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Welcome to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" thread, for the week of March 18-24, 2013. This is the thread to visit if you've got good taste in classic cinema, although I do realize that there are a lot of philistines around these parts. There's a third week of Greer Garson movies, as well as a third week of Roberto Rossellini movies. This week also brings March's Guest Programmer to TCM. But more on that later. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.

I think this week a good movie to kick off with would be The Front Page, which is airing at 7:45 AM Monday on TCM. Adolphe Menjou plays Walter Burns, a newspaper editor who's got a problem. His best reporter Hildy (Pat O'Brien) is retiring to get married, and there's an execution to cover. So Walter goes to great lengths to try to convince Hildy to do this one last story before getting married. And as Hildy, with a little help from Walter, starts getting the facts, it's discovered that perhaps our condemned man may not be guilty after all, and that the politicians are trying to get him executed because there's an election coming up. The story should sound familiar, because it was remade as the classic comedy His Girl Friday nine years later, which added a romantic twist by making Hildy a woman. The Front Page isn't quite a comedy (at least certainly not in the way His Girl Friday is), but it does have a biting wit and cynicism and tells the story just as well.

Another movie that's the same story as several other movies is The Law and the Lady, at 3:30 AM Tuesday on TCM as part of Greer Garson's turn as TCM Star of the Month. Garson stars as a housemaid in Victorian England who gets fired by her boss. The boss' brother (Michael Wilding) is a con man at odds with his brother and none too pleased with the firing, so he teams up with Garson to make a pair of globe trotting con artists who eventually wind up in San Francisco trying to steal a necklace from wealthy matron Marjorie Main. Complicatoins ensue when Garson falls in love with Wilding. If the story sounds familiar, that's because it was made twice earlier as The Last of Mrs. Cheyney. Both of those movies are superior, because they had a luster that MGM was beginning to lack in its non-musicals after World War II.

Sunday was St. Patrick's Day, with a bunch of crappy Irish-themed movies. If you want to see something that has a really naive view of Irish-Americans, however, you could do worse than to watch Tear Gas Squad, Tuesday at 5:15 PM. Dennis Morgan plays nightclub singer Tommy McCabe, who falls in love with Irish lass Jerry Sullivan (Gloria Dickson), although she doesn't care for his impression of a policeman. So, to try to win her love, he tries to joine the police force for real, finding out that her father is a police officer. Complications ensue when Tommy winds up on the tear gas squad and finds out that his instructor is Jerry's current boyfriend (John Payne). It's not a bad premise for a B movie, but boy are the Sullivans stereotypically Irish, and boy does Tommy get weighted down having to sing some lousy songs, notably "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling".

Later in the evening brings another Guest Programmer to TCM: Joel Gray, who was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance in the 1972 musical Cabaret. Most Guest Programmers select four films, although Gray is only being promoted as having picked three movies. However, they're all well-known and excellent films:
First, at 8:00 PM, is The Best Years of Our Lives, about soldiers returning home from World War II and the difficulties they face trying to readjust to civilian life.
That's followed at 11:00 PM by Yankee Doodle Dandy, in which James Cagney plays George M. Cohan, the writer of a number of popular songs such as "Over There".
Finally, at 1:15 AM Wednesday, you can see Marlon Brando up against the mob that runs the longshoreman's union in On the Waterfront.

Wednesday morning and afternoon brings movies for the most part about jazz and big band musicians to TCM. A couple of them are biopics of real people. The Gene Krupa Story, at 4:00 PM, stars Sal Mineo as the 1920s drummer. That's preceded at 1:45 PM by The Eddy Duchin Story, which I mentioned a few months back the last time it aired; it's the story of the famous pianist who was unfortunately doomed to die young.
Young Man With a Horn, which I've also recommended before, airs at 11:45 AM. This one is based on the life of cornetist Bix Beiderbecke, with the major exception that Bix died at a very young age. The role of the cornetist here is played by Kirk Douglas, who learns from Juano Hernandez and then treats the two women he meets (Lauren Bacall and Doris Day) like dirt.
Speaking of cornetists, Jack Webb learned how to play the cornet when he was a boy. So when he got the chance to direct a movie about jazz, it's unsurprising that he cast himself in the lead role as a cornet player. That movie, Pete Kelly's Blues, is on at 9:45 AM Wednesday.

