TCM's first star this week is Charlton Heston on Monday. Heston won an Oscar for playing Ben-Hur in the 1959 version of the story, and that movie is airing at 10:30 PM. But more on Ben-Hur later. There's also an intriguing remake of A Man For All Seasons at 5:15 PM that I haven't seen before. Heston had wanted to play Thomas More in the 1966 version, but that part went to Paul Scofield. Two decades later, Heston got the chance to produce and direct an adaptation of the play, so this time he cast himself as Thomas More, with Vanessa Redgrave playing his wife.
But, the Heston movie I'd really like to mention this week is Diamond Head, at 10:45 AM Monday. This is one of those movies based on a sprawling novel, with the setting being Hawaii just after it gained statehood in 1959. Charlton Heston plays a widower whose family owns an entire island, which has a very productive farm that's made the family quite wealthy. Heston is very protective of the farm's interests and doesn't want to see anything jeopardize them, but he's also decided to run for one of the two new Senate seats. He's got a native Hawaiian mistress (France Nuyen), but can't stand it when his little sister (Yvette Mimieux) falls in love with a native Hawaiian (James Darren) herself, which leads to tragedy for all involved. (Aline MacMahon as Darren's mother is even more ludicrously cast.) The source material is fairly soap operaish, but the movie was shot in Hawaii, which is a guarantee of a lot of nice scenery.
Moving ahead to Tuesday, we get 24 hours of movies with Joan Fontaine in the cast. If you like Alfred Hitchcock films, both of her movies that she made with him are on the schedule: Suspicion at 6:00 PM, followed by Rebecca at 8:00 PM. However, I'd like to recommend a movie directed by a different master of suspense, Fritz Lang. That movie Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, is on TCM at 12:30 PM Tuesday. In this one, Fontaine plays the fiancÉe of writer Dana Andrews, and daughter of newspaper publisher Sidney Blackmer. Her father is vehemently opposed to captial punishment, especially when the guilty verdicts that bring a death sentance are obtained by circumstantial evidence. Dad comes up with a "brilliant" idea: plant circumstantial evidence in an unsovled murder such that his future son-in-law (who is in on the plot) would be suspected of a capital crime, only to have the exonerating evidence be revealed after a guilty verdict is obtained. She doesn't know about the ruse, however, which is one problem. A much bigger problem is that as Dad is taking the exculpatory evidence to his safe for safe-keeping, he gets in a car crash which kills him and destroys the evidence. Oops. Can the fiancÉ get himself out of a crime we all know he didn't commit?
Wednesday brings a morning and night of movies starring Fred MacMurray. You could watch one of his greatest roles, in Double Indemnity, at 10:00 PM Wednesday on TCM. But a MacMurray movie I haven't mentioned before is Borderline at 11:30 AM. MacMurray plays a federal drug agent, but more on him later. Raymond Burr plays a drug dealer who's in Mexico where he's getting mules to take the drugs over the border into the US. Claire Trevor plays a Los Angeles police detective who's been assigned to get Burr because of his predilection for racy women; she goes down to Mexico as a dancer at the local nightclub. Just as she's about to get close to Burr, in comes MacMurray, who, although a federal agent, is playing the part of a gangster, so that Burr won't know who he is. He steals the drug shipment as well as Trevor, with neither of them knowing that the other is working for the police. Things get even more complicated as the two runaways fall in love with each other, It Happened One Night style. This is part comedy, part noir, and entirely bizarre.
Thursday on TCM means a full day of Ramon Novarro, who started his career in the silent era, so we get quite a few silent films, for those who like such films. Perhaps Novarro's best-remembered role is as Ben-Hur in the 1925 version of Ben-Hur, which is airing at 8:00 PM Thursday. It runs about an hour and a half less then the Charlton Heston version, while still having the iconic chariot race scene against Massala (Francis X. Bushman), as well as several sequences in two-strip Technicolor. Frankly, I like it even more than the Charlton Heston version. But it's also a movie I've mentioned a number of times in the past.
One of the Novarro movies I don't think I've ever mentioned before is a talkie: The Son-Daughter, which is on at 4:30 PM Thursday on TCM. In this one, Novarro plays a Chinese-American!
