Welcome to another edition of Fedya's “Movies to Tivo” thread, for the week of February 8-14, 2020. Valentine's Day is this coming weekend, so we've got some romances worth mentioning. There's no football until the combine, when everybody picks their favorite player they'll bitch about Gutekunst not selecting for years to come. But before that, why not watch a bunch of good movies. There's more from Star of the Month John Garfield on TCM on Tuesday, but interesting things on all the other movie channels too. As always, all times are in Eastern unless otherwise mentioned.
Monday is the centenary of actress Lana Turner, an icon of glamor and celebrity gossip. It's unsurprising that TCM is spending the day with her films, including one that doesn't seem to air quite so often, Johnny Eager, at 9:30 AM. Robert Taylor plays Eager, one of those would-be high-class gangsters who did some time and is now on parole, ostensibly doing honest work as a taxi driver. But that's a front, as he still runs his rackets from behind the scenes, and is looking to start a new one, a greyhound track. Not that the authorities would give him such a permit. One day, when he's getting a visit from his parole officer, the parole officer brings along Lisbeth (Lana Turner if you couldn't tell), who's studying social work in college and goes along to learn how these things work in real life. Johnny falls for Lisbeth, and the feeling seems to be mutual. But Lisbeth is the daughter of the DA (Edward Arnold) who put Johnny in prison, which obviously presents a problem. Waltzing in from another movie to play Johnny's cynical, alcoholic right-hand man Jeff is Van Heflin, who totally steals the movie from MGM's gloss and got a deserved Oscar for it.
Last week, I mentioned Breathless as a remake you might not remember. This week, it's the turn of the 2012 version of Sparkle, which will be on StarzEncore at 12:25 PM Monday (or three hours later if you only have the west coast feed). In early 1960s Detroit, Sparkle (Jordin Sparks) is a young woman who has a talent for music, but who has a mother Emma (Whitney Houston in her final film role) who had a difficult career in music back in the day, leading Sparkle to be unsure whether she really wants to go into public performance and Mom wanting her to confine her singing to church. But Sparkle and her sisters go to a talent show, where they get noticed by Stix (Derek Luke), which puts the sisters on the road to some success, but also a lot of the same heartache that Mom faced decades earlier as the entertainment business is brutal. One sister named Sister (Carmen Ejogo) gets in a destructive relationship with a comedian. Whitney Houston loved the original movie and had wanted to remake it for years; she died before she could see the movie be released.
Everybody remembers Vivian Vance as Ethel Mertz. She made very few movies, but one of them is The Secret Fury, on TCM at 3:00 PM Tuesday. Claudette Colbert is the star here, as concert pianist Ellen Ewing, engaged to be married to architect David McLean (Robert Ryan). At the wedding, when the minister does the “speak now or forever hold your peace” thing, somebody actually does speak now, claiming that Ellen got married some months back! Ellen, understandably, has no memory of this, so she takes everybody around her, including ex-boyfriend and now district attorney Eric Lowell (Paul Kelly), to the town where the wedding was supposed to have occurred to prove she's still single. Unfortunately, all the evidence suggests that yes, she really is married! And then the guy she is apparently married to winds up dead, a victim of murder, and done in such a way that Ellen is the prime suspect! As for Vance, she plays a maid at the hotel where the dead guy was found and who may have something to say about what's happening to Ellen.
If you want a movie different from a lot of what I recommend, you could try Altered States. You can catch it at 6:54 AM Tuesday on 5StarMax. William Hurt plays Eddie Jessup, a Harvard professor of psychiatry who's always been adventurous. Back when he was a grad student in the 1960s, he experimented with a sensory-deprivation chamber, using himself as the subject, and having experiences that were interesting, to say the least. He's got a wife Emily (Blair Brown) now, but his life is in a bit of a rut, so he figures that trying the sensory-deprivation chamber again might be a good idea. Only this time, he also decides to experiment with some hallucinogenic drugs he found while doing research in Mexico. You can probably guess that the combination isn't such a good one, not just for himself but for everybody around him, threatening irreparable damage to his mental health. Interestingly, this is based on a novel by Paddy Chayefsky, who is probably best known for his intelligent dark comedy, not horror/sci-fi.
With February being Black History Month, TCM is doing a spotlight on interesting performances by black actors, running every Wednesday in prime time. One of those performances comes in the movie Moonrise, at 8:00 PM Wednesday. Dane Clark plays Danny Hawkins, a young man who has had to grow up with the stigma of having a father hanged for murder, after Dad killed a doctor who was negligent in treating Mom, who died as a result. Anyhow, lots of people have been teasing Danny all his life about having an executed father, and now that he's grown up, it's gone too far. When Jerry (Lloyd Bridges) brings it up once too often, Danny snaps and kills Jerry, becoming a fugitive himself. He meets up with Mose (Rex Ingram), who as a black man has isolated himself from the rest of the southern small town as his way of not dealing with racism and Jim Crow. At a dance hall, Danny meets Gilly (Gail Russell) and falls in love with her, only to find out that she was the fiancée of Jerry. Ethel Barrymore turn in another fine performance as Danny's grandmother.
