Welcome to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" thread, for the week of December 8-14, 2014. In addition to the regular features this month on TCM that I mentioned last week, there's a very special guest, whom I'll mention a bit later. The Dr. Kildare/Gillespie series ended last week, so this Saturday sees a new series of films show up. And there are some good movies on other channels. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
We'll begin with this week's Silent Sunday Nights presentation on TCM. Back in October, I mentoined that TCM was going to have a couple of blocks of vintage animation. Unfortunately, due to a technical glitch at TCM, the third of those blocks, from the Van Beuren studio, didn't show up. So TCM rescheduled it, and those shorts will be on at midnight Monday (or 11:00 PM tonight if you're out in Packerland).
The other half of Silent Sunday Nights is a really, really anti-German movie called Yankee Doodle in Berlin at 1:15 AM Monday. The plot, such as it is, involves an American officer trying to steal some war plans from the Kaiser. The thing is, the American is played by Bothwell Browne, a noted female impersonator of the day, so he spends most of the film in drage pulling the wool over the eyes of the preternatuarlly stupid Huns. A bizarre little film.
Star of the Month Cary Grant returns to TCM on Monday night, when the Packers will be beating the crap out of th Falcons. Fortunately, the movies airing during the game are ones I've recommended before, so I'll instead mention a film that's on early Tuesday morning: Room For One More, at 7:00 AM. Grant plays father in a typical middle-class American family, with a wife (real-life wife Betsy Drake) and three children. They're comfortable, if not well-to-do, but that comfort is about to be challenged. Mom visits the local orphanage with the women's group, and her compassionate nature gives her the idea that perhaps they should take one of the children as a foster child. This is a movie, so the family's experience isn't as challenging as real life, but it's still no bed of roses. Having a foster daughter turns out reasonably well, so the famliy then adds a foster son, who is a much more difficult case. Can this mixed family learn to be happy together? Of course, since it's a Hollywood film, but there's still trouble along the way.
Over on FXM Retro on Tuesday morning, there's an interesting movie: King of the Khyber Rifles, Tuesday at 9:15 AM. Tyrone Power stars as a mixed-race colonel in the British Army in colonial India in the 1850s. He's stationed in the northwestern part of the country, not far from the Khyber Pass and forbidding Afghanistan The new general (Michael Rennie) is stationed there, and he assigns Power to defend the border from would be marauders. This poses some complications, since the head of the bandits (Guy Rolfe) is an old friend from the colonel's childhood. And that's not the only complication. The general has an adult daughter (Terry Morre) and as you can probably guess, the colonel is goign to fall in love with her. There's nothing groundbreaking here, but this is the sort of role Power was quite good at playing. Also, the Technicolor and Cinemascope photography are lovely to look at, even if the backgrounds are all California, not India.
TCM has a very special guest on Tuesday night: Rory Flynn, the daughter of actor Errol Flynn. She'll be sitting down with Robert Osborne to discuss her famous father, and present an evening of his films. The Adventures of Robin Hood is there at 10:30 PM, but I'll mention one I don't know that I've recommended before: Gentleman Jim, at 12:30 AM Wednesday. This movie, which was said to be Errol's own personal favorite of all his movies, sees him playing James J. Corbett, that famous Irish-American boxer from the end of the 19th century when white people dominated the boxing world. The Corbett in this movie was born into a working class family fathered by Alan Hale Sr., and when everybody realizes how well he can box he uses that skill to try to earn himself a place in polite society. With best friend Jack Carson in tow and with love interest Alexis Smith along for the ride, this Corbett goes on to fight John L. Sullivan (Ward Bond) for the title. How much of it is true? I have no idea, but it's entertaining fiction.
I can't remember whether I've recommended the movie Handle With Care before, but it's on again this Wednesday at 6:30 PM on TCM, so I'll mention it now. The scene is a small law school in a small town where almost everybody knows everybody else, except for one student (Dean Jones, before he did all the Disney stuff). The class is doing a mock trial, and our out-of-towner wants to do a real case. So he starts going through the town records and discovers that 25 years ago, when the current popular mayor (Thomas Mitchell, many years earlier from Stagecoach and the subject of Wednesday's morning/afternoon lineup) was the town tax collector, the receipts for taxes he took in didn't match the receipts for the deposits he made. Embezzlement! Corruption! Our brash young hero vows to investigate, even though the older generation tells him he's wrong and tries to stonewall the investigation. It's all resolved at the end, but the movie has all the hallmarks of its moralizing MGM B-movie origin. Still it's interesting and worth a watch.
