Welcome to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" thread, for the week of February 29-March 6, 2016. The days are getting longer, but the weather's still not good enough to do stuff outside if you're stuck in one of those places where you can't do things in the snow because there is no snow. So why not enjoy the movies instead? We're starting a new month, which means we're going to get a new TCM Spotlight and new Star of the Month. Also, another movie shows up on FXM Retro after a long absence. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
If you want to watch an odd little western, you could do worse than to catch The Parson and the Outlaw, at 6:10 AM Monday on Encore Westerns. This one asks the question, "What might have happened if Billy the Kid faked his death and tried to go straight?" Billy, played here by Anthony Dexter stays out west, where he at first starts working for the guy trying to corner the new territory, Col. Morgan (Robert Lowery). Meanwhile, Morgan's hired gun, Jack Slade (Sonny Tufts), is pissed that Billy the Kid is dead, because he wanted to be the one to shoot Billy. Little does he know.... And then Morgan's predations start to be too much for the people who want to live honestly. The only one who knows that they have Billy the Kid in their presence is the Rev. Jones (Charles Rogers, who produced the movie), and he tries to impress on Billy that Billy has to go back on his promise to go straight because he skills are so desperately needed.
Those of you who like MGM's glitzy looks at history are in luck. At 2:15 AM Tuesday on TCM, you can catch Young Bess. Young Bess, played by Jean Simmons, is a reference to Queen Elizabeth I of England; the film was released a year after Elizabeth II became queen. She is presented mostly before she became queen, being the daughter of Henry VIII (played once again by Charles Laughton who had won an Oscar playing the King 20 years previously in The Private Life of Henry VIII, which is airing at 4:30 AM Saturday). In this version of the history, Thomas Seymour (Stewart Grainger) marries Henry's widow Catherine Parr (Deborah Kerr), but is really in love with Elizabeth. Oh; Thomas is also the brother of Henry's third wife, who had borne Henry a son, who would become King Edward VI as a child. But of course Edward dies young, making Bloody Mary the queen, which makes life even more dangerous for poor Elizabeth. Of course, she outlives them all, which is what enables her to become Queen.
I've recommended quite a few Glenn Ford movies before. I can't recall whether Torpedo Run is one of them. It's airing at 6:15 PM Tuesday on TCM, so this is your chance to catch it. Ford plays Barney Doyle, who is the commander of a US Navy submarine in the time not long after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. By now the Japanese have taken the Philippines, which is tough for Barney, since his wife and child were there, and he has no idea whether they're even alive. Still, his mission is to sink the aircraft carrier which carried out the attack on Pearl Harbor. It would be a big propaganda victory, so the Japanese have made it tougher on the Americans. They're putting the carrier in a convoy with a ship carrying POWs from the Phillipines, and wouldn't you know it, the Japanese make certain Barney knows his wife and daughter are on that POW ship. Ernest Borgnine plays Lt. Sloan, Doyle's second in command.
It wasn't uncommon for studios to remake their own movies as musicals. A lesser-known movie remade as a lesser-known musical is Small Town Girl, airing on TCM at 3:30 PM Wednesday. Farley Granger plays Rick, who is racing to elope with his girlfriend Lisa (Ann Miller). Unfortunately, the two of them are racing at well above the speed limit, and when they're going through one small town, they get pulled over doing 85. Rick gets sentenced by Judge Kimbell (Robert Keith) to 30 days, at which point Rick meets the judge's daughter Cindy (Jane Powell). Cindy falls for Rick, even though she's got a boyfriend of her own in Ludwig (Bobby Van). Ludwig, for his part, wants to make it on Broadway, so you have to think he'd be right for Lisa (who doesn't love Ann Miller's energetic dancing?) and Rick would be right for Lisa. Ann Miller gets a memorable number through an orchestra of hands, while Bobby Van gets to hop through the entire back lot. As for the non-musical original, James Stewart had a supporting part in the Bobby Van role.
Thursday is the first day back to regular programming for TCM after 31 Days of Oscar, and it just happens to be Jean Harlow's birthday. TCM can only do a Harlow birthday salute in a leap year, so they've taken the opportunity to do just that this year, showing her films all morning and afternoon. The day concludes with Harlow's final completed role, in Personal Property at 6:30 PM. Harlow plays Crystal Wetherby, a woman who married thinking she was marrying into wealth, but wound up widowed and realizing she only has debts. Robert Taylor plays ex-con Raymond Dabney, younger son of the Dabney family of underwear fame. They need money to keep their business going, and want to marry off older son Claude (Reginald Owen) to Crystal, thinking she's got money, so they're none too happy to see Raymond come back. Raymond, however, winds up getting named by the law as the man to recover Crystal's debts, which means he has to move in with her to get them, and so he winds up pretending to be her butler. Of course they fall for each other.
