Welcome to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" Thread, for the week of May 23-29, 2022. Memorial Day weekend and the traditional start of summer are this weekend, and it's unsurprising that TCM will have a bunch of military-themed movies once again. Before that, however, there's one more night of the movies of Anna May Wong on Thursday in prime time, as well as stuff from the 1930s through to 2000. So there should be something for everyone. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
We'll start the week off with a Loretta Young pre-Code film: She Had to Say Yes, at 12:15 PM Monday on TCM. Young plays Flo Denny, a secretary at a New York clothing manufacturer engaged to one of the salesmen, Tommy Nelson (Regis Toomey). There's a depression on, and to get sales from out-of-town buyers, the boss has been hiring women to "entertain" the buyers. However, these women aren't classy enough, and Tommy comes up with the idea of using more innocent young women for the job -- namely, the company's secretaries! Not that they signed up for this. Anyhow, Flo goes along because she wants to keep her job, at least until she finds out from buyer Danny (Lyle Talbot) want the buyers really want out of this. Danny is stunned at how pure Flo seems to be, and actually falls in love with her. But another buyer whom Flo spurned, Luther (Hugh Herbert), tells Danny about Flo's relationship with Tommy. What's a poor working girl to do?
TCM had a programming salute to Yvette Mimieux back in April. One of the movies that I didn't mention was Dark of the Sun. That's on the TCM schedule again, at 8:00 AM Tuesday. In 1960, the former Belgian Congo gained its independence, and ethnic infighting immediately broke out. There were Europeans in isolated parts of the country, working as things like mining engineers, and President Ubi hires a pair of mercenaries, Curry (Rod Taylor) and Ruffo (Jim Brown) to go to one of those distant mining towns by train and rescue the Europeans from one of the approaching rebel groups. However, that's a ruse for the president's real desire. This is a diamond mine, and there's supposedly $50 million in diamonds in a safe there which the mercenaries should pick up, too. And this is technically not a legal mission since it's not UN-sponsored. Along the way, they pick up Claire (Yvette Mimieux), whose husband was killed by the rebels, and get to the mine, only to discover that the mission is about to get a lot more complicated.
Memorial Day is this weekend, and we're going to be having a bunch of war movies over the weekend. Before that, however, I'll mentioned a movie that's set on the homefront during World War II: Racing With the Moon, at 9:45 PM Tuesday on Flix. It's Christmas 1942 in Mendocino, CA, where two young adult best friends live: Hopper Nash (Sean Penn) and Nicky (Nicolas Cage), who already has a girlfriend Sally. Both of them have been drafted into the Marines, and they've got several weeks left until they have to report for duty. Caddie (Elizabeth McGovern) is a girl who catches Hopper's eye, and when he falls in love with her, he finds out that she lives in one of the big mansions up on the hill. The only thing is, she lives there with Mom, who lives in the maids' quarters, and isn't actually rich. And then the friendship between Hopper and Nicky is threatened when Nicky gets Sally pregnant and everybody disagrees on how to handle this problem.
We actually have a movie from the 2000s this week. That film is In the Mood for Love, which will be on TCM at 6:30 AM Wednesday. In Hong Kong in 1962, Mr. Chow (Tony Leung) responds to an ad about a sublet, only to find that it's been taken by a Mrs. Su (Maggie Cheung). However, there's another sublet next door, and Chow takes that. The two subletters find that they're both married, and that both of them have a spouse who has to travel abroad on business quite a bit. As they keep running into each other, they get the distinct feeling that each of their spouses is stepping out on them. And as you can guess, the two of them also find themselves developing feelings for each other, which is a problem because in a crowded and relatively conservative society like 1962 Hong Kong, anybody who knows them and sees them in the apartment block is going to realize they're carrying on a relationship if they're not careful. Eventually, Chow gets a job in Singapore, which could change the nature of their relationship forever.
The search function at x4 is probably screwed up, because I would have thought I mentioned Alvarez Kelly at least once before. It's airing again at 12:08 PM Wednesday on StarzEncore Westerns. William Holden plays Alvarez Kelly, a cattleman in 1864, which as you know is the height of the Civil War. He's signed a contract to deliver a herd of cattle to the outskirts of Virginia, where General Grant is besieging the city. He is to be accompanied by US Army Major Stedman (Patrick O'Neal). However, it's not hard to discover a herd of cattle like this being driven, and the Confederacy knows those cattle could be extremely useful in feeding the people of Richmond. So Confederate cavalry colonel Tom Rossiter (Richard Widmark) and his men capture Kelly and try to force him to deliver the cattle to Richmond proper rather than Grant's troops, despite Rossiter and Kelly not getting along. Meanwhile, it's personal for Rossiter, as his fiancée Liz (Janice Rule) is stuck in Richmond trying to escape.
