Welcome to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" Thread, for the week of December 9-15, 2019. Time marches on, and we get another week of each of the TCM spotlights this week. I haven't mentioned all of them, however, mostly because there was enough interesting other stuff that they didn't need to be mentioned. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
The remakes continue on TCM on Monday, with a day devoted to movies where the remake was a musical. One of the interesting pairings is Ah, Wilderness! at 8:00 AM, followed by Summer Holiday at 10:00 AM. Both of them are based on a play by Eugene O'Neill, in which a young man in early 1900s small-town Connecticut with radical ideas comes of age first by graduating high school, and then by learning about the world around him and women. It's set against the backdrop of a family life in which among other things an uncle on one side of the family with a bit of a drinking problem winds up falling with a spinster aunt from the other side, because they're both right for each other. Both movies have notable Fourth of July celebration scenes. One other thing that's interesting is that Mickey Rooney appears in both movies. In Ah, Wilderness! he plays the kid brother of the graduate, while in Summer Holiday he's 28 years old and playing a high school graduate. I know he was short, but come on.
A lot of what's on StarzEncore Classics is from the 80s and beyond, but among the movies they're showing this week is Marnie, at 2:30 AM Monday. Tippi Hedren plays Marnie, a kleptomaniac whose current target is the safe at a business run by wealthy Philadelphian Mark Rutland (Sean Connery). But after catching Marnie out, Mark doesn't turn her over to the police, apparently not wanting the bad publicity. Instead, he's fallen in love with her, and wants to figure out what the hell is so wrong with her, like why she also hates thunder and has a terrible fear of the color red. So Mark marries Marnie to keep her close. Mark's sister-in-law Lil (Diane Baker) senses that something about Marnie is not quite what it seems (gee, how did she get that idea), and sets out to prove it. So it's a race against time, and Mark finally learns the shocking truth about Marnie by taking her to see her mother (Louise Latham). This one was a critical failure for director Alfred Hitchcock, who never again would hit the heights he had earlier in his career. Still, it's a lot of fun.
The topic on the TCM schedule on Tuesday morning and afternoon is matchmakers. One of the movies I'm not certain I've mentioned before is Make Way for a Lady, which will be on at 2:00 PM Tuesday. Herbert Marshall plays Chris Drew, a widowed publisher with a teenaged daughter June (Anne Shirley). One of the books he's publishing is “Our Story”, by a lady writer named Valerie (Margot Grahame) who dedicated it to Christopher. The nature of the dedication, along with the story, leads June to believe that Valerie is really in love with June's father, and that they would make a good couple for each other. So June conspires to bring the two together. There are only two problems. The first is that Dad already has a different woman on his mind, namely June's teacher Miss Emerson (Gertrude Michael). And Valerie was writing about a different man in her novel, a man who shows up and admits this to June. But June keeps right on going….
FXM recently brought The Best of Everything back to their schedule, and for some reason I thought I recommended it a few weeks back as a result. But it turns out I didn't. It's on FXM again this week, at 10:50 AM Tuesday. Hope Lange plays Caroline, who's getting a new job in the secretarial pool of a big New York publisher, with dreams of becoming an editor. She meets fellow secretary Gregg (Suzy Adams), an aspiring actress who eventually starts a tragic affair with theater director David Savage (Louis Jourdan); and “good girl” April (Diane Baker) who gets knocked up by a boyfriend, with an unintentionally hilarious outcome. Meanwhile, at the office, Caroline has to deal with nasty martinet of a boss Amanda (Joan Crawford), a spinster in an affair with a married man; and womanizing boss Shalimar (Brian Aherne). So she takes solace in heavy-drinking editor Mike (Stephen Boyd) and starts a platonic relationship with him, since she's got a fiancé over in England. Except that she eventually hears from him that he married a wealthy oil heiress, but is still willing to keep her as a mistress on the side! It goes on like this. If you imagine Valley of the Dolls, only set against the world of publishing, you've got a good idea of what The Best of Everything is like.
Loretta Young is known for a lot of things, but one that she's generally not so well remembered for is the movie Loose Ankles, which will be on TCM at 12:15 PM Wedesday. Young (who was all of 17 when she made this) plays Ann, granddaughter in a wealthy family. The matriarch just died and everybody thinks they're inheriting, but the matriarch left the bulk of the inheritance to Ann, on a couple of conditions. One is that a couple of trustees find the man she chooses to marry acceptable, with the other, bigger one being no public scandal. Ann doesn't care about the money, so she takes out an ad in the paper looking for somebody to cause a scandal with her! Two guys who are professional escorts see the ad, but decide that they'll play a bit of a practical joke on their roommate Gil (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) and have him be the guy to try to create a scandal with Ann. Not that he knows how to do it, and he falls in love with Ann along the way too. It all ends up at a speakeasy, this being the Prohibition era, and a fairly wild party with a couple of Ann's much more strait-laced aunts.