Set in San Francisco in 1911, Novarro plays Tom Lee, in love with Lien Wha, played by Helen Hayes. Her father, Dong Tong (what kind of name is that?! -- the character is played by utterly non-Asian Lewis Stone). This being 1911, the Republic of China is just about to be founded, which divides the Chinese-Americans of San Francisco, with some supporting the republicans and some supporting the emperor. Matters come to a head when Dad, needing to raise money for the republican cause, decides to sell off his daughter to the highest bidder! Daughter, meanwhile, is extremely sorry she couldn't be a son and go fight for her father's beliefs. It was normal in 1932 for utterly white actors; see The Hatchet Man if you ever get the chance.Friday's star for TCM is Steve McQueen. If you missed Never So Few during last month's salute to Star of the Month Paul Henried, then Friday at 9:30 AM is your chance to watch it again. McQueen also famously played one of the teenagers who tries to get the square parents to realize there's a giant blob of cherry pie filling terrorizing the town in The Blob, which concludes McQueen's day at 4:30 AM Saturday. In between, you can see McQueen's love of fast cars in the car chase scene in Bullitt (4:00 PM), or McQueen racing his own car in Le Mans (6:00 PM).
But not being that much of a Steve McQueen fan, I'd like to mention something on another channel. Martin Ritt was a well known director, having made such quality movies as Hud and Sounder. But he got a chance to act in the movie End of the Game, which you can catch at 1:00 PM Friday on the Fox Movie Channel. Ritt plays a Swiss police detective who is assigned the case of another police detective who was murdered in his car in an out of the way place. Ritt is at the end of the line, as he knows his health is failing, and is given much younger detective Jon Voight as a partner. Ritt, however, knows that hsi old nemesis, Robert Shaw, has something to do with the murder. Voight, for his part, gets involved with one of the key people involved with the case, the deceased's girlfriend Jacqueline Bisset. Maximilian Schell, generally known for his acting, directed; as with Diamond Head earlier in the week, the movie is filmed largely on location, so it would look really nice if Fox could show a widescreen print.
Lana Turner was always lovely, and you can watch her for 24 hours on Saturday on TCM. The day kicks off with one of her earliest roles, a fairly brief one in They Won't Forget, at 6:00 AM Saturday. Turner plays a student at a "business college" (secretarial school) in Georgia. One Confederate Memorial Day, she goes back to get something she left in the classroom, and gets murdered! (I told you it was a brief role.) Suspicion falls on her teacher (Edward Norris), especially since he's a northerner. Enter Claude Rains, the local district attorney, who sees this case as a chance to advance his political career. This turns the case into a circus, giving Norris no real chance to prove his innocence. This movie is actually based upon a real case, that of Leo Frank and Mary Phagan, although some of the facts are changed. A very powerful movie, with an excellent performance by Rains, even if he doesn't sound convincingly Southern.
The last star for the week is Henry Fonda on Sunday. The Essentials, Jr. selection, The Grapes of Wrath at 8:00 PM Sunday, might be appropriate for older kids, although I have a feeling younger kids might find it boring. And if you liked Joan Fontaine in those Hitchcock films on Tuesday, you might like Fonda as The Wrong Man at 3:15 PM, in which Fonda is mistaken for the man who held up a series of liquor stores, and for years is unable to prove his innocence.
However, I've recommended both of those before. So instead, I'd like to mention a movie that I don't think I've mentioned here before: Spencer's Mountain, at 9:30 AM Sunday. The title may sound familiar, however: the movie is based upon the novel of the same title by Earl Hamner, Jr.; the novel was loosely adapted in the 1970s for the popular, long-running TV series The Waltons. In this movie, however, the action is set in Wyoming, and closer the present-day early 1960s instead of the Great Depression. Fonda plays the father of all the children, with Maureen O'Hara playing his wife, and Donald Crisp making his film farewell at 81 playing Grandpa. The main story involves son Clay-Boy (instead of John-Boy), who's been a very successful high school student, with everybody wanting hm to go to college and make a name for himself. Of course, that requires money, and Dad struggles to make that money to provide a better life for Clay-Boy and the rest of his children.
As for the shorts, the interesting From the Four Corners is showing up at 7:40 PM Tuesday on TCM. When the UK declared war on the Nazis in 1939, there was a big debate in other parts of the former Empire over how or whether to come to Britain's aid. Three actual soldiers -- one each from Canada, Australia, and New Zealand -- meet on a street corner in London, where they just happen to meet passerby Leslie Howard, who, with the outbreak of the war, dedicated himself to the war effort, including making propaganda films like this one, in which he reminds the soldiers "from the four corners of the world" that they're fighting not for Britain, but for the ideals of rule of law and liberty that Britain stands for and brought to the rest of the world. Howard is good as always, even if this was designed as propaganda.