Welcome to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" thread, for the week of March 4-10, 2013. Now that 31 Days of Oscar has ended on TCM, we're back to a more regular schedule with a Star of the Month and other features. But note that this is also the week when the clocks are moved forward one hour, in the overnight between Saturday and Sunday, so you'll want to check carefully the times for movies airing in the early part of Sunday. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
Monday, March 4, marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of actor John Garfield. TCM is spending a good portion of the morning and afternoon wiht him, including the movie Pride of the Marines, Monday at 12:30 PM. Based upon a real story, the movie stars John Garfield as Al Schmid, a marine who was sent to the Pacific theater in World War II. He serves in the Battle of Guadalcanal, in which he becomes a hero, but at a price: a Japanese grenade blinds him. Before going off to war, Al got engaged to Ruth (Eleanor Parker), but once he's blined, he gets mired in self-pity, and doesn't want Ruth to marry him because he'd only be an anchor around her. Can Ruth put Al together again emotionally, even if he'll never regain his eyesight? This movie actually dealt with the issues of disabled and disillusioned veterans a year before The Best Years of Our Lives.
This month's Star of the Month on TCM is Greer Garson. Garson won the Best Actress Oscar for playing the title role in Mrs. Miniver, but that's not airing until next week. This first Monday in March sees movies from a bit earlier in her career, such as 1941's When Ladies Meet at 11:30 PM. You probably recognize the title, because there's a 1933 movie with the same name. In fact, the Garson version is a remake. An author of "modern" books about women (played here by Joan Crawford) has the idea that if a mistress can only meet the wife whose husband she's horning in on, the wife will realize the husband loves the mistress more and let the husband leave her for the mistress. In fact, the book is what's going on in the author's life; Herbert Marshall is the husband (and Crawford's publisher) and Garson is the wife. So the "other" man who's in love with the author even though she doesn't particularly care for him (Robert Taylor) arranges things so that the mistress and wife can meet, without either knowing the other's true identity.
On Tuesday morning we have a bunch of dog movies. Not the sort of dog Beef would hit, but the sort of dog Michael Vick would shoot. Animals like Lassie, who appears in Courage of Lassie at 3:45 PM. One that I don't think I've recommended before is Behave Yourself!, which airs at 10:45 AM Tuesday on TCM. Farley Granger plays a young accountant married to Shelley Winters and living with her and her mother. On their anniversary, he doesn't get her a gift, but instead presents her with a seemingly stray dog who's followed him hom. The only problem is, this isn't a stray dog. No; it's the contact between a gang of smugglers and another gang that's planning to buy the smuggled goods. And they want their dog back before a gang war begins. So Granger is in danger with the gangs, and eventually the police too (watch for William Demarest as a police officer) as a bunch of murders pile up.
Wednesday morning's TCM spotlight is on actress Ann Sheridan, with movies such as Torrid Zone at 9:00 AM. Pat O'Brien plays the manager of a banana plantation in one of those Central American banana republics which is being plagued by revolutionaries, so he hires James Cagney to keep things running smoothly, even if it takes some not-quite-legal action. O'Brien also has trouble with Sheridan, who is a nightclub singer who turns all of the men's heads, including Cagney's, which may make it more difficult for Cagney to do a job he may not be too interested in in the first place, wanting to get back to America. Further complicating things is that there's another woman (Helen Vinson), the wife of one of the fruit company executives who also once had a relationship with Cagney.
Kim Novak, who is probably most famous for playing the blonde who makes James Stewart go nuts in Vertigo, turned 80 last month. Since she's got a February birthday, TCM can't celebrate it on her birthday since it conflicts with 31 Days of Oscar. So, TCM is honoring her this week. Well, not only because she turned 80 last month: it's also because last year, she appeared at the TCM Classic Film Festival and sat down with Robert Osborne for an interview. That interview was recorded, and will be making its broadcast premier at 8:00 PM Wednesday. For those of you out on the west coast, the interview will be rerun at 11:00 PM Wednesday. In between is Bell, Book, and Candle which I think I recommended not too long ago, in which Novak plays a witch who causes James Stewart to fall in love with her. Also airing as part of the night's tribute to her is the 1964 version of Of Human Bondage, in which Novak plays the Bette Davis character, of a woman from the lower classes with whom an upper-class medical student who was also a failed artist (Laurence Harvey) falls in love, tragically.
