Welcome to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" Thread, for the week of January 25-31, 2016. Even if you want to watch football other than the Packers, there's no meaningful game this week. And some of you may be snowed in if you're not in the Midwest, so why not pass the time with some good movies? I've used my good taste to pick out an interesting cross-section of the movies airing this week, so I know there's something you like unless you have terrible taste. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
We'll start off with this week's Silent Sunday Nights feature on TCM: Mickey, at midnight Monday (ie. 11:00 PM tonight LFT). Mickey, played by Mabel Normand, is an orphan being raised on a mine out west. When her aunt back east learns about the mine, she invites Mickey to live with her family, thinking the mine is going to pay off -- the aunt needs the money to marry off her own daughter. Ah, but it looks as thought the mine has been all played out, and with no money about to come in, the evil aunt stops treating Mickey so nicely and makes her earn her keep as part of the hired help! Meanwhile, the fellow mine owner to whom Mickey's aunt had been hoping to marry off her daughter has met Mickey, and you get the distinct impression that Mickey and this mine owner should wind up together in the last reel. Normand was one of the great early silent screen comediennes whose career was unfortunately cut short due to her friendship with Fatty Arbuckle and his legal problems.
One of the movies coming up on FXM Retro that I haven't mentioned in quite some time is Take Care of My Little Girl, airing at 10:25 AM Monday. Jeanne Crain plays Liz, who is going off to college. She's looking forward to joining Tri-U, the same sorority her mother was in, and is certain to be accepted thanks to that. Nice boy Joe (Dale Robertson), going to college on the GI Bill, is more mature and tells Liz not to worry about Greek life, while frat boy Chad (a young Jeffrey Hunter) pursues Liz romantically. Things begin to get complicated for Liz, however, when her best friend Janet doesn't get accepted into Tri-U. Ruth, meanwhile, does get accepted since like Liz her mother was in the sorority, but the other girls would rather not have Ruth if they could get away with it. It's a relatively gentle look at college life, and I've always wondered whether any of Hollywood's portrayals of college were at all realistic. It certainly wasn't like that by the time I went off to college in the 90s.
It's been a while since I've seen Arabesque show up anywhere, but it's on TCM at 8:00 PM Monday as part of a night of 1960s "unintentional" spy movies. In Arabesque, it's Gregory Peck who gets mixed up in spy business. He plays a professor who is an expert in ancient writing systems, which gets him approached by a Middle Eastern politician who asks him to translate a certain message, since some spy game stuff has already revealed that this message may hold the key to a bunch of political intrigue. Along the way, our professor meets lovely Sophia Loren, who plays the lover of the man who is opposing the Arab state, and who also wants the meaning of that message. Peck and Loren wind up getting involved with each other, but whose side is Loren really on? This is the sort of movie you watch with a bowl of popcorn because it's so physically gorgeous to look at, and don't care quite so much about all the convoluted plot twists.
The Academy Awards give out honorary awards every year, and this Tuesday, TCM is honoring the people whom the Academy honored with one film for each of the honorees. Among those people is actress Gena Rowlands, who was nominated for an Oscar for her work in the film A Woman Under the Influence, airing at 10:15 AM. More a character study than a plot-driven movie, this one has Rowlands playing a stay-at-home mom married to Peter Falk. It's not exactly an easy marriage, as Mom can be a bit high-strung, and Dad can be a bit tough with the discipline. Meanwhile, people on the outside think there's something more to the mom's behavior, that she might actually have a mental illness. Dad doesn't necessarily want to believe this, but things begin to get worse and even his own mother thinks perhaps he should get treatment (read: institutionalization) for his wife. The movie was directed by Rowlands' husband, John Cassavetes.
TCM is giving us a bunch of grown-up Liz Taylor movies on Wednesday. One that I don't think I've recommended before is The Sandpiper, airing at 10:15 AM. Taylor plays a bohemian artist living in a beach house in California's Big Sur (enjoy the scenery, which is lovely) with her son, but no husband in sight. She's not just a bohemian but an atheist, which causes problems when her son becomes a juvenile delinquent and the authorities want to send him to the local boarding school, which just happens to be run by Episcopalians. Specifically, the headmaster is an Episcopal priest played by Richard Burton with a lovely wife played by Eva Marie Saint. Burton meets Taylor, and of course they begin to fall for each other even though this is a big problem. Their presence together causes each of them to question their philosophy, but can they really have a relationship? At least it's lovely to look at. You may have heard that horrid MOR theme song, "The Shadow of Your Smile", which actually won an Oscar.
