Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" Thread, week of May 11-17, 2015

Welcome to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" thread, for the week of May 11-17, 2015.  I'm sorry to say that there's not much in the way of interesting shorts on the schedule, but there are as always several interesting feature films.  We get another night of Sterling Hayden as Star of the Month, a couple of birthday tributes, and a bizarre film for TCM Underground.  As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.

TCM is spending most of Monday morning and afternoon with Margaret Rutherford (born May 11, 1892), who memorably played Agatha Christie's Miss Marple in four films in the 1960s, all of which are airing.  The one movie airing Monday without Rutherford in a big role (she has a cameo)  is a Hercule Poirot film from the 1960s: The Alphabet Murders, at 1:15 PM.  Poirot here is played by Tony Randall, who is probably a bit miscast, but he gives it his best shot.  This mystery has Poirot in London, where he gets intrigued by a series of murders in which the victims, in order, have the initials AA, BB, and CC.  So naturally the thing to suspect is that there's going to be a murder victim with the initials DD.  A possible choice would be Duncan Doncaster (Guy Rolfe), especially since he's the therapist to Amanda (Anita Ekberg), whose full initials are ABC and who seems like a sensible choice to be committing alphabet murders.  This is more of a comic mystery than something as serious as Albert Finney's Poirot in Murder on the Orient Express a decade later.

Twice on Monday, Encore Westerns is showing The Battle of Rogue River, at 10:05 AM and again at 9:45 PM.  The scene is Oregon in the early 1950s, when settlers were pouring in but when the place was still not a state.  Of course, there were Indians in the region, and unsurprisingly they weren't happy about the settlers, so they've been fighting the settlers.  George Montgomery plays Maj. Archer, whose job it is to handle the situation and make certain that Oregan can become a state without too much difficulty.  One the one side, he's got the leader of the settlers' irregular forces, Stacey Wyatt (Richard Denning); on the other side, he's got Chief Mike (Michael Granger), because Mike is such an Indian name.  In the middle is Brett (Martha Hyer), who is a daughter of one of the fort commanders.  She winds up in a romantic dispute between the Major and Wyatt, complicating matters.  This was directed by future schlockmeister William Castle.

This week brings the TCM Guest Programmer for May.  Actually, we have a pair of Guest Programmers.  Singer Tony Bennett and his longtime accompanist Gary Sargent will both be sitting down on Tuesday evening to present four of their favorite movies.
First up, at 8:00 PM, is Treasure of the Sierra Madre, in which Humphrey Bogart goes looking for gold in Mexico with Tim Holt and Walter Huston, and winds up with more than he bargained for;
Following that is Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times at 10:15 PM, in which the Tramp works in a Metropolis-like factory; accidentally gets involved in a labor dispute, and roller skates on a balcony without a railing, all while trying to win the heart of Paulette Goddard;
The great post-World War II drama The Best Years of Our Lives in which Fredric March, Dana Andrews, and Harold Russell try to adjust to returning home from the War while their womenfolk adjust to having their men back, is on at 12:15 AM Wednesday, and finally
I'll Be Seeing You at 3:15 AM has soldier Joseph Cotten on leave and meeting and falling in love with furloughed prisoner Ginger Rogers.

Toward the end of their careers, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy made a couple of less well-remembered movies over at Fox.  One of them is showing up this week: Jitterbugs, at 6:00 AM Wednesday.  While driving through the desert, Stan and Ollie meet up with Chester (Bob Bailey), who claims he's got an invention that will make big money.  Together they all meet up with nightclub singer Susan (Vivian Blaine, whom the studio was trying to promote at the time), only for her to get scammed by a bunch of con artists.  It's up to Stan and Ollie to save the day by scamming the scammers, which they do with Ollie playing a southern gentleman and Stan dressing up in drag.  Along the way Chester falls in love with Susan and there will be a happy ending for all the good characters.  Still, you can't help but get the feeling that Stan and Ollie's best days were behind them.

TCM is showing one of Frank Sinatra's earliest movies this week: Step Lively, at 3:00 PM Wednesday.  Sinatra plays a playwright who shows up at a hotel where producer George Murphy is trying to get everybody involved in his latest project together, which means an entire troupe of actors.  The problem is, he doesn't have the money to pay for the hotel, which bugs the hotel managers (Walter Slezak and Adolphe Menjou).  Meanwhile, Murphy is trying to get Eugene Pallette to back the musical financially  And then, it's discovered that Sinatra can sing.  Gloria de Haven plays the lead actress, and unsurprisingly, her and Sinatra's characters wind up involved romantically.  If the material seems familiar to you, that's because RKO made it several years earlier as a straight comedy, Room Service, starring the Marx Brothers.

