Welcome to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" thread, for the week of May 16-22, 2016. We have more films from American International on Thursday night; a couple of movies returning to FXM after a long absence; and a bunch of other interesting stuff I've used my impeccable taste to recommend for you. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
Some of you complain that my good taste in movies leads me to recommend obscure stuff. For those of you who want something more famous, you could do worse than to watch Born Yesterday, airing on TCM at 4:15 PM Monday. Judy Holliday plays Billie Dawn, a former chorus girl who is now the trophy wife of businessman Harry (Broderick Crawford). He's in Washington trying to lobby some lawmakers, and has found that his wife isn't that much of a trophy since she's not very cultured. So Harry hires the journalist Paul (William Holden) to teach Billie some of the finer points of history and culture. Bilie eventually warms to the task, to the point that she finds athat Harry isn't all he's cracked up to be, and in fact might be corrupt to the point of doing things illegally. But this is all done as an intelligent grown-up comedy. Crawford is as good as he was in All The King's Men; Holliday is wonderful, and Holden is understated. There's also some nice black and white cinematography of Washington DC.
If you'd like color cinematography of Washington DC, you're in luck. Just before Born Yesterday, at about 4:05 PM Monday, TCM is showing the Traveltalks short The Capital City, Washington DC. This one was made in 1940, just before World War II came to America, and so talks in nice terms about how Japan gave us all those cherry trees that you can see in Washington, which are lovingly photographed.
On Monday night, TCM is bringing us a bunch of anthology movies. The evening kicks off at 8:00 PM with what I think is the TCM premiere of O. Henry's Full House, which brings us five short stories from O. Henry, including "The Gift of the Magi" (with Farley Granger and Jeanne Crain). The segments are introduced by John Steinbeck. That will be followed at 10:15 PM by Quartet. This movie has four stories, all based on the works of Somerset Maugham. What might be the best thing about the movie, however, is the fact that Maugham introduces the short stories himself! Well, that's not to say the stories aren't good. There's Dirk Bogarde as a pianist and cousin to Honor Blackman long before she was Pussy Galore, and Bernard Lee long before he was M in another story. The movie was popular enough that two sequels, Trio and Encore were made; neither of those is on the TCM schedule.
We have some more movies back on FXM Retro this week after a long absence. The first of them is The Visit, which you can catch at 11:45 AM Tuesday. Ingrid Bergman plays Karla Zachanassian, who married well and is now one of the wealthiest women in the world, returning to the small city-state where she grew up. The townsfolk are happy to see her, because they've been living in poverty and they think that she can help them out of their dire financial predicament. Karla, however, doesn't have quite that view. She hates the place, which is understandable once you understand why she was forced to leave. She meets old flame Serge (Anthony Quinn), who it turns out is one of the main reasons she had to leave. It turns out that Karla is willing to give the town a substantial sum, but only under one circumstance: they put Serge to death! Unfortunately, the last time FXM showed this years ago, it was a panned-and-scanned print. Broadway fans who saw Chita Rivera in "The Visit" last year will recognize this, although the movie changed the ending of the original 1950s play. (I don't know about the ending of Rivera's version.)
Teenage angst has been a staple of movies almost since the dawn of movies with real plots. One of the earlier examples would be in Are These Our Children, airing at 3:15 AM Wednedsay on TCM. Eric Linden plays young Eddie, a bright teen who thinks he's going places and is going to become someone. Well, he does become someone, but not in the way he intended. Instead, he falls in with the wrong crowd in the form of vampy Flo (Arline Judge), who gets him away from his girlfriend Mary (Rochelle Hudson) and into the world of dangerous things like speakeasies and jazz (well, this was still the Prohibition era). Eventually Eddie becomes the leader of a gang of similarly idle teens. While looking for booze, he gets involved in a break-in, killing an old man and winding up on trial for his life for it. Let's just say the trial doesn't go so well. And yes, the movie strongly implies that teens actually have sex, an idea that would be beyond the cinema pale just a few years later when the Production Code started being rigorously enforced.
