Welcome to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" thread, for the week of December 16-22, 2013. Christmas is drawing near, so we start to get a lot more Christmas movies. But there's also another night dedicated to Star of the Month Fred Astaire, and a day given over to a recently-deceased star for a memorial tribute. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
There are going to be a bunch of Christmas movies this week, starting Monday in prime time now that The Story of Film is over with. One that I don't think I've ever mentioned before is Mr. Soft Touch, Tuesday at 4:15 AM. Glenn Ford plays a veteran returning from World War II, hoping to come back to the nightclub that he ran before the war. Unfortunately, he discovers that the club has been taken over by gangsters led by Roman Bohnen, who have murdered Ford's partner. So Ford, who knows that money should be his, decides to rob the club, to the tune of $100,000! Ford runs away with the gangsters on his trail, and to hide out until he can get the boat to South America, he winds up in a "settlement house" in the poor districts of San Francisco. It's here that he learns about the true meaning of Christmas.... This movie has a problem, though, in that it's got two directors, as though the producer couldn't decide whether he wanted a noir or a comedy, with the movie veering between the two genres.
Since you all read the obituary thread I post religiously, you'll recall that three-time Oscar nominee Eleanor Parker died last Monday at the age of 91. TCM is honoring her with a seven-film salute on Tuesday morning and afternoon. The first of the nominations was for Caged (11:45 AM), an excellent and underrated women's prison movie with Parker playing a naÏve young woman who goes to prison after helping her husband in a robbery, and ends up becoming much harder for it. But I've recommended that movie several times. One that I don't think I've recommended is the one that earned Parker her final Oscar nomination: Interrupted Melody. Parker plays Marjorie Lawrence, wh in the early 20th century, entered a singing contest, won, and ended up going to Paris to train as an opera singer. She eventually did become a successful opera singer -- until during a performance in 1941 she discovered that she was stricken with polio. With the help of her husband, an orthopedic doctor played by Glenn Ford, she regains some of her abilities and is able to sing again for Australian troops in World War II. Rounding out the cast are Roger Moore as Marjorie's brother, and in a small appearance, Cecil Kellaway as her father.
Another biopic that I haven't mentioned in almost four years is Beloved Infidel, which FMC is airing twice this week, at 9:00 AM Thursday and 6:00 AM Friday. By the late 1930s, F. Scott Fitzgerald (Gregory Peck) was a raging alcoholic with a wife Zelda in a sanatorium for her mental illness. In need of money, Scott went to Hollywood to write screenplays. Enter British-born Sheilah Graham (Deborah Kerr), who had moved to the US to try to make a name for herself as a journalist. She became a gossip columnist, med F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1937, fell in love with him, and had an affair for the next three years until Scott's death. (She apparently was the one to discover his dead body.) Sheilah eventually wrote a book about the years with Scott, and this is the movie based on that book. I don't know precisely how accurate it is and how much Graham sugar-coated to make herself look better, but Gregory Peck and Deborah Kerr are always worth watching.
If you want to wait for the Friday showing of Beloved Infidel, you can stay tuned to TCM and watch Wichita at 10:30 AM Thursday. This movie purports to tell part of the life of Wyatt Earp (played by Joel McCrea) in the part of his career before the gunfight at the OK Corral in Tombstone AZ. Here, he's spending a year of his life in Wichita KS, where he worked as marshall trying to clean the town of its wild ways from all the migrant cowboys who were rowdy during the cattle drives, despite the fact that the town fathers don't want him to go too far. Some of the businessmen, who fear losing the money that the cowboys would spend, also don't want Earp to clean up the town too much, so they try to have him killed. The supporting cast includes Edgar Buchanan as two of the bad guys, and Peter Graves as Wyatt Earp's brother Morgan. Oh, there's also a lovely young Vera Miles as Wyatt's love interest.
There are Christmas movies a lot of nights this week on TCM, but one night that doesn't have them is Wednesday, which once again is given over to Star of the Month Fred Astaire. One of his films that I don't think I've ever recommended before is A Damsel in Distress, at 2:00 AM Thursday. That damsel is played by a young Joan Fontaine, who unfortunately wasn't the best dance partner for Astaire. She plays an English noble lady who's trying to run away from the family estate to meet the American she loves. While hiding out in a cab, she meets an American dancer (Astaire), who senses something is wrong and wants to help. So, with his publicity staff (George Burns and Gracie Allen), he rents a place near the estate; the usual complications ensue. It's based on a story by PG Wodehouse, with songs from George Gershwin, who unfortunatley died of a brain tumor during production. But his songs, with the most memorable of them here being "Nice Work if You Can Get It", live on.
