Welcome to another edition of Fedya's “Movies to Tivo” Thread, for the week of May 7-13, 2018. First, I need to apologize for the fact that TCM pulled We Go to Monte Carlo from the schedule at the last minute I should have realized something was up when they had a 90-something minute movie scheduled in a 75-minute slot. Anyhow, we finally get to our Star of the Month this week. We've also got some more movie series, and Mothers' Day on Sunday which means yet another showing of Mildred Pierce among other Hollywood movies with memorable mothers. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
TCM is showing a bunch of Robert Donat movies on Monday in prime time, kicking the night off with The Winslow Boy at 8:00 PM. Young Ronnie Winslow is a 13-year-old boy at a naval military school in Edwardian England who is accused of very petty larceny and expelled for his actions. That's bad enough, but in those days it would have been a serious black mark following him for the rest of his life, and his family. So his father Arthur (Sir Cedric Hardwick) goes to his friend the barrister and MP Sir Robert Morton (Robert Donat) for help in clearing his son's name, since to do so is going to involve taking the government to court, which the government for obvious reasons wants to avoid if it can. Meanwhile, the matter does begin to affect the rest of the Winslow family, as Ronnie's suffragette sister Catherine (Margaret Leighton) gets dumped by a boyfriend, and Dad's health starts to fail. Will they get justice for their son and brother? Or is the kid even innocent?
I can't recall if I've recommended Mr. Billion before, but it's going to be on FXM Retro this week, at 10:00 AM Tuesday. Terence Hill plays Guido, a sports car mechanic in Rome who's learned everything he knows about English and America from movie westerns and the films of Steve McQueen. Guido's uncle emigrated to America decades ago and founded a financial empire, but died suddenly. In the uncle's will, he left everything to Guido, so Guido has to go to San Francisco by the next meeting of the financial company to claim the inheritance. Guido stupidly wants to travel by boat and train the way his ancestors did (I'd get there as quickly as possible!) and this gives the acting chief of the company Mr. Cutler (Jackie Gleason) an idea. The will states that if Guido is unable to inherit the company, control will pass to Cutler, so he tries to waylay Guido on the way to San Francisco, or at least get him to sign a power of attorney giving control to Cutler. And to get Guido to do that, Cutler hires lovely Rosie Jones (Valerie Perrine) to try to trick Guido, but she falls in love with him.
There's another batch of movie series on TCM running for 48 hours starting at 8:00 PM Tuesday. This week sees three related series. First up are a whole bunch of Tarzan movies, starting with the original Tarzan the Ape Man at 8:00 PM. After you watch all 16 Tarzan movies, you can move to the five Jungle Jim movies at 8:00 PM Wednesday. That will be followed by a whole bunch of movies with Bomba, the Jungle Boy starting at 3:30 AM Thursday.
There are a bunch of movies on TCM on Tuesday set in the polar regions. I actually haven't seen the documentary With Byrd at the South Pole (2:15 PM) before, so instead I'll recommend another showing of Petticoat Fever, at 5:00 PM. Robert Montgomery plays Duncan, a radio operator at an isolated weather station in Labrador. He had a girlfriend, although he hasn't heard from her in two years, and the only contact with women he's had are with local Inuit women. No miscegenation allowed in Hollywood movies, remember! Anyhow, Sir James (Reginald Owen) and his fiancée Irene (Myrna Loy) are flying to Toronto where Sir James has some important business to attend to, when his plane develops problems and he's forced to land in the middle of nowhere in Labrador, which just happens to be right near Duncan's weather station. So he puts them up until help can arrive. Meanwhile, he begins to fall for Irene, and the feeling becomes mutual because Sir James is just so damn stuffy. Complicating things greatly is the fact that Duncan's old girlfriend finally shows up….
There have been any number of genre spoofs made. One that doesn't get much mention is Johnny Dangerously, which will be on StarzEncore Classics at 1:13 AM Wednesday. Young Johnny Kelly (grown-up Johnny is played by Michael Keaton) is a kid in 1910 New York whose brother Tommy is studying law and whose mother (Maureen Stapleton) is sick and needs an operation. The Kelly family can't afford it, so when Johnny earns the attention of local crime boss Jocko (Peter Boyle), he reluctantly takes a job working for Jocko. Johnny is good at what he does, however, and takes on the name Johnny Dangerously and rises through the ranks without his mother or brother knowing what he's really doing. Tommy becomes the DA, while Vermin (Joe Piscopo, remember him?), who was partly responsible for Johnny's entry into crime, works for a rival gang and tries to kill Tommy. The plot is flimsy, but of course the point of the movie was to spoof all those 1930s gangster movies, something it does successfully.
