Welcome to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" thread, for the week of June 22-28, 2015. We have a programming change to mention this week, but more on that in a bit. There's more pinup girls on Wednesday night, and more noir on Friday on TCM, as well as some interesting movies on other channels. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
Actor Christopher Lee died a couple of weeks ago at the age of 93. Lee rose to fame in all those Hammer horror movies in the 1960s, notably playing Dracula, but had a long career that lasted into his 90s, playing in the Star Wars prequels and the Hobbit movies. TCM has changed its schedule for Monday morning and afternoon to honor Lee's life and work, showing eight of his movies. The day kicks off st 6:15 AM with The Mummy, which really kicked off Lee's fame in horror films. I mentioned that Lee played Dracula a bunch of times, and TCM is showing three of Lee's Dracula movies:
Horror of Dracula at 9:30 AM;
Dracula, Prince of Darknes at 11:00 AM; and
Dracula Has Risen From the Grave at 12:45 PM.
A few months back I mentioned The Four Musketeers, which was a continuation of the 1972 version of The Three Musketeers. Those two films, which both had Lee as Rochefort, conclude the TCM tribute to him, with The Three Musketeers at 4:00 PM and The Four Musketeers at 6:00 PM.
Up against the Christopher Lee movies over on FXM Retro, you can catch You Were Meant For Me at 8:50 AM Monday; it'll be repeated at 7:45 AM Tuesday. Jeanne Crain plays Peggy, a girl of the Roaring Twenties. Into her small hometown comes Chuck Arnold (Dan Dailey), the leader of a big band of the sort that were popular in the 20s. Peggy falls in love with him almost immediately; the feeling is mutual, and they get married. Chuck goes on the road with his band and Peggy follows because they're so much in love. But then the stock market crashes, and the market isn't very good for lesser big band leaders like Chuck. Can he make a success of himself during the Depression and save his marriage? The film is chock full of standards of the late 20s, including the title song which of course was written by a man (Arthur Freed) who by the time this movie was made was producing musicals over at rival MGM. (He's also use "You Were Meant for Me" a few years later himself in Singin' in the Rain.) Oscar Levant is on hand to play the piano and crack jokes.
Monday night on TCM sees several biopics of Hollywood figures. One of the movies that I don't think I've ever mentioned before is Too Much. Too Soon, at 10:00 PM. This one is a look at the later years of John Barrymore, played here by Errol Flynn. John Barrymore, known as "The Great Profile", destroyed his career by drinking too much, so it's a bit ironic that it would be Errol Flynn playing the character, since alcohol played a large part in the downward trajectory of Flynn's own career and his ultimate early death a year and a half after this movie was released. Based on the book by Barrymore's daughter Diana (played here by Dorothy Malone), the movie chronicles Diana's own rocky life after she reconciled with her father shortly before his death and shows how she went through a succession of men and destroyed her own career. It's not quite true, since Diana was doing this to herself before the putative reconciliation. Diana's real life was tragic, as she eventually committed suicide in 1960, a few months after Flynn's death.
Tuesday morning and afternoon on TCM brings a bunch of Montgomer Clift movies, evn though his birthday was in October. One of the Clift movies that I don't think I've recommended before is Indiscretion of an American Wife, at 4:45 PM. Clift obviously doesn't play the American wife; that honor goes to Jennifer Jones. She plays Mary, a woman with a husband and child back in America, but while she was in Rome visiting friends, she met Giovanni (Clift) and started to carry on an affair with him. However, she realizes that she probably shouldn't have started the affair, and plans to leave the country as quickly as possible. Except that Giovanni is waiting at the train station when she plans to leave. Clift, needles to say, is terribly miscast as an Italian, and it didn't help that Jones' real-life husband, David O. Selznick, badly edited this movie down for the American release.
On Tuesday night, we get this month's Guest Programmer on TCM: Edgar Wright, whom you might best recognize from Shaun of the Dead. Edgar's first selection out of a varied bunch is Dames, at 8:00 PM. The dames here are Ruby Keeler as Barbara, daughter of ZaSu Pitts' Mathilda; and Joan Blondell as Mabel; more on her later. Mathilda's cousin Ezra Ounce (Hugh Herbert) is a wealthy man and wants to use his wealth to promote morality. That's all well and good, but Mathilda, her husband Horace (Guy Kibbee) and especially daughter Barbara don't quite live that way. In fact, Barbara is in show business, which Ezra would consider particularly scandalous if he knew about it. Barbara is in love with distant cousin Jimmy (Dick Powell), who's also in show buisness, trying to produce a Broadway show as he more or less did in Gold Diggers of 1933 a year earlier. Unfortunately, his backer has proved to be a con artist, so Jimmy has to turn to Mabel, who had a relationship with Horace in the past, to try to get the money. It's a bit of a mess of a plot, but this is a Busby Berkeley musical, so you don't watch for the plot.