Thursday night is back to the Christmas movies, with a twist that's either interesting or tedious depending on your point of view: the movies are all versions of Charles Dickens' classic Christmas story A Christmas Carol. The night kicks off at 8:00 PM with Albert Finney's musical version, Scrooge, which I think I already mentioned this month.
That's followed at 10:00 PM by the Alistair Sim version from 1951, which many people claim is the gold standard of A Christmas Carol movies.
Then, at 11:30 PM is another movie called Scrooge, this time from Britain in 1935; it's one of the versions that I haven't seen and can't really comment on.
MGM's 1938 version (and with MGM, that carries all the connotations both good and bad) comes on at 1:00 AM Friday.
Last up is Carol For Another Christmas at 2:15 AM. This was actually originally a made-for-TV movie, commissioned by the United Nations to show the virtues of UN peacekeeping missions, and stars Sterling Hayden in the Scrooge role.
Friday, December 20 marks the birth anniversary of actress Irene Dunne, and TCM is spending much of the morning and afternoon with her. I've recommended it before, but you could do worse than to watch Love Affair again. Charles Boyer plays Michel, a playboy who's set to get married to socialite Lois (Astrid Allwyn) on the other side of the Atlantic. On the ship across the ocean, he meets Terry (Irene Dunne), who's also engaged to be married, to Kenneth (Lee Bowman). Of course, you know Terry and Michel are going to fall in love, with a bit of help from Michel's grandmother (Maria Ouspenskaya). Once they get to New York, they make a vow to meet each other at the Empire State Building some months later to see whether they still love each other, but unfortunately an accident prevents Terry from doing so. You've probably seen the remake An Affair to Remember with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr, and widescreen and color.
I'm not quite certain why it's airing in the TCM Underground slot, but you have a chance to catch Husbands this week, at 3:30 AM Sunday on TCM. The opening credits have a lot of still photos of dumpy middle-aged guys doing dumpy middle-aged guy stuff, only for one of those guys to die suddenly. The other three (played by Ben Gazzara, Peter Falk, and John Cassavetes, who also directed) are now forced to face their own fears of death, and the three friends decide that they'd rather not face it and instead go on the bender to end all benders; this despite the fact tha they're all married and have jobs. They drink, go to an all-night gym, drink some more, and eventually go off to London where they pick up other women for one-night stands. It's all an interesting idea, but to be honest, a lot of times it seems disjointed and a bit overlong. Still, it's worth one viewing at least.
A movie that's more fit for TCM Underground is the 1975 version of The Stepford Wives, which is actually airing at 2:00 AM Saturday as part of the salute to costume designers; specifically the costumes of Anna Hill Johnstone, who also did Dog Day Afternoon which is on at 12:15 AM Saturday. You probably know the story; Katharine Ross plays a photographer and mother of two who moves from New York to the sleepy town of Stepford, CT, with her husband. She makes a new best friend in the form of Paula Prentss, but the two discover that most of the other wives in town act rather strangely and submissively. They can't figure out what's going on, and it really disconcerts Ross since she's a modern woman. And then she sees her best friend become like all the other women. It's actually a really good movie, but since it's one of those things that's entered the cultural consciousness and everybody already knows the ending, it's a bit harder to take seriously.
Jane Fonda was quite good the looker early in her career. I've mentioned Sunday in New York before; I don't think I've made much mention of Period of Adjustment, which is airing at 2:00 PM Sunday. Fonda plays Isabel, an army nurse who meets Korean War veteran George (Jim Hutton) when he's in an army hospital for a PTSD-like condition that's really a fear of sexual inadequacy. The two get married impulsively, and go to visit George's friend Ralph (Anthony Franciosa), who's married to Dorothea (Lois Nettleton) and works for her father. Except that Dorothea has just walked out on Ralph because he's quite working for Dad wanting to go into business for himself, and because of the way he treats their son. George though Ralph was going to be able to give them some advice on marriage, which isn't going to happen, and to make things more complicated, Ralph is finding Isabel attractive.
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