Welcome to another edition of Fedya's “Movies to Tivo” thread, for the week of June 20-26, 2016. I know it's coming out a day early, but them I'm going to be away for much of the weekend, and won't be around early Sunday morning to post from my desktop computer. Anyhow, I've used my good taste to make another selection of movies which I know you will all like. (One note to Goldie: I didn't try saving this as a text file to see if you'd get the normal x4 font.) As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
TCM is spending Monday morning and afternoon with Errol Flynn. One of his movies I think I haven't recommended before is Rocky Mountain, which comes on at 6:00 AM. Flynn stars as Lafe Barstow, a Confederate commander who's taken a band of men out west to try to hook up with an outlaw who claims he can provide men for the Confederate cause. Of course, that's not what happens. They come across a stagecoach being ambushed by Indians and of course foil the ambush. But there's a problem because one of the passengers was Johanna (Flynn's real-life wife Patrice Wymore), who just happens to be the fiancée of the local cavalry commander (Scott Forbes). So of course the cavalry send out a search party, forcing the Confederates to take them hostage too. And those Indians are still out there, waiting to attack and massacre everybody. This is one of Flynn's later movies, when his star was already waning, but it's still a reasonably good movie.
Marie Dressler returns for her third night in her turn as Star of the Month on Monday night. Her Oscar-winning performance in Min and Bill kicks off the night at 8:00 PM, but I'd prefer to mention Politics, which you can see at 10:45 PM. Dressler plays Hattie, the landlady to political activist Ivy (Polly Moran). Polly finds out that the mayoral candidate she's been supporting has no plans to do anything to get the speakeasies to close (this was 1931, during Prohibition), so she and Hattie come up with an idea: have Hattie run for Mayor! And to make matters more interesting, they get the women of the town together to have them stop doing the things housewives of the day did for their husbands, the idea being that they'll resume being good wives when the men help vote the corrupt politicians out. (Anybody seen Lysistrata?) Complicating matters is that Hattie's daughter Myrtle (Karen Morley) is in love with a small-time crook, who is hiding out in Hattie's attic.
One of the more interesting selections over on FXM Retro this week is Smiley, which you can catch at 1:20 PM Tuesday and 4:20 AM Wednesday. Distributed by Fox but made in Australia by London Films, this one tells the story of Smiley (Colin Petersen) and his best friend Joey (Bruce Archer). The two are young boys living in the Australian outback in that post-war era. Smiley's father works as a drover which means that he's constantly away from home working at other ranches, leaving Smiley's mother to care for him and essentially leaving a lot of time for Smiley and Joey to have various adventures. The main one is that Smiley wants to save up the money to buy a bicycle of his own, but things are always getting in the way of his desires. One of the signs of London Films' involvement is that the great British actor Ralph Richardson plays the town's minister. The movie was filmed in Technicolor and wide-screen, but I think the last time FXM aired it years ago they ran a panned-and-scanned print. 
I mentioned George Arliss two weeks ago. You've got another chance to see him this week, in The Millionaire, which is on TCM at 8:15 AM Wednesday. In this one he plays a millionaire who's been given the advice by his doctors to retire. But he quickly finds that the retired life is boring and more likely to kill him than being in business and doing something, so he buys a half share in a service station run by architect David Manners, hoping to save up enough money to go into architecture. It turns out that the two have been swindled by the guy who old them the station (Noah Beery), since he knew that a new highway was going to divert traffic away from the site of the station. Arliss, of course, being a shrewd businessman, is able to exact a measure of revenge on Beery. He's also able to help his business partner find romance with his daughter. Watch for a scene early on with an insurance salesman refusing to sell insurance to Arliss. That's the unmistakeable James Cagney in one of his earliest performances.
The western fans will be pleased to see one that I haven't recommended before: Fort Bowie, on Thursday at 10:10 AM and 9:40 PM on StarzEncore Westerns. Ben Johnson, normally a supporting player, gets to play a lead as Capt. Thompson, out at a western fort under the command of Col. Garrett (Kent Taylor). Thompson is escorting Mrs. Garrett (Jan Harrison) to the fort to keep her safe from the Apaches, but she tells her husband that the captain was trying to put the moves on her. This enrages the colonel, so he orders the captain out of the fort to go massacre some Apaches, who would really rather just surrender, at least did before the cavalry went out and tried to slaughter them. Meanwhile Apache woman Chanzana likes Capt. Thompson, and is none to happy with the idea of him going after Mrs. Garrett.
