Welcome to another edition of Fedya's “Movies to Tivo” thread, for the week of December 11-17, 2017. The Packers' playoff hopes could theoretically be over after today, and there's a big game next week in which Goldie's boyfriend may return, with all that anticipation, why not deal with the nervous anticipation by watching some movies that are better than what's on the Hallmark or Lifetime Channels? There's more from Star of the Month Lana Turner on Tuesday, as well as the monthly Spotlight and Guest Programmer. There's good stuff on other channels, too. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
TCM has another airing of Scarlet Street, at 7:45 AM Monday. Edward G. Robinson plays Christopher Cross, who doesn't have much of a life. He's frittered away 25 years of his life as a cashier, going home to a shrewish wife and taking solace in his painting. One evening when he's out he runs into Kitty (Joan Bennett), who is getting accosted by nasty Johnny (Dan Duryea). Chris saves Kitty from the assault and takes her to a bar, where he tells her about his painting and exaggerates how good he is at it. This leads Kitty to think that Chris actually earns a living from his art, and what Chris doesn't know is that Johnny is actually Kitty's boyfriend. (Well, if it weren't for the Production Code, she'd be a prostitute and he her pimp, but they couldn't say that back in the 40s.) Johnny cooks up a scheme to bilk Christopher of his wealth by using his art. Except, of course, that Christopher doesn't actually have any wealth to bilk, which leads him to all sorts of dishonesty to try to impress Kitty, with whom he's fallen in love by this time.
For those of you who like conspiracy movies, you could do worse than to watch Three Days of the Condor, which is going to be on StarzEncore Classics at 7:50 PM Monday. Robert Redford plays Joe Turner, nicknamed the Condor, who works as a “reader” for a literacy society that's really a front for a CIA organization that does analysis rather than actual field work. One day he's sent out to get the sandwiches for everybody for lunch, and when he returns from the lunch run, he finds that to his horror, everybody in the office has been murdered! Of course Joe doesn't know what to do so he calls his superiors who eventually send somebody to bring him in. Except that that guy tries to kill him, to, so Joe understandably begins to feel that perhaps the CIA is after him and his little corner of the spy world. Joe goes on the run, eventually kidnapping Kathy (Faye Dunaway) and forcing her to hide him while he can figure out what to do next. Cliff Robertson and John Houseman play the CIA guys.
Meanwhile, over on TCM on Monday night, we get this month's Guest Programmer: Comedian and actor/director Matt Walsh. He's selected four movies, three of them obvious comedies and the fourth having some absurdist elements, and will be presenting them on Monday night with Ben Mankiewicz:
Being There at 8:00 PM, in which Peter Sellers plays a gardener whose trite platitudes wow politicians;
My Favorite Year at 10:30 PM, starring Mark Linn-Baker as a TV producer who has to get a good performance out of a chronically drunk actor (Peter O'Toole);
Withnail and I at 12:15 AM, about two Londoners who escape for a raucous vacation; and
Horse Feathers at 2:30 PM, the Marx Brothers' salute to college movies and college football.
I mentioned one Edward G. Robinson movie before; TCM is going to have a bunch of them on Tuesday since December 12 is the Robinson's birth anniversary. One of the lesser-seen movies TCM is running is the excellent Two Seconds, at 11:00 AM Tuesday. The movie starts off with a college journalism student (William Janney) getting the assignment to cover an execution, and that execution is of John Allen (Edward G. Robinson). Apparently, in the two seconds it takes before the electric goes through your body killing you, you look back on your life, which is what John does…. At some point in the past, he had a best friend in Bud (Preston Foster). The two worked together as riveters, although Bud was a bit of a chancer. One night Bud takes John to a dance hall, which is where he meets Shirley (Vivienne Osborne), who is as much of a chancer as Bud. In fact, Shirley gets John drunk and marries him while he's drunk! Shirley proceeds to make John's life a hell as she wants the finer things in life that he can't provide. And then Bud tells John that Shirley's cheating on him and John doesn't believe him, getting into a fight with Bud that results in Bud's falling off a girder to his death….
I've recommended several movies about Jesse James before. One that will be on TV this week is The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid, at 4:50 AM Wednesday on StarzEncore Westerns. Jesse James (played here by Robert Duvall) and his brother Frank had formed a gang with their cousins the Youngers (Cole Younger played by Cliff Robertson) that had gone back to their days in the Civil War. Eventually amnesty is offered to ex-Confederates, so Cole puts aside his plan to rob a bank in Northfield MN under the belief that it was being run by a notorious (to them) northerner who had been a vicious Reconstruction-era territorial governor. Jesse, however, isn't so willing to put anti-northern sentiments aside, so he decides the robbery is still worth going ahead with. This leads to divisions within the gang, but Jesse's the one in charge, so they do eventually go ahead with it. The results, as history tells us, were less than a spectacular success.
