Welcome to another edition of Fedya's “Movies to Tivo” thread, for the week of February 6-12, 2017. There's nothing big going on in sports this week, so it's a good time to sit back with some good movies. Once again, I've used my impeccable taste to select a series of movies that I know all of you will like. No Star of the Month or Spotlight this time around, since TCM is in its annual 31 Days of Oscar, but that doesn't mean there aren't any good movies. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned, which is actually important this week since one of the movies starts at midnight ET.
Mary Pickford was known as America's Sweetheart in the silent era (even though she was born in Canada). She didn't make many talkies, although she won an Oscar for her first, which I can't help but think was a career award. That movie, Coquette, will be on TCM at 11:00 AM Monday. Pickford plays the title role, a flirtatious southern belle named Norma who could probably have any man she wants. She picks Michael (Johnny Mack Brown), which displeases her father (John St. Polis) no end because Michael is of a lower social class than Norma and the rest of her family. So Michael goes off to make something of himself in order that Norma's father will accept him when he returns. But not only does Dad not accept Michael on his return, Dad thinks Michael is compromising Norma. So Dad shoots Michael! In the climactic courtroom scene, Norma has to decide whether to defend her fiancé's honor, or her father's. It's a hoary plot, but Pickford does the best she can with it.
You've probably heard the phrase “The dingo ate my baby”. That's actually based on a real case, and a movie was made about the case. That movie, A Cry in the Dark, is on TCM at 8:00 PM Monday. Lindy Chamberlain (Meryl Streep) is camping in the Australian outback with her husband Michael (Sam Neill) and children. At night, the youngest child goes wandering off and Lindy spots a dingo. When the child never shows up, Lindy assumes that the dingo took the baby as prey. However, for a bunch of reasons, the media and public aren't so sympathetic to Lindy and her family, and suspect that she really killed the baby. It's not just Nancy Grace who is a nasty you-know-what who jumps to conclusions. So there's a trial, and a retrial, and ultimately it destroys the couple's marriage and you can only imagine what it did to the surviving siblings. Streep is excellent as always. The real-life Michael Chamberlain died a month ago, aged 72.
I'm not certain if I've recommended The Joe Louis Story before. It's running at 4:18 AM Tuesday on StarzEncore Black. Produced by the Chrysler auto company, this movie tells the story of Detroit's own Joe Louis (played here by real-life boxer Coley Wallace), who dealt with poverty and racism as he pursued his dream to become the heavyweight boxing champion of the world, and then defending his title against people like Max Schmelling. Louis served in World War II and fought longer than he should, mostly because he needed the money. Well, it doesn't quite tell that story, as it waters everything down, be it the poverty, the racism, people using him for their own ends, mafia involvement, and all sorts of other things like that. What it does have, however, is a reasonable amount of footage from the actual bouts. Among the plethora of not so well known black actors is the white character actor Paul Stewart, here playing a fictitious sportswriter in firm support of Louis' ambitions.
Over on StarzEncore Westerns, I could mention Invitation to a Gunfighter, which is airing at 11:40 PM Tuesday. George Segal plays Matt Weaver, a farmer in New Mexico who went off to fight in the Civil War for the Confederates. Unfortunately for him they lost, and he returns home to find a town that hates the Confederacy, to the point where local banker and general town boss Brewster (Pat Hingle) has expropriated Confederates' property and auctioned off Weaver's farm. Weaver doesn't like that, as well as the fact that his fiancée (Janice Rule) has left him for another man (Clifford David), so he tries to take matters into his own hands. To deal with that, Brewster hires a gunman (Yul Brynner) to deal with Weaver. The town ultimately finds that perhaps they would have been better off without this gunman around. And the gunman has some secrets of his own…. It's certainly not the best western out there, but Yul Brynner is always interesting to watch.
I know I've mentioned Alfred Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent several times before, but it's so underrated that it deserves another mention. TCM is running it at 8:00 PM Wednesday. It's August 1939, and a New York newspaper owner can't get anything about the current international situation out of his regular correspondents. So he brings in Johnny Jones (Joel McCrea), christens him Huntley Haverstock, and sends him off to Europe. There, Huntley meets Dutch Foreign Minister Van Meer (Albert Basserman), only to witness Van Meer's assassination. As he follows the assassins, however, he finds that Van Meer really wasn't killed! Of course, he can't get anybody to believe him. Along the way, he meets fellow reporter ffolliott [sic] (George Sanders), as well as Carol Fisher (Laraine Day), the daughter of the head of the “peace organization” that was working with Van Meer. This organization, headed by Carol's father (Herbert Marshall) may be more influential than it's letting on. There are a lot of great Hitchcock set-pieces here, a spectacular climactic plane crash, and Santa Claus (er, Edmund Gwenn) playing a hired killer.
