Welcome to another edition of Fedya's “Movies to Tivo” thread, for the week of February 10-16, 2020. Last week saw the death of Kirk Douglas, so there's a lot of mention of him this week as quite a few of his movies are airing. However, there's also quite a bit of other interesting stuff airing, from the 30s through… well I didn't actually pick anything from the current century this week. And there are genres from comedy to western to disaster movies. The actual Oscars are airing tonight, but instead of listening to tedious speechifying, why not watch the good movies instead? As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
Kirk Douglas died last Wednesday at the age of 103, and since February is 31 Days of Oscar on TCM, that means that they're not going to be able to do a proper salute to him until March. Still, they've got a couple of his movies on the lineup that had been previous scheduled:
Early on Tuesday morning, at 4:15 AM is The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, in which Douglas plays the ambitious district attorney husband of local business tycoon Barbara Stanwyck, whose career may be threatened when a former friend (Van Heflin) returns home after a good 15 years away.
In the prime time lineup there's a double feature of two of Douglas' three Oscar nominations. First, at 11:00 PM, is The Bad and the Beautiful, starring Douglas as ruthless Hollywood producer Jonathan Shields, who uses a co-producer (Barry Sullivan), an actress (Lana Turner), and a writer (Dick Powell) on his way to the top, only for his last picture to be a flop.
That's followed at 1:15 AM Wednesday by Lust For Life, in which Douglas plays the painter Vincent Van Gogh, who started in the Netherlands and then painted in Belgium before moving to the south of France where his mental illness overtook him while he was still able to create some of the world's most famous paintings. Anthony Quinn won a Supporting Actor Oscar for playing Paul Gauguin.
StarzEncore Westerns seems to be running a four-picture salute to him on Saturday afternoon, but more on that later.
There have been four film versions of A Star is Born, not counting the earlier What Price Hollywood? if you think that's the same story. All four received Oscar nominations, but it's the 1937 version of A Star is Born that airs this week, at 2:30 PM Monday on TCM. Janet Gaynor plays Esther Blodgett, who escapes her dead-end life in the upper Midwest to head for Hollywood to try to make a success out of life as an actress. At her rooming house she meets another person starting at the bottom, Danny McGuire (Andy Devine, who is quite good in an atypical role for him). Through him, she gets invited to work at a party where she meets big star Norman Maine (Fredric March). He gets her into the door of stardom, with the studio renaming her Vicki Lester. Vicki rises and becomes a star, falling in love with Norman along the way. But there's a catch, which is that Norman's career has been on the downturn, and he's been handling it by drinking heavily, which is ultimately going to take a toll on Vicki's career. This one is a notable early use of three-strip Technicolor, and watch also for May Robson as Grandma Blodgett.
There are Oscar-winning movies on channels other than TCM. One of them is Misery, which you can see on at 12:30 AM Wednesday on The Movie Channel Extra. James Caan plays Paul Sheldon, who has just finished the latest in a series 0f popular novels. As he's driving from his mountain hideout back to civilization with his manuscript, he crashes in a snowstorm and goes down a hillside, where he'll be lucky to be noticed? But a nurse, Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates) does find him and bring him back to her house to nurse him back to health. She's a big fan of his books, and reads the latest manuscript... only to be horrified that Sheldon has killed off the heroin. So Annie, who hasn't told anybody else about finding Paul, holds him hostage, forcing him to write a new ending to the book that doesn't kill the heroine. Of course, Paul doesn't want to do that, and tries to escape, but Annie always seems one step ahead of him growing increasingly violent as he doesn't do what she wants. Based on the Stephen King book, this won Bates the Best Actress Oscar.
If you like Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, then you'll probably also like the earlier film George Washington Slept Here, on TCM at 6:15 PM Wednesday. Jack Benny plays Bill Fuller, who lives in New York City with his wife Connie (Ann Sheridan) but is being forced to move out of his apartment because the dog has been peeing on the carpets. Unbeknownst to Bill, Connie has been looking for places to live, and found one. But that place is in the Philadelphia suburbs, a good ways away from New York. Connie was able to get it at a good price, however, because the place is in need of serious renovations, and has the possibility of being worth money because George Washignton supposedly slept there during the Revolutionary War. The Fullers hire Kimber (Percy Kilbride) to handle the renovations, trying to get money from their rich uncle Stanley (Charles Coburn), who it turns out is no longer rich after all. And there's a neighboring property owner who wants to foreclose on the Fullers.
If you like Paul Newman, you have multiple chances to see him this week. One of them is in The Towering Inferno, airing on Action Max at 3:25 AM Thursday. Paul Newman plays Doug Roberts, an architect who has designed the tallest building in the world, a 100+ story monstrosity in San Francisco. He returns from a vacation just in time for the official grand opening which is to be attended by the cream of San Francisco society, which means a cast of all-stars, but more on that later. Roberts is shocked to see that his wiring plans haven't been followed correctly, leading to short circuits and, eventually, a fire breaking out on an upper floor that threatens to bring the whole building down. Fire Chief O'Halloran (Steve McQueen) is greatly distressed by having to fight fires in buildings where the traditional ladders don't reach, and because all those dignitaries are up in the penthouse ballroom. Trapped up there are Roberts' boss Jim Duncan (William Holden); the boss' son-in-law (Richard Chamberlain); a senator (Robert Vaughn); and some older stars, with con-artist Fred Astaire trying to con Jennifer Jones.
