Welcome to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" Thread, for the week of August 6-12, 2018. Training camp has been open for some time now and the injuries are beginning to pile up, possible dooming the Packers' season. (The Vikings' season was doomed before training camp even opened.) If you'r worried about the injuries, why not R-E-L-A-X with some good movies? TCM's Summer Under the Stars brings seven more stars this week, and there are interesting movies on other channels, too. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
On Monday, TCM will have 24 hours of Audrey Totter movies. Totter was a femme fatale in a number of interesting noirs, one of which is Tension, which will be on at 8:00 PM. Totter plays Claire Quimby, the wife of Warren Quimby (Richard Basehart). He's a pharmacist who mans the all-night pharmacy since one of the pharmacies has to be open for any emergency prescriptions, and it's good money that will enable him to put a down payment on a house to please his wife. Except that she doesn't seem to be very pleased by it. The fact that she's started taking up with wealthy Barney (Lloyd Gough) might have something to do with it. Then Warren gets a brilliant idea. Soft contact lenses are a new thing, this being a late-1940s movie, so he concludes that if he gets a set, nobody will recognize him when he's wearing those instead of his glasses. Really. It's idiotic, except that it works, and he creates a second identity “Paul” living in an apartment next to Mary (Cyd Charisse). Warren's plan is to murder Barney while disguised as Paul, and then go back to living as Warren! He's too mousy to go through with the plan, but then he finds out not long after he chickened out that somebody actually did kill Barney.
We know that the Vikings suck. Can even the comic skills of Monty Python save the Vikings? You've got a chance to find out if you watch Erik the Viking, which will be on StarzEncore Classics at 5:08 AM Monday. Terry Jones directed (and has a ole as King Arnulf of the mythical island of Hy-Brasil) this tale of the Viking times. Erik (Tim Robbins) is a Viking who's grown tired of the whole raping and pillaging thing and the dead-end life it's created for the Vikings, so eventually he asks Freya (Eartha Kitt) for advice. Apparently the Vikings have entered the age of Ragnarok, so Erik will have to make the dangerous voyage to the land of Asgard to try to get the gods to stop it. Of course, there are other Vikings who have made a profit from all the pillaging, and they don't want Erik to succeed in his quest. John Cleese plays Halfdan, one of the Vikings trying to stop Erik. Also in the cast is Mickey Rooney as Erik's grandfather.
TCM's star for Wednesday is Jeanette MacDonald, who is an acquired taste because of that operetta singing. One of the best movies she was in is San Francisco, which TCM is showing at 2:00 PM Wednesday. MacDonald plays Mary Blake, a pure and virtuous opera singer who wants to make it in opera in the San Francisco of about 1905. Now, if you know your history you know that's leading up to the earthquake of 1906, which will form the spectacular last act of the movie. Anyhow, when Mary gets to Frisco she meets the society guy Jack (Jack Holt) and the Barbary Coast night spot operator Blackie (Clark Gable). Both men love her, but Blackie also sees Mary as a way for him to move up the social ladder since polite society doesn't particularly care for the Barbary Coast. Father Tim (Spencer Tracy essaying yet another priestly role) tries to keep Blackie on the straight and narrow. The earthquake special effects are quite good for 1936 standards, and the story overcomes MacDonald's singing.
Over on StarzEncore Westerns, one that I don't think I've recommended before is Gun Belt, at 9:14 AM Thursday. George Montgomery plays Billy Ringo, a gunfighter who's decided he's going to go straight and start a ranch with his nephew Chip (Tab Hunter; this wasn't one of the movies TCM ran in the recent Hunter tribute), and get marrtied to Arlene (Helen Westcott). Unfortunately, there are sinister forces who don't want to go straight. Local corrupt businessman Frazer (Hugh Sanders) decides that he's going to rob a shipment of gold from the Wells Fargo stage, and to that end he organizes two competing groups of outlaws to do the deed, as well as springing Billy's brother Matt (John Dehner) from prison; Matt just happens to be Chip's father. It's Matt's job to try to convince Billy to take part in the hold-up; who knows what Frazer is going to do to them if Billy doesn't join in. Then again, Frazer is just as likely to double-cross him as so often happens in heist movies.
Thursday on TCM brings a full day of Walter Matthau. Since I'm mentioning two other movies with heists, I suppose I could briefly mention Charley Varrick (2:15 AM Friday), which has Matthau robbing a bank in a small town in New Mexico, only to find out that the money he robbed actually belonged to the Mob. Oops. Or, since it's football season, I could mention The Fortune Cookie (10:00 PM Thursday), which has Matthau playing a lawyer with a brother-in-law (Jack Lemmon) who gets hit by a football player while manning a TV camera for CBS at a Cleveland Browns game. Lemmon is OK, but Matthau sees his chance at the big time and gets Lemmon to sue eerybody in sight claiming a back injury. And for Matthau at his funniest, it might be The Sunshine Boys (6:00 PM Thursday), in which he plays one half of an old vaudeville comedy duo that is asked to reteam for a TV comedy special. The only problem is that the team (Matthau and George Burns) broke up decades ago because the two were at each other's throats, and when they get back together, Matthau remembers why.
