Welcome to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" Thread, for the week of February 4-10, 2019. Now that we're in the first full week of 31 Days of Oscar, there's no Star of the Month on TCM, but there are a whole bunch of great actors, too many to name here although you'll note I started and concluded with Laurence Olivier. There's also a double feature of Anthony Quinn on Tuesday night, and a lot more. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
TCM's forma6 for 31 Days of Oscar this year is to have double features in prime time. One of the two themes on Monday is Laurence Olivier's Shakespearean roles, including Henry V at 4:00 AM Tuesday. Olivier plays the English king who led the forces against the French in the Battle of Agincourt during the Hundred Years' War, and that's used as an allegory for the situation that Britain was going through with World War II at the time the movie was made (1944). In fact it's pretty amazing the movie was made at all what with trying to get all that Technicolor film stock into the country when shipping resources were severely limited.. As for the movie itself, it's told in an interesting way, starting off as if it were being presented at the Globe Theatre in Shakespeare's day, complete with audiences in Elizabethan garb, before switching to a more cinematic telling for much of the story. The finale returns to the reproduction of the Globe. Olivier directed in addition to starring.
For those of you who want relatively recent movies, I'll recommend one that's less than a quarter-century old: The Usual Suspects, at 1:20 PM Monday on MoreMax. An explosion occurs on a ship in San Pedro, CA, with a whole bunch of people killed, and only one survivor, crippled Verbal Kint (Kevin Spacey). When the police, in the form of investigator Kujan (Chazz Palminteri) question him, he gives a story that stretches back several weeks and to the other coast. Kint was one of several men brought together in a lineup, with McManus (Stephen Baldwin), Hockney (Kevin Pollak), Fenster (Benicio Del Toro), and Keaton (Gabriel Byrne); the five then become a gang of petty criminals. They then get approached by Kobayashi (Pete Postelthwaite), the lawyer for the enigmatic gangster Keyser Söze, who may or may not actually exist. He's got the goods on the gang, and wants them to do a job out on that boat in San Pedro. The only problem is, it sounds like a rather suicidal plot.
For those of you who like foreign films, you're in luck as TCM is running a bunch of them on Tuesday, including The Walls of Malapaga at 7:00 AM. Jean Gabon plays Pierre, who at the beginning of the movie is in the hold of a boat off Genoa, Italy; it's clear he's running from legal issues. But he's also got an impacted molar that needs treatment, so he has to go ashore. There he gets robbed but meets the waitress Marta (Isa Miranda) and her daughter Cecchina. It turns out that Marta is also French, and running away from her husband who got involved in criminal activity and beat her. Marta would like an annulment and isn't averse to starting a new life with Pierre, so she's more than willing to shelter him. But her husband shows up, and he wants his daughter. He also has no qualms about sacrificing Pierre if that will help him get the daughter back. It's a good story, but unfortunately the last tim TCM ran it they had a horrendously bad print that made the subtitles difficult to read.
I don't think I've ever mentioned The Raiders before. It's going to be on StarzEncore Westerns at 2:30 AM Monday. An odd mix of Red River and Cecil B. DeMille's The Plainsman, the first half has Brian Keith playing John McElroy, who has returned home to Texas from the Civil War to find a devastated land. He has to get the cattle to the railroad head (remember that the transcontinental railroad had not yet been completed), but what is now Oklahoma was still Indian territory then, so unlike Red River, the cattle drive fails. McElroy goes to Hays City, KS where the end of the railroad line currently is, to try to get a line extended to Texas, which would be a huge boon for the cattlemen. When the railroad boss and the local army fort commander (who got shot by a Texan in the recently-concluded war) say no, the Texans try to bring the railroad to the negotiating table by other means. This gets Wild Bill Hickok (Robert Culp), Buffalo Bill Cody (Jim McMullan), and Calamity Jane (Judi Meredith) involved. All three of these historical figures were in fact in Hays City in the late 1860s and were the subjects of DeMille's The Plainsman.
On Thursday morning and afternoon, TCM is running a bunch of prison movies, with one of the earliest being Weary River at 6:15 AM Thursday. Richard Barthelmess plays small-time gangster Jerry, who has a girlfriend in Alice (Betty Compson) and a rival in Spadoni (Louis Natheaux). Spadoni gets him sent to prison, where the warden (the original William Holden; no relation to the one from Sunset Blvd.) actually believes in trying to rehabilitate prisoners. In Jerry's case, that lands him a spot with the prison orchestra, and on one of the radio shows the orchestra does, Jerry sings his song "Weary River". It becomes a hit, and that gives Jerry the possibility of staying away from gang life after release by becoming a singer-songwriter. The only problem is, Jerry is a one-hit wonder, and when people want to hear something other than "Weary River", he's not able to provide anything of comedy, which threatens to push him back into a life of crime. There was actually some controversy around this one when rumors come out that Barthelmess wasn't doing his own singing.
