Welcome to another edition of Fedya's “Movies to Tivo” thread, for the week of May 1-7, 2017. The annual meat market known as the NFL Draft has finished for another year, so while waiting for football to start up again in earnest, why not enjoy some time with some good movies? We're in the first week of a new month, so TCM has a new Star of the Month, as well as some other new programming blocks. And there is interesting stuff on other movie channels, too.
This week sees the start of a new month, and it always seems as if FXM Retro pulls a couple of movies out of its vault at the start of the month to put in heavy rotation. This week, that means Tall, Dark, and Handsome, which will be on FXM Retro Monday at 7:15 AM. Cesar Romero plays Shep Morrison, a gangster in Prohibition-era Chicago who has a reputation for being ruthless, but in fact that reputation is, unbeknownst to everybody else, overstated. He's meets Judy (Virginia Gilmore) one day and falls head over heels for her, but the only way he can see more of her is to hire her as a governess. Except that he doesn't have a child, so he has to hire somebody (Stanley Clements) to pretend to be the son. But will Judy find out about Shep's real career as a gangster and scupper the whole plan? Sheldon Leonard plays Willie, Shep's gangster rival, while Milton Berle has a small role too. If the story sounds familiar, it's because it was remade as Love That Brute with Paul Douglas in the lead role.
If she doesn't die in the next 24 hours, French-born actress Danielle Darrieux will be turning 100 tomorrow. TCM will be celebrating with a night of Darrieux' films, starting at 8:00 PM with The Rage of Paris. Darrieux plays Nicole, a struggling young woman who's come from France to New York but isn't really able to make it here. In her desperate attempt to get a modeling job, she winds up in the office of businessman Jim (Douglas Fairbanks), who ultimately falls for her, but that's later. Meanwhile, Nicole's friend and house-mate Gloria (Helen Broderick) comes up with a scheme: pass Nicole off as rich to get a rich guy to marry her; they set their sights on businessman Bill (Louis Hayward), using would-be restaurateur Mischa Auer's capital as a bankroll. The only problem is, Bill and Jim are friends, so Jim is naturally going to find out what Nicole and her friends are up to. It's typical late-1930s comedy fare, but it's well done.
Audie Murphy was the most decorated soldier of World War II, and Hollywood tried to parlay that into movie stardom. Murphy was actually a better actor than he was usually given credit for, mostly because like Elvis he was put into formulaic films churned out one after another. But he did some pretty fine movies, like No Name on the Bullet, which will be on StarzEncore Westnerns at 6:14 AM Tuesday. Murphy plays John Gant, who shows up in a western town one day. Everybody recognizes him and recoils in horror. That's because everybody knows Gant is a hired killer, and obviously, he's been hired to kill one of their number. But instead of a whodunit, this one is a “who's he going to do” in that pretty much everybody in town has good reason to think somebody else in town hired Gant to kill them, and Gant isn't about to reveal which of them he was hired to kill. The result is a sort of game of chicken among the townsfolk, and some interesting character studies, with a whole bunch of character actors whose faces you've seen in other westerns, but whose names you might not be able to put to the faces. And it's a pretty darn good movie, too.
The start of a new month means that we get a new Star of the Month on TCM, and this month that's Clark Gable, every Tuesday in prime time. This first Tuesday in May starts off with some of Gable's earlier movies, including one I'm not certain I've recommended before: No Man of Her Own, at 10:00 PM. Gable plays Babe, another con artist, something he'd do a lot early in his career, this time as a card sharp in the big city. Of course he eventually runs afoul of the law, which forces him to high-tail it out of the city and into the small towns, which is where he meets librarian Connie (Carole Lombard; the two were not romantically involved at the time they made the movie). Babe falls for Connie and of course the two eventually get married, and Connie wants to move to the big city. She doesn't realize Babe's true identity at first, but when she does, she tries to get him to stop being a professional gambler. Gable, meanwhile, has his own ideas. This is the only movie Gable and Lombard made together.
TCM is showing a bunch of James Whitmore movies on Wednesday in prime time. A good example of the work he did is in Shadow in the Sky, at 3:00 AM Thursday. Here, he plays Lou Hopke, a World War II veteran trying to move up in the world with a wife Betty (Nancy Davis) and two young kids. However, he's got a problem. He served in the war with Betty's brother Burt (Ralph Meeker), but Burt wound up with a case of shell-shock on Guadalcanal during the rainy season, and has been in a military hospital for quite a few years now. The military authorities think Burt has gotten well enough to reintegrate into normal society, but he still seems to have a terrible phobia of the rain. Since Burt seems unable to live on his own, he's going to have to live with Lou and Betty as a sort of halfway house. But what will happen when the next bad rain storm comes? And will he be a danger to the kids? Jean Hagen appears in a role very different from her Singin' in the Rain role, playing a nurse. This is one of those shorter, black-and-white programmers MGM was churning out in the early 50s to pay for the big-budget Freed Unit musicals (and programmers is where people like Whitmore and Davis often got cast), and the programmers are oftentimes far more interesting than the musicals.
