Welcome to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" Thread, for the week of February 25-March 3, 2019. The big awards are being handed out tonight, but there's still seven more days of 31 Days of Oscar. We also have a movie set at the Oscars this week, and a bunch of other fun stuff. So since there's no meaningful sports going on this week, why not sit back with some good movies? As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
There have been a small number of films that received only one Oscar nomination, with that being for Best Picture. Among them is Libeled Lady, which will be on TCM at noon Monday. Spencer Tracy plays newspaper editor Warren Haggerty, whose paper gets sued by Connie Allenby (Myrna Loy) and her father J.B. (Walter Connolly, who was also the father in It Happened One Night at 10:00 AM Monday) for claiming Connie was the other party in a divorce. To win the case, Warren decides he'll catch Connie with a married man, hiring ladies' man Bill (William Powell) to get caught in a compromising position with Connie. The only problem is that Bill isn't married so this wouldn't really be a compromising position. So Warren uses his own long-suffering fiancée Gladys (Jean Harlow) to have a marriage in name only to Bill so that Bill will in fact be married. Complications ensue when Bill falls in love for real with Connie, and Gladys falls in love with Bill, which isn't what Warren had in mind at all.
If I mention Law and Order, you probably think of that terrible TV show and the innumerable spinoffs. But there was an unoriginal 1953 western called Law and Order, and StarzEncore Westerns is running that at 6:15 AM Monday. Ronald Reagan plays Frame Johnson, who just finished up a stretch as the marshal of Tombstone (no Wyatt Earp or Clantons to be found), cleaning up the town's crime problem and leaving it safe to live in again. So he wants to retire to Cottonwood with his two brothers (Alex Nicol and future island professor Russell Johnson) and be a rancher, taking his fiancée Jeannie (Dorothy Malone) with him. The problem turns out that when he gets to Cottonwood, the town has another of those thoroughly nasty stock character town bosses, Durning (Preston Foster), ruling with an iron fist along with his sons (one of whom is a young Dennis Weaver) and leaving the population crying for a good guy to stand up to Durning. Frame is just the guy for that job.... I called this unoriginal, because it's the fourth movie version of a novel by W.R. Burnett. If that name sounds familiar, it's because other of his books became the movies High Sierra (not on this week) and The Asphalt Jungle (Wednesday at 2:00 PM on TCM).
TCM is showing The Story of G.I. Joe at 6:00 PM Tuesday. Burgess Meredith stars as Ernie Pyle, a journalist who was interested in telling the story of the common man. So, when the US entered World War II, he didn't want to be a regular war correspondent, staying in the rear and filing reports from headquarters. Instead, he wanted to tell the story of the common soldier, so he more or less got embedded with a company, following them through north Africa and then through Italy. Eventually, Pyle got transferred to the Pacific theater, going from island to island with the regular soldiers until he was killed in action in early 1945. Pyle's view of the war is not particularly glamorous, instead being lots of tedium with only brief combat. Robert Mitchum plays Lt. Walker, the commanding officer in the company, while most of the soldiers are played by real soldiers who, like Pyle, were being transferred to the Pacific theater. Mitchum got the only Oscar nomination of his career for this one.
For those of you who prefer more recent movies, we've got a pair this week, starting with For the Boys, at 11:04 PM Tuesday on StarzEncore Classics. Bette Midler plays Dixie Leonhard, a singer and dancer who is looking back at her career, a lot of which was spent entertaining the troops in the various wars the U.S. fought. She goes on tours with slimy, not very nice comedian Eddie Sparks (James Caan) starting in World War II, with a further complication being that Dixie's uncle Art (George Segal) writes gags for Eddie. Korea comes, and then the McCarthy era, which really puts a strain on Dixie and Eddie's working relationship. Reluctantly, she works with him again in Vietnam, soldiering on like a real trooper. Eddie is probably based loosely on Bob Hope (how loosely I don't know). Dixie on the other hand is a bit more controversial in that Martha Raye thought the character was based on her and unflattering enough that she sued.
For those of you who think of Mickey Rooney as a lightweight, you might want to watch The Human Comedy, which is going to be on TCM at 8:00 PM Wednesday. Set in the fictional town of Ithaca, CA during World War II, the movie tells the story of the Macauley family, whose father (Ray Collins in mostly voiceover) has died, and whose eldest son Marcus (Van Johnson) is about to go off to fight in World War II. In order to bring some extra money in to the household, second son Homer (Mickey Rooney) gets a job as a messenger for Western Union, delivering telegrams. This, during World War II, means a lot of "We regret to inform you..." telegrams. It also means working with drunken telegraph operator Willie (Frank Morgan) and boss Tom (James Craig). There's also Marcus' army buddy, who's never really had a place to call home the way the Macauleys have. And watch for a very young Robert Mitchum in a small scene as a soldier on leave. This one earned Rooney a Best Actor Oscar nomination (he was nominated four times in competitive categories and never won).
