Welcome to another edition of Fedya's “Movies to Tivo” Thread, for the week of January 16-22, 2017. We've got a long wait ahead of us for the Packers to play in the Conference Championship in Atlanta, so why not ease the anxiety of waiting by enjoying some good movies? I've used my good taste and erudition to select a bunch of movies I know you will all like, well except in one case where it's the TCM Guest Programmer who selected the movies. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
Monday is Martin Luther King Day, which means we get a lot of movies with black stars. Perhaps more interesting is that we get a couple of documentaries in prime time. But among the stars, perhaps the most interesting movie is Princesse Tam-Tam, which kicks off the day at 6:00 AM on TCM. Josephine Baker is the star of this French movie, playing a Tunisian shepherdess named Alwina who is found by a French writer vacationing with his wife. The writer is taken with Alwina and decides to cast her in a Pygmalion story. Meanwhile, the writer's wife falls for a maharajah, which makes our writer jealous. He brings Alwina back to Paris, where he plans to pass her off as a princess, hence the title of the movie. But will Alwina really be able to pull off playing a princess? And will our writer be able to win back his wife? The plot itself isn't the greatest, but Josephine Baker was a fascinating talent and it's good that we at least have a few movies to document that talent.
Over on StarzEncore Classics, you can watch Regarding Henry at 8:40 PM Monday. Henry Turner (Harrison Ford) is a lawyer and free-range a-hole who seems to be more married to his job than his family (wife Sarah is played by Annette Bening; they have a daughter). One night he goes out to pick up a few things at the convenience store and gets caught up in a hold up in which the crook (John Leguizamo) shoots, leaving Henry shot in the head and suffering brain damage as a result. He's going to have to learn how to walk and talk all over again, and will he remember his wife and daughter? He's got a therapist (Bill Nunn) who helps him with the physical stuff, but wouldn't you know it, getting shot changes Henry's brain so that he actually becomes a nicer man and perhaps Henry and Sarah can fall in love all over again. Not that I suggest shooting people to stop them from being free-range a-holes.
TCM is giving us a bunch of Errol Flynn movies on Tuesday morning and afternoon, even though his birthday is in June. This gives us another chance to catch The Sea Hawk, which will be on at 5:30 PM. Flynn plays Geoffrey Thorpe, a privateer which basically means a naval freelancer working for England to keep the sea lanes open without actually being part of a navy. Unfortunately, one of his conquests is of the Spanish ship carrying the Spanish Ambassador Don José (Claude Rains) and his daughter Doña Maria (Brenda Marshall). Obviously Geoffrey falls for Maria, but having taken a Spanish ship means the Queen (Flora Robson) is not amused. Eventually, there's prison time in Spain for Geoffrey, followed by a chance to redeem himself when Spain decides to declare war on England and send the Armada to the island and he's the one who can prove it and take on the Spanish. Another rousing adventure yarn for Errol Flynn, backed by Warner Bros. great stable of character actors.
The TCM spotlight prison movies continues on Tuesday, including the early talkie Weary River at 9:45 PM. Richard Barthelmess plays the prisoner here, a gangster named Jerry who while in prison joins the prison band. A radio producer gets the idea to do a show live from the prison to showcase the talent (and presumably help rehabilitate the prisoners), and Jerry contributes by writing a song called “Weary River” and singing it himself. The song becomes a smash hit on the outside, making Jerry famous in a good way. So it gets him released from prison, with his rehabilitation being to work as a musician. But it turns out that Jerry is just a one-hit wonder and audiences want something fresh, which he's unable to give them. Will this send him back into a life of crime? Perhaps his former girlfriend Alice (Betty Compson) will be able to persuade him to stay on the straight and narrow. That, or the prison warden, played by the original William Holden, a character actor not to be confused with the William Holden of Sunset Blvd. and other classic movies.
On Wednesday night we get this month's TCM Guest Programmer, writer/director Damien Chazelle. You may not recognize the name, but you probably recognize the movies Whiplash and La La Land. He's selected four of his favorite films and sat down with Ben Mankiewicz to present them. Those choices include three musicals:
It's Always Fair Weather, with Gene Kelly playing a World War II veteran ten years on, at 8:00 PM;
The French film The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, with all the dialog sung, at 10:00 PM;
Judy Garland's warbling about a GD trolley in Meet Me in St. Louis, at midnight Thursday (ie. 11:00 PM Wednesday LFT).
There's also one silent, Charlie Chaplin's City Lights at 2:00 AM.