Two people who, like Vivian Vance, are better known for their TV work are John Larroquette (Night Court) and Kirstie Alley (Cheers). They starred together in a movie, Madhouse, and that movie is on this week, at 12:53 PM Wednesday on StarzEncore Classics. Larroquette plays Mark Bannister, a stockbroker married to Jessie (Kirstie Alley). They get a house slightly above their current pay grade that threatens to put a crimp in their finances, but at least it's their house. At least, it is for a little bit. Mark hears from his cousin Fred (John Diehl) and Fred's wife Bernice (Jessica Lundy) that Fred has lost his job and Bernice is pregnant, so they're coming to stay for a little while that of course turns into much more than just a little while. Jessie, for her part, has a sister who shows up with a son, and lots of other hangers-on and neighbors begin to cause all sorts of chaos for our couple who really should be happily married. Dated comedy, but some of you will probably like it.
A search of the site suggests that I haven't recommended Man from Del Rio before. Since it's on StarzEncore Westerns this week at 3:32 AM Friday, now would be a good time to mention it. Anthony Quinn plays Dave Robles, a gunfighter by necessity, needing to get revenge on a bad guy who shafted him and is now the sheriff of the middle-of-nowhere town of Mesa. Dave wins that gunfight, and the honest townsfolk are thrilled with that, wanting Dave to become the new sheriff. However, there's a less-than-honest portion of the town, led by the barkeep Bannister (Peter Whitney). They harbor dreams of getting the honest law run out of town so that they can make it an open town amenable to their lawlessness. Dave, being a bit of an outlaw himself as a gunfighter who's taken down an entire gang, is conflicted, but with the help of lovely Estella (Katy Jurado), the forces of good may be able to win Dave over to their side and save the town even if they don't like him at first.
Valentine's Day is this weekend, so TCM is running a whole bunch of movies with romantic themes. One that always deserves a mention is Roman Holiday, at 8:00 PM Saturday. Audrey Hepburn plays Princess Ann, from an unspecified European country on a state visit to Rome. She's young and doesn't necessarily care for the stuffy state ceremonies. So even though she's under sedation, she escapes from the embassy to try to see Rome, unfortunately passing out along the way. American reporter Joe Bradley (Gregory Peck) is stationed in Rome, and saves Ann, not realizing at first who she is. But when he does, he knows that he's got the story of a lifetime on his hands, and gets in touch with his photographer friend Irving (Eddie Albert) to try to get some candid photos as Joe starts showing Ann around town. Of course the embassy is worried about Ann, who does understand that she does ultimately have her royal duties that she can't really run away from. And will Joe destroy her with that story?
One of the movies that's back in the FXM rotation is a fun World War II action film, Von Ryan's Express, at 4:00 AM Saturday. Frank Sinatra plays Col. Joseph Ryan, an American pilot who gets shot down over Italy and sent to an Italian POW camp where the commander of the prisoners is British Major Fincham (Trevor Howard). The Americans are approaching to liberate the POW camps, but before that can happen Italy surrenders, leading to the possibility that that Nazis could take over the camp, which would be much worse for the POWs than having the Italians run the place. So they try to flee the camp but eventually get caught and put on a train that as far as they know is taking them to Germany and a much harsher POW camp there. So Ryan comes up with a daring escape plan, only to find out that there's a German troop transport running on the same track behind them, so they're going to have to try to steer the train to neutral Switzerland instead.
A less successful romance that shows up in TCM's Valentine's Day marathon is A Patch of Blue, at 1:30 PM Sunday. Elizabeth Hartman plays Selina, a young blind woman who lives with her mom Rose-Ann (Shelley Winters) and Mom's partner, called Ole Pa (Wallace Ford), earning a few extra bucks for the family by stringing beads together for a jewelry manufacturer (John Qualen). Selina is dependent upon her parents and Mom especially resents it. One day when Selina is left in the park to do her bead-stringing, it begins to rain, and she's helped out by kindly Gordon (Sidney Poitier). Gordon learns from naïve Selina about her situation at home, and is horrified, trying to figure out what he can to do help Selina. Selina, for her part, begins to fall in love with Gordon, obviously not knowing at first that he's black because, well, she's blind. Mom figures out what's going on, and gets really pissed about it. Can love conquer all? Would that even be the best thing for Selina? Shelley Winters picked up her second Oscar for this one.