Welcome to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" Thread, for the week of August 26-September 1, 2019. Crappy turf may affect football games, but not movies, and you'll get full movies here as opposed to an 80% simulacrum. We've got the final six stars in TCM's Summer Under the Stars before September 1 comes along, as well as interesting stuff on many of the other movie channels. As always, all times are in Eastern unless otherwise mentioned.
On Monday, we're getting treated to an entire day of the films of Mary Astor. While she's probably best known for The Maltese Falcon, the movie I'd like to mention this week is A Successful Calamity, which will be on TCM at 12:30 PM Monday. Astor plays Emmy, wife of Henry (George Arliss). Henry is an industrialist who has just returned from Europe after taking part in US efforts to rebuild after World War I. He returns home to find that his children (Evalyn Knapp and William Janney) are all grown up and doing adult things, and neither they nor his wife want to seem to spend any time with him. So with a little help from his butler (Grant Mitchell), he concocts a scheme to convince his family that they've actually gone broke, to see if it will bring the family back together. The daughter has to decide whether to marry for love or money, while the son actually has to go to work! And how will Henry get rich again? George Arliss was one of the prominent stage actors of his day, with talking pictures coming along when he was pushing 60. Warner Bros. put him in a lot of very slight stuff like this, but he always takes his roles and runs with them, making the stuff well worth watching.
Up against A Successful Calamity is Always, over on StarzEncore at 12:51 PM Monday (and three hours later if you have the west coast feed; also, it will be on Starz Kids and Family three times on Sunday). Richard Dreyfus plays Pete, a hotshot pilot fighting forest fires in one of those bucket planes dropping water from above, sent out by dispatcher girlfriend Dorinda (Holly Hunter). One day he gets a little too daring, and gets killed saving his partner Al (John Goodman). Pete's mentor angel Hap (Audrey Hepburn in her final film) sends him back to earth on a duty to mentor a young new pilot, Ted (Brad Johnson the actor, not the crappy Vikings QB). Ted is determined to become part of the bucket brigade but doesn't seem to be competent enough to do it. Worse, Pete finds that Ted has met Pete's old girlfriend Dorinda, and is beginning to fall in love with her which distresses Pete who still carries a torch for her even though he's supposed to be an angel and not have such worldly concerns. If all of this sounds familiar, it's because it's a remake of A Guy Named Joe from back in the 1940s.
Tuesday's star on TCM is Walter Brennan. One of his movies that I don't think I've mentioned before is Blood on the Moon, which concludes the day at 4:30 AM Wednesday. The star here is actually Robert Mitchum, playing unemployed cowhand Jim Garry. He gets word from his friend Tate (Robert Preston) out in the New Mexico territory that there's a good job open for Jim out there. On the face of it, it doesn't seem so bad, helping protect homesteaders (one of them is Brennan) from cattle rancher John Lufton (Tom Tully), but it's really a scam. In fact, Tate has concocted a scheme with the local Indian agent to force Lufton to sell his cattle at an artificially low price, and Tate doesn't really care about the homesteaders at all. Jim meets Lufton's daughter Amy (Barbara Bel Geddes) and falls in love with her, although she worries about him being on the settlers' side. That is until Tate causes a stampede that kills a man. And to complicate matters, Tate falls in love with Amy's sister Carol (Phyllis Thaxter). An interesting western unlike much of what was being made in the late 1940s.
I think it's been quite some time since I've mentioned Love Me Tender. It's going to be on StarzEncore Classics this week, at 4:47 PM Tuesday. Elvis Presley made his movie debut as Clint Reno, youngest borther in a family of hardscrabble Texas farmers. The older brothers all go off to fight in the Civil War but Clint, too young, stays behind. When he receives word that the eldest brother has dies, Clint marry's the brother's fiancée Cathy (Debra Paget). But, it turns out that the eldest brother Vance (Richard Egan) didn't die, so there's one problem. There's another, which is that the older brothers had carried out orders to rob a shipment of Union money, but it turns out that they carried out the order a day after the war ended not realizing the war was over, so what they did was technically a crime and not an act of war. The Union Army, under the command of Major Kincaid (Bruce Bennett) wants to arrest Vance, but the local administrator is willing to pardon him if he gives the money back. But will he? The Clint Reno part wasn't supposed to be particularly big until Fox landed Elvis, at which point the part was beefed up and songs were added, including the title song based on an old Civil War tune “Aura Lee”.
TCM's star for Wednesday is June Allyson, whose films include The Reformer and the Redhead, at 10:30 AM. Allyson plays the redhead, a young woman named Kathleen Maguire, opposite her real-life husband Dick Powell as reformer Andrew Hale. Andrew is a lawyer running for mayor in his small town, and Kathleen comes to him looking for help one day. Her father Kevin was a zookeeper at the local zoo, but got fired for political reasons, and she wants Hale to help her dad get his job back. The problem is that the man who got Dad fired, Commodore Parker (Ray Collins) is a bigwig whose help Andrew may need in order to get elected. And to complicate matters, both Andrew and Kathleen have a connection to the Commodore's daughter (Kathleen Freeman), which makes things even more of a mess when Andrew falls in love with Kathleen. And to top it all off, a lion escapes from the zoo! Fairly light stuff, but with a cast that makes it work.
