Back in January, TCM had a night of Laurel and Hardy movies that included versions of the shorts made in foreign langauges for overseas audiences, with the two comedians more or less doing their lines phonetically off of cue cards and most of the other actors being replaced by native speakers of the language in question. Several of those foreign-langauge shorts are airing again on Monday, with the most interesting being Politiquerías at 10:45 AM. The plot involves Ollie running for mayor, but having to keep a scandal silent, which isn't all that much. But when this was made for Spanish-speaking audiences, Hal Roach added a couple of variety acts. One is a magician, who does a lot of your standard-issue tricks with cards -- stuff you've seen before, but which is still very entertaining. The other one, Hadji Ali, is a professional regurgitator. That's right -- the guy swallows stuff, and then brings it back up. Really. It's shocking in its gross-out factor, and has to be seen to be believed.
This week sees TCM's Guest Programmer for May: Angie Dickinson, whom you may recall from the 1970s TV series Police Woman. Unfortunately, she's aged since the 1970s and doesn't look quite as good as she did then, but even though she's 81, Beef would probably hit her. Dickinson sits down with TCM host Robert Osborne to present four of her favorite movies:First, at 8:00 PM, it's Gigi, starring Leslie Caron as a late-19th century courtesan who falls in love with the wrong person;
Then, at 10:15 PM is Yankee Doodle Dandy, in which James Cagney plays George M. Cohan;
at 12:30 AM Tuesday, Al Pacino robs a bank to pay for his lover to get an operation, only for the bank robbery to go wrong, in Dog Day Afternoon;
finally, at 2:45 AM is The 400 Blows, François Truffaut's tale of a young boy's angst.
The tough guys return to TCM on Tuesday night at 8:00 PM with Richard Widmark playing brutal mobster Tommy Udo in Kiss of Death. But just as interesting as tough criminals may be an overly tough cop, as we get to se in Where the Sidewalk Ends, which follows at 10:00 PM. Dana Andrews plays that tough cop, a detective who's been going after mobster Gary Merrill for years, never catching him because Merrill is always smart enough to have the evidence point to other people. Andrews tries to get one of the victims of Merrill's gambling racket to spill the beans, but unfortunately kills the guy while using "enhanced" methonds on him. So Andrews dumps the body, but in a way that puts suspicion not on Merrill, but on innocent nice-guy cabbie Tom Tully. His daughter (Gene Tierney) is the estranged wife of the dead guy, and Andrews unsurprisingly falls in love with her. Will he be able to keep the truth from coming out...? Obviously not, since there's the Production Code, but the movie is still very entertaining.
If you like seeing Gene Tierney taking direction from Otto Preminger, you can see that again in Whirlpool, which shows up at 7:20 AM Thursday on the Fox Movie Channle. Tierney stars as Ann, the wife of a prominent pyschologist (Richard Conte). Unfortunately, she's also a kleptomaniac! A "Doctor" Korvo (José Ferrer) shows up to help her beat kleptomania, for which he uses hypnosis, but he may just be using hypnosis for more sinister ends, as Ann winds up at the scene of a murder involving Theresa (Barbara O'Neill), one of her husband's former patients -- and Ann has no idea who the hell she got there or what she was doing! The idea that you can use hypnosis to make somebody commit a murder and forget having done it is of course ludicrous, but at least Ann has a psychologist husband who might be able to get in her mind and figure out what the hell is really going on, along with police detective Charles Bickford.
Wednesday, May 15, is the birth anniversary of Joseph Cotten. TCM is spending the morning and afternoon with a whole bunch of Cotten's movies. One that I haven't recommended before is Walk Softly, Stranger, at 11:30 AM. In this one, Cotten plays a conman who shows up in a small Midwestern town one day, taking a room in Spring Byington's rooming house. Being a conman, he's obviously not open with the townsfolk about why he's here, but it's to snag the wealth of the town's richest woman: Alida Valli, the heiress to the local shoe factory, who unfortunately was crippled in a skiing accident. (Well, Cotten is also trying to get away from the Mob.) Cotten pretends to woo Valli, as part of the con, but finds himself beginning to fall in love with her. And then, to complicate matters, Cotten's old partner in crime (Paul Stewart) shows up....
