Welcome to another edition of Fedya’s “Movies to Tivo” Thread, for the week of August 30-September 5, 2021. The only football this week is debating over cutdowns and practice squad signings, so that means there’s ample time to discuss the movies instead of bickering about football. We’ve got the final two stars in TCM’s Summer Under the Stars, as well as some interesting stuff once September rolls around. As always, all times are in Eastern unless otherwise mentioned.
Monday’s star on TCM is James Cagney. The x4 search function must be broken, since it can’t find any instances of my having mentioned The Oklahoma Kid before. It will be on at 2:30 PM. Cagney plays the titular Kid, real name Jim Kincaid, opposite another gangster out west, Whip McCord (Humphry Bogart). They’ve both headed out to Cherokee territory for the 1880s land rush, with McCord’s gang jump the claim of Jim’s father and brother, squatting on land that would eventually become Tulsa. Since the Kincaids are over a barrel, they decide to give McCord’s gang the rights to control all the vice in town, in exchange for the town getting built. But of course the vice is going to get out of control, and Jim is going to have to try to clean things up when McCord frames Jim’s dad for murder. Rosemary Lane plays Jane, daughter of a judge (Donald Crisp) and fiancée to Jim’s brother although you know there’s going to be a love triangle. This is the movie where Bogart famously described Cagney as looking like a mushroom in that ten-gallon hat.
We conclude Summer Under the Stars for this year with Fredric March on Tuesday. His films include the 1935 version of Anna Karenina, at 4:00 PM. Obviously, March doesn’t play Anna; that’s Great Garbo. She has a husband (Basil Rathbone) and son (Freddie Bartholomew) in St. Petersburg, when she’s called to Moscow by her niece Kitty (Maureen O’Sullivan) to patch up her parents’ marriage. On the train to Moscow, Anna meets Countess Vronsky (May Robson), mother of a military officer count (that’s Fredric March) who for some reason is always described as “dashing”, a word I wouldn’t necessarily use to describe March. Anyhow, Anna and the Count keep running into each other, and begin a torrid love affair even though Kitty had hoped to win Vrosnky’s heart. Anna’s husband is unsurprisingly pissed when he discovers the relationship, and bars Anna from seeing her own kid. So Anna and Vronsky go off to western Europe, but that’s not going to help things. Since it’s based on a popular novel, you probably know how the story ends.
A B movie that started showing up in the FXM rotation recently is The Brasher Doubloon. It’s going to be on again at 4:45 AM Tuesday. George Montgomery plays Raymond Chandler’s detective Philip Marlowe, who gets a call from Merle Davis (Nancy Guild), personal secretary to wealthy widow Elizabeth Murdock (Florence Bates) out in Pasadena. Apparently Murdock’s rare coin, the doubloon of the title, was stolen, and Murdock would like Marlowe to find it so the police don’t have to make an arrest and drag her name through the mud. As Marlowe investigates, however, he runs into two murders, and Murdock’s son Leslie (Conrad Janis) who really doesn’t want Marlowe digging into the case. Merle, meanwhile, seems to be somebody who would have been put in an institution back in those days but is being kept around for charitable reasons… or perhaps something more sinister. And there’s a lot of blackmail going around, too.
TCM is going back to school on Wednesday morning and afternoon, including a time warp to the 1960s in Get Yourself a College Girl, at 6:15 PM. Mary Ann Mobley, a former Miss America, plays Terry Taylor, a student at the the stodgy Wyndham School for Girls. She’s secretly a songwriter of the sort of popular music the trustees of the college, including Wyndham’s grandson, Senator Morrison (Willard Waterman) think will bring disrepute to the college. So when Terry’s music publisher Gary Underwood (Chad Everett) calls the college to get in touch with Terry, they’re pissed, telling her not to have any contact with boys over the upcoming Christmas holiday at Sun Valley. So Terry and her friends Sue Ann (Chris Noel), Lynne (Nancy Sinatra), and teacher Marge (Joan O’Brien) go off to Sun Valley. Gary and an artist follow to try to get a painting of Terry for advertising purposes, as do the Senator and his top aide in a movie where the plots don’t quite go together. It’s the disparate musical acts, however, that are the most interesting here, from the Dave Clark Five to the Animals, and Astrud Gilberto doing “The Girl from Ipanema”.
For those of you who like 80s cheese, you can always try Nighthawks, which will be on StarzEncore Classics at 1:41 AM Thursday. Sylvester Stallone plays Deke DaSilva, a NYPD detective partnered with Matthew Fox (Billy Dee Williams) working in the violent Street Crimes Unit. But the two get transferred to an anti-terrorism for a special mission. It seems that a terrorist named Wulfgar (Rutger Hauer) had been operating in London, but his latest terrorist bombing killed some children, so he beat a hasty retreat just ahead of the police first to Paris, where he met his partner in crime Shakka (Persis Khambatta), and then headed to New York. The New York police and their London counterparts, headed by Hartman (Nigel Davenport), think Wulfgar is going to go after a United Nations function. He does, but he’s also got some trump cards up his sleeve, including DaSilva’s estranged wife Irene (Lindsay Wagner).
