Welcome to another edition of Fedya’s “Movies to Tivo” Thread, for the week of December 6-12, 2021. There’s another night of Ingrid Bergman as TCM’s Star of the Month, but I found that there were enough other movies worth mentioning this week that I didn’t need to mention the night’s Bergman lineup on Wednesday. This week sees movies ranging from the late 1930s to the beginning of this century, and span most of the genres, although there’s no granny porn for Blair Kiel. As always, all times are in Eastern unless otherwise mentioned.
Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon were two of MGM’s more popular stars in the first 1940s, but by the 1950s, tastes were changing and they seemed old-fashioned, as you can see in a movie like Scandal at Scourie, on TCM at 8:45 AM Monday. Before we meet them, however, we get a prologue at an orphanage in turn-of-the-century Quebec. The orphanage suffers a fire, burning it to the ground, and forcing the nuns running the place to send the kids west to Manitoba; one of those kids is little Patsy (Donna Corcoran). On the way west, the train stops in the town of Scourie, Ont., which is where we meet local businessman Patrick McChesney (that’s Pidgeon) and his wife Victoria (that’s Garson). They fall in love with little Patsy, and decide to adopt her. But there’s a slight catch. Patsy, being from Quebec, is Catholic, while the McChesneys are Protestant. The McChesneys decide they’re going to raise Patsy as a Catholic, but their Protestant friends think that this could harm Patrick’s possible political career, especially when gossip starts that Patsy was responsible for the fire at the orphanage.
A search of x4 claims that I haven’t mentioned Ride Beyond Vengeance before. It’s got an airing this week at 2:30 AM Monday on StarzEncore Westerns, so I might as well mention it now. Chuck Connors plays Jonas Trapp, who returns to the town of Cold Iron, TX after 11 years away hunting buffalo. He’s got a wife in town, rich Jessie (Kathryn Hays), whom he left behind because he was a much lower social class and wanted to make his own support for her before returning. However, a lot of people assume that Jonas died considering how long he was away, so when he returns, nobody recognizes him, and three men try to kill him as an intruder. Bill Bixby and Frank Gorshin play two of the men; the third is a man who wants to marry Jessie named Brooks (Michael Rennie). But Jonas is only injured, and when he recovers, he decides he’s going to get revenge against his attackers. The movie is probably more notable for its casting, which includes a small role for Connors’ The Rifleman co-star Paul Fix; Golden Age holdovers Joan Blondell, Gloria Grahame, and Ruth Warrick; and non-western TV stars like James MacArthur (later of Hawaii Five-O) or even Jamie Farr.
Tuesday marks 80 years since the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, sending the US into World War II. So TCM is giving us a couple of World War II movies, including They Were Expendable at 5:30 PM. Robert Montgomery plays Lt. Brickley, a US Navy officer stationed in the Philippines trying to display the usefulness of what would become the PT boat in the days just before Dec. 7, 1941, together with fellow friend Lt. Rusty Ryan (John Wayne). Of course, the war starts for Americans, and the Japanese are certain to attack the Philippines as it’s the Americans’ furthest outpost. There are a lot of Americans to evacuate from the territory if the Americans can’t hold it, and it’s going to be up two the two lieutenants, the men under their command, and their PT boats to try to hold off the Japanese long enough for the rest of the defense to coalesce. Along the way there are also the usual battle scenes as well as a romance with an Army nurse, Lt. Davyss (Donna Reed). Director John Ford fell ill during filming, so Robert Montgomery took over and found that he liked directing.
Elsewhere on Tuesday, there’s Grand Canyon, at 8:30 AM on Cinemax (or three hours later if you only have the west coast feed). The lives of several people in various parts of Los Angeles intertwine. Mack (Kevin Kline) is a lawyer attending a Lakers game with movie producer friend Davis (Steve Martin). Driving home from the game, Mack’s car breaks down and he’s at the mercy of muggers until black truck driver Simon (Danny Glover) shows up to save him. This leads Mack to try to get in contact with Simon and his wife Jane (Alfre Woodard) to thank him and possibly even become friends with him. Meanwhile, Davis is disturbed by what happened to his friend and begins to wonder whether he should be putting so much violence into the movies he produces. Other chances are coming to Mack’s life as his wife Claire (Mary McDonnell) has run across a foundling and is thinking about trying to adopt the foundling she saved.
Fans of jazz music will definitely enjoy All Night Long, which will be on TCM at 4:00 PM Wednesday. Richard Attenborough plays Rod Hamilton, a wealthy lover of jazz who has rented a warehouse to host a jazz party for his friend Rex (Paul Harris) and Rex’s wife Delia (Marti Stevens) on their first anniversary. Rex leads a jazz combo, and Delia used to sing, giving that up as a profession when she got married to Rex. Meanwhile, jazz drummer Johnny Cousin (Patrick McGoohan) wants to go out on his own and front a combo, but he needs a hook. He thinks he can coax Delia out of retirement to sing with his proposed new band, but she’s not so sure. So Johnny sets out trying to break up Delia and Rex’s relationship by manipulating everybody into making it look like Delia is stepping out on Rex and then playing on Rex’s jealousy, a sort of modern-day version of Othello. The story itself isn’t bad, but the real highlights are the jazz performances, as folks like Dave Brubeck and Charlie Mingus have cameos along with some prominent names from the British jazz scene.