A movie on FXM Retro that is on for the first time in a long time is 11 Harrowhouse, at 1:25 PM Thursday. Charles Grodin plays Chesser, a small-time diamond dealer in London with a girlfriend in Maren (Candice Bergen). Unfortunately, the diamond supply has always been controlled by monopolies like DeBeers that keep supply low and prices high, and in London, that means the Diamond Exchange run by Meecham (John Gielgud), which keeps Chesser from becoming truly successful. Chesser has a chance to circumvent the Exchange by buying a diamond that wealthy Massey (Trevor Howard) wants named after himself. But the deal goes awry, and the only way Chesser can make good is by robbing the Exchange of the diamonds it's warehousing. Thankfully, he's got some help on the inside in the form of terminally ill employee Watts (James Mason), but as with all good heist movies, there's the nagging possibility of something going badly wrong.
On Friday we get a day of the films of Dorothy Malone. She won an Oscar for Written on the Wind (airing at 10:00 PM Friday), but the movie I'll mention this week is One Sunday Afternoon, at 9:30 AM Friday. The title probably sounds familiar, because this is the third movie version of the story done with the same title in 1933 and as Strawberry Blonde in 1941. Dennis Morgan plays Biff Grimes, a dentist who recently served a stretch in prison. On the titular Sunday, his old friend Hugo (Don DeFore) comes for some emergency dental work, which makes Buff think about their past together. Hugo is a smooth operator who introduced Bird to lovely Virginia (Janis Paige), only for Hugo to steal her away and leave Bird with plain Amy (Dorothy Malone). Hugo keeps exploiting Biff, up to a crooked public works deal that leaves Biff holding the bag. But now with Hugo in the dentist's chair, Biff could get his revenge. The movie was updated with Technicolor, and some musical numbers for Morgan's talents.
Saturday is chock full of Gary Cooper movies. I'm not certain if I've recommended Lives of a Bengal Lancer before; you can see it at 9:30 AM Saturday on TCM. Gary Cooper stars as Lt. McGregor, the veteran Scottish officer who is second-in-command to a group of Lancers stationed in the Northwest Frontier of India during the British colonial era of the late 1800s. He's joined by newly-stationed lieutenants Forsythe (Franchot Tone) and Stone (Richard Cromwell). Stone is also the son of the base commander Col. Stone (Guy Standing). The problem for the is that in this corner of British India there are a lot of rebellious tribal leaders who would just as soon attack the British. The natives are led by Mohammed Khan (Douglass Dumbrille). He's trying to get the ammo necessary to fight the British, and it's up to the British to stop it. Of course, they also have their internal squabbles.
Those of you who only like more recent movies might want to watch War of the Roses, which will be on StarzEncore Classics at 2:10 AM Sunday. Danny Devito (who also directed) plays divorce lawyer Gavin D'Amato, who warns one of his clients about getting too emotional during a divorce, and uses a previous case, of Mr. and Mrs. Rose, as an example. Oliver Rose (Michael Douglas) was a lawyer who many years back met passionate gymnast Barbara (Kathleen Turner). The two got married despite their differences. Two kids and many years later, those differences became irreconcilable, so they file for divorce, with Oliver taking Gavin as his divorce lawyer. Oliver wants the house despite what the divorce laws say, and tries to find a loophole in the law to use to his advantage. But Barbara wants the house too, and both of them will stop at nothing to make certain they're the one to get the house. That is if there's any house left after all is said and done.
Finally, I'll mention that Sunday on TCM is Doris Day, no pun intended. Doris made a lot of light comic musicals, such as Tea For Two at 2:00 PM Sunday. In this reworking of the old Broadway hit No, No, Nanette, Day plays Nanette, a wealthy socialite in the late 1920s who has talent, and wants to use that talent in a Broadway show. To that end, Jimmy (Gordon MacRae) has been teaching her to sing and Tommy (Gene Nelson) teaching her to dance. The only thing is, she doesn't actually have control of her money; that honor goes to her uncle Max (S.Z. Sakall). So when her old friend Larry (Billy DeWolfe) comes looking for money to invest in his new show, she doesn't actually have the money to invest. So she makes a wager with her uncle that she can say "No" to everything for 48 hours, in which case she'll get that $25,000 needed for the show to go on. Except that Max was wiped out by the stock market crash, and doesn't actually have the money to give. The movie gets its name from the most famous song in the original 1925 musical.