For those of you who like westerns, StarzEncore Westerns is running the classic Rio Grande at 7:40 AM Thursday. John Wayne plays Kirby, a cavalry commander in the Rio Grande region who is faced with attacks by the Apache, which would be bad enough. But on top of that, he's got personal problems. His son Jeff (Claude Jarman Jr.), whom he hasn't seen in years, shows up, having been stationed here, and Dad has to whip Jeff and the other newcomers into a fighting force that can take on the Apache. And then there's Kirby's estranged wife Kathleen (Maureen O'Hara). She's none too pleased that her son is facing possible danger having to fight the Apache, and wants to get him out of there. He chooses to say, and Kirby and Kathleen begin to have a bit of a reconciliation. But is Kirby's plan to deal with the Apache workable or even legal? And will the Apache attacks on civilians ever end? Another of the westerns John Ford made in Monument Valley, UT.
For those of you who like more recent movies, FXM Retro is running Dreamer a couple of times, at 3:00 AM and 1:25 PM Wednesday. This is a familiar story, set in a different location – the lower levels of the bowling world. Tim Matheson plays “Dreamer”, a small-time bowler who wants to make it into the big time, by getting his tour card to compete on the PBA Tour. (If you grew up in the 70s like me or earlier, you may remember people like Chris Schenkel and Nelson Burton Jr. on Saturday afternoons doing the bowling tournaments before ABC's Wide World of Sports; both of them play themselves as does bowler Dick Weber; no Earl Anthony here.) Dreamer has a girlfriend in Karen (Susan Blakely) who loves him through thick and thin, and a mentor (Jack Warden) who owns the local bowling alley where Dreamer practices. Eventually, Dreamer gets the chance at the big time as a wild card into the big tournament. Will Dreamer seize the opportunity? As I said, this is a story with a lot of clichés that could have been set in pretty much any sport.
Jane Wyman gets another night of her movies as TCM's Star of the Month this Thursday night; one that I'm not certain I've recommended before is Here Comes the Groom at 8:00 PM. Obviously Wyman doesn't play a groom; the would-be groom is played by Bing Crosby. Here he's playing Pete Garvey, a foreign correspondent who, working in Paris, has decided to adopt a couple of French war orphans, this being not long after the end of World War II. Wyman plays his ex-fiancée, Emmadel, who is now engaged to the much wealthier Wilbur (Franchot Tone). She likes the two war orphans, but there's a problem. If Pete can't get married in five days, he's going to lose custody of the kids. Well, the obvious solution would be to marry Emmadel, but of course she's now engaged to another man…. Alexis Smith actually gets the chance to do some comedy, playing Wilbur's cousin Winifred. It's directed by Frank Capra, whom you wouldn't think of as doing a Bing Crosby movie, but then several of his frequently-used character actors show up.
TCM is putting the spotlight on Dana Andrews on Saturday night. The evening kicks off with the well-made docudrama Boomerang! at 8:00 PM. Andrews plays prosecuting attorney Henry Harvey, who is given the job of prosecuting the case of a murder of a popular small town clergyman. Eventually war veteran and drifter John Waldron (the perennially underrated Arthur Kennedy) is arrested after a lot of calls for action from local politicos. Waldron is pressured into giving a confession (Lee J. Cobb is the cop getting the confession), and put on trial, where part of his defense is that he was coerced into confessing. And, in fact, Harvey isn't so certain of the man's guilt, so he works to investigate whether or not Waldron is actually guilty. More amazingly, Harvey is able to prove that Waldron is in fact not guilty. And perhaps the most amazing thing of all is that this is all based on a true story (although the names were changed), with the prosecutor going on to become US Attorney General.
During the first half of the Packers' blowout victory against Atlanta next week, the movie that will be up against the game over on TCM is one you'll definitely want to record: A Place in the Sun, at 2:00 PM Sunday. Montgomery Clift plays George Eastman, cousin to the wealthy Eastman industrialists. He's been given a job working from the bottom up at the Eastman plant, and it's there that he meets Alice (Shelley Winters). The two fall in love against company policy, but then when George goes to his uncle's house to discuss business, he runs into Angela (Elizabeth Taylor) at a party. He falls in love with her, and spends so much time with her that it makes Alice jealous. The fact that George has knocked up Alice along the way complicates things. He takes Alice to the lake with the intention of killing her, but she winds up falling overboard in what may have been an accident. The resulting trial is the trial of the century. Clift is very good, Elizabeth Taylor is lovely to look at even though she's really in a supporting role, and Shelley Winters is outstanding