Welcome to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" thread, for the week of March 9-15, 2015. This is the week in which you Wisconsin Badger fans get to find out which round you're going to lose to Kentucky in the Big Basketball Tournament. But that announcement won't come until Sunday, so why not enjoy the wait by watching some good movies. There's more Ann Sothern, more roadshow musicals, an infrequent programming feature on Sunday night, and more on some of the other channels. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
Monday morning and afternoon on TCM brings a bunch of pregnant women. One of the movies I don't think I've recommended before is Doctor, You've Got to Be Kidding!, at 2:30 PM. Sandra Dee plays a young woman who, at the beginning of the movie, is being taken to the hospital in labor. The only thing is, who's the father? That's not a very transgressive question, however, as the movie turns out to be fairly mild, and we learn about it all in flashback. Dee is a would-be singer, but reluctantly because her mother (Celeste Holm) is pushing her into it. She's also working for efficiency expert George Hamilton, while being pursued romantically by playboy-next-door Bill Bixby; singer Dick Kallman, and salesman Dwayne Hickman. Eventually Hamilton begins to fall for her too. I mean, who wouldn't fall for good-girl Sandra Dee? It's just too bad the movie comes across nowadays as being rooted to the 1960s.
Those of you who like Steve McQueen will be happy: on Monday night, TCM is showing several of his films. The one I don't think I've mentioned before is Baby the Rain Must Fall, at 4:30 AM Tuesday. McQueen plays Henry Thomas, who has just been released from prison after having been in for several years for stabbing a man. He's got a wife Georgette (Lee Remick) and daughter to support, but instead he's working for room and board and trying to pick up a few extra bucks by singing with a band at the sort of crappy third-rate bars that dotted the South of the 1960s. Meanwhile, Henry has a foster mother who wants him to go to night school so he can learn a better trade and hopefully get a good job, and the parole issues to deal with. Georgette, meanwhile, just wants to live a happy, peaceful life. Can Henry adjust to life outside prison?
Up against Baby the Rain Must Fall is one of this week's two airings of Bigger Than Life. It's on FXM Retro twice: at 9:45 AM Monday and again at 4:00 AM Tuesday. James Mason plays a schoolteacher who seems happily married to wife Barbara Rush and with a young son. Except that his teaching job doesn't pay enough, since he's moonlighting as a cab driver. Overworking himself is a strain on his heart, leading to several incidents until it's discovered that he's got a condition with his arteriers. On the bright side, there's a new wonder drug to treat the condition: cortisone. It cures the heart problem, but cortisone being a steroid, it leads to aother problems, especially when Dad starts abusing the drug. In the climax, he becomes a Jesus freak willing to sacrifice his son in what is a really ludicrous scene. Playing Mason's best friend is Walter Matthau early in his career.
Tuesday night brings the TCM Guest Programmer to TCM: Robin Quivers, whom you may recall as the sidekick to Howard Stern. She's picked four fairly well-remembered movies, but they're all worth another watch.
First, at 8:00 PM, Montgomery Clift falls in love with Elizabeth Taylor, but only after he's knocked up coworker Shelley Winters, in A Place in the Sun.
Then, at 10:15 PM, a black family comes into an insurance windfall and faces conflict over what to do with it, in A Raisin in the Sun.
At 12:30 AM Wednesday, William Holden is hired by Broderick Crawford to teach refinement to Crawford's wife Judy Holliday in Born Yesterday.
Finally, Cary Grant arrives with tabloid reporter James Stewart to break up the remarriage of Grant's ex-wife Katharine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story at 2:30 AM.
Our next selection is the British movie Obsession, also known as The Hidden Room, airing at 1:00 PM Wednesday on TCM. Robert Newton, who is probably best remembered for playing Long John Silver in the 1950 Disney version of Treasure Island is is often created with the priate accent that's given rise to "Talk Like a Pirate Day", stars as Dr. Clive, a London doctor married to Storm (Sally Gray). The only thing is, the marriage isn't quite so happy. Storm has been seeing other men, with the current other man being an American sailor named Bill (Phil Brown). So Dr. Clive barges in on the two lovers and abducts Bill, leading Storm to think Clive has killed him as he said he'd do. In fact, he's really looking for the perfect murder, so he's going to terrorize the two lovers a little longer as he threatens to... well, I'm not going to give that away. This is one of those movies made in the UK with some Americans near the top of the cast (in this case, director Edward Dmytryk as Phil Brown was mostly a character actor) to try to appeal to the larger American market.
