Welcome to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" thread, for the week of Jnauary 21-27, 2013. Now that we've all found a week to calm down from the Packers' disappointing loss and can stop thinking about jumping off the ledge, it's time to think about how many good movies there are out there to sit down and relax with. A bunch of them are being shown this week, as well as some stuff that's more fun than good. There's more heist movies on TCM, as well as a fourth night of Loretta Young, and some other stuff too. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
I don't think I mentioned it last week, but TCM is celebrating the centenary of actor Danny Kaye, with a 24-hour salute that started at 6:00 AM today. Helping present some of the movies will be Danny Kaye's daughter. The movies continue into the overnight hours, displacing the usual Silent Sunday Nights and TCM Imports. Among the movies airing in the overnight are Wonder Man, at 2:00 AM. Thankfully, Kaye isn't dressed here in a skimpy outfit complete with boots, tiara and golden lasso. No, here he plays a dual role as twin brothers. One is a nightclub singer who gets murdered by gangsters. The other one is an eggheaded research librarian who is the polar opposite of the nightclub singer. But the singer's ghost visits the librarian, to impress upon him that he should help bring the killers to justice. This being Danny Kaye, it's a light, zany musical comedy and not a serious movie.
Actually, we've got a couple more comic murder movies this week. The first of these is A Night to Remember, which is airing at 12:45 AM Thursday as part of TCM's salute to Star of the Month Loretta Young. This movie has nothing to do with any ship hitting an iceberg; instead, Young stars as a young woman who's just gotten married to Brian Aherne. He's a mystery writer, and together, the two plan ot move into a Greenwhich Village apartment so that he can do some research on his next mystery novel. They get more than they bargain for, as they find a dead body in the apartment building just after they move in! The mystery isn't the greatest, mostly because this sort of movie was not only about the mystery but about the husband and wife detective team. Watch for Sydney Toler, who also played Charlie Chan in several movies, playing a police inspector here.
The third comic mystery I'm recommending this week is The Corpse came COD, which you can watch at 11:30 AM Friday on TCM. 1930s movie stars Joan Blondell and George Brent return, several years older in this late 1940s movie, as a pair of newspaper reporters going up against each other trying to crack the case. That case happens when Adele Jergens gets a crate she thinks is filled with wardrobe, but in fact contains a dead body! Jergens didn't like the guy whose body it is in the crate, so she believes somebody is trying to set her up. Is that actually the case, or did she commit the murder herself? The movie is based on a novel by Hollywood newspaperman Jimmy Starr, who not only has a cameo; but is part of a scene with cameos of several Hollywood columnists, most famously Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons.
If you want some serious murder, try Tuesday on TCM. On Tuesday there are a bunch of movies with women who either get murdered by their menfolk, or who have good reason to believe their menfolk are out to get them. December Star of the Month Barbara Stanwyck, for example, shows up in The Two Mrs. Carrolls at 9:30 AM, in which she falls in love with artist Humphrey Bogart, only to come to discover that his first wife died under mysterious circumstances and that he might be trying to poison her now.
In Gaslight, at 7:30 AM, Ingrid Bergman may be be subject to a murder plot by her husband Charles Boyer, but "only" a plot to drive her insanse, as he's looking for her aunt's jewels in their Victorian mansion.
Another case of suspected murder is in Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca, at 5:15 PM; in this one, Joan Fontaine plays the second wife of Laurence Olivier, and discovers that his first wife died under mysterious circumstances -- and the house staff believe he may have killed her!
Monday is Martin Luther King Day, when government workers who should be beneath us get a day off. TCM is marking the occasion in its usual boring way, with a bunch of Sidney Poitier movies. Not that there's anything wrong with Poitier; it's just that we've all seen these movies a dozen times, especially since they keep showing up on Martin Luther King Day. TCM is showing seven of Poitier's films, some of which I've blogged about before:
Poitier's first film, No Way Out, kicks things off at 6:00 AM;
Poitier befriends John Cassavetes in Edge of the City at 11:45 AM; and
Poitier helps blind Elizabeth Hartman, who doesn't realize he's black, in A Patch of Blue at 3:30 PM.
