Welcome to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" thread, for the week of June 17-23, 2013. Since we're all waxing nostalgic about x4 with the impending move to a new bulletin board platform, I'd like to remind everybody that I first came up with the idea of recommending some good movies for all of you back in the Packers' annus horribilis of 2005 when they went 4-12. There was a lot of bickering that season, so I decided that perhaps we could all sit down with some fun old movies instead of bickering. There's still a lot of bickering, so the movie suggestions are needed as much as ever. As always, all times are in Eastern unless otherwise mentioned.
Eleanor Parker returns for a third night of movies as this month's Star of the Month on TCM. The night kicks off with the adventure movie Scaramouche at 8:00 PM. Stewart Granger plays what is eventually the title role, although he starts off as a bastard child in the France just before the Revolution. He falls in love with Janet Leigh, who may be his sister, although she's also pursued by nobleman Mel Ferrer, who's in with Marie Antoinette (Nina Foch). Ferrer kills one of Granger's friends in a sword duel, and Granger vows to avenge the death. But he's also an enemy of the state now, and has to go in hiding as a comic actor playing the character Scaramouche, which is where he learns to become a master fencer so that he can kill Ferrer with a sword. So, of course we know there's going to be one more big sword fight at the end. As for Eleanor Parker, she plays one of the actresses in the troup that Granger joins, and also becomes a love interest for him.
I'm not particularly a Doris Day fan, but if you are, you might like Romance on the High Seas, which TCM is showing at 4:30 AM Wednesday. Day plays a singer who is hired by wealthy Mrs. Kent (Janis Paige) to take a cruise to South America posing as Mrs. Kent; Mrs. Kent wants to stay behind so she can spy on her husband (Don DeFore) who she thinks might be cheating on her. Hubby, meanwhile, has hired a private detective (Jack Carson) to take the same cruise, because the husband is sure his wife is cheating on him. So Carson meets Day, thinks she's the wealthy woman, and romances her not knowing who she really is, which causes all sorts of complications since Day has to play the part of a faithful wife even though she's fallen in love with the private detective. This is actually Day's first film, and she's quite capable even if she's not my thing.
Over on the Fox Movie Channel, you can see Tony Randall in a role you might never have expected from him, in No Down Payment, at 11:10 AM Wednedsay. The movie starts off with Jeffrey Hunter and Patricia Owens as a young couple driving their car down the freeway past a number of Southern California housing developments, until they get to the one they're moving into. It's there, in suburban tract housing, that they meet Randall, who's one of their neighbors. He's a car salesman, but not a particularly succesful one, and he's retreated into the bottle as a result, which is hell for his wife (Sheree North). Another neighbor is Cameron Mitchell, a war veteran who relives his World War II days and wants to be a cop, presumably because he likes to dish out violence. His wife is Joanne Woodward, who wants to have a baby. No Down Payment is one of the earliest movies to engage in the now tedious trope that the suburbs aren't all they're cracked up to be, but still deserves a viewing for Randall's performance.
Hollywood has a way of butchering history. They even butcher their own history. An example of this is in the movie Gable and Lombard, at 2:15 AM Thursday on Encore Love Stories. (It's also showing up the following week at some more convenient times.) James Brolin stars as Clark Gable, and Jill Clayburgh as Carole Lombard, two people who met in early-1930s Hollywood, at first didn't like each other but then fell in love, and after Gable was able to get a divorce, got married and lived happily ever after... until Lombard died in a plane crash promoting war bonds in January 1942. Unfortunately, the film has several glaring errors. Louis B. Mayer, Gable's boss at MGM, is portrayed as a nice guy, when it's fairly well known that he was viciously mean. Loretta Young, who was knocked up by Gable and lied for decades about the origins of her "adopted" child, is completely absent. And Gable didn't enlist until after Lombard's death. On the other hand, Lombard was apparently as saucy as she's portrayed here. Lovely to look at, but how accurate is it really?
