Welcome to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" thread, for the weeof June 1-7, 2015. We're into a new month, which means several new features on TCM, as well as a movie returning to FXM Retro after a long absence. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
When you think of westerns, you naturally think of Fred MacMurray. What, you don't? Well, you have a chance to see MacMurray in a western this week: Face of a Fugitive, at 3:00 AM Monday and 6:05 AM Saturday on Encore Westerns. MacMurray plays Jim Larsen, an outlaw who gets involved in a hold-up with his kid brother. However, in the holdup, the brother gets shot and killed, as does a US Marshal. That's the big problem, since killing a US Marshal is a serious no-no. Jim changes his name to Ray Kincaid and escapes to a border town. He's not home free, however, as the sheriff (Lin McCarthy) knows there's a Jim Larsen on the loose and is keeping everybody from entering or leaving town until he gets the wanted posters to find out who Larsen is. While stuck there, Jim/Ray winds up on the right side of the law, as a cattle baron (Alan Baxter) is trying to make life difficult for everybody there. Further complicating matters is that Jim begins to fall in love with a woman who just happens to be the sheriff's sister.
On Monday night, TCM is giving us a night of movies made by longtime married couple Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, married 50 years before Newman's death in 2008. The night kicks off at 8:00 PM with The Long, Hot Summer. Newman plays Ben Quick, a drifter who goes from one town to another because the various townsfolk think he's a con artist. So he winds up in a small Mississippi town where the Varner family, led by patriarch Will (Orson Welles), runs the place. Will puts Ben to work in his store, since he thinks his own son Jody (Anthony Franciosa) isn't good enough. Daughter Clara (Woodward), meanwhile, doesn't care much for Ben, which is a problem because Daddy not only likes Ben, but also thinks that strong Ben would make a good husband for Clara, since Daddy wants a strong man to continue the family line. Will, meanwhile, is carrying on an affair with Minnie (Angela Lansbury). This is an adaptation of a Faulkner work, which may be a good or bad thing depending on your opinion of Faulkner.
Monday being June 1, it's the start of a new month, which means we're going to get some films coming back out of the Fox vault to appear on FXM Retro. One of the best is Tales of Manhattan, airing at 9:50 AM Tuesday and 3:30 AM Wednesday. This one is an anthology film, telling half a dozen stories and tying them all together with the conceit of a men's formal coat with tales and how coming into possession of it affects the various owners. Suave Charles Boyer kicks off the proceedings as a man having an affair with Rita Hayworth; her husband (Thomas Mitchell) catches them. Next up is Henry Fonda helping out pal Cesaro Romero with his girlfriend (Ginger Rogers), only for Fonda and Rogers to fall in love. Charles Laughton gets one of the best sequences as a composer who needs a coat in which to perform his new piano concerto, and gets this one even though it's the wrong size. The other great sequence involves Edward G. Robinson, a lawyer who fell on hard times and is living at the mission, but getting the coat allows him to go to his class reunion. WC Fields gets an episode, as do some of the prominent black actors of the day (Paul Robeson, Ethel Waters and Eddie "Rochester" Anderson) when the coat, now full of stolen loot, falls out of the sky into their lives.
If you want a movie that's not very taxing, you could do worse than to watch You Were Never Lovelier, airing at 3:15 AM Wednesday on TCM. Fred Astaire plays a dancer stuck without funds in Buenos Aires, hoping to get a job from hotelier Adolphe Menjou so he can get the money for the trip home. Menjou, on the other hand, has an eldest daughter (Rita Hayworth) who refuses to marry, which is a problem because family tradition dictates the daughters marry in order. You can guess that the two plots are going to cross, when Astaire delivers orchids from a "secret admirer" that Dad was actually sending. The daughter obviously thinks Astaire is the secret admirer, and they spend the rest of the movie with an on again, off again relationship that you can probably guess is going to end up with the two of them in love, albeit with some complications along the way. The plot, however, isn't really the reason to watch a Fred Astaire movie. Instead, you watch for his dance numbers, and Rita Hayworth turns out to be an excellent dance partner for him. Xavier Cugat, a name you might recognize from I Love Lucy since Ricky Ricardo always named Cugat as his rival, leads the band that provides the music.
Rita Hayworth returns at 4:00 PM Wednesday on TCM in Affectionately Yours. This one has a relatively familiar plot. Dennis Morgan plays Mr. Mayberry, a globe-trotting newspaper correspondent who has a woman in every port, and a wife who he says won't give him a divorce. It's the perfect excuse, and he's using it on current squeeze Irene (that's Hayworth). The only thing is, it's about to come undone, as Mrs. Mayberry (Merle Oberon) has met Owen (Ralph Bellamy), fallen in love with him, and is now willing to divorce her husband. So Mr. Mayberry returns home to try to put everything right, with Irene following close behind. Complications ensue, as you can imagine in this sort of movie. Unfortunately, one of the problems with this movie is the presence of Ralph Bellamy, who had for several years now been playing the second man who you know is going to lose the girl to the male lead.
