Welcome to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" Thread, of the week of January 28 to February 3, 2019. Friday starts 31 Days of Oscar on TCM, but before that there's still time for one more night of Star of the Month Kathryn Grayson on Tuesday night, if that's your thing. There's also interesting stuff on some of the other movie channels. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
On Monday in prime time, TCM is honoring the 2018 honorees at the AMPAS' Governors Awards. The actual awards were given out in November, but TCM runs a movie for each of the nominees on a night just before the start of 31 Days of Oscar. This year's acting honoree was Cicely Tyson, in whose honor TCM is running Sounder at 8:00 PM. Tyson plays Rebecca, the matriarch in a poor sharecropping family in 1930s Louisiana at the height of the Depression, with husband Nathan (Paul Winfield) and adolescent son David (Kevin Hooks). Sounder is the family dog who helps Dad hunting for game to supplement the family's meager diet. When even that isn't enough, Dad gets in legal trouble for stealing food, sending him to the prison labor camp and making David grow up as the temporary man of the house. Sounder, meanwhile, goes missing, and Rebecca and the rest of the family have to work even harder to make ends meet. I know you've all seen this one before since I've recommended it in the past, but if for some reason you haven't, you really need to.
A movie that's back on FXM after an absence is Soldier of Fortune, which you can see at 7:55 AM Monday. Susan Hayward plays Jane Hoyt, who has come to Hong Kong looking for her photojournalist husband Louis (Gene Barry), who has gone missing. The consulates can't help her, and the scuttlebutt is that Louis probably took photos of things he shouldn't have in mainland China, and might even be a spy! Eventually Jane turns to Hank Lee (Clark Gable in his first film away from MGM in ages following the end of his MGM contract). He's a "businessman", which is really a euphemism for a smuggler, which means that he might be able to get things out of mainland China, or at least know the shady underworld people who can find Louis and bring him back alive if he even is alive. Of course, Hank and Jane begin to develop feelings for each other along the way. A fair amount of the establishing shots were done on location in Hong Kong, I'd guess to try to lure audiences in with things they couldn't get on TV.
It's been a while since I've mentioned That Uncertain Feeling. It's airing again this week, at 6:30 PM Tuesday on TCM. Merle Oberon plays Jill Baker, who is happily married to businessman Larry (Melvyn Douglas). Or, she was blissfully married, but she started noticing her husband's quirks and has also developed an odd case of the hiccups. So she goes to prominent psychoanalyst Dr. Vengard (Alan Mowbray) to figure out what's going wrong. He has some odd ideas, but worse is that while visiting an art gallery, Jill meets classical pianist Alex Sebastian (Burgess Meredith), who probably should have married Alicia Huberman instead, but that's a subject for a different movie. Anyhow, Jill begins to fall for Alex and the feeling is mutual, leading Larry to realize that he has to do something drastic to save his marriage the more Alex tries to insert himself into the Bakers' lives. This was directed by Ernst Lubitsch, and is one of his lesser-remembered films, but it's still Ernst Lubitsch which beats a lot of other things.
Another movie I haven't recommended in a while is The Return of Frank James, which will be on StarzEncore Westerns at 6:42 AM Wednesday. You know the story of Jesse James, which was told in a 1939 movie in which Henry Fonda played Jesse's older brother Frank. Fox wanted to cash in on that film's success by making a sequel, although since Jesse was shot to death they couldn't use him. So they came up with a mostly bogus story about what happened to Frank after Jesse died at the hands of Robert Ford (John Carradine). The movie posits that the railroad, which the James Gang had robbed on multiple occasions, used its influence to get the Fords to shoot James and then get away with it. Plus, the railroad would be happy if the Fords killed Frank too. So Frank, who had been trying to live a quiet life as a farmer. wants revenge. He gets a young reporter Eleanor (Gene Tierney in one of her earliest performances) to write a false story about Frank's death, leaving Frank freer to pursue the Fords. It's historical nonsense, but the film is entertaining.
I've mentioned several "race movies" before, but I'm not certain if that includes Two-Gun Man From Harlem. It's going to be on TCM at 6:00 AM Thursday. Black singing cowboy Herb Jeffries plays Bob Blake, a ranch hand working for a boss whose wife is cheating on him. She gets caught, so her boyfriend shoots hubby and puts the blame on Bob putting the gun in his holster. So Bob, realizing he's been framed and has no way to defend himself, goes east, meets a preacher who looks just like him, and then goes back west disguised as the deacon in order to get to the bottom of the murder case. By now, though, the former illicit relationship has gone south and the bad guy is trying to steal another woman's ranch. Herb Jeffries could sing but not act particularly well; movies like this are interesting however because they were made on shoestring budgets with all-black crews for segregation-era black audiences. Black audiences, it turned out had many of the same movie tastes as white audiences.
