Welcome to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" Thread, for the week of March 7-13, 2016. Spring is approaching but isn't quite here yet, so to deal with your cabin fever, why not watch some good movies? I've used my good taste once again to select a bunch of films that I know you will all like. We've got Star of the Month Merle Oberon again; another week of condemned movies, and more on the other channels. As always, all times are in Eastern unless otherwise mentioned.
We haven't exactly had much of a winter here in the Northeast this year, but if you're sick and tired of the winter, you'll be hapy to know that TCM is showing a bunch of films set in Hawaii on Monday morning and afternoon. The day concludes with Ride the Wild Surf at 6:00 PM. Three friends from the mainland: Jody (former teen idol Fabian), Chase (Peter Brown) and Steamer (Tab Hunter) go to Hawaii to take part in the annual competition to see who can be the best surfer at Waimea Bay. While the plan is to surf, of course they all wind up meeting young women. Jody gets Brie (Shelley Fabares) who isn't certain she wants a beach bum; Chase meets fellow tourist Augie (Barbara Eden just before she became Jeannie); and Steamer meets local girl Lily (Susan Hart), whose mother doesn't particularly care for surfers. Romance threatens to derail their plans to become the best at Waimea. There's some nice scenery, some terrible rear projection, and skimpy outfits for whatever floats your boat.
On Monday nights this month, TCM will be giving us a bunch of movies about art, including many of the great artist biopics of the studio era. One that I don't think I've mentioned before is the 1952 version of Moulin Rouge, at 10:30 PM Monday. If you remember any art appreciation class you took, you may recall that the Paris night spot the Moulin Rouge is associated with Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (played here by Jose Ferrer), who painted any number of paintings of the denizens of the establishment. So, this movie is a fictionalized account of Toulouse-Lautrec's life. Young Henri fractured both of his femurs as a young teen (possibly the result of a genetic disorder), with the result that he was short and looked deformed. This led him to drink, and the alcoholism that greatly shortened his life. In this movie version of his life, Henri meets prostitute Marie (Colette Marchand), while Zsa Zsa Gabor plays one of the dancers at the Moulin Rouge.
This week sees what I think is the TCM premiere of The Ritz, at 1:30 AM Wednesday. Jack Weston plays Gaetano, who made a mistake of marrying into the mob: his wife Vivian's (Kaye Ballard) family are gangsters. Gaetano is worried that her brother Carmine (Jerry Stiller) wants to off him, so he hops in a taxi and desperately asks the cabbie to take him someplace nobody would think to look for him. So the cabbie takes him to the Ritz, which is... not a hotel, but a gay bathhouse! (The movie was made several years before AIDS exploded onto the scene.) Needless to say, things get out of hand very quickly. One queenish gay (F. Murray Abraham!) tries to help Gaetano, but there's a chubby chaser who likes Gaetano more. Carmine sends in a private eye (Treat Williams) before both he and Vivian show up, and perhaps most hilarious of all is failed Broadway singer Gogie (Rita Moreno) trying to resurrect her career in the bathhouses; all the straight people mistake her for a transvestite.
Wednesday night on TCM brings another night of Treasures from the Disney Vault. The first half of the evening deals with the sea, with a couple of cartoon shorts kicking the evening off at 8:00 PM. That's followed at 8:30 PM by 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Based on the book by Jules Verne, it tells the story of 19th century sailors who are frightened by something attacking them from below. When scientists in the form of Prof. Aronnax (Paul Lukas) investigate, they're attacked by what turns out to be a submarine, the Nautilus, captained by Captain Nemo (James Mason); the only survivors from the regular ship are the professor; his servant (Peter Lorre); and Ned, a member of the ship's crew (Kirk Douglas). Aronnax tries to make Nemo see the reason of his fellow man, while Nemo tries to get Aronnax to understand just how backwards the rest of mankind is, all against the backdrop of undersea adventures that come with some pretty good for the 1950s special effects. Poor Kirk Douglas, however, gets saddled with Esmerelda the trained seal.
If you like Randolph Scott westerns, Encore Westerns has another one this week: The Stranger Wore a Gun, at 12:35 PM Wednesday. Scott plays Jeff Travis, who at the beginning of the movie is working for Quantrill's Raiders during the Civil War. However, Quantrill's violence really turns him off, so Jeff makes his way west to the Arizona Territory. With the war over, he tries to rebuild his life out in a place where he thinks nobody will know him. But of course there is going to be somebody who knows him; specifically, that's Jules Mourret (George Macready). He seems to be a businessman but is actually the leader of a gang, and gets Jeff into a job with the stagecoach line so that Jeff can be the inside man in Jules' planned heist of the gold from one of the stages. Claire Trevor plays Jeff's love interest, while Lee Marvin and Ernest Borgnine play a couple of the members of Jules' gang. The movie was originally done in 3D, so expect things to move or be thrown toward the camera.
