This week's last set of interviews on Carson on TCM brings us a couple with classic studio-era stars: First up is Henry Fonda from 1980, followed by Elizabeth Taylor from early 1992. Susan Sarandan isn't exactly studio-era, but she's been a successful actress. That's followed by William Holden from 1976 (I'd guess he's promoting Network) and Goldie Hawn from 1980 (I think that's the time Private Benjamin was released). After Carson on TCM will be a night of Walter Matthau movies, except that the first one co-stars the last of this week's Carson interbiewees.
That film is Cactus Flower, at 9:00 PM Monday on TCM. We see Hawn, as Toni, at the beginning of the movie trying to commit suicide in her apartment. As Toni tells neighbor Igor (Rick Lenz) when he saves her, she's in love with dentist Julian (Matthau) but he's just dumped her because he's married. Safely recovered, Toni gets the idea that instead of killing herself, she'd like to meet Julian's wife. There's one catch: he's not married, and has used this bogus wife as an excuse to get out of relationships. He needs a bogus wife, and quick! The only person who can play that part is his spinster secretary Stephanie (Ingrid Bergman). Stephanie, who has to act married, falls in love with Igor, even though we can see halfway through the film that Igor ought to end up with Toni and Stephanie and Julian ought to get together. Hawn won an Oscar, but it's Bergman who's the revelation here. Who knew she could do comedy like this in English?
This Tuesday is the last week for Paul Henried to shine as TCM's Star of the Month for July. One of his most famous roles is as Ilsa's (Ingrid Bergman) husband Victor Laszlo in Casablanca, which is airing at 10:00 PM. It was a successful enough movie that Warner Bros. tried to use a very similar formula with him and several of the folks from Casablanca again, this time in The Conspirators, which comes on at 8:00 PM. This time, Henried plays van der Lyn, a member of the Dutch Resistance. The Nazis want him, so he's had to flee Holland, and has made his way to Lisbon in neutral Portugal. This time the love interest isn't his wife, but Hedy Lamarr playing the wife of a German (Victor Francen). Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre are both here, playing underground members. In fact, the plot has to do with that underground group, since one of them is actually a traitor, and it's up to Henried to figure out which one.
Just before we get to Summer Under the Stars, we have a night of movies directed by Douglas Sirk on TCM. Sirk was known for his soap-opera like movies of the 1950s, such as Imitation of Life, which is airing at 10:00 PM. I'd like to mention one of Sirk's earlier movies, though: Shockproof, at 4:00 AM Thursday. Cornel Wilde plays Griff, a parole officer in charge of recently paroled murderess Jenny (Patricia Knight, Wilde's real-life wife at the time). She had murdered in order to defend Harry, the man she loved (John Baragrey), who was involved in illegal gambling. She violates one of the terms of the parole, whcih was staying away from Harry, and Griff respondes to this by putting her in his own house to look after his blind mother. The thing is, he's fallen in love with the parolee in his charge, which is a serious violation of ethics! Harry realizes he can use this to blackmail Griff. The screenplay was by future director Sam Fuller (Pickup on South Street), except that the producer didn't like Fuller's original ending and changed it to something that's an utter mess.
And now, on to Summer Under the Stars. Thursday, August 1 on TCM is given over to 24 hours of movies starring Humphrey Bogart, all from the part of his career from High Sierra (airing at 7:00 AM) on when Bogart was a star; none of the 30s second-billing stuff here.
One of the few movies airing that I don't think I've recommended before is Beat the Devil, which comes on at 4:15 PM. Robert Morley plays the leader of a gang of crooks stranded in Italy who are trying to make their way to Africa to buy some land that's supposedly got a bunch of uranium in it. They meet Bogart, who lives in the seaside town with wife Gina Lollobrigida, and enlist him in their scheme. Ah, but also in town is a proper English gentleman whose wife (Jennifer Jones) falls for Bogart. Some people say that this movie was intended to be a satire; audiences of the day didn't quite see it that way and the movie flopped. (Bogart himself called it a mess.) Either way, though, Beat the Devil is one of those movies that deserves at least one viewing so you can make up your own mind.Moving ahead to Friday, we get 24 hours of Doris Day movies. Now, Day isn't my favorite, since I'm not a huge fan of musicals, but I know there are some people who will like her. Two of Friday's movies, however, form part of a mini-series: On Moonlight Bay at 12:45 PM, followed at 2:30 PM by By the Light of the Silvery Moon. In both movies, Day stars as Marjorie Winfield, the young adult daughter in a middle-class family in Indiana in the years around World War I. In the first movie, she meets the neighbors' son, Bill Sherman (Gordon MacRae), a college student with some unusual ideas. His unusual ideas, combined with her being tomboyish, complicate the relationship in On Moonlight Bay, which takes place first. Then President Wilson declares war, and when Bill returns after the war we get into the action of By the Light of the Silvery Moon. He's ready to marry her now, but wants to make enough to support her, which causes problems as there's another young man who'd be willing to marry Marjorie now. Along the way, Day and MacRea get to sing a bunch of songs, with the best known being "Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag", "By the Light of the Silvery Moon", and "Ain't We Got Fun".