Back in the FXM rotation is Let’s Make Love. You’ll be able to see it this week at 6:00 AM Thursday. Jean-Marc Clément (Yves Montand) is the latest in the Clément family of businessmen, and extremely wealthy as a result of the family business. However, he’s just as interested in being a playboy as running the business. One day, his publicist Alexander Kaufman (Tony Randall) learns that Clément is going to be one of the people satirized in an upcoming off-Broadway revue called Let’s Make Love, something that could obviously cause problems. Clément decides to go to a rehearsal and graciously accept being a target of their satire, but the producer and cast mistake him as being an actor auditioning for the part of Clément, a part that he actually gets. Also in the cast is Amanda Dell (Marilyn Monroe). Unsurprisingly, Clément falls for Amanda in more than just a playboy having a brief interlude with a chorine way, and starts to pursue Amanda. She’s not going to be so easy to get, however, and what’s going to happen when everybody learns that this is the real Clément?
For more music, try the silly B movie Dancing Co-Ed, at 5:15 AM Friday on TCM. Ann Rutherford plays Eve, agent to a publicist who represents a prominent dancing couple. The wife in the couple has gotten pregnant, meaning the other dancer needs a new partner, and a brilliant idea is hit upon: hold a nationwide contest on college campuses to find the new dancer. However, it’s going to be a rigged contest, with Patty Marlow (Lana Turner), a vaudeville dancer, being selected beforehand as the winner. Of course, Patty is also not a college student, so she’s going to have to get into college to be eligible for the phony contest in the first place. Eve takes Patty’s college entrance exams, and both of them wind up at the same small liberal arts college of the sort that always popped up in studio era movies. Pug Braddock (Richard Carlson) is a reporter for the college newspaper who suspects something is up, but who also falls in love with Patty, complicating matters. Bandleader Artie Shaw plays himself; he would go on to marry Lana Turner in real life.
The 1947 movie Miracle on 34th Street is a classic, but one of the networks has the rights to it. However, the movie has been remade a couple of times, and the 1994 version, also called Miracle on 34th Street, will be on HBO Family at 3:42 PM Friday. Dorey Walker (Elizabeth Perkins) is a single mother and events manager for a large department store. Her current store Santa gets drunk so she has to fire him and replace him, hiring a man conveniently named Kriss Kringle (Richard Attenborough). Dorey has told her daughter that Santa isn’t real, so the daughter confides in Mom’s boyfriend Bryan (Dylan McDermott) that she’s really like a new father, a new house, and a baby brother. All of the other children start believing that Kriss really is Santa Claus, but the old store Santa gets Kriss arrested on trumped-up charges, and the only way to get Kriss off those charges is to prove that he really is Santa. You can probably guess what happens from there.
One of those movies that’s always worth mentioning is Of Human Hearts. TCM is showing it this week at 6:00 AM Saturday. Jason Wilkins (played as a child by Gene Reynolds and as an adult by James Stewart) is the son of a preacher (Ethan Wilkins) who has moved the family west to Ohio circa 1840 to take a new job. It’s not very financially rewarding, and Jason would like to grow up and become something that will help pay the bills better. So he studies under the town doctor, Dr. Shingle (Charles Coburn) in the hopes of going off to medical school. Of course, that takes a lot of money, and when Dad dies, Mom (Beulah Bondi) has to scrimp and save even harder to try to provide for her son. Jason succeeds academically and goes east to medical school, but as he graduates, the Civil War hits and Jason goes into service as a medic. In a sentimental twist, Mom doesn’t hear from her son in quite a bit of time, not even hearing news whether Jason has been killed in action. So she writes to President Lincoln (John Carradine) to see if he can figure out what’s happened to Jason.
There are more Christmas-themed movies on TCM over the weekend, including Lady on a Train at 8:00 PM Saturday. Deanna Durbin plays the lady, a young woman named Nikki traveling to New York to visit an aunt for Christmas. Just before pulling into New York, she looks out her window into the window of an apartment building and sees a murder being committed! Of course she can’t get the police to believe her, especially since she was reading a mystery novel on the train, so she goes to see the author Wayne Morgan (David Bruce)! And then in a movie newsreel, she sees the image of the man she saw getting murdered, who, it turns out was a famous but reclusive industrialist who lived out on Long Island, which sends Nikki out there. The dead guy’s nephew, Arnold (Dan Duryea), mistakes Nikki for a chorus girl the dead uncle was seeing, which gets her in the house where she meets suspects including another nephew, Jonathan (Ralph Bellamy). And Nikki is able to get Wayne involved in helping her solve the mystery.