TCM's spotlight on the “Great American Songbook” continues on Thursday night, including another airing of Alexander's Ragtime Band, at 10:00 PM Thursday. Tyrone Power plays Roger, a rich young man from polite society in San Francisco in the early 1910s who has studied classical violin, which is the thing polite society does. However, Roger really has a thing for jazz, shocking his family when he starts a band playing the new music. He meets singer Stella (Alice Faye) after accidentally using one of her songs, so she joins the band. The band's pianist and arranger Charlie (Don Ameche) is in love with Stella, but Stella is in love with Roger. Roger, however, is in love with his music, constantly torn between that and Stella, until World War I comes. Roger goes off to fight, while Stella marries Charlie. Roger returns from the war and become famous all over again, wondering what ever happened to Stella. The title song Alexander's Ragtime Band was Irving Berlin's first big hit, and Berlin had complete musical control over this movie, putting in over two dozen of his songs, and they're the reason to watch the movie, not the predictable (if perfectly serviceable) plot.
There are more Christmas movies on TCM on Friday, and this week I'll mention The Shop Around the Corner, which you can catch at 8:00 PM Friday. James Stewart plays Alfred Kralik, who is a top salesman at Matuschek's (Frank Morgan) store in Budapest. One of his co-workers is Klara (Margaret Sullivan), but the two don't really get along. That's all just as well because Kralik has a pen-pal he's been writing to, and he's fallen in love with her. In fact, he plans to propose to her. Meanwhile, Klara also has a pen-pal, and she's fallen in love with him. Of course, you can probably guess that the two are pen-pals with each other, not realizing that the person they're writing to is in fact the person they know and allegedly don't like in real life. And then, just as Kralik is going to propose to his pen-pal, he gets fired in a misunderstanding by Matuschek, causing all sorts of complications. This one was remade multiple times, first as In the Good Old Summertime (which will be on next week), and as You've Got Mail.
FXM Retro is digging the 1935 version of Call of the Wild out of its vault for another airing, this time at 4:35 AM Saturday. Loosely based on the book by Jack London, the movie stars Clark Gable as Jack, a man who wants to go make his fortune in the great Klondike gold rush of the late 1890s, but he's having trouble getting together the money to go up there and stake his claim. Along the way he gets the dog Buck who helps him out of some jams, and finds a partiner-in-crime in Shorty (Jack Oakie). And then the two run into lovely Claire (Loretta Young), a woman fleeing her husband. That husband was supposed to get a letter with a map to the best gold sites that Shorty took instead. And then there's the villain of the piece, Smith (Reginald Owen). It's rousing enough, which is easy to do when you've got Clark Gable, even if it isn't that much of the book. This is the movie where Gable and Loretta Young met and started the relationship that resulted in her getting knocked up and going off for several months to have the child that she “adopted”.
I tend not to recommend movies that you all know the plot to, but there are probably people out there who don't know the movie Casablanca. That one will be on TCM at 4:00 PM Saturday. Humphrey Bogart plays Rick Blaine, the American expat who for whatever reason can't go back, and is now in Casablanca having left Paris thanks to the Nazi invasion. He runs the jumping night spot where refugees from all over Europe come, hoping to get letters of transit to Lisbon. Representing Vichy France is Capt. Renault (Claude Rains); he and Nazi Major Strasser (Conrad Veidt) find that there are two letters of transit floating around somewhere. Into all of this walks Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman). She and Rick had a torrid affair in Paris, but she couldn't follow Rick because the love of her life Victor Laszlo (Paul Henried) was in a German prison camp, having been part of the resistance. But Victor got out, and Ilsa wants those letters of transit for her and Victor so they can continue their resistance.
There's another really good Christmas movie coming on TCM at 2:15 PM Sunday: The Bishop's Wife. David Niven plays the bishop, Henry Brougham, an Episcopal bishop in presumably some medium-sized American city. He's trying to get a cathedral built, but that takes money and time, and he finds that the attempt to get the cathedral built is taking away time from his wife Julia (Loretta Young) and their daughter. So he's prayed for guidance, and God obliges by sending down Dudley (Cary Grant). Dudley is an angel from heaven, and only the bishop knows he is in fact an angel, but he's in human form and everybody can see him and interact with him. Dudley charms everybody, almost to the point that Julia falls in love with him which is of course a problem. Dudley, meanwhile, helps everybody learn the meaning of goodwill towards one's fellow man, whether it be tippling professor Monty Woolley, maid Elsa Lanchester, or taxi driver James Gleason. One of the great Christmas movies, and good for the whole family.