Welcome to another edition of Fedya's' “Movies to Tivo” thread, for the week of June 25-July 1, 2018. It's hard to believe we're at the end of another month, which means it's your last chance to catch Star of the Month Leslie Howard, or those musicals you're mad about. The days are also beginning to get shorter. So with a little more darkness, which not spend those nights wtching some good movies? As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
On Monday in prime time we get one final night of Leslie Howard movies on TCM, concluding with Five and Ten at 3:30 AM Tuesday. Howard is the top-billed male, but the star is actually Marion Davies. She plays Jennifer Rarick, daughter of John (Richard Bennett). When Dad got married, he married into a small five-and-dime store that his wife's (Irene Rich) family owned out in Kansas City. Dad is a shrewd businessman, and he really grew the business, to the point that he's moved the whole family to New York to be headquartered there and build the empire. However, the rest of the family doesn't care for New York. Mom takes a gigolo; Jennifer's brother Avery (Douglass Montgomery billed as Kent Douglas) becomes a drunk; and Jennifer meets playboy Berry (Leslie Howard). The two fall in love, but that's a problem because Berry already has a fiancée in Muriel (Mary Duncan). It's bound to lead to problems for the whole family. Marion Davies generally doesn't get the credit she deserves thanks to the parody of her in Citizen Kane, but she was actually quite a capable actress.
FXM Retro is bringing back another of those movies where Marilyn Monroe gets much more attention on the DVD box art than she does in the movie: Let's Make It Legal, at 7:20 AM Tuesday. Hugh and Miriam (Macdonald Cary and Claudette Colbert respectively) are a couple who are getting a divorce that is soon to be final. Their adult daughter Barbara (Barbara Bates) has a husband Jerry (Robert Wagner) and a young child, and she doesn't want the divorce to go through. Hugh, for his part, keeps going back to the house to tend to his rose garden. Hugh is also the PR director at a local resort hotel, and on the day the divorce is about to become final, who should walk into that hotel but Miriam's old flame Victor (Zachary Scott)? In the years since Miriam married Hugh, Victor became quite successful, so when he returns to find Miriam getting a divorce, he decides to start putting the moves on her again. Jerry quite likes that idea, since it would result in him and his wife having to get a place of their own. But Barbara wants Mom and Dad to get back together, not Mom and the new guy…. As for Marilyn Monroe, she plays a woman at the hotel who would like to get a little publicity of her own, and what better way to do it than hooking up with Victor?
We have one more week of “Mad About Musicals” on TCM, this Tuesday and Thursday. In this final week of the month it's musicals from the 1960s and 1970s. This gives TCM another chance to run A Hard Day's Night, at 1:45 AM Wednesday. A band you may have heard of called the Beatles, played by John, Paul, George, and Ringo, go from their home town of Liverpool down to London to do a TV appearance for the BBC. To get there, they take the train, along with Paul's grandfather (Wilfrid Brambell). Along the way, Grandpa is annoyed that he doesn't get to see much, while nobody ever seems to give Ringo the respect he deserves, which leads to him running off just before the big show and hanging out with some kids down by the river. Eventually, though, he's found and joins his bandmates in the big show complete with a bunch of songs from the group's early career. Probably most notable is the scenes of the Beatles escaping down a fire escape to the strains of “Can't Buy Me Love”.
The 1974 version of The Great Gatsby is on again this week, at 4:34 AM Tuesday and 1:18 AM Wednesday. Nick Carroway (Sam Waterston) is a young man living on 1920s Long Island, who tells the story of his neighbor Jay Gatsby (Robert Redford). Some years back, Gatsby was in love with Daisy (Mia Farrow), but Gatsby wasn't rich at the time and Daisy was, and she wasn't about to give up her lifie of luxury to marry for love. So, instead, she married Tom Buchanan (Bruce Dern) to live a comfortable live on Long Island, at which point Gatsby comes back into her life. Gatsby has become rich in the last five years and tries to renew the relationship. Meanwhile, Tom starts taking up with Myrtle (Karen Black), wife of the local mechanic George (Scott Wilson). It all leads to tragedy for pretty much everybody but Nick. The movie was a big deal when it was in production and first came out; it was the subject of the first cover of People magazine.
Foreign films tend to get relegated to the slot overnight between Sunday and Monday on TCM. This week, though, we have one at a more reasonable hour: Lola Montès, at 10:45 AM Wednesday. This is based on the life of Lola Montez, an Irish-born beauty who wowed parts of Europe in the 1840s. Lola,played here by Martine Carol, has in the movie, been relegated to a circus act introduced by ringmaster Peter Ustinov, who will take questions from the audience and use those to illustrate scenes from Lola's life, shown in the movies as flashbacks. There was a dalliance with composer Franz Liszt, but the more important relationship with with Ludwig I, King of Bavaria (Anton Walbrook). This was not the “mad king” who built the palaces; that was Ludwig II. But Ludwig I gave Lola the title of Countess and had her as a mistress until the revolutions of 1848 forced her to flee. Oskar Werner plays a Bavarian student who falls in love with Lola's beauty. The color cinematography is gorgeous; it would just be nice if the story were a bit better.