On Thursday night, TCM is putting the spotlight on Mamie Van Doren, who is best known for two things: the left half of her buxom bustline, and the right half of her buxom bustline. She could act passably enough to show up in serious movies like The Girl in Black Stockings opposite movie Tarzan Lex Barker; I've recommended that one before and it's airing at 5:00 AM Friday. However, Van Doren also wound up in more exploitative stuff such as Sex Kittens Go to College, which is on TCM at 3:15 AM Friday. Van Doren plays a stripper who gets hired as a college professor thanks to her 13 degrees. (Stop laughing. It gets much more laughable.) The decision is made in part by a robot computer named Thinko who also handicaps horse races, which gets him in trouble with the Mob. Van Doren, of course, drives all the men crazy, including future Adam-12 star Martin Milner; the captain of the football team; and a professor played by John Carradine. Rounding out the cast are Tuesday Weld, along with Brigitte Bardot's sister Mijarou as an exchange student; and Jackie Coogan as one of the college's biggest benefactors. Well, there's also Van Doren's chimpanzee.... Oh boy is the a hilarious mess.
Friday night brings the return of Eddie Muller to TCM, discussing noir writers. This time, Muller will talk about two different writers, presenting two pictures from each of them. You might have heard of James M. Cain before; you certainly recognize the movies he was involved with: TCM is showing Double Indemnity at 11:15 PM Friday and The Postman Always Rings Twice at 1:15 AM Saturday. Before that, though, are two films from the pen of Jonathan Latimer. I've recommended They Won't Believe Me before; that one is ising at 9:45 PM Friday. But kicking the night off at 8:00 PM is Nocturne. The movie opens with an aerial shot of Los Angeles at night, eventually zooming in on the hilltop home of a composer, who is workingn at the piano on his latest composition. There's also a woman in black... who shoots him dead! Detective George Raft and his partner investigate, and although the partner thinks it's a suicide, we know, and Raft suspects, that it's murder. There are a lot of suspects, though, as the composer had girlfriend after girlfriend.
Try to imagine Robert Mitchum playing a lawyer. It doesn't seem somthing he was suited to do. Put him in uniform, and he seems a bit more at home. Combine the two, and you get Man in the Middle, at 1:25 PM Saturday on the Fox Movie Channel. The movie starts off in India in 1944, still a British colony and still at war. American serviceman Keenan Wynn shoots a British soldier in cold blood. Because of the brewing international incident, Mitchum, a lawyer before the war who is recovering from war injuries, is called in to provide the defense so they can have a court-martial and execute Wynn. However, as Mitchum investigates, he gets the decided belief that Wynn is insane. This especially because it seems as if the British are trying to keep information about Wynn's psychological evaluation secret, mysteriously disappearing psychologist Sam Wanamaker. France Nuyen provides what was presumably supposed to be a love interest to Mitchum as a nurse to Wanamaker who feeds important documents to Mitchum.
Gable and Lombard isn't the only 1970s movie looking back at the past airing this week. You can also catch Lies My Father Told Me, at 5:00 PM Saturday and 9:00 AM Sunday, on Cinémoi. This one is set in the Jewish slum district of Montréal of the mid-1920s, as little David (Jeff Lynas) lives with his more modern parents Harry (Len Birman) and Annie (Marilyn Lightstone), and her father Zaida (Yossi Yadin). Zaida is a junk dealer, hooking up his old horse to a cart, and going around the slums offering to buy "rags, clothes, and bottles"; he takes along little David and tells stories of the old European Jewish life. Dad, meanwhile, thinks his father-in-law is too traditionalist, and is trying to make a living -- not very successfully -- as an inventor. This constant lack of money on his part causes further problems between him and Grandpa Zaida. Things get even more complicated when Annie gets pregnant again....
Fred MacMurray was already a success in movies when he started working on the sitcom My Three Sons in 1960. However, the TV show gave him a fatherly image he hadn't really had before, that resulted in his making more family-friendly movies when he went back to moviemaking during his hiatuses from the sitcom. Unfortunately, some of those movies aren't all that great, such as Kisses For My President, which TCM is showing at 6:00 PM Sunday. MacMurray plays a businessman and father whose wife (Polly Bergen) is elected President. Amazingly, nobody seems to have any idea what to do when faced with the idea that we might have a First Gentleman or First Husband instead of a First Lady. Eventually, the staff decide to get him out of their hair by having him entertain Latin American dictator Eli Wallach in an attempt to grease the wheels of diplomacy. The whole thing reeks of tired attempts at humor based on cheap stereotypes.
Original Post