Some of you may recognize the name Penny Singleton. She played Blondie -- yes, the Blondie from the comic strip -- opposite Arthur Lake's Dagwood Bumstead in a series of movies in the 1940s. Singleton took time away from the Blondie series to make Go West, Young Lady which you can catch on Encore Westerns at 5:45 AM Wednesday and 6:15 AM Sunday. Singleton plays Belinda, nicknamed Bill, whose uncle Jim (Charlie Ruggles) lives in the old west town of Headstone. Headstone is having difficulties with a bandit, and when Jim learns Bill is coming west, Jim thinks Bill is a he and would make a good sheriff for the town. On the same stagecoach to Headstone as Bill is Tex (Glenn Ford), and when Tex gets off the stagecoach Jim immediately thinks Tex is Bill, leading to Tex getting named sheriff. Tex and Bill fall in love and of course get their man, with a lot of comedy and some music along the way. Rounding out the cast are Allen Jenkins as Ford's deputy (he even gets a musical number), and Ann Miller as the saloon's "entertaiment" (Miller and Singleton get a fight scene).
Wednesday night means another night of the "Star of the Month" on TCM, which is of course the pin-up girls. This Wednesday has a bunch of hat babes from the 1960s, starting at 8:00 PM with Raquel Welch in One Million Years BC. A remake of the 1940 classic, this one has John Richardson as Tumak of the "rock" people who gets expelled from his tribe. So he wanders off until he finds the shell people, and Raquel, playing Loana wearing a skimpy two piece fur outfit. But Tumak's presence ticks off Loana's betrothed, so Tumak has to leave the shell people. Loana, being in love with him, decides banishment is acceptable if she can be with the prehistoric man she loves. Together, they wind up back with the rock people. Oh, and everybody has to deal with dinosaurs courtesy of Ray Harryhausen along the way and volcanoes and earthquakes. It's a wonder man ever survived, but with Raquel Welch around, man certainly had good reason to want to survive.
Jean Harlow died tragically at the age of 26. At the time of her death, she was working on the movie Saratoga. Harlow's fans clamored for MGM to release the footage, but the movie was only half finished, so MGM had to rewrite scenes so she wouldn't be in them, or use a body double and film her solely from the back. The finished product was still a financial hit, and you can watch it at 4:00 AM Friday on TCM. Harlow plays Carol, the daughter of a gambler father who dies heavily in debt to bookie Duke (Clark Gable). To pay off the debt, Dad deeded his stud farm to Duke. Duke decides to manage the stud famr, and seeing Carol there, immediately takes an interest in her. However, complicating matters is the fact that Carol has a fiancÉ in Hartley (Walter Pidgeon). There's a lot of trivia surrounding this movie, mostly down to which scenes use the Harlow stand-in. But watch Frank Morgan (who would play the Wizard of Oz two years later) get a scene with Margaret Hamilton (the Wicked Witch of the West). Or, watch Hattie McDaniel with a musical number.
Back in March, I mentioned that TCM's Saturday morning serial slot would be running the 1943 serial of Batman. This past Saturday saw the final episode in that serial, so this Saturday begins a new serial for the next several months: Batman and Robin, from 1949. This one involves a device that can control cars by remote control, and a bad guy named "The Wizard" who has stolen that device and taken it back to his secret hideout reached by submarine. About the only recognizable name in the cast would be Lyle Talbot, who plays Commissioner Gordon. Talbot was a character actor in the 1930s, but his career fizzled out in the 1940s until the advent of television allowed him to work nonstop in guest roles for the following 20 years. Talbot plays the General in Plan 9 From Outer Space.
Our last feature this week is Best Foot Forward, airing at 8:00 AM Sunday on TCM. Bud (Tommy Dix) is a senior at a military school who, even though he has a girlfriend Helen (Virginia Weidler), writes to Hollywood star Lucille Ball (obviously playing herself) and asks if she would be his date for the senior prom. No harm in asking. Especially when Ball's press agent figures that because her last couple of movies haven't done such big box office, a publicity stunt like this would be a good boost for her career. So she reluctantly accepts and goes off to the military school, which is when the fun begins. The guys want to meet Lucille Ball, and their dates (June Allyson, Gloria de Haven, and Nancy Walker all at the beginning of their careers) don't want Lucy to upstage them, and then of course there's Bud's girlfriend who understandably wouldn't want to be stood up. Lucy, for her part, begins to realize that it would be a good thing to do this good turn. Lucille Ball was better-looking than she's normally given credit for, and being in Technicolor here really shows that.
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