I'll mention one last musical from the 1970s in conjunction with the “Mad About Musicals” spotlight: The Boy Friend, at 8:00 AM Thursday. In the late 1920s, at the start of the talking picture era, director Cecil B. DeThrill (Vladek Sheybal) is looking for a new star from the stage to perform in his all-talking, all-singing picture. So he's at a lousy musical to see the star Rita (Glenda Jackson in a cameo), only for Rita to break her ankle just before her entrance and the assistant stage manager Polly (60s supermodel Twiggy) to have to take over, and she fantasizes about being a big hit and making her boyfriend, the male lead in the show, happy. Everybody else is trying to catch DeThrill's eye, as the show has otherwise been a disaster to this point. The movie is really more of a spoof of the old 1930s Hollywood musicals and had been a London and Broadway musical starring Julie Andrews.
There's not just one foreign film airing in the daytime on TCM this week, there's a second: M, at 9:00 AM Friday as part of a day of movies honoring Peter Lorre. There's a child killer on the loose in Berlin, and the police are desperately trying to find him. Also trying to find him is the criminal underworld, because the police crackdown is putting a serious crimp in their activities. Hans (Peter Lorre) is that killer, as we see him lure a young girl to her death. Eventually, the criminal elements are able to spot Hans and slap a chalk M for Mörder/Murderer on his back, making it easy for the crime synidcate to find him after he escapes into an office buildin hoping to spend the night there. Hans is about to find out that being found out by the police would have been less bad than being put on a vigilante trial by the crime world. M is a masterpiece of early sound cinema, and a masterpiece for its director Fritz Lang.
I've recommended the wonderful Here Comes Mr. Jordan multiple times before. I've also recommended the remake Heaven Can Wait. I'm not certain if I've recommended the 2001 version, titled Down to Earth, before. Down to Earth is going to be on several times this week, including at 3:45 PM Saturday on Starz Comedy. Chris Rock plays Lance, a bike messenger whose passion is stand-up comedy, and who wants desperately to win a spot in amateur night at the Apollo. The only problem is, he's a terrible comedian. He's about to get a much bigger problem, though, when he gets hit by a car. The angel Mr. Keyes (Eugene Levy) takes him up to heaven, only for the folks who run the place to discover that Lance's time wasn't supposed to be up until a good forty years later. Oops! So what's a heavenly administrator to do? Mr. King (Chazz Palminteri) gives Lance a reprieve by putting him in another man's body, Mr. Wellington. The thing is, Wellington is white. And rich. And has a scheming wife and personal assistant trying to bump him off. And all the while, Lance in the body of Wellington is trying to hone his routine for the Apollo.
A western I don't think I've mentioned before is Run for Cover, which will be on StarzEncore Westerns at 2:53 AM Sunday. James Cagney, later in his career, plays Matt Dow, a man who's just gotten out of prison for a crime he didn't commit. He's riding west to start a new life, when he meets Davey Bishop (John Derek). There's been a robbery of the train bound for Madison, NM, and a posse comes riding along and picks up Matt and Davey, thinking those two must have been the men to commit the robbery. Davey gets shot and crippled, while the townsfolk plan to hang Matt. At least, until it's discovered that Matt and Davey really didn't commit the crime. The town tries to make it up to Matt by asking him to become their new sheriff. You'd think after what they did to him, he'd go somewhere else, but he takes the job and makes Davey a deputy, presumably to find the real bad guys. Of course, he's also fallen in love with the daughter (Viveca Lindfors) of the farmer (Jean Hersholt) where Matt stayed to look after Davey. And Davey has some secrets of his own….
Up against Run for Cover is the hilariously awful The Arrangement, at 3:45 AM Sunday on TCM. Kirk Douglas plays Eddie Anderson, a wealthy ad executive in the LA suburbs who has a seemingly perfect life in the form of a nice home, an understanding wife Florence (Deborah Kerr), and a mistress on the side in Gwen (Faye Dunaway). But there's something gnawing away at Eddie's insides, and he decides to act upon that by trying to drive his car underneath a semi in an attempt to kill himself. The movie would have been better if the attempt had been successful, but then we'd only have a 20-minute movie. Instead, doctors try to nurse Eddie back to health, but he's got those psychological issues that he's decided he's going to try to deal with by dropping out of society as much as possible. And then Dad (Richard Boone) gets sick and Eddie has to go to New York to try to care for him. Gwen had, in the meantime, moved there too, and things start up again…. It goes on like this for another hour or so, and the one reason to watch it is for the astonishing train wreck considering all the talent (Elia Kazan directed).