Welcome to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" Thread, for the week of January 14-20, 2019. We're in the dog days of the sporting season, unless you're a tennis fan in which case the Australian Open is about the heat up with five women who could become #1 by winning. But if tennis isn't your thing, why not relax with some good movies? Once again I've used my impeccable taste and erudition to pick out a bunch of stuff I know you'll all like. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
This week's Silent Sunday Nights feature on TCM is The Extra Girl, at 12:30 AM Monday. One of Mabel Normand's final films, she plays Sue, a plainish small-town girl who dreams of becoming a movie star and marrying her childhood sweetheart Dave (Ralph Graves). However, Dad wants her to marry another man, and there's a woman who wants Dave for herself. So when there's a contest looking for new Hollywood stars, the more beautiful other woman sends in her picture claiming to be Sue, and Sue is named the winner. When she gets to Hollywood and they find out she's not the woman in the photo, she has to start at the bottom in the wardrobe department. Eventually Dave follows Sue out to Hollywood and gets a job at the studio, while Sue's parents also come out but get involved in a financial swindle. Can Sue solve her parents' problems and become a star? Normand was primarily known as a comic actress, but The Extra Girl is just as much drama as comedy. And stay for the thrills involving the lion.
Robert Mitchum and James Stewart died one day apart in July 1997. They actually made one movie together, the 1970s remake of The Big Sleep. They're both Hollywood legends, but in many ways very different, so it shouldn't be a surprise that somebody came up with the brilliant idea of doing a documentary on the two actors and how they relate to Hollywood history in James Stewart, Robert Mitchum: The Two Faces of America. That documentary is going to premiere on TCM at 8:00 Monday night, and it's also an excuse to air a night of Stewart and Mitchum's movies. I don't know if Stewart and Mitchum really do represent two different faces of America; Stewart and Henry Fonda were definitely on opposite sides of the political aisle but were also lifelong friends. Unsurprisingly, there's a book about that relationship.
A movie back on FXM after a long while is Hombre, which will be on at 7:40 AM Tuesday. Paul Newman plays John Russell, who although he's white, was raised by the Apaches and feels more Apache than white. Others treat him the same way. When his white father dies, he has to settle the old man's affairs. That bring him in contact with the whites in town. Among them is Interior Department Indian agent Favor (Fredric March), who is looking for a special stage out of town. The disparate cast of characters on the coach includes Jessie (Diane Cilento), the boarding house manager whose house Russell sold; slimy Cicero (Richard Boone); stage line manager Mendez (Martin Balsam); and several others. Cicero is there to organize a hold-up, since he just knows that Favor has a bunch of money he's embezzled from his dishonest treatment of the Apache. That hold-up comes, of course, and Russell gets the chance to earn some respect in the eyes of white society. But he's a hard man, and everybody winds up at each other's throat.
I'm not the biggest fan of TCM Star of the Month Kathryn Grayson, but one of her movies that's running this week is good for other reasons: Anchors Aweigh, at 10:15 PM Tuesday on TCM. Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra play a pair of sailors, Joe and Clarence, who get four day's shore leave in southern California. They meet a boy who wants to run away to join the navy (Dean Stockwell in his film debut), and they take him back to his guardian, aunt Susie (Kathryn Grayson). She's a waitress, but she can sing and has dreams of getting an audition with famed conductor Jose Iturbi (playing himself). Joe and Clarence both wind up falling in love with Susie along the way as they try to get her to Hollywood for an audition. Will either of them get the girl, or any girl? The plot is fairly standard stuff, but the movie has Frank Sinatra's singing as well as Kelly's inventive dancing. Most notable is a scene in which Kelly dances with Jerry, the cartoon mouse.
It's been a year and a half since I recommended Rebel in Town, so I'll mention it again this week. It's airing at 10:59 AM Wednesday on StarzEncore Westerns. It's the time shortly after the Civil War, when the South was laid waste, so any number of southerners decide they'll try to go west to make a new life for themselves. This includes the Mason family, led by patriarch Bedloe (J. Carroll Naish). To make a living, and I suppose to deal with their side having lost the war, they turn to robbing banks. In one of the robberies they hear somebody pull a gun on them so one of them shoots, only realizing afterwards it was a little boy with a toy gun. The boy's father, John Willoughby (John Payne), who also served for the Union in the Civil War, goes nuts and vows revenge, which scares his wife Nora (Ruth Roman), who wants regular law to take its course. And then one of the sons who didn't kill the boy gets injured and taken back to the Willoughby place, without John realizing who it is. Nora does, of course....
