Welcome to another edition of Fedya's Movies to Tivo thread, for the week of December 21-27, 2020. Christmas is this week, and I'm sorry to say that Santa isn't brining you a new special teams coach this year. Instead, Santa is using me to bring you a bunch of interesting movies. No TCM Star of the Month this week because TCM is running a marathon of Christmas movies through Friday. But there are some worthwhile Christmas movies, and some interesting stuff on the other channels. As always, all times are in Eastern unless otherwise mentioned.
A Christmas movie that got several remakes is Three Godfathers. Probably the John Wayne version from the late 1940s is the best known, but there were two earlier versions, and both of them are on this week. The first, at the dawn of the sound era, was titled Hell's Heroes, and can be seen at 7:30 AM Monday on TCM. In the mid-1930s, it was remade as the first version titled Three Godfathers, and that gets an airing at 5:15 AM Friday. I don't think the John Wayne version is on. The story involves three men in the old west who stage a bank robbery and flee out into the desert, only to find they may not have enough water to make it across the desert. And then they find a woman who's died in childbirth, but the child is still alive and can only survive if they go back to the town where they robbed the bank. What to do?
A search of x4, and of my browser history, suggests that I haven't mentioned Frontier Uprising before. It's going to be on StarzEncore Westerns at 3:43 AM Monday. Jim Davis plays Jim Stockton, a frontier guide who has taken on the job of leading a wagon train from a fort in Wyoming west to Mexican California in the mid-1840s. Along the way, they get attacked by the Shoshone, who have been armed by the Mexicans. After another attack, this one by a Mexican army officer, they find that while they've been going west, the US has declared war on Mexico and there's now a war going on between the two countries. The Mexican lieutenant switches sides and falls in with the settlers going west, to try to get the wagon train to California peacefully. Of course, Stockton and the lieutenant both wind up falling for the same young lady member of the wagon train, and they're going to have to settle that dispute once they get to California.
A rather different Christmas-themed movie is Cover-Up. This one gets a showing at 7:15 AM Tuesday on TCM. Dennis O'Keefe plays Sam Donovan, an insurance investigator who gets the job of going to a small town at Christmastime where one of the company's policyholders has supposedly committed suicide. On the bus into town, he meets the dead man's daughter Anita Weatherby (Barbara Britton) and falls in love with him, until she learns why he's really here. As Donovan investigates, he gets the distinct feeling that this wasn't a suicide but a murder. Yet when he goes to Sheriff Best (William Bendix) with his findings, the sheriff scoffs at them. And the rest of the town doesn't believe it either. Not only that, but they start stonewalling Donovan as much as possible, as though they know this really was a murder but don't want the truth to come out. Why? The movie has some B movie low budget plot holes, but is definitely worth a watch.
Another somewhat different Christmas-set movie is The Cheaters. This year, it's going to be on TCM at 10:00 PM Wednesday. Eugene Pallette plays JC Pidgeon, a businessman who's fallen on hard times, but who is in line for an inheritance after his uncle dies. The only catch is that there's a showgirl the uncle bequeathed the money to, if only she can be found. Meanwhile, daughter Therese (Ruth Terry) wants to impress her rich boyfriend's family, so she has her broke family take in an alcoholic actor, Anthony Marchaund (Joseph Schildkraut) for the holidays. Everybody learns about the inheritance, and JC's attempts to use subterfuge to get the inheritance for his family and not the showgirl. But even though the showgirl, Florrie (Ona Munson), is found, she, like everybody else, realizes that she's got a good reason for going along with the ruse. Perhaps the best solution would be to come up with some solution that allows everybody to get some of the inheritance which would leave them financially secure if not wealthy, but can they figure that out?
A decidedly non-Christmas movie for Christmas Eve is Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, which has an airing at 2:44 AM Thursday on Cinemax (and three hours later if you've only got the west coast feed. Thuderbolt (Clint Eastwood) is a preacher with a past who gets shot at in the movie's opening and forced to flee the pulpit. He runs into Lightfoot (Jeff Bridges), who has stolen a car and has literally run into the guy chasing after Lightfoot. Thunderbolt, it turns out, is not really a preacher, but a bank robber disguising himself as a preacher until he can throw off the people gunning for him and get the money from the last bank robbery, which is hidden in Montana. The two men set off for Montana, but are pursued by the other guys from Thunderbolt's old guy, Red (George Kennedy) and Eddie (Geoffrey Lewis). When they catch up to Thunderbolt, he decides to mollify them by proposing a new heist. But considering all that's gone on between them, is that really a good idea? Do you have a better idea?