I'm sure you heard about the Lady Gaga version of A Star Is Born, which is up for multiple Oscars. TCM is running the original on Thursday night. No, not the 1937 A Star Is Born, although that's going to be on at 9:45 PM. Instead, I'm talking about the 1932 movie What Price Hollywood?, at 8:00 PM Thursday. Constance Bennett plays Mary Evans, a waitress at the famed Brown Derby in Hollywood, who dreams of becoming a star. She thinks she may just have the chance when by director Max Carey (Lowell Sherman), who is a lovable drunk. He does, in fact, make her a star, but things aren't so rosy for Mary. Max continues to drink and becomes a less lovable drunk. Meanwhile, Mary doesn't marry Max, but east coast millionaire polo player Lonny (Neil Hamilton), who eventually decides that he doesn't understand Hollywood people and doesn't like that his wife is more famous that he is. Max continues to drink himself to death. Can poor Mary find true happiness?
With many movies, the title doesn't give much clue as to what the movie is about. That's not the case with the next selection: Escape From Alcatraz, which will be on StarzEncore Classics as 10:49 PM Thursday. Well, I suppose it would help to know that Alcatraz is the famous island prison in San Francisco Bay, but is there anybody who doesn't know that? Anyhow, the prison was meant to be inescapable, but there were 14 escape attempts during the time the island was used as a prison. The prisoners were either captured or drowned, but in June 1962, three men escaped and their bodies were never found, with nobody knowing whether they were successful. Escape From Alcatraz is their story. Clint Eastwood plays Frank Morris, who was sent to Alcatraz after a !omg string of crimes, while the Anglin brothers (Jack Thibeau and Fred Ward) were bank robbers. They immediately though about escaping, and planned it for quite some time before the famous escape attempt. Patrick McGoohan plays the warden at Alcatraz.
Friday is the February 1, the first day of TCM's annual 31 Days of Oscar, in which every movie was at least nominated for one Academy Award. One of the big awardees at the first Academy Awards was Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, which received an award for "Unique and Artistic Picture", which was only awarded that one year and is not the same as Best Picture. (It beat out The Crowd and Chang.) Anyhow, Sunrise is going to be on at 8:00 PM Friday. George O'Brien plays "The Man", a farmer married to "The Wife" (Janet Gaynor). The farm is in a part of the country where tourists from the big city come to visit, and one day one of those visitors is "The Woman from the City" (Margaret Livingston), who is much flashier than anything The Wife could ever hope to be, even though we know it's The Wife who is right for The Man. Anyhow, he's taken in by the flashiness, and she actually suggests that he murder his wife and be with her! And The Man actually thinks that's a good idea. It's a morality play at heart, elevated by beautiful cinematography.
For those of you who like more recent stuff, I see that The Delta Force is going to be on multiple times this week, including at 8:52 AM Saturday on StarzEncore Action. After a brief prologue showing the US Delta force failing in its attempt to rescue the hostages from the US Embassy in Teheran in 1980, we fast forward the the mid 80s, and a thinly disguised reenactment of the hijacking of TWA flight 847 on a flight out of Athens. Led by the terrorist Abdul (Robert Forster), they examine the passengers' passports to find that they've got a couple of Jewish couples, the Kaplans (Martin Balsam and Shelley Winters) and the Goldmans (Joey Bishop and Lainie Kazan); an Irish-American priest, Father O'Malley (George Kennedy); and a couple of young Marines. The Delta Force has a chance to redeem itself, as the plane is taken first to Algeria and then, when that fails, to Beirut, which at that time was in the midst of a civil war. Col. Alexander (Lee Marvin in his final film) assembles his team with Maj. McCoy (Chuck Norris) second in command, and with the help of the Israelis they raise holy hell in Beirut to try to rescue the hostages. It's not particularly great, but a hell of a lot of fun.
French composer Michel Legrand died yesterday at the age of 86. He won three Oscars, although it looks as though none of those movies are on the TCM schedule during 31 Days of Oscar. He was, however, nominated for his score to The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, which will be on at 7:00 AM Sunday. Nino Castelnuovo plays Guy, a mechanic in Cherbourg in 1958 who dreams of opening his own service station and is in love with Geneviève (Catherine Deneuve) daughter of a woman (Anne Vernon) who runs an umbrella shop in town. However, Algeria, still part of France at the time, is in revolt, and Guy gets drafted to fight. He gets injured and the letters to Geneviève stop, so her mom suggests she get married to Roalnd (Marc Michel), a dealer in diamonds whom Geneviève doesn't really love, but who could provide her a nice, stable middle-class life in Paris. Eventually Guy recovers and returns to Cherbourg, only to find Geneviève left after her mom died. Can either of the two of them live happily ever after together or apart? The hook of this movie is that all of the dialogue is sung.