I don't recall whether I've ever recommended Across the Wide Missouri before. You can catch it on TCM at 10:15 PM Wednesday. Clark Gable stars as Flint Mitchell, who is a beaver trapper circa the 1830s in what would now be Montana. This was a time before the cavalry reached the west in larger numbers, so life was really difficult for the few whites there. Flint tries to make peace with the Blackfoot confederacy by regaining for them a Blackfoot woman who is living with the Nez Perce (Maria Elena Marqués). However, things go wrong when he falls in love with her! This, even though they don't speak a common language and need Flint's friend Pierre (Adolphe Menjou) to translate between them. The Blackfoot chief Bear Ghost's (Jack Holt) heir apparent Iron Shirt (Ricardo Montalbán) doesn't like this one bit, and decides to try to gain revenge on Flint. The story is fairly pedestrian, but the movie is backed by a whole bunch of gorgeous scenery, having been filmed mostly in the San Juan mountains around Durango, CO.
Stars and Encore are part of the same corporate overlord, so it's not surprising that the names of channels have changed; what used to be Encore Westerns is now StarzEncore Westners (I think there might be another space in there). It's still in the same channel location, though, at least on DirecTV; check your box guide if you have a different provider. One of the movies airing on that channel this week is Hang 'Em High, at 10:30 AM and 11:20 PM Tuesday. Clint Eastwood plays Jed Cooper, who at the start of the movie is being lynched for a crime he didn't commit. Obviously he survives the intended lynching when Marshal Bliss (Ben Johnson) comes along and is able to cut him down. Bliss takes him to the nearest fort, where justice is served, in the form of clearing Jed's name. The judge (Pat Hingle) decides to make Jed a marshal, too, since he's the only one who knows who tried to lynch him and can find them to bring them to justice in a court of law, most definitely not hang them. Along the way, Jed meets Rachel (Inger Stevens), who is looking for justice of her own; they begin to fall for each other in a romantic subplot.
Another movie back on FXM after an absence is Of Love and Desire, airing at 1:15 PM Thursday and 9:30 AM Friday. Steve Cochrane plays Steve, a mining engineer who has flown down to Acapulco to meet Paul Beckmann (Curd Jürgens) about a possible job. Meanwhile, Paul has a sister Katherine (Merle Oberon). She takes an interest in Steve, but then, she takes an interest in every man she meets, as Steve is soon to learn. Katherine has had a string of relationships, although they all seemed to end fairly briefly thanks in part to Paul who tries to be protective of his sister. A little too protective, perhaps. He realizes that what Steve is feeling for Katherine is deeper than what other men have felt and the feeling is mutual, so he plans to break it up by bringing in one of Katherine's ex-boyfriends. Steve, of course, doesn't know the real truth behind Katherine and why she's had so many boyfriends. The movie was made in Mexico, and has some nice scenery, although like The Visit, the last time Fox showed this, it was a panned-and-scanned print.
The salute to American International Pictures continues on Thursday night, with things like Wild in the Streets at 1:15 AM Friday. This bizarre movie has Christopher Jones as Max Frost, a young man who ran away from home (and overbearing mother Shelley Winters), emerging years later as a rock star. He's got ideas of getting the youth involved in politics, and to that end he helps get US Rep. Johnny Fergus (Hal Holbrook) elected to the Senate. There, Max uses Fergus to get certain laws changed, most notably the ones regarding the voting age, which gets reduced to 14, as well as the minimum age for running for federal offices. Oh, but there's a much more devious plot, which involves putting all of the "old" (ie. over 30) people on LSD! Yeah, this is one nutty movie, but it's one of those you watch for how strange it is; you don't watch it seriously. The cast includes Richard Pryor as Max's drummer (!); Dick Clark, Army Archerd, and Melvin Belli playing themselves (!!), and future Greg Brady Barry Williams as Max before he runs away from home.
Saturday night brings a bunch of insurance people to TCM, and among them, I'll mention Dick Powell in Pitfall, at 11:30 PM Saturday. Powell is John Forbes, living in the new suburbs with wife Sue (Jane Wyatt) and son Tommy. One day when he gets to work he finds that the company had hired detective J.B. MacDonald (Raymond Burr) to work on a case involving Mona Stevens (Lizabeth Scott) and her boyfriend Bill (Byron Barr), who defrauded the company and used the proceeds to buy things for Mona -- and went to jail for it. The company is trying to recoup their losses, which involves getting the things back from Mona. So John goes there, and he begins to fall for her, which is a problem since he's married. Well, that's not the only problem. Mona has a boyfriend in jail, of course. But the even bigger problem is that J.B. has fallen for her, and plans to set John and Bill against each other to get Mona. Raymond Burr was always a good heavy before becoming Perry Mason, while Dick Powell is good too, once again showing he wasn't just a light musical star.