Welcome to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" Thread, for the week of June 22-28, 2020. It's hard to believe that the days are already getting shorter, although it's not as if there's that much darkness out there. And if the hot weather is keeping you up at night, try watching some good movies. There's more from TCM Star of the month Ann Sheridan; a couple of 80s movies; the spotlight on jazz, and more. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
Most of you will remember Gloria Swanson for Sunset Blvd., but she had a long career before that comeback. That first career more or less petered out by the time she made Music in the Air, which is on TCM at 6:00 AM Monday. Swanson plays Frieda, a Munich stage actress in a long relationship but not yet married to Bruno (John Boles), the lack of a marriage being mostly because they're constantly bickering. Into this comes rural composer Dr. Lessing (Al Shean), who's come to the big city with his daughter Sieglinde (June Lang) to try to make it in the big city. Sieglinde has a boyfriend Karl (Douglass Montgomery) back in the small town who's eventually going to show up in Munich. Meanwhile, in Munich Dr. Lessing tries to get one of his songs into Bruno and Frieda's new show. When Karl shows up, Frieda realizes she can use him to get her way in the relationship with Bruno. But then it might screw up Karl and Sieglinde's relationship. This is based on a Broadway show with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein (long before the partnership with Rоdgers), and music by Jerome Kern.
We've got a couple of 80s movies this week. The first of them is Platoon, airing at 9:29 AM Monday on StarzEncore Classics. Charlie Sheen, before he went nuts, plays Chris, an idealistic young college student in 1967 who decides to drop out of college because he believes that the war against the Communists in Vietnam is just, and wants to volunteer to fight. What he finds when he gets there is not what he expected at all. The soldiers who have been in Vietnam for a while don't really care for the new guys, and worse, he's got two commanding officers who have diametrically opposed views. Sgt. Elias (William Dafoe) tries to fight within the traditional rules of war despite having to fight a guerrilla force, while Sgt. Barnes (Tom Berenger) doesn't care and does whatever he feels is necessary to achieve the mission, even if it means things like killing innocent women and children. The war has an indelible psychological effect on everybody who fights in it.
We get another night of Ann Sheridan's movies on TCM on Tuesday, including It All Came True, at 3:30 AM Wednesday. Sheridan plays Sarah Jane, a nightclub singer who's got a friend in songwriter Tommy (Jeffrey Lynn) because their mothers (Una O'Connor and Jessie Busley respectively) run a boarding house together – and the two moms have some overdue taxes to pay, so the kids return to help them out. Unfortunately, Tommy has some problems with the law. His old boss Chips Maguire (Humphrey Bogart) is a gangster who ran a nightclub and shot a police informant with Tommy's gun, so now Chips needs a place to hide out, with the boarding house being a good place to do it. There are a lot of quirky tenants with odd talents, and when Chips grows bored with hiding out, he decides that perhaps some of these tenants could use a little bit of excitement in their lives by having the boarding house turn into a nightclub, with the tenants providing the talent. Of course, that could bring Chips back into the eye of the law….
A movie that I know I haven't recommended before is Bad Company. It's airing at 2:55 PM Wednesday on Epix2. Barry Brown plays Drew Dixon, an Ohio boy who's been drafted into the Civil War but has no desire to fight. So his family helps him dodge the draft, getting to Missouri and from there west to the territories to mine for silver out in Nevada. But when he gets to the jumping-off point in Missouri looking for a wagon train west, naïve Drew is rolled by Jake (Jeff Bridges), leader of a group of ragtag ne'er-do-wells who are similarly trying to escape their pasts back east. Drew falls in with them although he wants to live honestly, something that the hard times out in the Kansas territory aren't necessarily going to allow for. Jake's gang comes to the attention of the local marshal (Jim Davis), and worse, winter and hunger are closing in. And while Jake and Drew become friends of a sort, it may only be a friendship of convenience.
For some reason I thought I had recommended Lady Sings the Blues the last time it aired, but I picked a different musician biopic that week. Anyhow, it's on this week at 9:45 PM Thursday, so now's your chance to get it. Diana Ross plays Billie Holiday, who at the start of the movie is being put in solitary after an arrest for heroin possession and needing to detox. This gives her a chance to figure out how she got there…. Billie started off in Baltimore working as a cleaning girl at a brothel, getting raped and escaping to New York where her mother lived. Eventually, she winds up at a nightclub where she convinces the manager to let her sing. Frequenting the club is Louis McKay (Billy Dee Williams), who falls in love with her and the two eventually have a tempestuous relationship. A white bandleader wants Billie to front his jazz band, which means facing racism. And her best platonic friend, her pianist (Richard Pryor, who's excellent in a dramatic role), winds up having demons of his own. Can Billie make it back from heroin addiction to triumph again? Apparently, it's only loosely based on Holiday's real life.
