Welcome to another edition of Fedya’s “Movies to Tivo” Thread, for the week of June 28-July 4, 2021. It’s hard to believe that Independence Day is already at the end of this week, and as we’ll see, TCM is running some of the same movies they seem to run every year, since Hollywood didn’t make quite so many Revolutionary War-themed films. Before that, however, we’ve got a lot of interesting stuffj from the 1930s through the 1990s, and not just on TCM. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
TCM’s Alfred Hitchcock marathon concludes overnight, with a chance to mention a movie that doesn’t get shown often enough: the 1934 version of The Man Who Knew Too Much, at 2:15 AM Monday. Leslie Banks plays Bob Lawrence, a British man on vacation in Switzerland with his wife Jill (Edna Best) and daughter Betty (Nova Pilbeam). The make the acquaintance of a Frenchman there, but at a ball he gets shot while dancing with Jill. Before dying, he tells Jill about a secret message hidden in his brush up in his hotel room which they have to get to the British Consulate. However, other people want that message as well, and they kidnap Betty, taking her to London where they plan to kill her if Bob doesn’t give them the message. It turns out that a bunch of radicals led by Abbott (Peter Lorre in his first English-language role) are planning to assassinate a foreign ambassador when he attends a concert at Royal Albert Hall, and it’s up to Bob and Jill to stop that while also trying to rescue their daughter. The 1950s version is better known, but this original is pretty darn good in its own right.
If you want a family movie, you could do worse than to watch Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, which will be on at 4:01 PM Monday on StarzEncore Family. Based on the book by James Bond creator Ian Fleming, it tells the story of inventor Caractacus Potts (Dick Van Dyke). He’s a struggling inventor whose two children find an old racing car from the beginning of the century. They want Dad to restore the car, but he has to buy it first. Once he finally gets the money and gets the car running, he goes out on a date with Truly Scrumptious (Sally Ann Howes) that the kids arranged. On that picnic date, Dad tells the kids stories about a magical car that looks suspiciously like the one he’s restored, which flies them to Vulgaria ruled by dicator Baron Bomburst (Gert Fröbe). Bomburst wants the car for himself, and will stop at nothing to get it, including kidnapping Grandpa Potts (Lionel Jeffries) as well as Truly’s father, Lord Scrumptious (James Robertson Justice). Cataractus and Truly are going to have to save everybody from Bomburst. There are a bunch of musical numbers, including Fröbe singing.
We’ve got a couple of Shelley Winters movies this week, starting with A Place in the Sun, at 8:00 PM Tuesday. Montgomery Clift is the star here, playing George Eastman, a young man who comes to a town where his uncle owns the local factory. Uncle Charles gets George a job at the factory, boxing women’s wear, which is how he meets co-worker Alice Tripp (that’s Shelley, unmistakeable as always). The two fall in love, which they’re not supposed to do by company rules. George tries to get ahead, and when he presents some of his ideas to his uncle, he meets one of his cousin’s friends, Angela Vickers (Elizabeth Taylor). Those two are immediately taken by each other and fall in love, which is a problem for George since there’s Alice back on the poor side of town. Worse, George knocked Alice up, and if he doesn’t do something, Alice is going to let all of those rich people know. So over Labor Day weekend, George and Alice get into a boating “accident” that might not have been so accidental, killing Alice and putting George on trial for murder. (Raymond Burr plays the DA, one of his rare pre-Perry Mason non-heavy roles.)
You probably recall the old story Cyrano de Bergerac. It got an update in the 1980s, and that update, titled Roxanne, is on StarzEncore Classics at 6:32 PM Tuesday. Steve Martin stars in the Cyrano role, here a fire chief named C.D. Bales, living in a small town in Washington. His friend Dixie (Shelley Duvall) rents her house to an astronomy student, Roxanne (Darryl Hannah) for the summer, and Bales quickly falls for Roxanne. The problem, of course, is that Bales has a schnoz that would put Jimmy Durante or Karl Malden to shame, so nobody will give him a second look, at least not for the person he is behind the nose. Meanwhile, there’s a young firefighter, Chris (Rick Rossovich), who also falls in love with Roxanne, but while he’s handsome enough for her to like him, he doesn’t have a way with women at all, and that’s putting it mildly. So Bales writes love letters for Chris to give to Roxanne. Sooner or later, you know the truth is going to come out, and what will happen then?
It’s been a while since I’ve mentioned Jezebel. TCM has it on this week, at 8:30 AM Thursday, so why not mention it now. Bette Davis plays the lead, a feisty southern belle named Julie Marsden, who has to movie up with her aunt Belle (Fay Bainter) above the yellow fever line in 1850s Louisiana. The people down there want to keep their old ways going, but there are some like banker Preston Dillard (Henry Fonda) who are worried about what the growing abolitionism drive up north is going to do to them economically since the North is much wealthier. Preston is one of Julie’s suitors, along with Buck Cantrell (George Brent), at least until Preston goes north on business and returns home a year later with a wife Amy (Margaret Lindsay), who is also a northerner! Wouldn’t you know, however, all of this romantic conflict is brought to a screeching halt when another outbreak of yellow fever hits and this time Preston is one of the people struck down. There’s also the famous sequence when Bette Davis declares that she can wear a red dress to the ball because dammit, this is the 1850s!