A movie returning to FXM Retro is The Lieutenant Wore Skirts, which you can watch at 1:20 PM Tuesday or 7:50 AM Wednesday. If you're reminded of The Seven Year Itch while watching this, don't be surprised. Tom Ewell plays an Air Force reservist who's about to re-up. His wife (Sheree North), n order not to be separated from her husband, decides to enlist as well. Except that there's a catch. He fails his physical while she gets assigned to Hawaii, so husband has to follow along. Needless to say, it's a fairly humiliating life for the husband, as he's forced to become a 1950s era househusband. To deal with that, he tries to come up with any harebrained scheme he can to get his wife discharged. He's even forced to deal with the lady in the apartment upstairs (Rita Moreno) when she approaches him, shades of that former Ewell movie. You can probably figure out where all of this is going since there was no way Ewell was going to run off with Moreno and no way the script wasn't going to make North a happy wife by her husband's side at the end of the movie.
Another movie I think I've never recommended here before is The Great Santini, which will be on TCM at midnight Saturday (or 11:00 PM Friday LFT). Robert Duvall plays the title character, a Marine pilot named Bull Meechum; “The Great Santini” is his nickname. He's got a wife and four children who, like military families do, follow him from post to post. Now they're in South Carolina, and Dad is as demanding as ever, running his life the way he'd run a military command, which is of course no way to run a family. Especially not in peacetime (the movie is set in the early 1960s, just before Vietnam). But this is the era when Dad is boss, and Mom (Blythe Danner) puts up with it. Eldest son Ben (Michael O'Keefe) wants his father's respect, but also wants to be his own man, and growing up with a martinet like Dad is tough. It doesn't help that Ben has developed a friendship with the black cook's son. This is as much a character study as anything else, and Duvall and O'Keefe portray their characters excellently.
For those who like biting comedy, you could do far worse than to watch Hail the Conquering Hero, which TCM is showing at 6:00 PM Saturday. Eddie Bracken plays Woodrow Truesmith, who with it being World War II, is expected to do his part for his country and enlist. The only problem is, he tried to enlist but was declared 4-F, medically unfit. He couldn't bear to tell his family back home this, however, so he's been working in a defense plant and sending home fake letters about his heroic military service. That is, until he meets a group of Marines commanded by Sgt. Heffelfinger (William Demarest). Heffelfinger and his Marines hear the story, and decide that dammit, they're going to make a hero out of Woodrow. They take him back to his hometown, where they find that the mayor is a corrupt you-know-what, and figure this is the perfect opportunity for a war hero to use that heroism to run for office and clean up his home town. Woodrow would like to confess, but the town and his girlfriend (Ella Raines) need him, and Heffelfinger isn't about to let Woodrow let them down.
Sometimes, a movie that's not particularly great gets an Oscar nomination for one of its songs. Such is the case with Honeysuckle Rose, which is on TCM at 2:45 PM Sunday. Willie Nelson plays Buck Bonham, a medium-time country singer who tours Texas with his band. However, his guitarist Garland (Slim Pickens) wants to retire, and Buck's wife Viv (Dyan Cannon) wants Buck to spend more time at home for the sake of their son. It's a life Buck doesn't really know how to live, however, as he itches to go back on the road. And then Viv comes up with the idea that until Buck's band can come get that replacement guitarist, why not use Garland's daughter Lily (Amy Irving) for a couple of weeks? Lily likes the idea, and soon enough she practically becomes one of the guys. Except, of course, that she's a woman, and that's a lot of temptation for Buck. The movie was nominated for introducing Willie Nelson's now classic song “On the Road Again”. The movie also has a lot of great footage of small-town rural Texas life. It's just too bad the subject matter is so unoriginal. “On the Road Again” lost the Oscar to the title song from Fame, which is going to be on TCM at 10:30 PM Tuesday.