Welcome to another edition of Fedya's “Movies to Tivo” thread, for the week of March 6-12, 2017. This is that week when normal people move their clock one hour forward; those freaks in Arizona are among the few who don't. But I avoided selecting anything airing around the time of the time change so there shouldn't be any problems. There's a new Star of the Month on TCM this week, and a bunch of other interesting movies that I've used my good taste to select. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
This week's TCM Import is from Denmark: Babette's Feast, at 3:00 AM. The movie tells the story of two sisters in mid-19th century Denmark whose father leads a strict sect of Lutheranism in their small village. Both young woman had an opportunity to get maried, one to an army officer and the other to a French opera singer, but both eventually turned down the offers to serve their father and their God. Fast forward a couple of decades, to 1870 and the Franco-Prussian War. Babette (Stéphane Audran), a chef at a tony Paris restaurant, apparently served the wrong master, as she had to flee the country and shows up at the two Danish sisters' door one night because she knew the opera singer. Babette's presence brings new life into the sect, and helps the two sisters enormously. Eventually, around the time of their late father's centenary, Babette announces that she's won a French lottery and that she'd like to make a special dinner for the sectarians. Everybody's afraid that she's going to leave them and this is her parting gift. Stay tuned for the food photography in the third act, although the story as a whole is pretty darn good.
On Monday morning and afternoon, TCM is honoring birthday boy Guy Kibbee. One of his less-often shown movies is Earthworm Tractors, which will be on at 10:30 AM Monday. Joe E. Brown is the star here, playing Alexander, a man who claims he can sell anything. To try to win his girlfriend Sally's hand, he gets a better salesman's job selling earthmoving equipment. He then goes to a small town where Sam Johnson (that's Guy Kibbee) is in charge of the roadworks commission. Alexander tries to sell Sam on the idea of buying tractors, but Sam doesn't like motorized equipment, so it's going to be a tough sell. Along the way, Alexander falls in love with Sam's daughter Mabel (June Travis). And then there's the finale with a wild tractor ride through an explosive-laden road construction site. This fun B-movie gives Joe E. Brown ample opportunity to use his very expressive face, and for Kibbee to get exasperated as the tractors cause no end of havoc.
If you like Warner Bros.' B-movies and programmers, there's more this week, including Barbara Stanwyck in the polo set in The Woman in Red, at 10:45 AM Tuesday. (No Gene Wilder here, and no weddings Saturdays within the month of June.) Stanwyck plays Shelby, who is a great show jumper, but actually has to do real work to make the money to be in show jumping. One day she meets polo player John (Gene Raymond) and falls for him, which is a perfectly good thing. Except that John has been riding for the same boss as Shelby (Genevieve Tobin), and said boss also has the hots for John. And then there's John's family, who were from older money, except that with the Depression on they're running short of funds. The idea that John should take up real work is horrifying. Jealousies abound as Shelby borrows money from a former suitor, and it all winds up in a murder trial! Even though these short programmers are sometimes overcooked, they gave you a lot for your money back in the day.
Sticking the word “the” in front of a title can be a big deal. Consider the movie The Unforgiven, which is airing at 3:10 AM Thursday on StarzEncore Westerns. A completely different movie from the later Clint Eastwood film, this one stars Burt Lancaster as Ben Zachary, the eldest son in a family ranching the Texas frontier, together with his other brothers (Audie Murphy and Doug McClure), his mother (Lillian Gish), and sister (Audrey Hepburn). Eveything is going reasonably well for them, until the Kiowa show up and claim that the sister is actually Kiowa! Yeah right, Audrey Hepburn is an Indian. But Mom reveals that this is in fact true, and it's unsurprising that the Kiowa want her back. Further complicating matters is the presence of Dr. No (er, Joseph Wiseman), whose child was kidnapped by the Kiowa ages ago and who could have gotten his son back in exchange for Audrey Hepburn, which seems a reasonable exchange. Oh, and the Audie Murphy character has become an inveterate racist because the Kiowa killed the Zacharys' father.
I've mentioned some Warner Bros. B movies above; over at MGM they were producing stuff like Tish, which will be on TCM at 8:15 AM Thursday. Marjorie Main plays the title character, a woman living in a small New England Town with her nephew Charlie (Lee Bowman) and together with her best friends (Aline MacMahon and Zasu Pitts) making life difficult for town judge Bowser (Guy Kibbee). Into all this comes Cora (Susan Peters), who falls for Charlie, except that he loves the judge's daughter (Virginia Grey). Tish would rather Charlie be with Cora, but then Cora realizes that the judge's son would be better for her (Richard Quine, who would wisely quit acting and become a director). All sorts of complications ensue including multiple character deaths, even though this is supposed to be a fairly light comedy. It's got good production values, but it's not without reason that Warner Bros. usually had the best B movies.
