the law that could mean the death of this innocent dog, he decides to make a big story about it. That's one problem, but another one is that Harrison has fallen in love with the Provost's daughter (Vivian Leigh). This movie is actually a comedy, and a very good one at that.
Sunday, September 1 is a special day for TCM. On all five Sundays in September, TCM is running a salute to the films of Alfred Hitchcock, which is going to run much of the day every Sunday and will include some of the lesser-seen silents that he made in Britain as part of Silent Sunday Nights. To be honest, I think that with the exception of some of the silents, I've already recommended all of the Hitchcock films that are airing. At least, I know I've recommended all of the films Hitchcock made from the time he came to America to make Rebecca in 1940. Much of Sunday will be movies from Hitchcock's American period, but the tribute kicks off at 10:00 AM with Murder!, from 1930. Herbert Marshall plays Sir John, a juror in a trial that involves the murder of one member of a band of traveling performers by another. The female defendant is found guilty and sentenced to death, but Sir John is convinced somebody else must have done it. So he decides to investigate and find out who the murderer is himself. The climax is a bit ludicrous in that it involves a character who is supposed to be mixed race and ashamed of it; the original story this movie is based on has the character being gay. Still, Murder! is an interesting movie with early glimpses of Hitchock's directorial touches.
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