If you want a fun 80s comedy, you could do a lot worse than to catch Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, at 6:00 AM Friday on MovieMax. Michael Caine plays Lawrence Jamieson, a con artist plying his trade on the rich women visiting the French Riviera. He cons Fanny (Barbara Harris) before running into fellow con artist Freddy Benson (Steve Martin), whom he doesn't really like. Lawrence runs Freddy out of town, but Freddy meets Fanny, which gives him something to blackmail Lawrence with. The two then wait for the next mark, who happens to be American heiress Janet (Glenne Headley), and bet on who can con her first, with the winner getting to stay in town. Except that things get more complicated when Janet turns out to be a contest winner instead of an heiress, and Freddy finds himself falling in love with Janet. Things continue on like this in hilarious fashion as everybody tries to one-up one another in their con artistry.
Herbert Marshall was capable at comedy, even though he didn't get that much chance to star in prestige comedies. Instead, he got stuck in RKO programmers like Breakfast for Two, airing on TCM at 10:15 AM Friday. Marshall plays Jonathan Blair, scion of a family owning a shipping company, but who spends his life as a playboy. One morning, he wakes up to find a woman named Valentine (Barbara Stanwyck) in his apartment. Apparently he got blackout drunk after meeting her on a night out on the town; she took him home; and the dog wouldn't let her leave. Valerie realizes she likes Jonathan, even though he's got a nominal girlfriend in Carol (Glenda Farrell). So when Valerie learns that the Blair shipping line is in danger of going under financially, she decides to come up with a scheme to save the company as well as winning his heart. However, when Jonathan begins to comprehend what's going on, he thinks Valerie is trying to steal the company out from under him, which threatens to put the kibosh on a budding romance.
I mentioned earlier that Memorial Day is this weekend, and once again, TCM has a marathon of war-themed movies starting at 8:00 PM Friday with Twelve O'Clock High and continuing right through the weekend. A lot of the movies are World War II movies, with one telling a story that doesn't get told much: Go for Broke!, at 2:30 AM Saturday. Van Johnson plays Lt. Michael Grayson, who reports for a new assignment that's not what he expected, to command the 442 nd Regiment. All of the soldiers in this regiment are Nisei: second-generation Japanese-Americans, whose parents emigrated to America and are now in the internment camps out west because of Franklin Roosevelt's shameful policies. The young soldiers want to show their loyalty to the country of their birth, and also don't want to be in the internment camps. But, of course, it was Japan that attacked Pearl Harbor, and Lt. Grayson has a hard time getting past that when faced with Japanese-American soldiers. Eventually, the regiment gets shipped off to Italy, where it turns out that they're a pretty fine bunch of soldiers, and the soldiers in turn learn that Grayson is actually a decent man who can learn to overcome his prejudices.
For a movie not about war over the weekend, try Mississippi Burning, which you can see at 2:00 PM Sunday on The Movie Channel. The movie is of course based on a real case, although the names have been changed to protect people since the actual case didn't result in convictions until many years after the movie was released. It's 1964 in Mississippi, and three student civil rights workers are going through one of the more rural counties trying to register black residents to vote, when they go missing. Because of the new civil rights laws, the FBI gets involved, sending a pair of agents to investigate. Alan Ward (Willem Dafoe) is a northerner and technically the superior officer, while Rupert Anderson (Gene Hackman) is a former sheriff in Mississippi and knows the way the place works and how difficult it's going to be to get any information out of the white people. Indeed local law enforcement has sway over the locals and tries to influence them not to talk, as we see when the wife (Frances McDormand) of the deputy sheriff (Brad Dourif) actually does talk. Eventually, the FBI decides that there's no chance of getting a murder conviction, so instead they're going to have to try a federal case of civil rights violations.
One of the movies that TCM loves to drag out for military-themed programming is They Were Expendable. It shows up this weekend, at 7:30 AM Sunday. Robert Montgomery plays Lt. John Brickley, who is stationed in the Philippines in the autumn of 1941, the islands being a US colony at the time. Working under him is Lt. Rusty Ryan (John Wayne). Brickley is working on an idea that would eventually become the PT boats, but because the war isn't on yet, Washington isn't pursuing the idea that urgently. Of course, the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor, which means that an attack on the Philippines can't be too far behind. In one of those skirmishes, Ryan picks up an injury that results in blood poisoning, so he gets sent to a field hospital where he meets Nurse Lt. Davyss (Donna Reed), who becomes the focus for a romantic subplot. The PT boats' job is to hold off the Japanese as long as possible, and Washington realizes these boats do have some strategic value. Director John fell ill during production, and Robert Montgomery took over to get the movie finished, discovering that he enjoyed directing.