Welcome to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" thread, for the week of January 6-12, 2014. The Packers will be preparing to go to Caroloma to play next Sunday afternoon, and while we're all waiting for that with nervous anticipation, there are some good movies on that we can relax with. There's more Joan Crawford, as well as some tributes to other people, and a special salute to TCM host Robert Osborne. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
Silent Sunday Nights begins on TCM just after midnight tonight, or not long after the Packers beat the everloving crap out of the 49ers. This week sees the first of two weeks saluting early silent comic Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, who was big at Keystone in the 1910s until his personal life caught up with him. Unfortunately, as often happens with blocks of shorts, TCM's schedule doesn't give the exact starting times, and I've noticed the set-top box guides to be less than accurate, so you may just want to set your recording device for he entire two hours and catch all seven shorts, such as Fatty Joins the Force, which should come on sometime between 12:30 and 1:00 AM. This one sees Fatty and his girlfriend out at a park, where he saves a litle girl who wanders off into a pond. That girl happens to be the daughter of the Police Commissioner, so Fatty is given a job with the force. But, he finds that being a policeman really isn't all that great. The policeman in the opening sequence is played by Edgar Kennedy, who would go on playing cops for the rest of his career until his untimely death in 1948.
There's a very special program on Monday night: a Private Screenings interview. Normally Robert Osborne interviews some famous old actor or producer, but this time, it's Robert Osborne himself who's being interviewed, by former Essentials co-host Alec Baldwin. Osborne will presumably be discussing his early days, when he was actually an actor (he was in the pilot for The Beverly Hillbillies), to becoming a writer, and eventually becoming the prime-time host for TCM when it went on the air in April 1994. The interview kicks off Monday night's prime time lineup at 8:00 PM, and like many TCM original productions, will be getting a second airing after one feature movie for the benefit of the people in the Pacific time zone. The movie is The Third Man at 9:30 PM, with the repeat airing of the interview coming on at 11:30 PM.
Columbia Pictures is turning 90 this year, and TCM is celebrating the anniversary with a day of movies all day and night Tuesday, 11 movies in all. Most of them I've recommended multiple times; one that I've recommended less often is Cover Girl, at 2:00 PM Tuesday. Rita Hayworth plays a young woman working at a small-time nightclub owned by Gene Kelly, who also does some dancing, naturally. She's noticed by wealthy magazine owner Otto Kruger, who reminds him of a woman he dated long ago; he tries to take her away from Kelly and make her a star. She becomes the titular "Cover Girl", at which point she's noticed by Broadway producer Lee Bowman, who wants to use her in his revue. Everything goes more or less well for her, until Gene Kelly returns realizing he's loved her all along and wants her back. Most of the songs are by Jerome Kern and Ira Gershwin; and, this is the film that really made Kelly and Hayworth big stars.
Wednesday marks the 79th anniversary of the birth of Elvis Presley, so unsurprisingly, they're going to be giving us a bunch of his films during the morning and afternoon, such as Tickle Me at 12:45 PM. Elvis plays a rodeo star who's currently out of work, and forced to sing in a club someplace out west. He's discovered by Julie Adams, who offers her a job at the dude ranch she runs, except that it turns out there aren't many dudes at the ranch, but a bunch of pretty women vacationing at a place that's sort of been turned into a heath resort. One of them, played by Jocelyn Lane, is actually there to look for treasure that might have been buried in a nearby ghost town. Elvis falls in love with her, while at the same time trying to protect her from the bad guys who also know she's looking for family treasure and trying to get it for themselves.
On Wednesday night, TCM is putting the spotlight on actor Dane Clark. Note that he is not to be confused with the talentless Dane Cook; Clark is a man who worked in movies in the 40s and 50s before doing a lot of TV work. The lineup of Clark movies begins at 8:00 PM with Gunman in the Streets. Made in France by a small production company with a mixed cast and crew of American and French actors, the story has Clark as a US Army man who's deserted and become a gangster. He's been caught, although his gang has gotten him an escape from the police van that's transporting him through the city to court. He goes to his old girlfriend (a young Simone Signoret) to try to get help, but unfortunately she's got a new boyfriend, and this one is a reporter who would like to get the story on Clark and turn him over to the authorities. The rest of the movie tries to get him across the border.