I don't think I've recommended the movie Whispering Smith before. You can catch it this week on Encore Westerns at 7:20 AM Thursday. Alan Ladd plays the title character, a railroad detective who's goign out west to catch the Barton brothers who seem to be trying to wreck all the line's trains. He winds up getting more than he bargained, however. En route, he meets old friend Sinclair (Robert Preston), who works for the railroad, at least for the time being. When Sinclair takes Smith back to the ranch to buy time to plan his next move, Smith discovers that the now Mrs. Sinclair (Brenda Marshall) is one of his old flames. Meanwhile, Sinclair loses his job by pilfering some of the material from the latest wreck, and this leads Smith to believe that Sinclair may be in with the Bartons. Worse, he comes to conclude that the owner of the ranch where he's staying (Donald Crisp) is the real brains of the organization!
Now that we're done with 31 Days of Oscar, it's time for a new TCM Spotlight. Every Thursday in March, Sister Rose Pacatte, of the Pauline Center for Media Studies, will present films that were given the "Condemned" label by the Catholic Legion of Decency. The Legion of Decency was a fairly powerful organization back in the day when Catholics did what their hierarchy told them to a much greater extent, and their threat to boycott Hollywood movies is one of the things that led to the imposition of the Production Code in 1934 with Joe Breen at its head. Unsurprisingly, this first Thursday in March sees several pre-Code movies, although the spotlight is going to have more than its share of movies from later years. Many of these will be non-Hollywood movies, such as this week's showing of Black Narcissus (9:30 PM Thursday), the British movie about a group of nuns in India and how their faith is tested; as for Code-era Hollywood movies, this week brings Jane Russell's apparently condemnable bustline in The Outlaw (1:15 AM Friday).
And then on Friday night we get the new Star of the Month on TCM: Merle Oberon. The salute kicks off with a bunch of the movies she made in the 1930s, including one I think I haven't recommended before, Beloved Enemy at 9:45 PM Friday. In theory, this movie is based on history, that history being the end of the Irish struggle for independence from the UK in the 1910s and early 1920s; in fact, the movie uses those events to pin this wholly fictitious story on. The IRA have more or less forced the British to the negotiating table, and Dennis Riordan (Brian Aherne), based loosely on Michael Collins, is one of the negotiators for the Irish side. But during the negotiations, he meets Helen (that's Merle Oberon), not realizing she's the daughter of Lord Athleigh (Henry Stephenson), one of the British negotiators. Dennis and Helen fall in love, only learning to late that the two of them are representing opposite sides. Riordan isn't able to get as much out of the treaty as the Irish want, and that threatens disaster.
A movie that's returning to FXM Retro after a long absence is Vicki, which you can catch at 1:30 PM Friday and 8:00 AM Saturday. Vicki Lynn, played by Jean Peters, is a model who, at the beginning of the movie, is discovered murdered! (A good portion of the story is told in flashback.) Her sister Jill (Jeanne Crain) feels a sense of guilt for helping her get to the big city, and wants to help find whoever did the deed. The suspicion pretty immediately falls on her agent, Steve (Elliott Reed), and in fact the police detective investigating the murder, Lt. Cornell (Richard Boone), is certain that Steve did it. But why is Lt. Cornell so obsessed with seeing Steve arrested and found guilty for the murder? Well, he has his own thoughts about Vicki, for one. Also in the cast is future TV producer Aaron Spelling, playing the desk clerk at the apartment building where Jill and Vicki lived. If the plot sounds familiar, it's because this is a remake of the spectacular I Wake Up Screaming.
Finally this week, I see that the original 1962 version of Cape Fear is back on TCM, at 4:00 PM Saturday. Gregory Peck plays Sam Bowden, a happily married lawyer with a wife Peggy (Polly Bergen) and daughter Nancy (Lori Martin). Unfortunately, he also has a past in which he testified against one Max Cady (Robert Mitchum) and got Max sent to prison. Max has just been released, and is determined to get some sort of revenge, although that revenge involves staying just on the right side of the law and driving the Bowdens nuts by so doing. Stalking a man's daughter on public property was apparently fully legal back then and getting a restraining order was hard. Things escalate until Sam plans to deal with Max personally, while keeping his wife and daughter safe out on a houseboat. Max finds out, however, leading to one of the great climactic sequences.