TCM has been running the documentary Hollywood Without Make-Up on an irregular basis over the past months. It's showing again at 5:45 AM Friday. Ken Murray was a would-be movie actor from the start of the talking picture era who wasn't quite good enough to cut it as an actor, so he decided to become an emcee instead. For this special, released in 1963, Murray was able to get a bunch of the old-time stars to release their old home movies; in addition, some people went further and talked with Murray in footage that was new to the special. (There are also clips from actual theatrical movies.) A good example of the latter would be when Walt Disney takes Murray's daughters and shows them around the Disney studio. But it's those home movies that are the star of the show, especially the ones of William Randolph Hearst and his mistress Marion Davies inviting stars over to San Simeon to enjoy themselves. Murray would later make a second special, Hollywood, My Hometown, that also shows up on TCM from time to time.
I know I've mentioned the Marlene Dietrich classic The Blue Angel before; I can't recall whether I've ever recommended the 1959 remake, also titled The Blue Angel. The remake is airing on FXM Retro at 7:45 AM Friday. The plot involves biology teacher Rath (played here by Curt Jurgens), who finds his students having the hots for nightclub act Lola-Lola (May Britt). He's incensed, but then he actually goes to the club and meets Lola-Lola. He immediately falls in love with her, and things progress quickly to the point that Rath asks Lola-Lola to marry him. She accepts, but this has disastrous consequences, as the townsfolk no longer want him as a teacher. Not only them, but the schools in other towns don't want him either. Rath is reduced to being a shill for Lola-Lola's boss Klepert (Theodore Bikel) to induce people to come see the show, while Lola-Lola humiliates Rath too.
TCM has been running a tribute to director Billy Wilder every Friday night in June. That continues this week with a bunch of movies I've recommended before:
First, at 8:00 PM is Witness for the Prosecution, with Tyrone Power on trial for murder, his wife (Marlene Dietrich) more or less standing by him and his defense attorney (Charles Laughton);
At 10:15 PM, Tony Curtis tears off one of Jack Lemmon's chests in Some Like It Hot;
Lemmon is badgered by attorney brother-in-law Walter Matthau into suing everybody after a football-related injury in The Fortune Cookie, at 12:30 AM Saturday; and
Lemmon lets his boss Fred MacMurray use his apartment to romance Shirley MacLaine in The Apartment, at 2:45 AM Saturday.
Saturday night's theme on TCM is con artists. A film that doesn't show up so much is The Flim-Flam Man, which will be on at 10:30 PM. George C. Scott plays the title role as Mordecai, an older man who is a con artist, bilking people out of their money using every old confidence trick in the book, and staying one step ahead of the law, Sheriff Slade (Harry Morgan) and Deputy Meshaw (Albert Salmi). Mordecai meets young Curley (Michael Sarrazin), who has gone AWOL from the army. Mordecai starts teaching Curley the tricks that he's learned along the way, and Curley seems like an adept student. But Curley begins to get the impression that perhaps he should be, well, more honest, which is kind of a problem for a con artist. Sue Lyon plays Bonnie, the love interest for Curley, who helps him and Mordecai stay ahead of the authorities.
Some months back I mentioned the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland musical Babes in Arms. If you like that sort of thing, then you'll enjoy the return pairing in Strike Up the Band, which will be on TCM at 8:00 AM Sunday. Rooney plays Jimmy Connors. Not the nasty tennis player, but a high-school aged kid who plays drums in the school band. However, he has dreams not of playing the crap that high-school bands play, but of playing jazz like the stuff he hears from Paul Whiteman on the radio. And it just so turns out that Whiteman himself is running a contest for high-school bands. So Jimmy gets his friend Mary (Judy Garland) from the glee club who will provide vocals, and gets together a band. But there's the problem of getting the money to make it to the contest, as well as other obstacles in their way…. There's a stop-motion sequence that was conceived by George Pal and Vincente Minnelli, and of course the other Garland/Rooney numbers.