The movie version of MASH is going to be on a couple of times this week, including at 5:15 PM Friday on StarzEncore (that's the east coast feed; if you only have the west coast feed it's going to be three hours later). Donald Sutherland plays Hawkeye Pierce, a doctor serving in the medical corps during the Korean War (although the movie is of course an allegory about Vietnam which was going on at the time) who gets deployed at the understaffed 4077th near the front lines. There he meets Trapper John (Elliott Gould), and the two of them along with Duke Forrest (Tom Skerritt) try to remake the place to help deal with the absurdity of war. Maj. Frank Burns (Robert Duvall) and "Hot Lips" Houlihan (Sally Kellerman) are more by-the-books, and needless to say Pierce and his friends enjoy needling Burns and Hot Lips. The success of the movie paved the way for the long running and increasingly unfunny TV show, although the only actor reprising his role from the movie is Gary Burghoff as Radar O'Reilly.
There's a relatively limited number of Oscar-nominated movies, so it's not surprising the I repeat movies during February. I recommend the 1931 version of The Front Page last year, and it's going to air again this year, at 4:15 AM on Friday. Adolphe Menjou plays Walter Burns, a newspaper editor who's about to lose his best reporter, Hildy Johnson (Pat O'Brien) to marriage. There's a big story coming up in the impending execution of Earl Williams (George E. Stone), and Walter thinks Bailey would be perfect for getting the death row interview. And the Earl escapes, making the story bigger, and making Walter believe he can use it to keep Hildy from leaving. Add in the fact that Earl might not in fact be guilty.... With all that going on, Walter uses every trick in the book to keep Hildy on the story. Billy Wilder remade the story in the 1970s, but the more famous remake was in 1940 with a gender switch with Hildy being a woman, and a different title in His Girl Friday.
Another of the double features looks at the Best Original Song category in 1980. This allows TCM to premiere 9 to 5, at midnight Sunday (ie. 11:00 PM Saturday LFT). Jane Fonda plays Judy, a divorcee who has to reenter the working world, doing so by joining the secretarial pool in a corporate office in Dallas. Her supervisor Violet (Lily Tomlin) shows her the ropes, and pretty much everybody hates their chauvinistic boss Franklin (Dabney Coleman). He's trying to woo his personal secretary Doralee (Dolly Parton), but it turns out she really doesn't like his advances. When the three get together, they discover that he's embezzling from the company. But it's going to take time for them to get proof, and Franklin will be able to cover up his tracks given the chance, so they kidnap him and keep him incommunicado, which causes other complications. It's a lot of silly fun, with Parton earning an Oscar nomination for the memorable title song. (She lost to the theme from Fame.)
If you ever wanted to see Burt Lancaster in an Italian movie, you're in luck: FXM Retro will be showing The Leopard, at 11:50 AM Sunday. Lancaster plays Prince Don Fabrizio Salino, patriarch of a noble family in Sicily in 1860. This was a turbulent time in Italian history, as the various kingdoms and city-states were going through the upheaval that would result in the unification of the country in 1861. And, indeed, the turbulence has hit Don Fabrizio's own family, as his spendthrift nephew Tancredi (Alain Delon) has joined up with Garibaldi's forces, at least for the time. As for Don Fabrizio, he can see the writing on the wall that there's a new Italy coming, and it's not going to be for people of his generation. He muses upon this at a party in the village of his summer residence where another nobleman is trying to marry of his daughter (Claudia Cardinale). Don Fabrizio realizes she'd be right for Tancredi, but she loves both Tancredi and Don Fabrizio. The movie was made in Italian, with Lancaster's voice dubbed, but Fox picked it up for distribution in the US and had it dubbed into English, with Lancaster providing his own voice.
Finally, just before The Leopard, I'll mention the delightful A Little Romance, at 10:00 AM Sunday. Young Diane Lane is Lauren, a precocious girl living in Paris with her actress mother Kay (Sally Kellerman) and her latest husband. While on the set of Mom's latest movie, Lauren runs into Daniel (Thelonius Bernard), a similarly precocious boy who has an interest in old Hollywood movies. So you know the two are going to be right for each other, although Lauren's mom and stepfather don't approve. The two young lovers meet Julius (Laurence Olivier), a man with a criminal past who tells the two tall tales, including a legend that if they kiss together under Venice's famed Bridge of Sighs at sunset, they'll always be in love. Lauren and Daniel predictably decide to enlist Julius' help in getting them to Venice; everybody back in Paris thinks they've been kidnapped. There's also a fun turn from actor Broderick Crawford playing himself and getting harassed by poor Daniel about movies Broderick barely remembers.