I should make brief mention that the star for Thursday in TCM's Summer Under the Stars is Paul Lukas. He won an Oscar for his performance in Watch on the Rhine, which is showing up at 8:00 PM. Personally, though, I prefer a movie like Confessions of a Nazi Spy, which is on the schedule at 2:30 PM, or even something with him in a smaller role, like I Found Stella Parish at 9:30 AM. This one is a Kay Francis vehicle with her as a stage actress with a past, found out by newspaperman Ian Hunter.
It may be hard to believe, but it's been 30 years since the release of My Left Foot. The movie is going to be on this week, at 11:50AM Thursday on MoreMax. Based on a true story, the movie won Daniel Day-Lewis the first of his three Oscars for playing Christy Brown. Brown was born to a ridiculously large family in Dublin in the 1930s, and was born with a severe case of cerebral palsy. Doctors suggested putting Christy in an institution, but his mother (Brenda Cricket) refused, believing that there is intrinsic value in every human life. Christy had one usable limb in his left leg, and he was taught to put a paintbrush between his toes in order to paint. With the help of therapist Dr. Cole (Fiona Shaw), Christy learned how to speak better, eventually becoming an accomplished artist and writer, including the book of the same title as the movie. Unfortunately, real life didn't have quite the happy ending for Christy, who married an alcoholic who most likely beat him; he choked to death at the young age of 49. 
Friday brings the films of Susan Hayward to TCM. She made a lot of potboilers in the late 50s and 60s, and a good example is Ada, which will be on at 12:30 PM. Hayward plays the title role, a woman of ill repute in an unnamed southern state who is introduced to one Bo Gillis (Dean Martin) at the beginning of the movie. Bo is running for governor and apparently some hope that by having him cavort with a hooker, it will derail the campaign. Instead, Bo marries Ada and wins the election, the two going off to the governor's mansion. However, the real power behind the throne is Sylvester Marin (Wilfrid Hyde-White), who drafts the bills for the governor to sign. At least, until Ada cottons on to what's happening and puts a stop to it. So Sylvester has Bo's car wired to explode, and while he's recovering, Ada becomes acting governor. And horror of horrors, she actually has a mind of her own and proposes things that the good old boys don't like. So they try to frame her over her past and bring her down. As I said, it's pure melodrama, but one of those fun melodramas for being over the top.
I haven't mentioned anything over on StarzEncore Westerns yet this week. This time around it won't be one of those 50s B westerns, but instead Will Penny, at 4:31 AM Saturday. Charlton Heston plays Will, an aging cowboy who, needing a job for the winter, takes one as a "line rider", somebody who mans the cabins in the mountains over the winter to catch any straggling cattle and make certain nobody's squatting on the property. It turns out that somebody is squatting in the cabin: Catherine Allen (Joan Hackett) and her son Horace, who are there because the guide taking them west to Oregon where Catherine was to be reunited with her husband just abandoned them. Will gives them a week to leave, but while on patrol during that week, he runs into the nasty preacher Quint (Donald Pleasance) and his sons, who attack Will. While Will is recovering with a lot of nursing from Catherine, the two begin to develop an uneasy alliance, especially with Horace seeing a father figure in Will. Will knows there's the joint danger of his boss finding squatters, as well as Quint and family showing up to finish the job of killing Will.
The final star in Summer Under the Stars is Kirk Douglas, whose movies show up on TCM on Saturday. Sure enough, The Bad and The Beautiful gets yet another airing, at 2:00 PM. But the movie I'll mention this wee is one that doesn't show up so often: The Vikings, at 11:30 PM. Ernest Borgnine(!) is Viking King Ragnar, who has a son Einar (Kirk Douglas). One of the Vikings' raids of Northumbria results in pillaging and the rape of an English princess by Ragnar that knocks her up and results in a half-brother for Einar named Eric (Tony Curtis). Eric is raised as a slave, with he and Einar not knowing their real relationship. Eventually Einar and Eric meet the Welsh princess Morgana (Janet Leigh, Curtis' real-life wife at the time) on one of their raids and both want her. Eric flees to England with Ragnar as a hostage, and Einar goes following behind both to avenge Dad's death and take Morgana for his own. It leads to the climactic showdown where Einar and Eric learn the truth about their background.
Finally, Sunday night sees a pair of psychological thrillers on TCM. The first of them is the 1962 classic Cape Fear, at 8:00 AM. Gregory Peck plays the lawyer who witnessed a serious crime and testified against the defendant (Robert Mitchum). Mitchum has gotten out of jail, and returns to Peck's hometown to extract revenge on Peck, by stalking him with the eventual goal of going after Peck's wife (Polly Bergen) and daughter (Lori Martin). The movie was remade in 1991 with Nick Nolte in the Peck role and Robert De Niro taking Mitchum's part; Peck and Mitchum had brief cameos. The 1991 version is also on this week, at 2:20 PM Friday on StarzEncore Classics.