Star of the Month Sterling Hayden shows up again on TCM on Wednesday night, this time in a bunch of more-or-less action movies.  One of these is Battle Taxi, airing at 12:45 AM Thursday.  This one is set during the Korean War, and has Hayden as Capt. Edwards, running a squadron of rescue helicopters, and constantly wants to make certain that they're going to be available.  Then he gets new charge Lt. Stacy (Arthur Franz), who buts heads with his new commanding officer at every opportunity.  The Lieutenant wants to take more risks to save soldiers than the Captain would like.  But there's a reason why the Captain has advanced through the ranks as far as he has.  As for the reason to watch this movie, it's not for the stereotypical conflict between the two leads -- find a good submarine movie for that.  Indstead, there was a lot of stock footage used, so aviation buffs will enjoy looking for the various military aircraft portrayed in that stock footage.

Thursday night brings a second night of disaster films to TCM.  Where last Thursday dealt with disasters in the air, this Thursday deals more or less with natural disasters.  There's an Earthquake at 10:00 PM, and a volcanic eruption in The Last Days of Pompeii at 4:15 AM Friday.  This film sets the eruption of Mt. Vesuvus incongruously in the context of one of the Biblical epics that would really become popular in the 1950s.  Blacksmith turned gladiator Marcus (Preston Foster) becomes successful, but at the cost of his soul.  Marcus' adopted son Flavius (John Wood) met Jesus when Flavius was young, which is balderdash since the eruption was a good 50 years after Jesus is believed to have been crucified, which ought to make Marcus about 90 at the time of the movie.  Flavius became a Christian, and tried to get his father to become one, too.  And then the volcano intervenes.  Basil Rathbone plays Pontius Pilate, while Alan Hale (Sr.) plays Marcus' best friend Burbix.  It's well done, if utter nonsense.

TCM is putting the spotlight on actor James Mason on Friday, since May 15 is the anniversary of his birth in 1909.  One of his movies airing that day that I don't think I've mentioned before is The Last of Sheila, at 5:45 PM.  Sheila is the wife of movie producer Clinton Green (James Coburn), and was killed in a hit-and-run accident a year before the main action of the movie.  To celebrate his wife's life, he invites six of their mutual Hollywood friends to party on his yacht, where he's devised a murder-mystery style game as they sail along the French Riviera.  However, something goes wrong during that game and they end up having to try to solve a real crime before everybody gets killed.  It's an all-star cast even if the names were bigger in the 70s than today.  Birthday boy Mason plays a director; Richard Benjamin plays a screenwriter married to Joan Hackett; Racquel Welch plays an actress married to Ian McShane; and Dyan Cannon plays a superagent.  The screenplay was provided by the unlikely duo of Stephen Sondheim and actor Anthony Perkins (yes, he of Psycho).

Something that I don't think I've seen on the TCM schedule before and which I'm looking forward to is An American Hippie in Israel, at 2:30 AM Sunday as part of the TCM Underground lineup.  The story involves an American who, having seen the Vietnam War, has decided he wants to drop out of society, which is what's brought him to Israel.  Once in Israel, he gets picked up by a young lady, and the two find themselves constantly being chased by a pair of mimes, who presumably represent the establishment, who don't want hippies like these to be able to live their heterodox lives.  Apparently, the director and stars all thought they were making a serious statement when they were making this film.  Bizarre, and precisely the sort of thing that TCM Underground was made for.  Where else can you find stuff like this?

Finally, we'll return to FXM Retro for one more film: The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come, at 11:00 AM Sunday.  Late-50s pop singer Jimmie Rodgers tries his hand at acting as he plays Chad, a young man who's lost his parents and winds up working on a farm in antebelum Kentucky.  He's got some book-learning potential, however, so his guardian (Chill Wills) helps him to get a college education in the big city, where he falls in love with lovely Melissa (Luana Patten).  And then the Civil War comes, and Chad goes to fight for the North; after all, Kentucky didn't secede.  The war ends, and Chad returns to Kentucky to find some resentment, as well as finding that his foster father died in debt and the debt-holder (George Kennedy) wants Chad to pay off that debt.  Can Chad put his life back together?  Rodgers' acting career never took off, for good reason, although this film isn't terrible.  Unfortunately, the last time it showed up on FXM, they ran a panned-and-scanned print.