TCM is looking at the transition from silent movies to sound on Thursday night, kicking off at 8:00 PM with The Comic. Dick Van Dyke plays the titular comic, an old silent screen star named Billy Bright whose funeral, narrated by Billy himself, kicks off the movie. Flash back 50 years, when Billy made the move from vaudeville to movies, although at first director Frank Powers (Cornell Wilde) isn’t so sure. But Billy becomes a success, marries his leading lady Mary (Michele Lee), and loses her because of his flirting with other women and his penchant to drink. It nearly destroys him, although his best friend Cockey (Mickey Rooney in a character based on silent star Ben Turpin) tries to help him along the way. Eventually talk show host Steve Allen (playing himself) rediscovers the old silent movies and books Billy for a spot, which leads to a third act that Billy might have the chance to enjoy if he lives long enough. Much of this is loosely based on the life of Buster Keaton.
It’s hard to believe, but it’s coming up on a quarter-century since the release of The Full Monty. You can see it this week at 2:00 AM Friday on Flix. Sheffield, England had a seemingly bright-future as a producer of steel in 1970s Britain, but the world economy changed and most of the factories closed down, leaving many of the men there in much worse jobs or on the dole. Gaz (Robert Carlyle) is divorced from his wife and with a son Nathan, of whom he’s in danger of losing his share of custody not being able to pay the child support. One day, Gaz and his friend Dave (Mark Addy) see posters for a Chippendale’s show that brings the ladies in in droves. This gives him an idea to make the money for the child support: Gaz and a bunch of his friends will put on a similar show for the women, but with the added step of going “the full Monty”, or completely nude! Not that any of them are excited about actually going all the way, but they also need the money, and there’s the peer pressure not to let each other down. Word starts getting out around town….
Friday marks the birth anniversary of Alan Ladd, who was born on Sept. 3, 1913. So TCM is running a bunch of his films on Friday morning and afternoon, including The Iron Mistress at 1:45 PM. Ladd plays Jim Bowie, the colorful frontiersman who died at the Alamo, but how much of this movie is accurate is a good question. (At least it ends before the Alamo and doesn’t have him surviving that battle.) Here, Bowie is a backwoodsman in 1920s Louisiana who travels to New Orleans to sell the family’s lumber. He meets lovely Judalon (Virginia Mayo) who can twist men around her finger, and soon enough she gets Jim involved in a duel. Some time passes and they meet again, and Judalon is once again the femme fatale, claiming to love Jim but planning to marry a rich cotton grower instead, leading to Jim fighting a second duel. Eventually, though, Jim does wind up in Texas, but Judalon still has that baleful presence. Oh, and there’s a very fanciful story about the creation of the Bowie knife.
Over on StarzEncore Westerns is a Preston Sturges Comedy: The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend, at 2:19 AM Saturday. Betty Grable plays the blonde, named Freddie, working as a saloon singer in Bashful Bend, and having a boyfriend Blackie (Cesar Romero). Blackie, unfortunately, is a bit of a ladies’ man, constantly looking at the other women. Since Freddie is a crack shot, she tries to shoot Blackie, but misses him and hits the local judge, forcing her to flee town. She and her maid find the luggage of a woman passing through town who died, enabling them to escape to Snake City. The only problem is that the dead woman was going to Snake City to be the town’s teacher in their one-room schoolhouse. Local mine owner Charles (Rudy Vallee) starts pursuing Freddie romantically, but you know that Blackie is going to show up looking for Freddie, leading to the final showdown. In a truly bizarre bit of casting, look for 40-something Sterling Holloway as one of the students.
If you want a biopic that’s open about its subject, try The Joker Is Wild, on TCM at 10:15 PM Saturday. Frank Sinatra plays Joe E. Lewis, who was a popular nightclub singer in the 1920s. (The song Sinatra sings here, “All the Way”, won an Oscar.) Unfortunately, this being the Roaring Twenties, the club was Mob-owned, and the mobster who owned it had more control over Lewis than Lewis liked. So Lewis tried to bolt, which didn’t really work as the Mob found him and slashed his vocal cords, ruining his singing career. Many years later, in the 1930s, Lewis is in New York performing with Sophie Tucker (playing herself), where old friend Swifty Morgan (Jackie Cooper) finds that Lewis has developed a vicious sense of humor and would make a great stand-up comic. He has success at this, but he’s still bitter over having lost his music career, turning to drink to compensate. This screws up his personal life, including a relationship with socialite Letty Page (Jeanne Crain), and a marriage to character actress Martha Stewart (Mitzi Gaynor). Can Lewis have a happy third act?
We’re into a new month, which means a new Star of the Month on TCM. This time, that’s going to be Paul Robeson, whose movies will be appearing on Sundays in the brief slot leading up to Silent Sunday Nights, since Robeson didn’t make too many movies. This Sunday, TCM is running Body and Soulat 8:00 PM, which is an interesting silent that was marred by edits forced by various boards of censorship since the original edit was scandalous; that will be followed by a documentary.