For some reason, I thought TCM had already run Forever Amber before, but their schedule implies it's a premiere. It's going to be on TCM at 12:15 AM Friday. Amber St. Clair (Linda Darnell) is a young woman living in rural England with her Puritan foster parents when Oliver Cromwell's rule ends and the monarchy is restored. She's able to escape to London with the help of privateer Bruce Carlton (Cornell Wilde), but his leaving the country causes her eventually to wind up in prison, where she's sprung by a highwayman and then placed into the theater by Capt. Morgan (Glenn Langan) and there is discovered by King Charles II (George Sanders). She becomes the King's favorite mistress, which gives her some needed protection since she has a past which is going to come to light when Bruce returns from the western hemisphere with a wife in tow. This was based on an enormously popular book from the mid-1940s, but the book was much racier (Amber clearly slept her way to the top) than the Production Code would allow. Still, it's Technicolor fun.
A movie that I think I haven't recommended in quite some time is The Day the Earth Stood Still, which will be in FXM Retro at 10:00 AM Thursday. Michael Rennie plays Klaatu, who lands in Washington DC in his spaceship, something which obviously freaks out the locals since they're not ready for aliens from outer space. Klaatu wants to meet with the President to send him an important message, but the government shoots and wounds him. Being an alien, he recovers quickly, escapes, and moves in next door to war widow Helen (Patricia Neal) and her son Bobby. Eventually they figure out that he's the alien. When Klaatu is unable to get earthlings to listen to reason, he has to resort to more drastic measures to get our attention about the threat we pose to ourselves. Hugh Marlowe plays Helen's boyfriend; Sam Jaffe an eminent scientist; and Lock Martin the most memorable character, seven-foot tall robot Gort. Neal revealed later in life she couldn't help but laugh at how silly her famous line "Klaatu barada nikto" sounds.
I know a lot of you like car racing, so if you want to see son spectacular footage, watch Grand Prix, at 11:00 AM Friday on TCM. James Garner plays American driver Pete Aron, who injures his teammate Scott Stoddard (Brian Bedford) in a crash at Monaco, so he gets dropped from the team and has to hook up with a team owned by Japanese sponsor Yamura (Toshiro Mifune). Meanwhile, Aron also has to go up against one of the best drivers in the world, the Frenchman Sarti (Yves Montand). The racing footage is amazing, especially for 1966, but there's the slight problem that they had to come up with a story to tie the racing bits together, and that's a lot of formulaic stuff about the racers' lives off the track. Pete gets involved in a relationship with Brian's estranged wife (Jessica Walter), while Sarti gets involved with a female reporter (Eva-Marie Saint). There's also a side plot involving a high-living Italian driver (Antonio Sabato Sr.) and his girlfriend.
I actually have two movies from the 1990s this week. The second of them is The Naked Gun 33-1/3: The Final Insult, which you can catch at 10:30 AM Saturday on Showtime Extreme. Leslie Nielsen returns for one more go-round as Lt. Frank Drebin, the head of the Police Squad who at the start of the movie is retired and living with wife Jane (Priscilla Presley). His old partners Hocken (George Kennedy) and Nordberg (O.J. Simpson before the unpleasantness) come to him hoping he can help on a case. It involves him having to go into prison to find out what Rocco (Fred Ward) is planning when he gets out. Rocco's diabolical plan involves bombing the Academy Awards ceremony. Drebin and his partners have to go to the Oscars and try not to upstage the ceremony while also making certain they find that bomb and defuse it before it goes off. This offers the opportunity for a lot of cameos, with the most notable of them being Mary Lou Retton (not her movie debut as she had been in Scrooged).
We'll conclude this week with The Heiress, at 10:00 PM Sunday on TCM. Olivia de Havilland plays the titular heiress, Catherine Sloper, living in New York circa 1850 with her widower father Dr. Sloper (Ralph Richardson) and widowed aunt Lavinia (Miriam Hopkins). Catherine is incredibly introverted thanks to her father's treatment of her, and he worries whether she'll ever be able to find a suitable man. That, and he's convinced his daughter will never match the perfection that he feels his late wife had. Then, at a party, dashing Morris Townsend (Montgomery Clift early in his career) comes calling. This being the first man who ever paid attention to Catherine, she's immediately taken by him, and begins to fall in love with him, and the feeling seems mutual. But Dad is convinced Morris is just out for Catherine's inheritance. In fact, it gets so bad between father and daughter that he threatens to disinherit her, while she threatens to elope anyway. What does Morris really want?