On Wednesday night on TCM, we get a number of movies set in outer space, kicking off at 8:00 PM with For All Mankind. This is a documentary, looking at the Apollo space program, and the men who went to the moon as part of the Apollo program. As such, it's mostly archival footage, with your traditional documentary narrator replaced by the various astronauts themselves providing the voiceover with interviews they did. Added to the mix is electronica music by Brian Eno. The movie even includes the folks who didn't make it to the moon, from the Apollo 13 mission. Which brings us to another movie airing as part of the Wednesday into Thursday prime time lineup:
Marooned, at 3:00 AM Thursday. Released about four months before the real-life Apollo 13 mission, this movie tells the story of three astronauts on an Apollo mission that goes wrong, putting them in jeopardy of dying. One of the interesting things is the cast: Gene Hackman is one of the astronauts, while Gregory Peck is the equivalent of the NASA director. Some may pan this movie because it was used for an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, but that of course was chopped to bits. The movie is better than that.

Thursday night's TCM lineup is dedicated to Dean Stockwell, who was a child star in the 1940s and 1950s before as an adult going on to schlock like the TV series Quantum Leap. One of his movies that I don't think I've ever mentioned before is Kim, which is airing at 12:15 AM Friday. Based upon the novel by Rudyard Kipling, Stockwell stars in the title role of the orphan boy who passes for somebody from India but is actually the son of a British officer. Because of this, he moves in both worlds, studying with a Tibetan lama (Paul Lukas) and being used by the British colonial army officers to spy on rebel movements, albeit with a little help from a horse trader played by Errol Flynn. The movie was made in lovely Technicolor, with any number of establishing shots done in India. A good movie for young boys.

Friday is the birth anniversary of Karl Malden, who won an Oscar for his role in A Streetcar Named Desire. That's not airing on Friday, but TCM is showing several of his other movies, including Phantom of the Rue Morgue, at 11:30 AM Saturday. Loosely based upon the story by Edgar Allan Poe, our movie is set in Paris, where a string of murders ove beautiful women is taking place. The police unsurprisingly suspect a psychology professor played by Steve Forrest, because there's evidence that one would believe to be his -- stuff related to his fiancΓ©e (Patricia Medina) -- is found at the crime scenes. He protests his innocence, but can't prove it. However, it eventually becomes clear that whoever the killer is, it's too strong to be a man, so zoologist Malden (who also conveniently was in love with the Medina character) si brought in to help. He probably knows more than he's letting on, though.... It's interesting to see a serious actor like Malden doing 3-D schlock like this.

This week's Roberto Rossellini movies includes one that shows up so rarely, I don't think I've ever seen it before. But, it sounds quite interesting: The Machine That Kills Bad People, at 11:00 PM Friday on TCM. The plot of this one involves a photographer in a small town somewhere in Italy. One day, he's visited by the Devil, who gives him a special power: his camera now has the ability to smite people who commit evil. There's a problem, of course, which is that our photographer is a self-righteous blankety-blank like, say, Michael Bloomberg. So he feels firmly justified in smiting the people he considers evil, only to find that this isn't enough for him, so he has to start smiting everybody.

I'm not certain whether I've recommended Two Flags West before. It's airing Saturday at 7:45 AM on the Fox Movie Channel. Joseph Cotten plays a Confederate POW who is given the opportunity to gain his freedom if he works for the Union Army. Not against the Confederates, but out in the New Mexico territory, which is more or less away from the theaters of the Civil War, but which is suffering Indian ambushes. Out in New Mexico, Cotten is befriended by Cornel Wilde, because both of them have to deal with nasty fort commander Jeff Chandler. Although he's their CO, his treatment of the Indians is also one of the reasons the Indians have been attacking. Complicating matters is the fact that Chandler's brother was killed in battle by Cotten, and that the dead brother left a widow behind (Linda Darnell) who is a romantic interest for both Cotten and Wilde.
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