Amazingly, The Young Philadelphians earned three Oscar nominations, so TCM can run it during 31 Days of Oscar. This year, that means it's getting an airing at 9:45 PM Thursday. Paul Newman plays Tony Lawrence, son of a woman (Dian Brewster) who engaged in a marriage of convenience into one of Philadelphia's rich old “main line” families, her husband being a closeted homosexual who killed himself on their wedding night. Fast forward a quarter century, and Tony, shunned by the rich family, is working his way through law school, going to fight in Korea, and ruthlessly working his way up the ladder of the law community in Philadelphia. This includes an affair with a boss' wife (Alexis Smith), and stealing a client (Billie Burke) from a rival law firm. But things threaten to come crashing down when one of his friends from law school, Chester (Robert Vaughn, who got a Supporting Actor nomination), who was crippled in Korea, is arrested on a murder charge. He wants Tony to defend him, and doing so means going up against “main line” society and possibility revealing secrets about himself he never knew.
Over on FXM is a movie I haven't recommended in a couple of years, Call Northside 777, which is on at 9:35 AM Friday and 7:35 AM Saturday. James Stewart plays P.J. McNeal, a reporter for the Chicago Times. One day, an elderly lady takes out an ad in the paper offering $5,000 for information leading to the exoneration of her son Frank (Richard Conte). P.J.'s editor Brian (Lee J. Cobb) gives him the story of looking into the case. Eleven years earlier, near the end of Prohibition, a Chicago policeman was killed and Frank was put on trial and found guilty based on eyewitness evidence. P.J. starts to investigate, and the more he does, the more he finds himself becoming convinced that Frank really is innocent. But there are powerful political forces trying to keep Frank in prison because of the nature of the case. Perhaps proving Frank innocent hangs on finding a mysterious “Wanda Skutnik” (Betty Garde). Even then, it's still going to be tough. This one is based on a true story, and is one of a series of docudramas that Fox made in the late 1940s.
One of the all time great movies is The Third Man, showing on TCM at 4:00 PM Saturday. Joseph Cotten plays Holly Martins, an American pulp novelist who was invited to post-war Vienna by his good friend Harry Lime. But when he gets to Vienna, he's told that Harry is dead! Meanwhile, Vienna being occupied by the four Allied powers, British Maj. Calloway (Trevor Howard) tells Holly that he really should leave if he knows what's good for him. Holly, having been to the funeral and suspecting something isn't quite right, starts to do some investigating, meeting a woman who knew Harry, Anna Schmidt (Alida Valli). And then, in a twist, Holly discovers that Harry (Orson Welles) is in fact alive and in hiding! That's because, as Calloway informs him, Harry has been involved in the underworld, and now perhaps Holly can help bring Harry to justice. The movie is beautifully photographed on location in post-war Vienna, with a distinctive zither score.
Kirk Douglas died last week, and I already mentioned a couple of his movies that are airing on TCM. Elsewhere, StarzEncore Westerns is showing Gunfight at the OK Corral, at 3:38 PM Saturday as part of an afternoon of his westerns including The Man From Snowy River, Man Without a Star, and Posse. You probably know the basic story here, of the fight between the Earp gang, led by Wyatt (Burt Lancaster), and the Clantons, led by Ike (Lyle Bettger) in Tombstone AZ. Douglas plays Doc Holliday, the tuberculosis-stricken dentist who in this telling of the story first meets Wyatt in Dodge City when Wyatt is looking for information about a criminal. The two don't quite become true friends even if both wind up in Tombstone and wind up allies. Doc has a girlfriend in Kate (Jo Van Fleet) while Wyatt falls in love with gambling hall operator Laura (Rhonda Fleming, still alive at 97), who wants Wyatt to hang up his badge. But then brother Vernon (John Hudson) writes from Tombstone telling about the Clantons' cattle rustling and having bought a marshal who looks the other way, so Wyatt just has to go west and help his brothers….
We'll conclude with Bad Day at Black Rock, at 4:45 AM Sunday on TCM. Spencer Tracy plays John Macreedy, a man with a crippled arm who shows up one day in the insular town of Black Rock, out in the Nevada desert where the train only stops by special order. He's there looking for the family of a Komoko, but nobody in town seems to want to help him. Obviously, they're all hiding something, but what, Macreedy's search leads him quickly to Reno Smith (Robert Ryan), who is the real power in town as opposed to Sheriff Horn (Dean Jagger). Coley (Ernest Borgnine) tries to drive Macreedy off the road on the way to the old Komoko plays, where the family of course no longer lives. Komoko was a Japanese-American who fought with distinction in World War II and Macreedy is here to award that distinction, but thanks to the townsfolk there's nobody to award it to. Ultimately, the town doctor Velie (Walter Brennan) is one of the few who turns good and helps Macreedy somewhat in Macreedy's tribulations with Reno Smith.