Fred MacMurray returns on Wednesday night for one more night of his movies. If you want to see him in a western, you've got a chance, as TCM is running Good Day For a Hanging at midnight Thursday (that is 11:00 PM Wednesday LFT). MacMurray plays a man who joins the town posse after a bank robbery. The marshal gets killed in a shootout with the posse, so MacMurray is named the new marshal. He intends to bring the bank robbers to justice, and finally does when he captures the alleged killer, played by a young Robert Vaughn. At this point, however, the townsfolk begin to doubt whether they want such harsh justice meted out. Vaughn's character had come from a broken home, and nobody thinks he could have turned this bad; instead it has to be one of the other robbers who pulled the trigger. It doesn't help that MacMurray's own daughter had been in love with the kid before he left town and joined up with the bank robbers.
A second movie back on FXM Retro after a long absence is Daisy Kenyon, at 9:30 AM Thursday and 7:45 AM Friday. Joan Crawford plays the title role, a successful commercial artist who amazingly makes enough to live in an oversized Greenwich Village apartment. She's got a lover in the form of lawyer Dan (Dana Andrews), but Dan is unhappily married to nasty Lucille (Ruth Warrick) and you'll wonder if he'll ever be able to get a divorce from her. Then Daisy meets yacht-builder Peter (Henry Fonda), who has returned home from the war a changed man. Peter falls in love with Daisy, but the feeling is not mutual. Still, Daisy finally gets the idea that Dan is never going to get a divorce, so she marries Peter if only to get the illicit relationship with Dan out of her mind -- it doesn't help that Dan doesn't treat her so well while Peter clearly loves her. The only thing is, after Daisy marries Peter, Dan finally does get that divorce. Oops.
William Cameron Menzies is generally better known as a production designer, but he directed some movies too. Among them are The Whip Hand, at 11:30 PM Thursday on TCM. Eliott Reed plays Matt Corbin, a newspaperman on a fishing vacation somewhere in northern Wisconsin. He stops in a town where the fishing is supposed to be good, only to be told that all the fish have died and so he ought to leave town. Obviously, this is like red meat to a newspaperman, who wants to find out what really happened. As he tries to find out, danger lurks at every turn and everybody in town seems to be part of a conspiracy theory. Well, with the possible exception of the town doctor's sister, who doesn't want to be in town any more but can't leave because.... Yes, there is a conspiracy going on, and a pretty ridiculous one. Raymond Burr gets to play another bad guy, as the owner of the local hotel.
Every now and then, Encore Westerns airs a comic western. This week, they're showing Fancy Pants several times, including Saturday at 7:25 AM and 5:00 PM. Bob Hope stars as a crappy actor in a British acting troupe in the late 19th century. An man trying to impress a visiting family from the American west including adult daughter Lucille Ball hires them to play his rich relations, but the family winds up hiring him and taking him back to America to be their butler. Meanwhile, due to a comedy of errors, the folks back west think that the butler the family has hired is not a butler, but an English nobleman, so when the family get to town our actor playing a butler now has to play yet another false identity. On top of that, President Theodore Roosevelt is visiting with the possibility of making their western territory a full-fledged state. If all of this material sounds vaguely familiar, that's because it's a remake of the Charles Laughton classic Ruggles of Red Gap.
A movie that you probably all know but is always worth seeing again is One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. It's airing on TCM at 10:45 PM Saturday. Jack Nicholson stars as Randle, a career criminal who is trying to get out of some more prison time, so he's been exhibiting signs of insanity. The authorities, trying to determine whether he is in fact insane, put him into a mental institution, something Randle wanted since he thinks spending time at the nuthouse is going to be easier than spending it in prison. Randle tries to make life better for the other patients, including Indian Will Sampson, a young Brad Dourif, and Christopher Lloyd. But he never expected to have to contend with somebody like Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher), who is the nurse from hell. Randle learns that perhaps there are some people able to outsmart him, and learns that lesson too late.