Welcome to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" thread, for the week of July 20-26, 2015. We've got an interesting set of movies this week, with more Shirley Temple, this month's TCM Guest Programmer, and a look at everybody's favorite sport (no, Tuna, that's not baseball). As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
TCM starts off the week with a salute to birthday girl Natalie Wood, who would have been 77 on Monday if she hadn't drowned in 1981. One of her films that I haven't recommended before is Never a Dull Moment at 7:30 AM. Natalie, who was 11 at the time, is obviously not the star, but a supporting character to star Irene Dunne who was near the end of her movie career. Dunne plays Kay, a Broadway composer living the good life in New York City. That is, until the rodeo comes to Madison Square Garden, which is where she meets rodeo cowboy Chris (Fred MacMurray). It's love at first sight, which is a good thing for Chris, since he's a widower with two children (Wood and Gigi Perreau) on his ranch back in Wyoming. So Kay marries Chris and leave New York City behind. Life out on the ranch is obviously a big adjustment for her and to a lesser extent for her new family. And not all of the people out there, such as neighboring rancher William Demarest, take kindly to her. But it's all pleasant family comedy material of the sort that Dunne and especially MacMurray could do in their sleep.
Monday night sees more of Star of the Month Shirley Temple on TCM with some of her later films, although later here only means post-Fox, since she still wasn't 20 when she made these. One that I haven't mentioned before is Honeymoon, at 1:00 AM Tuesday. Temple, now 18, plays a young woman who wants to get married to an American serviceman (Guy Madison). But they're in Mexico City, which means legal complications for two Americans wanting to get married there. So Shirley goes to the American consulate to try to help, and the consul (Franchot Tone) agrees to help her. This, mostly because he's got his own love life that he's trying to avoid dealing with in the form of a Mexican fiancÉe (Lina Romay). Shirley begins to develop a crush on the much older consul, thereby causing problems for everybody. Shades of The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer, which shows up next week.
Spencer Tracy spent several years at Fox before moving to MGM. One of his early MGM films shows up on TCM at 10:30 AM Wednesday: Riffraff. Tracy plays Dutch, a fisherman with ideas. Jean Harlow plays Hattie, a cannery worker living with her sister Lil (Una Merkel) and Lil's kids (including Mickey Rooney). Dutch and Hattie meet and, amid all the arguing, fall in love long enough to get married. And then Dutch gets ideas about becoming a union leader to deal with the cannery owners like Lewis (Joseph Calleia) and get a better pay for their catch. That, unsurprisingly, causes problems both in their public lives and in their personal relationship. Dutch leaves Hattie, but Hattie is willing enough to stick by him that she goes to shocking lengths, up to and including going to prison, for him. Which is how Dutch learns that perhaps she really is the right woman for him.
Speaking of Fox, FXM Retro is showing one of the actors who took over from Tracy after he left: Tyrone Power, in Day-Time Wife, at 6:00 AM Tuesday and again early Wednesday morning. Tyrone Power plays businessman Ken Norton, married to Jane (Linda Darnell at the beginning of her career). When Ken misses their anniversary night, Jane gets the impression that perhaps Ken is spending time with the secretary (Wendy Barrie). So Jane comes up with a brilliant idea. She'll go to work as a secretary herself to learn what it is that men see in their secretaries, so she can provide that at home for Ken! Jane goes off and gets a job, except that it's with the architect Dexter (Warren William), who just happens to do a lot of business with Ken. And Jane is keeping it a secret from Ken that she's actually working. (She claims to be shopping all day.) To make matters worse, Mr. Dexter is married but trying to put the moves on Jane!
This week sees the Guest Programmer for July: Joan Collins, whom you may remember from her time on the trashy prime-time soap opera Dynasty in the 1980s, but whose acting career goes back to the 1950s. She's selected four films and is presenting them with Robert Osborne on Wednesday night. Collins' selections:
Gilda, at 8:00 PM, in which gambler Glenn Ford finds that his old flame Rita Hayworth is now romantically involved with his boss;
Boom Town at 10:15 PM, which has Spencer Tracy and Clark Gable in the oil business;
The Women, airing at 12:30 AM Thursday is the 1939 classic about gossipy women and the trouble they create for each other; it was remade in 1956 as
The Opposite Sex, which will be airing at 3:00 AM Thursday. Joan Collins appears in this one, if memory serves in the Joan Crawford role.