Ann Sothern returns to TCM on Wednesday night with another evening of her movies, starting at 8:00 PM when Sothern plays Maisie. Maisie is a chorus girl who has gone west to Wyoming where she's to join up with the cast of a traveling show in which she's been promised a job, only to find that the show has folded. Borke and jobless, Maisie takes a job with a carnival, which is how she meets Slim (Robert Young), a cowboy managing a ranch who doesn't have time for women. Maisie, however, has other ideas, and weasels her way onto the ranch, where she winds up working first for the absetee owner's wife (Ruth Hussey) and then the owner himself (Ian Hunter). Maisie becomes a sort of factotum on the ranch, but it turns to tragedy when the wife thinks Maisie and the husband are in love with in fact it's the wife who's been unfaithful all along. Maisie turned out to be such a hit that MGM decided to make it a series of films, and TCM is running the series back to back to back all night Wednesday into Thursday morning.
The person getting the spotlight on TCM on Thursday night is Jackie Gleason. One of his least known films is the ultra-B movie Escape From Crime, at 3:45 AM Friday. Gleson only has a small role as a convict; the star turn goes to Richard Travis, who at the beginning of the film is a convict just getting out of prison, returning to his wife (Julie Bishop) and their young son. Travis gets good luck when he takes a candid snapshot of a robbery in progress that gets him a job as a press photographer, but it gets him in trouble with his old gang. There's also the matter of an assignment he gets to cover as a writer -- not a photogapher -- an execution, but is really sent there to get photos of that against all rules. It's breezy Warner Bros. B material, running a little over 50 minutes. If the plot sounds familiar, that's because the movie is a remake of the movie that follows it on TCM, Picture Snatcher, at 4:45 AM Friday. In Picture Snatcher, it's James Cagney playing the ex-con, and he brings so much energy to the role that he makes this slender material worth watching.
I haven't recommended a western yet this week, so how about The Ox-Bow Incident, airing at 7:05 AM Friday on Encore Westerns, with a repeat at 11:35 PM. Henry Fonda, along with Harry Morgan, play a pair of drifters who arrive in a small western town where they discover that one of the local farmers has been murdered, and his cattle stolen. The townsfolk assemble a posse to find whoever did the dastardly deed, even though a few including the drifters think the sheriff should handle the situation. Eventually the posse finds the cattle. The posse immediately jumps to the conclusion that the three men with the cattle (Dana Andrews and Anthony Quinn before either of them became stars, and Francis Ford) must be guilty of the murder. So the posse bays for an immediate hanging, although some of the people again express their objections. This isn't your typical rah-rah western, but a dark story presenting uncomfortable truths about group dynamics.
There's a marathon over on Encore Classic on Saturday: a marathon of Rocky movies. Encore Classic is showing the first five in order, starting at 11:45 AM with Rocky, and continuing through to Rocky V at 7:10 PM Saturday. The first of the films is of course the best, starring Sylvester Stallone as the boxer Rocky Balboa who lives a crappy existence in Philadelphia and loves Adrian (Talia Shire), and is plucked from obscurity by Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) to fight in a title fight. Burgess Meredith plays Rocky's trainer.
In addition to the movies themselves, enjoy the music from the various Rocky movies. Bill Conti was nominated for an Oscar for "Gonna Fly Now", the theme to the first movie. Jim Peterik of Survivor would be Oscar nominated for "Eye of the Tiger" from Rocky III. Rocky IV has another Survivor song, "Burning Heart", as well as this memorable hit:
Sunday brings another night of Treasures From the Disney Vault to TCM, starting at 8:00 PM with Darby O'Gill and the Little Poeple. Darby O'Gill (Albert Sharpe) pays Darby, who is an elderly caretaker for an absentee lord's castle. But Darby also has a secret: he knows the leprechauns! Nobody believes his stories about King Brian and the leprechauns, but they're true all reigh. Darby has to enlist their help whtn the lord of the manor decides that Darby, getting on in years, could use to be retired so he could enjoy the rest of his life. The lord tries to replace Darby as caretaker with Michael (Sean Connery), but Darby will have none of it. On the other hand, Michael could be a good match for Darby's daughter Katie (Janet Munro). Be forewarned that Sean Connery gets to sing a song in this movie. After the movie, at 9:45 PM, TCM will be running a Wonderful World of Disney epsidoe in which Walt takes us to Ireland for the making of the movie; if there's one thing the Disney company has always been good at it's promoting itself.
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