Instead of a normal "Star of the Month", TCM is have a concept that a bunch of different people fit as the "Star of the Month": pin-up girls. So we'll be getting one movie apiece from a bunch of lovely ladies depicted on posters every Wednesday in June. The month kicks off with the best known pin-up girl of them all, Betty Grable, in the appropriately titled Pin-Up Girl, at 8:00 PM Wednesday. Grable plays a woman who's a secretary by day, and works in the USO canteen by night. That's because this is the middle of World War II, and there are members of the armed forces going hither and yon all the time, and need some companionship from nice-looking ladies. Grable's looks charm them all, and a whole bunch of servicemen have proposed to her, although she assumes none of the proposals are serious. But then she meets one that she really does fall in love with, and all sorts of complications ensue. The plot isn't the thing here, as you watch a Grable movie for the musical numbers. This one you can also watch for the comic interludes from Joe E. Brown, and Martha Raye before she started hawking Polident. Take it from the big mouth. Oh, and there are a bunch of novelty dancers too. Fox really wanted to entertain the homefront audiences during the war.
Thursday night's lineup on TCM is all eight movies of the Bulldog Drummond series that were made in the late 1930s, starting with Bulldog Drummond Escapes at 8:00 PM. "Bulldog", played in the first entry by Ray Milland, is a British Army officer-turned detective who in this one gets involved with a wacky heiress when she darts out in front of his car. When he gets out to help, she gets in the car and drives away! He eventually finds her at one of those country estates, where she's claiming that there are untoward doings going on. Bulldog investigates and of course eventually saves the day, but not without twists and turns. He's got a detective partner Algy (Reginald Denny), a butler Tenny (E.E. Clive), and an exasperated Scotland Yard officer Nielson (Guy Standing) having to deal with Bulldog. In later entries, Nielson would be played by John Barrymore on the downside of his career.
TCM normally has a "Friday Night Spotlight", but they're doing something different this summer. Every Friday in June and July, they're showing 24 hours of noir, and the movies inspired by noir. Film noir was influenced by several French films of the late 1930s (hence the French name "noir"), including La bÊte humaine which will be on at 8:00 AM Friday. Jean Gabin plays Jacques Lantier, an engineer for the French railways. Unfortunately, he's prone to having seizures, but that's about to become the least of his problems. His colleague, conductor Roubaud (Fernand Ledoux) has a trophy wife SÉverine (Simone Simon, later of Cat People) who's cheating on him, and when he finds out, he murders the guy on a train, with her as a witness-accomplice. Jacques happens to witness the murder, but Roubaud doesn't know about this. Jacques also has another problem in that he finds himself falling in love with SÉverine. If this all sounds familiar, that's because Hollywood remade the movie as Human Desire.
A movie better known for its title song than for the movie itself is Against All Odds, airing at 1:15 AM Saturday on Encore Classics. Jeff Bridges plays Terry, a bitter ex-football player who's been forced to retire by injury. However, he gets a call from a friend from out of the past, a bookie named Jake (James Woods). Apparently Jake's girlfriend Jessie (Rachel Ward) took a bunch of Jake's money and ran off with it somewhere. Perhaps Terry could go find Jessie and bring her back to Los Angeles? If this sounds familiar, it's because the movie is based loosely on many of the same ideas as the classic noir Out of the Past. Anyhow, Terry goes to Mexico and finds Jessie there, And then things get complicated. Terry falls in love with Jessie, and the two decide the hell with it, we'll just stay here, which is of course a problem since Jake never had that in mind. Jane Greer, who played the femme fatale in Out of the Past shows up here as Jessie's mother.
This week's TCM Essential is The Man Who Would Be King, at 8:00 PM Saturday. Based on a story by Rudyard Kipling, the movie actually has Kipling as a character, played by Christopher Plummer. He's working as a clerk in British India, which is where he's met by Peachy (Michael Caine). Peachy was in Kipling's life in the past, briefly, and Kipling remembers how they met. Kipling had earlier met Peachy's friend Daniel (Sean Connery), back when the two were trying to get information on Kafiristan, a kingdom to the north of India in what would be modern-day Afghanistan. So Peachy and Daniel set off, and through a series of coincidences the Kafiristanis think Daniel is the descendant of Alexander the Great, returned to Earth to rule them as a God. There's immense wealth in Kafiristan, and being a god would be a good way to get at that wealth, but how to return it to civilization? Also, Daniel seems to be taking the god thing a little too seriously. Caine's real-life wife Shakira (they're still married after 42 years) plays the princess Connery is set to marry.
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