If you're not too interested in Joseph Cotten, you could switch over to FMC and watch Untamed at 9:30 AM Wednesday. Tyrone Power stars as Paul, a Boer in mid-19th century South Africa who's visitng Ireland to buy horses, which is where he meets Katie (Susan Hayward), who falls in love with him athough he's more in love with the new country he's building, going back to South Africa. The potato famine hits Ireland, and Katie, now maried with a child, heads off with her family to South Africa, ostensibly to build a new life but probably just as much to find Paul. She takes part in a pionner trek to the Boer country led by Kurt (Richard Egan), who takes a liking to her as well. So we've got a boy who loves a girl, a girl who loves another boy, and that other boy who doesn't seem to love the girl. Kurt, spurned by Katie and losing his leg due to her incompetence, becomes a bandit, holding up a town and leading to the climax involving all of our leads. It's a muddled storyline, although there's some lovely location shooting in South Africa. Watch also for Rita Moreno as the woman who loves Kurt, and Agnes Moorehead as the nanny for Katie's children.
Moving back to TCM, Thursday night sees the lives of saints. Interestingly, one of the movies on TCM has recently been over on the FMC playlist as well: Francis of Assisi, at 11:15 PM Thursday. Bradford Dillman stars as Francis, the 13th century son of a wealthy Italian merchant who turns his back on worldly goods when he hears the voice of God. He founds what becomes the Franciscan order, but problems arise for the order when Francis' strict rules won't scale well to a bigger order. The movie also includes a bogus love triangle with Clare (Dolores Hart), who at least in this movie loved Francis, following Francis' love of God, would take holy orders herself (in real life Dolores Hart also became a nun). Meanwhile, a completely fictitious nobleman played by Stuart Whitman, who is hilariously miscast, loves Clare and can't understand what she sees in Francis. The movie also makes Francis impossibly perfect, as in a scene where he somehow tames wild leopards sicced on him. Watch also for Cecil Kellaway as a Cardinal, and Finlay Currie as the Pope. Much of this was filmed on location in Italy.
Friday night is another night of second looks. I'm not certain if I've ever recommended It's Always Fair Weather before; that's airing at midnight Saturday (ie. 11:00 PM Friday LFT). In 1945, at the end of World War II, three soldiers (Gene Kelly, Dan Dailey, and Michael Kidd) tell each other that they're the best of friends, and make plans to meet up in ten years' time. Well, needless to say, they drift apart, but when the 10-year anniversary comes up, they meet, only to find they're all quite different. Kelly's promoting a boxer the mob wants to take a dive; Kidd owns a diner upstate; and Dailey is a harried adman who does the ads for a show produced by Cyd Charisse. She's got a brilliant idea: put these three "best friends" on the show as a great human interest story! Well, she falls for Gene along the way too. It's not quite an upbeat movie like other MGM musicals, but watch for Gene Kelly's musical number on roller skates.
Moving forward to the weekend, if you're sick of the interminable wait for horsies to run in an oval for two minutes, you can break up that wait by watching Pandora and the Flying Dutchman at 2:00 PM Saturday on TCM. The legend of the Flying Dutchman is that of a sailor who is doomed to sail the seas for all eternity... unless he can find a woman who is willing to die for him. Perhaps that woman might just be Pandora (played by Ava Gardner). She's a nightclub singer in 1930s Spain, a femme fatale curretnly being pursued by British racecar driver Nigel Patrick. In fact, he's engaged to her, although there's a bullfighter (Mario Cabré) who also wants her. That is, until James Mason shows up in his yacht. Mason is obviously a strange beast, as he can't be killed in the normal way, as Cabré finds out to his detriment. But Pandora seems to love Mason, and that might just bring him his release....
Finally, for something completely different and something more recent. Most of you will remember the TV series Get Smart from the 1960s. There was in fact a movie made from the characters back in 1980: The Nude Bomb, which you can see at 6:00 AM Sunday on Cinemax. Don Adams returns as Agent 86, but none of the other main characters from the TV series return to reprise their roles (although, to be fair, the Chief had died so he would have had some difficulty reprising his role). This time, the plot involves a fashion designer (Vittorio Gassman). He's come up with a bomb that's harmless to human flesh, but deadly on clothing so that when it goes off, it will leave everybody stark naked! (Finally the channel's nickname of "Skinemax" might be appropriate.) This is apparently a threat to the world because it will destroy social mores and allow Gassman to rule the fashion world, or something. The whole thing isn't quite up to the level of the original TV series.