If you want something more recent, I could always mention Company Business, which will be airing at 9:55 AM Thursday on StarzEncore Classics. Gene Hackman plays Sam Boyd, a retired CIA agent who is coaxed out of retirement to handle a prisoner exchange with the Soviets, with Sam in charge of turning over Soviet spy Pyotr (Mikhail Baryshnikov, no dancing here). They get to Germany to do the exchange but when Sam sees the prisoner the Soviets are handing over, he realizes it's no prisoner at all, but somebody he saw walking around quite freely in the airport terminal back in Washington. So Sam calls off the deal. But it turns out that the deal was all a ruse, designed to launder a bunch of money that the CIA was making in its black operations. So the CIA bosses don't want Sam spilling the beans and try to have him bumped off. Sam and Pyotr go on the run trying to stay one step ahead of the CIA and the Soviets who may not be Soviets.
Thursday nights in May bring a bunch of creature features to TCM, including Mothra at 1:15 AM Friday. A bunch of shipwreck survivors are found on an island where atomic testing had been done, and when the island is investigated, it turns out that among other things there are a couple of midget priestesses dancing around a giant egg that the population worships. An American businessman expanding into Japan decides that the priestesses would be perfect for a novelty entertainment act and brings them to Japan. Except that it's against their will. So they start singing more songs to the eg and it hatches into the giant moth Mothra. And Mothra hears the priestesses' songs and comes to Tokyo to try to save them and punish whoever hurt them. The Japanese, unsurprisingly, view Mothra as a threat but don't realize that perhaps the same radiation that brought them Godzilla a decade earlier is also bringing them this giant moth. Mothra got its own series of movies, and even got to go up against Godzilla once.
Friday is May 5, also known as Cinco de Mayo when Americans celebrate all things allegedly Mexican. TCM gets in on the fun with a lot of Mexican-set movies, such as The Treasure of Pancho Villa at 2:45 PM. Rory Calhoun plays Tom, an American soldier of fortune circa 1915. For those of you who know a bit of Mexican history, that's the era of the Pancho Villa revolution, and Tom's girlfriend Ruth (Shelley Winters) suggests Tom go and help out in the revolution. Tom winds up on a train where there's going to be a shipment of gold, and Villa's underling Juan Castro (Gilbert Roland) plans to rob the train so the gold can be used to purchase weapons for Villa and his men. Of course, once they actually get the gold off the train, they have to deliver it, and that's a lot more difficult, with the local Yaqui and government forces hot on the revolutionaries' trail. And Tom begins to think that perhaps he could use the gold better himself…. Watch early on for a serious anachronism.
Robert Osborne was supposed to do a second series of The Essentials with Sally Field last year, but the illness that eventually led to his death interfered with the taping schedule, so the segments were never recorded. TCM is bringing back The Essentials, however, and it premieres this Saturday at 8:00 PM. The revamped version will be hosted by Alec Baldwin, who will be accompanied by a series of guest hosts, each of whom will be sitting alongside Alec for several weeks. The first guest host will be David Letterman, and the two men will be presenting the Hollywood on Hollywood movie The Bad and the Beautiful, starring Kirk Douglas as a Hollywood producer who uses everybody on his way to the top, only for it all to come crashing down.
The other movie back on FXM Retro after a long absence is Sitting Pretty, which you can catch at 10:35 AM Sunday. The Kings (Robert Young and Maureen O'Hara) are a suburban couple who are also in need of somebody to live with them and look after their three sons, and what they get is Lynn Belvedere. They don't realize until after they hire Lynn that Lynn is actually a man (Clifton Webb). Mr. Belvedere moves in with the Kings and proceeds to turn their lives upside-down as he has unorthodox, but effective means for instilling self-discipline in the children. He also seems to be a polymath, expert on a load of different subjects, which leads to his shaking up the entire town. And then one of the Kings' neighbors (Richard Haydn) tries to spread gossip about Belvedere to get him out of the Kings' house. Lynn has his own way of dealing with it. The movie earned Webb a Best Actor Oscar nomination, and spawned two sequels.