Jack Nicholson didn't make many westerns, but one of them shows up this week: Ride in the Whirlwind, at 7:15 AM Thursday on Encore Westerns, and several other times on various premium channels. Nicholson plays Wes, a cowhand on his way to a new job together with his friends Vern (Carmeron Mitchell) and Otis (Tom Filer). On their way, they stop for a night, not realizing that where they've stopped is the hideout for a gang of stagecoach robbers led by Blind Dick (Harry Dean Stanton). Of course, there's a posse looking for the robbers, and that posse eventually gets the idea that the three cowhands are part of the gang as well. Wes and Vern escape and stay ahead of the posse until they make their way to a farm run by an older man and his daughter (Millie Perkins), but you know the posse is going to come eventually....
There are more Christmas movies on TCM on Thursday night, and one of the better ones that deserves more attention is It Happened on Fifth Avenue, at 11:30 PM. Victor Moore stars as Aloysius, a hobo who has a unique living arrangement. He knows the habits of millionaire Mike O'Connor (Charlie Ruggles), and spends the winters in O'Connor's New York mansion while Mike goes to Florida, and then goes to Mike's Florida house while Mike is in New York. This winter, however, things go a bit differently. Aloysius meets a couple of WWII veterans (Don DeFore and Alan Hale Jr.) who are about to be made homeless due to the post-war housing shortage, and decides to let them live in O'Connor's mansion with him until they can find a place to stay! And then O'Connor's daughter Trudy (Gale Storm) shows up. She's run away from finishing school in a snit with her divorced parents, and so doesn't let on that she's the daughter of the mansion's owner. And them Dad and Mom (Ann Harding) both show up, also hiding their true identities. Eventually this wild masquerade turns out for the best for everybody, but the way it gets there is exceedingly charming.
Friday marks the birth anniversary of actor Edward G. Robinson, so TCM is showing a whole bunch of his films, ending with The Last Gangster at 6:00 PM. Robinson plays that gangster, a man named Krozac who goes to the old country to get himself a wife (Rose Stradner, who didn't pan out in Hollywood as an actress), but then gets arrested and convicted on tax evasion charges. As he goes of to prison, he learns that his wife is pregnant. Krozan vows to return to his wife and son after his stretch in prison, but she winds up rying to make a new life for herself by changing her name and marrying a newspaperman (James Stewart) who realizes how mean he had been in his reporting of her and the kid. Meanwhile, Krozac's old gang thinks that he's got a stash of money somewhere on the outside, so when he finally does get released from prison, they try to get him to divulge the location of that money. And when he doesn't, they find out where his son is and kidnap the kid! Not that the kid knows who his biological father is. This movie is rather different from the gangster roles Robinson had played at the beginning of the 1930s, but he's still quite good in his role here.
For those of you who like more recent movies, there's a good one on Encore Classics: Misery, at 7:10 PM Sunday. James Caan plays Sheldon, an author who's just finished his latest novel at his cabin in the snowy north woods. On his way back to the city, however, his car goes off the road in a snowstorm and into a ravine. He wakes up to find that he's been rescued by nurse Annie (Kathy Bates), who is also a big fan of his writing. Unfortunately, she's too big a fan. She reads the manuscript for the latest novel, and discovers to her horror that Sheldon plans to kill off the main character. Annie can't allow that to happen, so she holds Sheldon hostage, forcing him to write a new book. Not that Sheldon wants to, but the choice is between that and being murdered. Of course, he tries to escape, too, but that brings its own terrible consequences. Based on the novel by Stephen King, Misery is one frightful tale. Bates won an Oscar for her role, and thoroughly deserved it.
As for the shorts on TCM, the schedule only seems to list the shorts through Wednesday, so there's not a whole lot to choose from. But if you enjoy Cary Grant's Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (airing at midnight Tuesday), you might enjoy the short preceding it, So You Want to Build a House, at 11:47 PM Monday (if the Packers game is over by then). This is one of the Joe McDoakes shorts. McDoakes, played by George O'Hanlon (the voice of George Jetson), is a character whose overconfidnece and know-it-allism consistently get him in trouble, with the shorts playing out in a fairly broad way. This short, as you can guess from the title, finds McDoakes facing eviction and so deciding to buy a house of his own, with everything that could go wrong in fact going wrong.
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