The Wyatt Earp story is a popular one that's been told on screen several times. One of the older versions is My Darling Clementine, which will be on StarzEncore Westerns at 1:44 AM Thursday. Henry Fonda plays Wyatt Earp, who comes riding into the town of Tombstone AZ with his brothers Morgan and Virgil (Ward Bond and Tim Holt respectively). Another brother James had been killed in a cattle rustling incident, so Wyatt is happy to take the position of town Marshal with his brothers as deputies so that he can find his brother's killers legally. In Tombstone Wyatt meets old friend and consumptive dentist Doc Holliday (Victor Mature) and the Clanton family, led by a patriarch played by Walter Brennan, and his sons. It soon becomes clear that the Clantons were involved in James' killing and that there's a lot of bad blood between the Earps and the Clantons, which is going to lead to that gunfight at the OK Corral. The title refers to one of Doc's two girlfriends, a fictitious "good girl" played by Cathy Downs; the other girlfriend is a saloon girl played by Linda Darnell.
Friday morning and afternoon sees a bunch of movies on TCM with characters in disguise. I think it's been some time since I last mentioned Yolanda and the Thief, so I'll point out that it's airing at noon Friday. Fred Astaire stars as the thief, named Johnny Riggs. He's not in disguise as Yolanda; as Yolanda (Lucille Bremer) is a young woman in a South American country visiting her aunt Amarilla (Mildred Natwick) after spending years in a convent school. Astaire is on the run from the American law, together with his friend Victor (Frank Morgan). Johnny overhears Yolanda praying to her guardian angel, so the disguise is that he's her guardian angel come down to earth. Of course, Johnny isn't doing this out of the goodness of his heart, as he knows Yolanda's aunt is managing the family's considerable wealth, and he plans to help himself to some of that wealth. Except that things get complicated when Johnny falls in love with Yolanda, and getting out of the country is going to be a problem. This is one of the odder studio-era musicals out there.
There's another airing of The Panic in Needle Park on this week, at 2:00 AM Sunday on TCM. Bobby (Al Pacino) is a small-time heroin dealer in the New York City of the era just before Gerald Ford told the city to drop dead. While trying to get some money from client Marco (Raul Julia), he meets Marco's girlfriend Helen (Kitty Winn), recovering from a botched back-alley abortion (this being before Roe v. Wade). Bobby begins to fall in love with Helen, and the feeling seems to be mutual. Or maybe they're just both more in love with their heroin usage. Compounding the problem is that the cops are currently putting a chokehold on the supply of heroin, which is drying up (the “panic” of the title). They're putting the pressure on both Bobby and Helen, while higher-up dealers are also putting pressure on Bobby. It's an uncompromisingly tough look at a certain section of society (dog lovers will be horrified by one scene), very effectively capturing the New York of that era and the people at the bottom of the barrel trying to make their way in that world.
The Epix channels seem to have the rights to a bunch of the James Bond movies right now. They're showing what most consider to be the best of the Roger Moore Bonds, For Your Eyes Only, at 2:55 PM Sunday. Somewhere off the Greek coast, a British fishing boat sinks. The only thing is, it wasn't really a fishing boat, but a navy boat in disguise carrying an advanced weapons-targeting system. And the British don't want it to fall into Soviet hands. They called on a Greek agent to try to salvage the boat, but that guy got killed an a daring attack. Since it's determined the Greek guy was assassinated, MI6 calls on Bond (Roger Moore, of course) to go find who's behind it all, the system. This takes him all over Europe in search of the businessman Kristatos (Julian Glover) who may be involved. Also looking for Kristatos is the murdered man's daughter Melina (Carole Bouquet). They have a car chase in a Citroën 2CVX; there's a requisite ski chase in Italy; and a climax at a mountaintop Greek Orthodox monastery. And the Sheena Easton (who turned 60 this year :eek
title song:
The Christmas movies continue on TCM on Sunday afternoon, starting with Lady on a Train at noon. Dianna Durbin plays the lady, a young woman named Nikki Collins traveling east to New York to spend Christmas with her aunt. Not long before getting into Grand Central Station, she looks out the window of her compartment, and sees… a murder being committed in a nearby building! Of course, nobody believes her, especially since she was reading a mystery novel on the train. So when she gets to her aunt's place, she decides to look up Wayne Morgan (David Bruce), the author of the mystery she was reading. Perhaps he, as a mystery writer, might be able to help solve mysteries. Not that Wayne – or especially his fiancée Joyce (Patricia Morrison) is happy about this. When she learns the dead man's identity, she goes to his mansion, where everybody assumes she's Margo, the nightclub singer to which the man was engaged. He was a wealthy industrialist, with relatives who all have things they want to hide. Jonathan Waring (Ralph Bellamy) seems to want to help; Arnold (Dan Duryea) seems not to want to help. And what really happened? A fun if formulaic mystery, with the plot giving Durbin the chance to sing Silent Night.