We'll start off with this week's TCM Import, the excellent and lovely Black Orpheus, at 2:00 AM Monday on TCM. This film is based on the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, with the setting changed to Rio de Janeiro at Carnival time. Orfeo (Bruno Mello) is a tram conductor in Rio, who is engaged to be married to Mira. And then Eurydice (Marpessa Dawn) comes to visit her cousin in Rio for Carnival, and she's so beautiful that Orfeo can't help but fall in love with her. But she's constantly stalked by Death. If you know the Greek myth, you'll know that Eurydice eventually dies. But Orfeo will get a chance to have her -- if only he can avoid turning around to look at her. It's a story that's thousands of years old, but I don't know if it's ever been done with more gorgeous cinematography, actors, and color. Being filmed on location in beautfiul places doesn't hurt, either.
I'm not certain if I've recommended the movie version of the musical Camelot before, but it's airing at 10:00 PM Monday on TCM. Camelot, of course, refers to the era of King Arthur (played here by Richard Harris), and his knights of the Round Table. Arthur's wife Guinevere is played by Vanessa Redgrave, and her life, as well as those of everybody in Camelot, changes when the French Sir Lancelot (Franco Nero) comes along. At first they don't like him, but he shows what a brave knight he is, and then falls in love with Guinevere, which unsurprisingly makes life difficult for King Arthur. Ah, but Lancelot isn't the only thing he has to worry about; his son Mordred (David Hemmings) wants to usurp the throne! It's a movie that's lovely to look at with its cinematography and set/costume design, but not the most fun to listen to, since much of the cast aren't great singers. And as a bit of trivia, it was the last movie Jack Warner produced at Warner Bros, the studio he and his brothers founded all those years earlier.
I'm sure I mentioned it the last time it aired, although I don't recall how long ago that was. TCM has another showing of the British comedy Make Mine Mink, at midnight Wednesday (or 11:00 PM Tuesday LFT). Terry-Thomas stars as a retired British Army officer and World War II vet living in a London boarding house with a bunch of eccentric women, none of whom has that much to do in life. One day, a bickering rich couple in an apartment above has an argument that involves throwing a mink coat over a balcony, which Terry-Thomas and his group fish off a railing and claim for themselves. It eventually becomes the proceeds for a charity one of them supports, which raises the problem that the charity wants more money, which they don't have a way to provide. Unless they start stealing fur coats and fencing them. Terry-Thomas uses his military past to design the heists meticulously, but the women aren't exactly professional thieves! This is an absolute laugh riot.
Wednesday morning sees a bunch of movies with nurses and lady doctors and the babies they look after. An interesting one is A Child is Born, at 5:00 PM. Geraldine Fitzgerald plays a woman about to have a baby who's sent to the maternity ward for difficult cases... straight from prison, since she's a prisoner! In this maternity ward are a bunch of oddball cases, from one young woman who doesn't even seem to realize she's pregnant, to a much too old Spring Byington, to a woman who drinks like a fish. Warner Bros. contract player Jeffrey Lynn plays Fitzgerald's extremely nervous husband who claims his wife is innocent, having killed in self-defense, while Eve Arden for once doesn't deliver one wisecrack after another as a nurse. This is a Code era remake of the pre-Code Life Begins, which will be on at 7:30 AM. In Life Begins, Loretta Young is the putative murderess, while the always wonderful Glenda Farrell plays the dipsomaniac mother-to-be. Life Begins is very much worth watching.
Ida Lupino is another of those February birthdays who doesn't get honored during 31 Days of Oscar, so TCM is putting the spotlight on her on Thursday morning and afternoon. Among the Lupino movies on TCM is Beware, My Lovely, at 3:45 PM Thursday. Lupino plays a war widow living in a house much too big for her, so she takes in an itinerant laborer (Robert Ryan) who needs a job to be her housekeeper/handyman. It's a match made in heaven, right? No, of course not! It turns out that Ryan has some sort of brain injury that causes him to have violent mood swings, becoming paranoid and even violent -- and then have no memory of any of this when he's in one of his good moods. Lupino starts to figure out that there's something wrong with her new handyman, but is it too late? By this time Ryan has kept her a prisoner in her own house and cut the telephone lines. This is the sort of role that Robert Ryan was excellent at.