With it being Christmas week, another movie that seems to show up every year and deserves a mention is The Bishop's Wife. This year, you can see it on TCM at 8:00 PM Christmas Eve. David Niven plays the bishop, Episcopalian bishop Henry Brougham, who has a wife Julia (Loretta Young) and daughter. The bishop is so busy trying to get a new cathedral funded and built that he hasn't been paying enough attention to his wife and is forgetting the true meaning of Christmas. So God sends Henry an angel named Dudley (Cary Grant) to help Henry re-learn the spirit of Christmas. Along the way, Julia begins to fall in love with Dudley, which is a big problem, and Dudley becomes a sort of factotum to the entire town, spreading joy wherever he goes, as with the tippling professor (Monty Woolley) who gets a bottomless bottle of wine as a gift, or with taxi driver James Gleason, or Mrs. Hamilton (Gladys Cooper), who is the big donor for the cathedral and wants so much control over how that money is spent.
FXM, in recent years, has had a Christmas programming strategy of running the 1951 version of A Christmas Carol (the one with Alastair Sim as Scrooge) on a loop for a good 24 hours or so. This year, they're doing something a bit different. Starting at 2:30 PM Thursday, they're showing that 1951 version. But they're alternating it with a 2019 miniseries that premiered on FX, starring Guy Pearce as Scrooge. The two will run on a loop through to 3:30 AM Saturday, giving you a bunch of chances to catch either one.
Among the more recent movies this week is Untamed Heart, which is on HBO Zone at 12:12 AM Friday. Christian Slater plays Adam, a busboy at a diner who is a recluse because he was an orphan and the nuns told him all sorts of stories about his origins. He is secretly in love with waitress Caroline (Marisa Tomei) who doesn't pay too much attention to Adam, and certainly doesn't get the fact that he's as shy as he is. And then one day, on the way home from work, Caroline is attacked by two men. Because Adam's been following, he's able to break up the attack and save Caroline, which finally allows the two of them to start a relationship. It comes at a cost however, as Adam's part in saving Caroline gets him injured and hospitalized, where he learns that he's got a heart defect that's probably going to kill him young unless he can get a heart transplant. But would that leave Adam the same man that Caroline fell in love with? Also stars Rosie Perez as the stereotypical sassy best friend for Caroline.
The King Arthur legend has been done on screen many times, and one of those shows up this week: Knights of the Round Table, at 2:00 PM Saturday on TCM. Mel Ferrer plays Arthur, who is able to extract Excalibur from the stone and become king, although Mordred (Stanley Baker) would like the sword and throne for himself. Lancelot (Robert Taylor) is a brave knight, loyal and true, and when word reaches him of Arthur's having become king, he immediately heads off to Camelot to proclaim his loyalty to Arthur. Along the way, he meets Guinevere (Ava Gardner) and falls in love with her, and the feeling is most definitely mutual. This is a problem, of course, since Guinevere is supposed to be betrothed to Arthur. And then there's Mordred and his woman, Morgan Le Fay (Anne Crawford) waiting in the background with their treachery. There's also great British character actor Felix Aylmer as the wise Merlin.
It's not exactly Christmas cheer, but if you want cheer you could do far worse than to watch Tootsie, which gets a showing at 6:24 AM Wednesday on StarzEncore Classics, followed by another at 2:02 AM Saturday on StarzEncore. Dustin Hoffman plays Michael Dorsey, a struggling actor in New York with a long-suffering agent Fields (Sydney Pollack), an equally long-suffering girlfriend Sandy (Teri Garr), and a struggling playwright roommate Jeff (Bill Murray). When Sandy tries out for a part on a popular soap opera and doesn't get it due to sexism from the show's director (Dabney Coleman), Michael gets the brilliant idea of dressing up as a woman. Calling himself Dorothy Michaels, he tries out for the part and handles the director's sexism in a way that he actually gets the part. Michael was only planning on doing the role long enough to get the money to produce Jeff's play. But Dorothy is so successful that things get complicated. Michael falls in love with another of the actresses, Julie (Jessica Lange), and Julie's father Les (Charles Durning), who watches his daughter on the show, falls in love with Dorothy, not realizing that Dorothy is in fact a man.
If you ever wanted to see Errol Flynn do The Maltese Falcon, you're in luck, sort of. TCM is running Mara Maru at 4:00 AM Sunday. Flynn plays Gregory Mason, who served in World War II and survived the sinking of a PT boat helping to evacuate the Philippines. He's returned to the Philippines to run a salvage company, when his friend Callahan has some odd rantings about a supposed buried treasure. Callahan gets killed with Mason being framed for it. Meanwhile, Mrs. Callahan (Ruth Roman) has taken in with the obviously shady Brock Benedict (Raymond Burr before Perry Mason), who is willing to fund an expedition to find that PT boat that Mason had been on since one of the passengers was apparently carrying the treasure that sank along with the boat. As you can guess, Brock has no plans of letting anybody else keep the treasure, and Mason has to figure out a way to keep one step ahead of everybody else (including the police), not being helped by the fact that there's a typhoon approaching. Not nearly as bad as its reputation claims it is.