TCM is putting the spotlight on Charles Bickford on Thursday even though it's not his birthday. The Bickford movies include A Wicked Woman at noon. Mady Christians is actually the star of this one, playing a woman with four children and a nasty husband (Paul Harvey the actor, not the broadcaster). He gets violent with her once too often and she kills him in the struggle. Knowing she'll be tried for murder, she dumps the body and goes off with the children to another town, changing her name, saying that she'll only stand trial after the kids are old enough to support themselves. In her new home, she meets Bickford, a journalist, and falls in love with him. Will this keep her from going back to stand trial? Watch for Winnie the Pooh (er, Sterling Holloway, who voiced Pooh) and Robert Taylor as boyfriends to two of Christians' daughters.
If you don't like Charles Bickford, you could always switch over to the Fox Movie Channel. At 9:20 AM Thursday, they're showing Fatso. Anne Bancroft was the writer and director of this movie, and also has a big role in it, although the actual star is Dom DeLuise. He plays a fat Italian (some stretch there) who loves Italian food seemingly more than anything else, to the point that he loves to cook for pepole and loves to eat and it's gotten him terribly fat. It also got his cousin fat, and the cousin dies of a heart attack at age 39. So DeLuise's sister (that's Bancroft) begs him to go see a diet doctor. Needless to say, the diet advice for DeLuise is joyless. (It's not as if the government and medical establishment's food guidlines have been much better for decades now.) He finds it hard to follow the diet, until he meets Lydia (Candice Azzara), who opens up a small shop in the same neighborhood as Dom's greeting-card shop. He falls in love with her, but she wants him healthy. Can love conquer a bad diet?
In the late 1940s, Louis B. Mayer was forced out of MGM and replaced by Dory Schary, who wanted MGM to make some films that were more "relevant". One of the earliest such movies MGM made under his watch is Dial 1119, which TCM is showing on Friday at 6:00 AM. Marshall Thompson plays a criminally insane man who has escaped from the mental institution, and is trying ot make his way to see the pyschologist who more or less got him committed. He ends up in the psychologist's home town, but having taken the bus there, kills the bus driver, and then holes up in a bar in the second story of a building, holding the bartender and several patrons hostage. While the police try to negotiate with him, the local TV news station pulls up to do a live on the spot report, making the situation a bit of a circus much like in Fourteen Hours. Meanwhile, the bar has a TV, and our hostage taker turns the TV on and sees what's going on outside the building.... It's an interestingly little movie with a cast full of people who mostly weren't big movie stars.
Every Friday night in March, TCM is putting the spotlight on director Roberto Rossellini. One of his many achievements was to marry actress Ingrid Bergman (a big controversy at the time); the marriage produced daughter Isabella Rossellini, who herself went on to become and accomplished actress. That all happened during the filming of Stromboli, which isn't on until next week. This week sees earlier movies; specifically, it brings all three of the movies in Rossellini's World War II trilogy.
First, at 8:00 PM, is Rome, Open City, which focuses on the the Italian Underground.
That's followed at 10:00 PM by Paisan, which is more about ordinary Italians trying to navigate through life in a war zone, this time after the Allies have come through and occupied the place.
Finally, at 12:15 AM Saturday, is Germania Anno Zero, which you can probably surmise from the title is set in Germany, specifically Berlin, as Germans are trying to survive the aftermath of war.
Saturday night sees a return of The Essentials to TCM. Drew Barrymore returns for a second season of presenting movies that are "essential" for a movie buff to have seen, although a different set of movies than last year, obviously. This year's first selection is Grand Hotel at 8:00 PM Saturday, that movie about the hotel in Berlin where "people come, people go, nothing ever happens", except of course we see so much that happens with Greta Garbo wanting to be left alone; businessman Wallace Beery and secretary Joan Crawford; and terminally ill employee Lionel Barrymore. You might recall that Grand Hotel was remade in 1945 as Weekend at the Waldorf, which follows Grand Hotel at 10:00 PM Saturday on TCM. Ginger Rogers plays the Greta Garbo role; Edward Arnold plays the Wallace Beery role and winds up with Lana Turner as a secretary; Walter Pidgeon is the man who romances the woman who wants to be left alone, and Van Johnson is an Army captain who could die if the operation to remove a bullet from his chest goes badly.
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