If you don't care for the same Sidney Poitier movies over and over, you could do a lot worse than switch over to what's left of the Fox Movie Channel. At 11:30 AM on Monday (with a repeat at 9:45 AM Tuesday), they're showing Raquel Welch in Fathom. In this movie, which is a spoof of James Bond films and all the other spy movies that were big in the mid-1960s, Welch plays a dentist's assistant who likes to sky-dive as a hobby. While on vacation, she's visited by a man who says her country needs her: he's from a spy agency, and tells her China's got the bomb, with the launch device hidden in some fake Ming pottery; they need a skydiver who won't be recognized by the agents in their plot to help recover the launch device. Others (in the form of love interest Tony Franciosa) tell her this is nonsense and it's all a plot to steal priceless Ming pottery. Which is it? Well, that's not so important, because you've got Raquel Welch prancing around screen often scantily clad.
The Screen Actors Guild will be honoring Dick Van Dyke later this month with a lifetime achievement award. TCM is marking that occasion by showing five of Dick van Dyke's movies on Monday night in prime time. One of his films that I don't think I've mentioned before is Cold Turkey, which is airing at 10:00 PM Monday. Van Dyke plays a minister in a small town in Iowa who convinces his town to take up a challenge. One of the cigarette companies has offered a town $25 million if all of its citizens can quit smoking for an entire month, figuring of course that they'll never have to pay out because no town could possibly quit smoking. But they've never met Dick Van Dyke. The cigarette company, headed by Edward Everett Horton, sends out PR man Bob Newhart to the town to make certain that the town doesn't succeeed. Several other well-known TV names show up in this comedy produced by Norman Lear just before he put All in the Family on TV.
The heist movies return on Tuesday night. Earlier in the month, TCM showed The Asphalt Jungle, which is one of the all time great heist films. MGM did a loose remake of it a dozen years later. That remake, Cairo, shows up on TCM at 2:15 AM Wednesday. As you can probably guess, the action is changed from a nameless American city to Cairo, with the bazaars substituting for the dark streets in the seedier side of a US City. The plot involves stealing Cleopatra's jewels from the Egyptian Museum, with George Sanders being the mastermind behind it. Taking the Sterling Hayden role is one Richard Johnson, who has the misnfortune to be cast as an Arab. There are movies that don't particularly need a remake. The Asphalt Jungle is one of them. Watch Cairo to see why doing a remake just because you can't isn't a good idea.
Wednesday morning and afternoon sees a bunch of 1960s horror movies on TCM. One that I don't think I've recommended before is The Reptile, at 10:45 AM. A couple decide to move to a cottage in a small village after their brother dies under rather mysterious circumstances. The townsfolk don't particularly care for the newcomers, and suggest that they leave. Needless to say, this would pique anybody's curiosity, so they stay. Soon enough, they find that something strange is going on, involving a scientist who's got one of those great Gothic mansions and a desire to have nobody trespass upon the estate. So, of course we know that our heroes are going to put themselves at some risk to figure out what's going on. The only bad thing is that, thanks to the title of the film, you can probably hazard a good guess as to what's happening. This one was made by Hammer Films in the UK with a bunch of not very well known British actors, but that doesn't mean it's a bad film.
If Ernest Borgnine hadn't died last summer, he'd be turning 96 on Thursday. So it's only natural that TCM is celebrating the birth anniversary of their good friend with a bunch of his movies on Thursday morning and afternoon. Granted, most of them are things I've recommended a couple of times before, starting with From Here to Eternity at 6:00 AM or the wonderful Bad Day at Black Rock at 8:15 AM.
I can't recall whether I've ever mentioned Miss Robin Crusoe before. It's airing at 4:45 AM Sunday on TCM. You can probably guess from the title that it's a version of the Robinson Crusoe story, and that this time, the Robinson Crusoe character is a woman. Amanda Blake, who would go on to play Miss Kitty on the long-running TV series Gunsmoke, plays Robin Crusoe, who unsurprisingly is shipwrecked on a deserted tropical island. Along comes a female Friday to play servant to Crusoe. And then in a twist from the Daniel Defoe book, another shipwreck brings a male castaway. You can probably figure out that Crusoe and Friday both want the man. (Either they weren't interested in lesbian sex all those years, or the Production Code had a problem with it.) It's not very good, but it's interesting.
Finally, I'm glad to mention that TCM seems to have gotten once again the broadcast rights to the movies Alfred Hitchcock made in the UK before coming over to the US to make Rebecca. In fact, TCM is showing three of those movies this coming Sunday for you to watch instead of the NFL's crappy excuse for a some-star game. Those movies are
The 39 Steps at 8:00 PM, in which Robert Donat gets pulled in to a spy plot;
The Lady Vanishes at 9:30 PM, in which Margaret Lockwood finds her traveling companion Dame May Whitty has disappeared; and
Sabotage at 11:15 PM, in which Sylvia Sidney discovers her husband Oscar Homolka is engaging in acts of sabotage.
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