TCM is doing something slightly different for their Star of the Month this month. Rather than having the star one night a week for every week in the month, they're honoring the star every night in prime time this week. That star is Richard Burton, the Welsh Shakespearean actor possibly best remembered for marrying Liz Taylor twice. We get some TCM premieres, notably Sea Wife at 1:30 AM Tuesday, but the movie I'll mention this week is Where Eagles Dare, at 8:00 PM Friday. American Brigadier General Carnaby is shot down over Germany early in 1944 and taken prisoner. The Allies know that he knows the details of the planned D-Day invasion of Normandy, but the Nazis don't realize it. Of course, since the Allies know, they conclude that they have to rescue the general at all costs. So they set up a rescue mission headed by British Major Smith (Richard Burton). Carnaby is being held in a castle in the Bavarian Alps, so we get some great scenery, but we also get an action-packed story. Smith and his men, a combined British and American team, parachute into Bavaria, but one of them dies in the landing and it's eventually determined they likely have a double agent in their midst. And things get a hell of a lot more complicated than that.
For those of you who like more recent movies, you might enjoy Summer Rental, which will be on StarzEncore Classics at 2:55 PM Saturday. John Candy plays air traffic controller Jack Chester, married and with a son and a daughter. (The son is played by Joey Lawrence when he was a bratty little child, years before the TV show Blossom.) Air traffic control is a stressful job, so Jack's boss suggests he deal with the burnout by going on a vacation. The Chesters rent a house on the Florida coast, and enjoy the vacation as they live happily ever after. Yeah right. If you've seen any vacation movie, you'll know it doesn't go like that at all, and the vacation winds up being more stressful than real life. First they go to the wrong place, and then find out the place they rented is a dump, and then wind up getting involved in a feud with local yachter Richard Crenna who insists that he's going to win the big boat race yet again this year.
A movie returning to FXM Retro after a long absence is Somewhere in the Night, which will be on at 4:00 AM Saturday. John Hodiak plays George, a World War II veteran who wound up in the hospital because of war injuries, and suffered amnesia as a result of those injuries. The only evidence he has is a couple of letters from Los Angeles, one from an ex-girlfriend, and one from a man named Larry Cravat. So he goes to Los Angeles trying to find Larry Cravat, and discovers that there's apparently a large sum of money involved, as well as a whole bunch of people who don't want Cravat found. Eventually George finds a bit of luck in sympathetic nightclub singer Christy (Nancy Guild), who tries to get George some help in the form of the police detective Kendall (Lloyd Nolan). However, this causes more problems in that it's alleged that Cravat was murdered, and George must have been the man with Cravat at the time of the murder. Richard Conte plays Christy's boss, and a bunch of other great 40s character actors appear.
Another movie airing this week that shares its title with a later film is The Quick and the Dead, which will be on TCM at 8:00 PM Saturday. If you remember the Sharon Stone movie from the mid-1990s, that's not what you're getting. Instead, you're getting a story about World War II, specifically the Italian front around 1944. A bunch of American soldiers have been on patrol at an observation post, but the advanced nature of the post means that it's easier for the Germans to cut it off from the rest of the American lines. Unsurprisingly, that's precisely what happens. And our Americans have to make it back to the American lines through hostile territory. Not much more here, but sometimes it's good just to have a story and not bloat it. There are a couple of interesting members of the cast. Future TV star Victor French shows up again, and one of the Italian women who help our American soldiers is played by a young Majel Barrett.
Carmen Jones is coming back to TCM, at 8:00 PM Sunday as part of a double feature of Dorothy Dandridge movies. This is a daring piece of work, taking Georges Bizet's classic opera Carmen and updating the action to an all-black defense factory in Florida during World War II. Dandridge plays Carmen Jones, who is obviously so much better-looking than all the other women workers, such as Carmen's friend Frankie (Pearl Bailey). Unsurprisingly, the female workers run across the male soldiers, and one of the soldiers, Joe (Harry Belafonte) winds up being pursued by Carmen in though he's already got a girlfriend in Cindy Lou (Olga James). Of course, Joe winds up with the hots for Carmen, which can only lead to a tragic ending, with him ultimately going AWOL to follow Carmen from Florida to Chicago. The main arias from Carmen are included, and all the actors are dubbed because none of them could sing opera. Dandridge is a good enough actress that you hardly notice; Pearl Bailey has so much energy that you don't care; Harry Belafonte is the weak link as usual.