TCM is finishing up a three-night spotlight on director Elia Kazan this Wednesday in prime time. One of the movies airing this week is Splendor in the Grass, at 10:15 PM Wednesday. Natalie Wood plays Deanie, a high school senior in 1920s Kansas in love with football team captain Bud (Warren Beatty). They haven't gone far in their relationship because it's the 1920s, and Bud doesn't want Deanie to get the "loose" reputation his flapper sister Ginny (Barbara Loder) has. But both of the young lovers have to deal with the pressures being put on them by their parents. Bud's dad (Pat Hingle) is a wealthy oil man, and wants Bud to go off to Yale, which likely means a "nice" society girl and not Deanie is in his future. Deanie, meanwhile, has a mother (Audrey Christie) who thinks that their family's future would be set if Deanie were to marry Bud. And, of course, Bud and Deanie have the same biological desires all of had when we were 18 and thought we could take on the world.... This was Beatty's Hollywood debut, and a spectacular one it is.
I can't recall whether I've recommended Thief before. It's going to be on StarzEncore Action at 4:16 AM Thursday. James Caan plays the titular thief, a man named Frank who engages in high-end diamond heists and has a restaurant, car dealership, and new wife Jessie (Tuesday Weld) on the side. He wants to settle down to a more normal life, so with that in mind, he decides to take "one more job", for Leo (Robert Prosky) in order to make the money necessary to get out of the crime racket. Of course, what Frank doesn't realize until it's much too late is that Leo is way high up in the organized crime business, and Leo and his cronies plan to use Frank's abilities to their end, and not just for that one job. Threatening to kill Jessie is one way to do it. Meanwhile, the cops are unsurprisingly corrupt, and they too would like to use Frank for their own purposes. Also in the cast as two of Frank's friends are Willie Nelson as the incarcerated Okla, and Jim Belushi as Barry.
Last week, TCM ran Young Mr. Lincoln; this week they're showing Abe Lincoln in Illinois, at 11:15 AM Friday. The movie actually starts off in Lincoln's (played here by Raymond Massey) home state of Kentucky, before he meets Ann Rutledge (Mary Howard) and follows her to Illinois. However, Rutledge was fated to die, resulting in Lincoln ultimately marrying Mary Todd (Ruth Gordon) which wasn't a particularly happy marriage. Along the way, Lincoln served a couple of terms in the Illinois state legislature, as well as spending time as a lawyer in private practice. Eventually as you'll recall from your history lessons, Lincoln would be nominated for the US Senate against Stephen Douglas (Gene Lockhart), which would serve as a springboard for a presidential campaign. Massey is quite good as Lincoln and earned an Oscar nomination, although this movie's version of Lincoln is fairly hagiolatrous. No vampire hunting in this one.
For those of you who want a more recent biopic, have something that's only a quarter-century old: Tombstone, which will be on Showtime at 12:00 PM Friday and Showtime Extreme at 7:00 AM Saturday. You probably know about the gunfight at the OK Corral in Tombstone AZ, and unsurprisingly, this is yet another retelling of the story. Wyatt Earp (Kurt Russell) has grown tired of quashing crime in Dodge City, so he moves with his brothers Virgil (Sam Elliott) and Moran (Bill Paxton) to Tombstone, along with their friend, the consumptive dentist Doc Holliday (Val Kilmer). Of course, trouble follows in the form of a gang known as the Cowboys who are of course the Clantons. They eventually kill the marshal (Harry Carey Jr.) leading to Virgil becoming marshal and deputizing his brothers, which Wyatt didn't want. That leads to the gunfight, although in this case it's not the end of the movie as Wyatt still has a bunch of enemies to face down afterwards. Robert Mitchum narrates, while Charlton Heston has a small rolle as a friend of Doc's.
Another movie I haven't mentioned in a while is The Prowler. TCM will be showing it at 1:45 PM Saturday. Evelyn Keyes plays Susan, a suburban housewife married to a late-night radio host, so she's alone quite a bit. One day, she thinks she hears somebody snooping around the house, so she calls the police. They send Lt. Garwood (Van Heflin), who does an investigation, but by the time he arrives there's nobody left to be found. However, Garwood finds Susan striking, so he returns later in the pretext of checking up on the case, but it's really to try to hit on her. That, and he's dissatisfied with his life and wishes he could live like these rich folk. She begins to feel the same way toward Garwood because she's constantly bored what with her husband away every night. They start to carry on an affair, and you know that down that road lies trouble. Especially when Garwood learns that Susan is in for a substantial inheritance should her husband die. But can they really get away with it?