The "condemned by the Catholic Legion of Decency" movies return on Thursday night, with a bunch of stuff from the 1950s, including the fun Untamed Youth at 1:30 AM Friday. Mamie Van Doren and Lori Nelson star as a pair of sisters who, on their way to California, stop off to take a break in some small town and skinny dip, which is what gets them arrested by the authorities. Unfortunately, this is a corrupt town where the judge (Lurene Tuttle) is engaged to be married to the owner of a cotton farm (John Russell) who is corrupt, and gets the judge to sentence young offenders to a work-release scheme that means giving him the labor for slave-labor wages. The judge's son returns home from a stint in the military and is shocked by what he discovers going on. The movie is actually a lot better than it's normally given credit for, although the scenes of the young characters doing a musical number out in the cotton field (including a young Eddie Cochran) strains credulity.
In the past couple of months, FXM Retro ran the movie House of Strangers several times. The movie was remade as a western called Broken Lance, and the remake can be seen this week on Encore Westerns at 6:20 PM Saturday. Robert Wagner plays Joe Devereaux, the youngest son of cattle baron Matt Devereaux (Spencer Tracy). He's just returned from three years in prison, and his three brothers (played by Richard Widmark, Hugh O'Brian, and Earl Holliman) don't want him back. Apparently, Joe is the only son Matt really loved, and is also the son of a different mother than the other three. It doesn't help that Joe's mother (Katy Jurado) is a Comanche. So in a dispute with a copper mine owner, the other three brothers sent Joe down the river which is how he ended up in prison. And now with Joe out, the brothers are trying to take the ranch out from under Dad's nose, a plan which Joe's return is bound to scupper.
As for FXM Retro itself, they've pulled something out of the vault that I don't think has shown up in years: Nob Hill, which is airing at 6:00 AM Wednesday. This is a good example of the Fox musical of the 1940s, a genre which was not as over the top as the old Busby Berkeley musicals or as glitzy as the Freed Unit musicals at MGM would be. George Raft plays Tony, who owns a saloon in San Francisco's Barbary Coast at the turn of the last century. He wants to break into the high-class part of San Francisco society, and has even met the lovely Harriet (Joan Bennett), whose brother is running for District Attorney. However, there are a couple of problems above and beyond Tony's being a saloon-keeper. One is the orphan he's taking care of. Katie's (Peggy Ann Garner) uncle, who worked for Tony, sent for her from Ireland, but he died in the meantime. The other problem is Tony's main attraction Sally (Vivian Blaine), who doesn't want Tony to make into the upper class.
Merle Oberon returns on Friday night for another night of her movies. One that I don't think I've recommended before is The Cowboy and the Lady, at 11:30 PM. Oberon plays Mary Smith, a socialite whose father is about to run for high political office. But before that happens, Mary and her uncle Hannibal (Harry Davenport) go out for a night on the town and the joint gets raided. So Dad sends Mary away with two maids. One night, the maids are going to go on a double date with a couple of rodeo cowboys, except that it turns out there's a third cowboy, Stretch (Gary Cooper). So Mary is invited along, pretends to be one of the maids, and you can guess what happens next. Stretch and Mary fall for each other despite being from totally different social classes, and if the relationship is discovered it could pose problems for Dad's political campaign. Gary Cooper is never given enough credit for his skills at comedy, which I think is a bit of a shame.
Finally, for those of you who prefer more recent movies, you can catch Misery, at on Encore Mystery at 9:00 PM Sunday. James Caan plays Paul Sheldon, a writer who at the beginning of the movie has just finished his newest novel. He's about to go back to the big city, but unfortunately he sets out in a snowstorm and his car goes off a mountain road into a ravine. However, he's rescued by Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates), a nurse who just happens to be his #1 fan. That's the good news. The bad news is, she's a bit of a nutcase, and she doesn't like what the end of Paul's new novel does for her favorite character. So Annie holds Paul hostage, forcing him to write a new novel that will be better for the character she's come to love. And she turns out to be even more of a nutcase than that. But can she keep somebody hostage for that long? And what happens if he tries to escape? Bates is excellent, winning the Best Actress Oscar. But it helps that the story (based on a work by Stephen King) is great, too.