Saturday's star on TCM is Alec Guinness. Of the Guinness films that TCM is showing, I don't think I've recommended The Scapegoat, which is aiirng at 2:00 AM Sunday. Guinness stars as a British teacher on vacation in France, which is where he meets his lookalike, who unsurprisingly is also played by Guinness. That lookalike is a count with financial and family troubles, and sees the lookalike as a way to get away with murder -- kill his wife, and get the lookalike blamed for it! Not that the teacher knows this, of course. Meanwhile, Guinness' English half is trying without too much success to convince people that he's not the count, having been swindled by the count into switching identities. He's also beginning ot think that perhaps he could make something of his life if he were a count instead of a teacher by turning the count's failing business around. Bette Davis shows up as the Count's mother.
Over on the Fox Movie Channel, you could watch A Walk With Love and Death, at 11:15 AM Saturday. Israeli actor Assaf Dayan plays Heron, a student at the Paris university during the Hundred Years' War, who one day decides he wants to see the sea. So he heads off on a walk to the sea, eventually winding up at a castle where he meets the lovely Claudia (Anjelica Huston). He leaves to resume his walk, but just before he gets to the sea he learns that Claudia's castle was sacked and everybody but her was killed -- he has to go back to save her. The two young lovers then try to make their way to the sea across a war-torn, anarchic countryside, but various episodic adventures always seem to waylay them. Anjelica's father John directed, and has a small role as the father of one of the castles where Heron stays.
On Sunday, TCM is spotlighting the not-very-well-known actress Mary Boland. The movie of hers that I'll select is this week's Essentials, Jr. movie, Ruggles of Red Gap, at 8:00 PM. Boland plays a Effie Floud wife in the American west who's trying to get her husband Egbert (Charlie Ruggles) some culture, so she's taken him to Paris. Egbert would rather drink and gamble, and in a poker game, he beats an Earl (Roland Young) and wins the Earl's butler Ruggles (Charles Laughton). Effie thinks the butler can teach her husband how to be more refined, but when they all return to America, Egbert starts teaching the butler not to be so stiff. The butler falls in love (with ZaSu Pitts) and becomes a prominnent figure in his new hometown of Red Gap out west. Boland, Ruggles, and Pitts were all comedy veterans and are all good, but Charles Laughton is the revelation; who know before this how deftly he could do comedy?
In between the stars in Summer Under the Stars, there are a couple of interesting shorts worth mentioning. First is Four Minute Fever, airing at 3:49 AM Friday. Can man run a mile in under four minutes? Well, we know the answer to that question is yes, since Roger Bannister did it in 1954. And RKO knew the answer when they made this short, since it was released in 1956. For them, the question was, can an American run the mile in under four minutes? So, we get a bunch of footage of famous white-guy runners from the mid-1950s running faster then they'd ever run before. The vintage footage of all these athletes is interesting, but RKO's insistence on making this about the Americans is a bit silly.
The other short is All Eyes on Sharon Tate, which you can catch at 3:50 AM Sunday. This one is a promotional short about hot new actress Sharon Tate, was was appearing in the new MGM movie Eye of the Devil. There are some scenes from the movie, as well as some positive words from co-star David Niven. But there's also a fair amount of footage of Tate being herself out on the town in London. Of course, this was made long before Tate was to be murdered by Charles Manson's acolytes, and there's no way MGM could know such a thing would happen. But 45 years on, we know what was to happen, and it's sad to see this vibrant young woman and wonder what might have been.
