Welcine to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" thread, for the week of August 4-10, 2014. There's still no meaningful football, so fill the time with some interesting movies instead. We've got a full week of Summer Under the Stars on TCM, so there are seven different stars being spotlighted on TCM. Oh, there are some good movies elsewhere, too. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless oterhwise mentioned.
On Monday on TCM, we're going to get a full day of movies with Judy Garland. I'm not her biggest fan, especially not of her singing, but she certainly showed she could act in a movie like The Clock, which is on at 10:15 PM Monday. Garland plays a working girl in New York who by chance meets serviceman on leave Robert Walker when she trips over his bag and breaks the heel of her shoe. They spend a few hours together, and then make a date to meet under the titular clock in a hotel lobby. They nearly don't meet, but you know that the two are right for each other as they have a series of adventures including having to help a milkman (James Gleason) do his route. Will the two young lovers be able to get married before the end of Walker's leave? It's a little story, but wonderfully told. The part of the milkman's wife is played by James Gleason's real-life wife of forty-plus years, Lucile.
Tuesday brings us Barbara Stanwyck for an entire day. Her films include Cry Wolr at 4:15 PM. Stanwyck plays Sandra, whose husband James just died while he was away, so she goes to his family to deal with the will and that stuff. James' uncle Mark (Errol Flynn) says oh no, there's no way the two of you could have been married, since James didn't tell him about it. James' half-brother, a politician, also treats Sandra like dirt. But she hears strange sounds in the isolated house where the family lives, which leads her to believe that there's something untoward going on. The only one willing to give her any help, though, is James' sister Julie (Geraldine Brooks). Will Sandra figure out what happened to James before anything happens to her? Wrell, you can probably figure out the answer to that question is "yes", but the ending doesn't turn out to be quite so satisfying.
Wednesday on TCM is Paul Muni day. He's generally remembered for his hard-hitting dramas, but he could actually do comedy, as you can see in Hi, Nellie!, at 7:45 AM Wednesday. Muni plays the managing editor of a newspaper. When a bank manager and half a million bucks both go missing, every paper in town figures the manager absconded with the money. Muni won't print that without proof. For this, the publisher demotes him -- to writing "Nellie's" lonelyhearts column. As luck would have it, he gets a letter which just happens to tie in to the disappearances. Also, with the help of hard-boiled, wisecracking reporter Glenda Farrell (this a year before she started playing Torchy Blane), he helps solve the case of the disappearances. Of course, he was right all along, but since this was a routine programmer, you knew that all along. Warner Bros. remade it several times, including as Ronald Reagan's first film, Love Is on the Air.
Over on FXM Retro, you've got a chance this week to catch I'd Climb the Highest Mountain, at 9:30 AM Wednesday. Susan Hayward stars as the new Mrs. Thompson, a city girl at the beginning of the last century who at the start of the movie has just got married to Rev. Thompson (William Lundigan). His Protestant denomination for which Rev. Thompson is a minister has sent him to do a stint in the poor hill country of northern Georgia, which is sure to be tough on Mrs. Thompson who isn't so handy around the house, isn't so good at dealing with privation, and isn't anywhere near as strong a believer as her husband. However, she married him, and their love grows as they deal with a series of trying events told in vignette form. These include a subplot about a black sheep (Rory Calhoun) who loves a young woman (Barbara Bates) her father doesn't approve of, and a freethinker (Alexander Knox) who considers religion decidedly bogus. There's also the epidemic.... It's filmed in nice color and is suitably nostaligic, although nothing that will never make any all-time great list.
TCM's star for Thursday is James Stewart. One of his films airing that I don't think I've recommended before is Malaya, at 2:30 PM. During World War II, Japan took over Southeast Asia, which was a problem for the Allies, since that was the region that produced much of the world's supply of rubber. Stewart plays Royer, a reporter working for Lionel Barrymore's newspaper who comes up with a plan to smuggle rubber out of Malaya. To do that, though, they need somebody with knowledge of the area, and that man, Callahan (Spencer Tracy) just happens to be in prison in Alcatraz. Ah, but there's a war on, so the US Government is willing to let Callahan out and give these two access to US gold to get the rubber. Of course, once the Japanese figure out what's going on, there's going to be hell to pay. Sydney Greenstreet plays the contact in Malaya, John Hodiak the Washington man, and Valentina Cortese the love interest.