If you want a nice mindless action movie, you could do a lot worse than to watch Point Break. Your chance to see it will be on Thursday at 1:45 PM on HBO Signature. Keanu Reeves plays Johnny Utah, a young FBI agent who gets partnered with veteran Angelo Pappas (Gary Busey) on a case that’s been baffling the bureau. A gang of criminals have been going into banks and robbing them, dressing to the nines and wearing masks with visages of former US presidents. Pappas has a belief that the gang, called the Ex-Presidents, gets its members from the close-knit surfing community down at the beach. Pappas is clearly too old to take up surfing, so it’s up to Johnny to go down to the beach and start surfing in the hopes that he can infiltrate the community and find out whether or not they’re actually the Ex-Presidents. Bodhi (Patrick Swayze) is the big man among the surfers there, and it turns out that he is in fact the head of the Ex-Presidents. But by this time, things have gotten extremely complicated between the various characters.
When you think of the early part of James Garner’s career, you might think of those light comedies. A film that’s not quite so light is Cash McCall, airing at 4:00 AM Friday on TCM. Garner, as you might have guessed, plays McCall. He’s a businessman who looks for failing businesses that might still have some salvageable parts left so that he can buy up the business, engage in creative destruction on the fossilized parts of the company, and leave the good parts more nimble to pick up the pieces. Currently, he’s looking at buying Austen Plastics, run by Grant Austen (Dean Jagger). This is in part for revenge, because he was in love with Austen’s daughter Lory (Natalie Wood) until the relationship fizzled and he still wants to pursue Lory. One person trying to stop Cash from starting anew with Lory is divorcée Maude (Nina Foch). But you know she’s not going to be successful. You also know that in a movie like this that Cash is going to wind up somewhat reformed.
Shelley Winters got more fun and over the top as her career went on, as you can see in What’s the Matter With Helen, at 2:00 AM Saturday on TCM. Winters plays Helen, good friends with Adelle (Debbie Reynolds) in 1930s Iowa. However, their sons committed a murder together, and they’re now incredibly notorious in their home town. So they move out to Los Angeles and start a dance studio for children of parents who hope their daughters will be the next Shirley Temple. Things start to go not so well, however, when Linc Palmer (Dennis Weaver), father of one of the kids, takes a liking to Adelle, which, as in movies like The Children’s Hour, could put a crimp in the two friends’ relationship. But worse is that Helen starts getting flashbacks to the murder, thinking that somebody might be stalking them and threatening to reveal her and Adelle’s pasts. Or is she just going crazy? It gets more bizarre, including Agnes Moorehead as one of those 1930s radio evangelists, and those kids doing the musical numbers.
Will Rogers’ State Fair was a popular movie for Fox back in the early 1930s. In 1945, they decided to remake it as a musical with songs from Rogers and Hammerstein, and the 1945 version of State Fair is back in the FXM rotation, at 7:15 AM Saturday. The Frake family: parents Abel (Charles Winninger) and Melissa (Fay Bainter) take their family to the Iowa State Fair in order for Dad to display his prize pig and Mom to enter her mince pie in the pie contest. Their son Wayne (Dick Haymes) lost money to one of the carnival barkers (Harry Morgan) and wants to get revenge, and daughter Margy (Jeanne Crain) is there too. Unsurprisingly, both of the kids meet romances along the way: Wayne meets a singer Emily (Vivian Blaine), while Margy meets reporter Pat Gilbert (Dana Andrews). But Wayne and Margy actually both have loves back at home. Who will end up with whom at the end of the movie? Watch also for character actors like Percy Kilbride, Donald Meek, and Frank McHugh.
It’s hard to believe, but Sunday is already Independence Day. TCM is running some movies appropriate for the day, including The Howards of Virginia at 7:45 AM Sunday. Cary Grant, terribly miscast in buckskin and that wig, plays Matt Howard, a man from the backwoods of Virginia who loses his father in the French and Indian War. He goes to school with a kid named Thomas Jefferson (Richard Carlson) and gets a surveying job and land in the Shenandoah valley out of it. He also meets wealthy planter Fleetwood Peyton (Cedric Hardwicke), who has a lovely sister in Jane (Martha Scott). So of course Matt falls in love with Jane and the two get married. But Matt has a thing against his brother-in-law, especially once the Revolutionary War comes. Matt, being friends with Thomas Jefferson, understandably supports independence, while Peyton is a loyal Tory. By this time Matt and Jane have had two children, sons who are old enough to fight, so they’re drawn in to the conflict as well. Of course, I assume you know how the war ends.