Over on the Fox Movie Channel, you can watch a movie that's lovely to look at, but sorely needs a good plot: The Marriage-Go-Round, at 11:00 AM Thursday. James Mason plays a professor of cultural anthropology who is happily married to Susan Hayward, teaching what looks like a glorified home ec course to women looking to get their MRS. degree. They're supposed to be hosting an old Swedish colleague of his that he hasn't seen in years, but due to a mix up, only the Swedish guy's daughter shows up first. And she's all grown up now, played by Julie Newmar. As a Swedish Aamzon (complete with terrible accent), she immediately tries to put the moves on James Mason, wanting him to be the father of her child! Really! Needless to say, Hayward doesn't like this, and plans to keep Newmar from succeeding. The house where Mason and Hayward live is a lovely example of mid-century modern design, and the establishing scenes of the university are nice to look at too, even if they pale in comparison to Newmar; but, the plot is daft.
Elsewhere on Thursday, you can see Marion Davies in The Florodora Girl, at 6:15 AM on TCM. Davies plays a chorus girl in the 1890s, an era when wealthy men would look to Broadway chorus girls for trophy girlfiriends, while the chorus girls would look for the man to be their sugar daddies. Marion wants true love, though, which causes problems in all her relationships until she meets wealthy playboy Lawrence Gray. Her friends in the chorus teach her how to manipulate these rich playboys, which only causes further problems for a while, until the two are about to end up married. Then the marriage gets put on ice thanks to a market crash and his losing much of his fortune. Of course, you know the couple is going to end up together and happy in the last reel, which in this case includes a musical number in two-strip Technicolor. Marion Davies is often derided as an actress because of her relationship with William Randolph Hearst, but movies like The Florodora Girl show that she really wasn't that bad.
Joan Crawford's turn as TCM Star of the Month continues on Thursday night at 8:00 PM with Grand Hotel. It continues into Friday morning with lesser-known movies like Chained, at 6:30 AM Friday. Crawford stars as the mistress of wealthy businessman Otto Kruger, whose wife won't give him a divorce. So Crawford runs off to South America, meets Clark Gable, and falls in love with him. She goes back to the States to tell Kruger that she's fallen in love with another man, so stop worrying about trying to obtain a divorce so you can marry me. The only thing is, while she was off in the Argentine, Kruger was able to get that divorce, and unsurprisingly, now he wants to marry Crawford. She does out of a sense of duty; after all Kruger had to go through a lot to get that divorce. And then the now-married Crawford meets Gable, who's on business in America, again.... Yeah, the plot is kinda dumb, but the acting is good, and Crawford and Gable both look good on screen here.
We've reached the end of the Maisie series of movies on Saturday mornings on TCM, so this week a new series is beginning: the Hildegarde Withers mystery series. Withers was a teacher/detective who uses her powers of deduction to solve the mysteries before the police do, much to their chagrin. Withers, for her part, only makes matters worse with her constant wise-cracking, although the incompetent police detectives deserve it The series starts at 10:30 AM Saturday with The Penguin Pool Murder, which is set in an aquarium from the days before Sea World. Withers is played by Edna May Oliver; long-suffering detective Oscar Piper is played by James Gleason. Oliver would only play Wither in the first three movies in the series, which should take us through January before the break for 31 Days of Oscar; James Gleason plays Oscar in all six films.
Finally, we've got another entry from TCM Underground to round out the week, and this one has a doozy of a plot: Chained for Life, at 3:30 AM Sunday. Violet and Daisy Hilton, who had appeared together (it's not like they could appear separately) as the conjoined twins in Freaks back in the 1930s, show up again in this early 1950s exploitation flick, unsurprisingly again playing the part of a pair of twins in a carnival sideshow. The guy who runs the show gets the brilliant idea of having one of the twins (but not the other) get married. The courts don't like the idea claiming it's bigamy(?!), and the guy picked to be the groom is only in it for the money, so when he wants to walk out, the other twin shoots him dead. This brings up an "interesting" legal dilemma: one of the twins is a murderess and has to be punished; but what do you do with the other, innocent twin? Surely you can't execute the guilty twin if the innocent one is going to die, but can you even incarcerate the two of them?
Original Post