If Ida Lupino isn't your thing, you might wish to switch over to FXM/FMC, which is showing The Day Mars Invaded Earth, at 1:45 PM Thursday. You might guess from the title that Martians invade earth, and that does happen, although not quite in the way you expect. Kent Taylor and Williams Mims play a pair of scientists who launch a probe to Mars, but the probe goes bust, so Taylor goes back to his wife (Marie Windsor) and kids in a platial estate in Beverly Hills. Only, it turns out that the probe made it to Mars, and what they thought was the probe's failure was the Martians destroying it, since they didn't want earthlings coming to their beautiful planet. And to keep earthlings from coming back, they're going to come to Earth and take over, by take the form of earthlings as in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, specifically the scientists and their famliies. Sure, this is B material, but at least it's interesting B material.
The opposite is the case for retch-inducing A material like Magnificent Obsession, at 8:00 PM Thursday on TCM. Star of the Month Rock Hudson plays a playboy who everybody seemingly hates, because he's such a jerk. And a selfish jerk, too; while riding his speedboat on a lake at a mountain resort he crashes it, and the chest injuries necessitate the use of the only defibrillator in the region. That defibrillator belongs to a beloved doctor with a bad heart, who's so perfect and generous that nobody could possibly dislike him. But he suffers a heart attack, and because the defibrillator is being used on Hudson, he dies, leaving behind a wife (Jane Wyman) and adult daughter (Barbara Rush). Our playboy tries to apologize to the widow, but his constant attempts to get in her life result in a car accident that blinds her! Seriously! And it gets worse. The playboy meets a spiritual man who puts him on the path of becoming a doctor, so he can perform an operation to restore the widow's sight.... Lloyd Douglas wrote the novel on which this is based, and also wrote the novel The Robe.
The pirate movies return to TCM on Friday night, this week including a comic pirate movie: The Princess and the Pirate, at midnight Saturday (ie. 11:00 PM Friday LFT). Bob Hope plays Sylvester, a cowardly actor who isn't very good, as he's gotten terrible reviews and gone into terrible debt. He's running away to avoid those debts, which is how he meets Princess Margaret (Virginia Mayo). She's running away to marry a commoner. But these plans are bollixed up when the boat they're on gets captured by the notorious pirate The Hook (Victor McLaglen). Our two heroes get involved in a plot involving supposed buried treasure on an island run by corrupt colonial governor Walter Slezak. Or something like that; what little plot there is is basically in service of Hope delivering a slew of one-liners and Mayo being pretty around him.
Sunday is Fathers' Day, the day on which all of you who knocked up your ladyfolks should thank them for carrying your child for nine months.
TCM is celebrating the occasion with several movies about fathers that I've recommended before, and one that I haven't, Vice Versa, at 6:00 AM Sunday. Roger Livesey plays a father who wishes he could be young again, while his adolescent son (a young Anthony Newley) wishes he could be older and didn't have to go off to boarding school. As luck would have it, they wind up making these wishes while holding a magical jewel that allows wishes to come true, which it does in this case by having the two characters switch bodies -- a plot device we've all seen before in films like Big or Freaky Friday, or even a 1980s remake with Judge Reinhold. The movie was directed by raconteur/actor Peter Ustinov, and also has a young Petula Clark in the cast, when she was a teen actress long before becoming a 60s pop star.And now on to the shorts. Tuesday is the birth anniversary of Judy Garland, who was born June 10, 1922. TCM will be showing her films all morning and afternoon Tuesday, but what's most interesting are the two shorts. First up is Starlet Revue, a little after 9:30 AM, or just after Everybody Sing (8:00 AM, 91 min). Here, a 7-year-old Judy is singing with her sisters as part of the Gumm Sisters, while there's a chorus line of young girls dancing in the background. If you think the chorus line of young girls is creepy, wait until you see Bubbles, at about 1:22 PM, or just after Babes in Arms (11:45 AM, 96 min). This one is putatively set on the moon and has children playing moon beings or something singing then popular songs (again including the Gumm Sisters), with somebody who is apparently supposed to be the man in the moon is watching them.