Encore Westerns is showing a movie I haven't recommended before: J.W. Coop, at 12:05 PM Thursday and again at 2:00 AM Friday. Cliff Roberts wrote, directed, and starred in this film playing the title character, a man who at the beginning of the film is just getting out of prison after having spent a decade in the clink. Before going into prison, Coop was a top-level rodeo cowboy, and wants to get back into that as this is the only thing he knows. However, he finds that the intervening decade (the film is actually set in the present day of the early 1970s) has changed a whole bunch of things. Women aren't quite like they used to be, as he finds in his relationship with hippie chick Bean (Cristina Ferrare). The young rodeo riders are also a threat to Coop's old position, as Coop is by now an old man in rodeo terms. Still, Coop perseveres and is able to make it to the national championship tournament.
Thursday night on TCM brings us young George Burns in several films with his wife, Gracie Allen. I think I mentioned the short Lambchops they did back in 1929; that's on at 9:45 PM. But I'd like to mention the film that follows: The Big Broadcast of 1937, at 10:00 PM. This was part of a series of movies from Paramount in the 1930 showcasing the big radio stars of the day, although this one has a plot that is at least halfway coherent. Jack Benny gets top billing as the bigwig at a national radio network. As for Burns and Allen, they play the owners of the company that sponsors one of their shows. One of the show's stars (Frank Forest) is subject to commentary by a small-town radio announcer (Shirley Ross), so the sponsors invite her to New York, where she thinks she's going to become a star, but they're really trying to keep her off the air. Romantic complications ensue. A youngish Ray Milland plays Jack Benny's underling, and Benny Goodman shows up to provide some music; after all, the movie was about the radio talent.
The Summer of Darkness noir festival on TCM has two more Fridays to go, and this Friday includes one that I'm not certain I've recommended before: Kansas City Confidential, at 12:15 PM. John Payne plays Joe, an ex-con who is now making a living driving a delivery truck for a florist. Unfortunately, ex-cop has planned the robbery of an armored car that just happens to take place when it's parked next to the florist truck, meaning that the cops immediately suspect Joe. (Foster, in fact, was doing this so he could catch the crooks and get his job back.) Joe is able to get out of police custody, so he starts following the trail of the actual robbers who worked for Tim, none of whom know each other since they wore masks. Along the way, Joe meets Helen (Coleen Gray), who just happens to be Tim's daughter and is studying to be a lawyer. Eventually everybody winds up in Mexico, since that's where you went to avoid extradition at the time.
It's not particularly an underground movie, but TCM Underground this week is airing the 1971 version of Vanishing Point, at 2:00 AM Sunday. Barry Newman plays Kowalski, a man who hasn't been able to keep a good job, as we'll learn in a series of flashbacks. So he's working delivering cars, since that's something he's good at. His next delivery is of a 1970 Dodge Challenger from Denver to San Francisco, and he wagers a friend that he can make the trip in 15 hours, which means keeping up an average speed of 100 MPH. Of course, this is a bit above the speed limit, so the cops start chasing him, even though Kowalski's driving seems perfectly safe. Kowalski becomes a bit of a folk hero, and helping him to avoid the cops is Supersoul (Cleavon Little), a blind DJ who just happens to have a police scanner and broadcasts information to Kowalski over the radio. If you like chase films, this is one for you.
With training camp opening soon, we've got one of the earliest pro football-themed movies coming up this week: Easy Living, at 8:00 AM Sunday on TCM. Victor Mature plays Pete Wilson, who is the star quarterback for the New York Chiefs, at least until it's discovered that he's got a heart murmur that could kill him, medicine back in the late 1940s being nowhere near as advanced as it is today. So Pete plans to retire from playing and go into coaching. The only problem is, he's got a wife Liza (Lizabeth Scott). She's played off her husband's fame to help make her interior design business a success, and doesn't want to leave that for being a coach's wife someplace else. Besides, she's got a sugar daddy (Art Baker) whom she's seeing on the side. As for Pete, he'd probably be better off with the widowed daughter-in-law (Lucille Ball) of his coach (Lloyd Nolan), but out quarterback hero decides to handle his problems differently. And to think that if they win the big game they'll all get an extra thousand bucks! My how times have changed in the NFL.
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