Speaking of synthetic rubber, that's a key part of the plot of the film High Pressure, which is on TCM at 4:45 AM Sunday to wrap up William Powell's day in Summer Under the Stars. Powell stars as a fast-talking promoter who could sell anything, much to the chagrin of girlfriend Evelyn Brent, who just wants him to settle down. His latest find is an inventor who seemingly has a process that can produce synthetic rubber from sewage. And he's already sold lots of shares in the company he's formed to commercialize the process, with the help of frontman Guy Kibbee. And then when it comes time to get the inventor, they all find that he's gone missing. Or was there even an inventor in the first place, and if there was did his process actually work? How is Powell going to get out of this one?
If for some bizarre reason you don't like James Stewart, you could switch back to FXM Retro and watch Sweet Rosie O'Grady, which is airing twice, at 10:40 AM Thursday and again at 4:30 AM Friday. Betty Grable plays the title role, an American stage actress who's made it big in England and is about to marry a duke (Reginald Gardiner) and come back to the States. The problem is, there's a tabloid reporter at the "Police Gazette" (Robert Young) who knows the scandalous truth about Grable, who was burlesque singer Rosie O'Grady in the US but took a different name when she went to the UK. So to get back at him, she makes up a story for all the other press that she is in fact in love with him and not the Duke, and going to marry him. Adolphe Menjou plays Young's long-suffering editor. If this sounds familiar, it's because Fox had made this story several years earlier as Love Is News.
Summer Under the Stars usualy includes one foreign star, and this year, that's Jeanne Moreau. Her mostly French films fill TCM's lineup for 24 hours on Friday, concluding with Diary of a Chambermaid at 3:45 AM Saturday. Mureau playse CÉlÉstine, a young woman in 1930s France who takes on a job as a chambermaid at a manor somewhere out in the French countryside. What she finds is a dysfunctional family: the husband is a sex fiend, the wife is frigid, and the wife's father has a shoe fetish. Oh, and Joseph the groundskeeper is the worst of them all, an out-and-out fascist brute, this being the 1930s. Needless to say, CÉlÉstine discovers that she doesn't like the job, and when the patriarch dies, she decides to quit. That is, until she hears that there's been a murder which she's certain Joseph must have committed, so she's determined to get him found guilty.
On Sunday, we have a full day of Carole Lombard movies on TCM. One that I think I haven't recommended before is The Gay Bride, at 2:15 PM Sunday. Lombard plays a chorus girl who wants easy money, so she decides to marry a gangster (Nat Pendleton) even though she doesn't like him, in the hopes that he'll be bumped off and she'll get his money. Chester Morris plays Pendleton's bodyguard, assigned at times to look after Lombard. He doesn't like her, knowing she's only married to his boss for the money, but you know that they're going to turn out to be right for each other once Pendleton does get bumped off. After that happens, Lombard goes through a series of gangster husbands only to find that this sort of life isn't all it's cracked up to be. Thankfully, Morris is still there to save the day. There's a lot wrong with the plot of this movie, but Lombard and Morris are good enough to make the film worth watching.
Unfortunately the pickings for shorts is slim this week since TCM currenly only has shorts listed in the schedule for tomorrow. But as Packer fans we can all have fun laughing during Night Life in Chicago, on at about 5:45 PM Monday, or after In the Good Old Summertime (4:00 PM, 103 min). This is another of those Travetalks shorts, this time going to Chicago, but mostly to the Loop and the hotels that had floor shows in their ballrooms back then. You'd think that at least they could have gotten an Applebee's or something. Then again, this short might give Jay Cutler some ideas. Oh, watch for Calvin Coolidge's Vice-President. I'm sorry to say this isn't the greatest of the Traveltalks shorts, and not only because the subject is a crappy place like Chicago.
Original Post