Up against Lady Sings the Blues is our next movie, A Day of Fury, at 11:13 PM Thursday. It'll also be on at 9:08 AM Friday. Jock Mahoney is Marshal Burnett, the law enforcement in a small town in Oklahoma. While out on a manhunt, his life is in danger, but he's saved by Jagade (Dale Robertson), who himself is a gunslinger but not the man Burnett was looking for. Jagade winds up coming to Burnett's town to stay a while, which brings up all sorts of complications. First, Jagade had a past with Sharman (Mara Corday), who now happens to be Burnett's fiancée. The townsfolk don't want a gunslinger in town, but since there aren't any warrants out for Jagade's arrest and he hasn't committed any crimes in town, there's not much the marshal can do, never mind the debt he feels since Jagade saved his life. Meanwhile, Jagade starts working one the town's citizens and begins to turn some of them against Burnett.
Meanwhile, up against the Friday morning showing of A Day of Fury is Strange Cargo, which begins at 10:00 AM Friday on TCM. Clark Gable plays Verne, who's being transported to a Devil's Island-like penal colony. On the way there he meets Julie (Joan Crawford), some sort of woman of ill-repute who hasn't actually done anything illegal enough to wind up in prison, so she's just free on the island. In prison, Verne meets Moll (Albert Dekker), who hates Verne and the feeling is mutual. But Moll is trying to come up with an escape plan, and Verne wants a place in the escape party, including Paul Lukas as a serial killer and Ian Hunter as a Christ-like figure. Julie apparently is the one on the outside who knows where the boat that's supposedly going to take the convicts off the island is, and in the meantime she's fallen in love with Verne despite having turned him in at the beginning and being in moral debt to slimy bounty hunter Pig (Peter Lorre). The title is appropriate, as there's a lot strange (but quite interesting) going on here.
TCM's Saturday matinee block has been including a B movie that runs about an hour starting just before 8:30 AM to fit before the serial. This week's entry is Accidents Will Happen, at around 8:25 AM. Ronald Reagan plays insurance adjustor Eric Gregg, who's married to Nona (Sheila Bromley), a woman who wishes her husband could advance faster and make more money. A bunch of insurance fraudsters see this and use it as a way to get Eric fired by getting his wife involved in insurance fraud. He decides he's not going to take it, with the attitude of “if you can't beat 'em, join 'em”, and actually starts getting involved in insurance fraud himself! Except that there's a method to his actress. Meanwhile, Joan Blondell's sister Gloria plays Pat, a clerk with a crush on Eric except for the fact that he's married. But when he needs help getting his job back, she's there to help him bring down the fraudsters. It's a breezy little B movie, but Reagan was just the type for this sort of movie.
The screwball comedy era had some pretty darn funny movies dealing with divorce. A more recent movie that fits the same topic is The War of the Roses, which you can cat at 4:04 AM Sunday on Starz Comedy. Danny DeVito, who also directed, plays divorce lawyer Gavin D'Amato, who has a new client that he gives a warning about the difficulties of getting divorced. Flash back to clients the Roses. Oliver (Michael Douglas) met Barbara (Kathleen Turner) in college and the two fell in love despite not necessarily being compatible. Two decades later, and they're getting divorced. But with Oliver being a successful lawyer himself, he's quite wealthy and has a big house with lots of possessions. He's going to do everything within his power to keep the house – but then again, so is Barbara, who's grown accustomed to it. And there are some pretty frighteningly funny lengths the two will go to in order to “win” in the divorce settlement, even if it's a Pyrrhic victory.
Finally, I've mentioned it before, but it you want a really funny (in an unintentional way) short, stay tuned for the end of the TCM Underground block. In the 5:30 AM Saturday time slot, one of the two shorts is The House in the Middle. Produced by a coalition of paint manufactures, this short has the bizarre premise that a good way to help ensure survival should there be a nuclear attack is… to make certain your house is clean and well-kept! The house that hasn't been painted in a while burns, while the one that has an untidy interior has a lot of crap in it to catch fire, none of which the middle house has. And now that you've kept your own house neat, go out in the neighborhood and get everybody else to get their houses and yards in shape. Yeah, it really is that nutty.