You'll recall Jeff Chandler as Cochise in Broken Arrow back in 1950, but there was a completely different movie called Broken Arrow released in 1996. That 1996 movie will be on StarzEncore Action at 7:54 AM Thursday. John Travolta plays Air Force pilot Deakins, but it turns out that he's really one of the bad guys. On a training flight using a real tactical nuclear warhead, he overpowers the co-pilot Hale (Christian Slater), intending to take the plane to parts unknown. But it doesn't quite go to plan as both are forced to eject. Deakins' partner-in-crime Kelly (Howie Long) is part of the team sent to find the lost nuclear warhead, although of course he's really planning to get them for himself and Deakins, and then threaten to blow up a major US city if the feds don't pay the ransom. Hale survived too, was found by park ranger Terry (Samantha Mathis), and the two work together to try to foil Deakins and Kelly's nefarious plan. Not great, but passable action.
We finally get to TCM's Star of the Month on Thursday night: Marlene Dietrich. TCM is going to be showing her films for the next four Thursdays through to the end of the month. One that doesn't show up very often is Blonde Venus, which will be on at 3:30 AM Friday. Dietrich plays Helen Jones, a woman who falls in love with scientist Ned Faraday (Herbert Marshall), marries him and has a child (Dickie Moore). However, Ned gets sick with radiation poisoning as a result of his research and needs to go to Europe for an expensive cure. Helen decides that she's going to make the money to pay for the medical treatment by becoming a cabaret singer, which she had done before getting married. She's successful at this but becomes noticed by millionaire playboy Nick (Cary Grant in a very early role) who helps pay for the treatment in exchange for a little loving from Helen. The treatment is successful except for the fact that Ned gets well too early and returns home while Helen and Nick are still an item. So he divorces her and gains custody, leaving Helen to go back and put the pieces of her life back together. Dietrich wears some stunning costumes in this one.
I've recommended Young Jesse James a couple of times before when it was going to be on FXM Retro, but it's made its way over to StarzEncore Westerns, where it will be on at 7:14 AM Friday. Ray Stricklyn plays Jesse James who, as you can guess from the title, is young here and has not yet committed the crimes that would make him notorious. Instead, he's living with his family in southwestern Missouri during the Civil War when marauding Union forces invade the family farm and trump up bogus charges against his father, hanging him and burning the family farmhouse. So of course Jesse and Frank (Robert Dix) are pissed, which leads them to join Quantrill's Raiders, a band of rebels raiding Union camps and committing robberies to raise money for the Confederate cause. Their cousins Bob and Cole Younger are also part of Quantrill's Raiders. Eventually, as you should know from history, the Confederates lose the war, but Jesse was part of the small minority of people who didn't want to give up and turned to outlawry instead, which is about where the movie ends. There's one fun scene of Jesse doing his part in a bank robbery… by dressing up as a girl!
The Great Train Robbery is going to be on TCM at 8:00 PM Friday. No, not the seminal 1903 movie, but a really fun film from the 1970s about a completely different train robbery. In 1850s England, the country has sent troops to fight the Crimean War, and those troops need to be paid, so the government is shipping £25,000 in gold bars to deal with the pay; the part from the central bank to the port at Southampton is going by train. Pierce (Sean Connery) comes up with the brilliant idea to rob the train. Now, trying to hold up a train that's going to be this well guarded is pointless, so he comes up with a different idea that involves copying multiple keys, and then cracking the safe while the train is moving. For the latter part he's going to need to spring master safe-cracker Agar (Donald Sutherland) from prison. All of this is done with the help of Pierce's lovely girlfriend Miriam (Leslie-Anne Down). The first half of the movie, dealing with getting the keys, is deliberate but entertaining; the action really picks up in the second half to make a thoroughly fun film.
Yet another title that's been used for multiple movies with completely different plots is The Running Man. A 1963 movie by that name will be on TCM at 10:15 PM Saturday. Laurence Harvey plays Rex Black, who runs a small civil aviation company. One of his planes crashes, nearly killing him, and when he claims on the insurance, the company tells him, sorry bub, but one of your payments was two days late, so we can legally deny paying the claim. Rex is pissed off, so he does the logical thing, which is to try to bilk the company out of what he thinks they should have paid. He does this by faking his death and running off to Spain, the early 60s being a time when it still wasn't common for drunken British tourists to storm the Spanish Mediterranean coast. Of course, the fact that Rex's body is never found is a problem, and insurance investigator Maddux (Alan Bates) shows up in Spain to investigate something, spending entirely too much time with Rex's wife Stella (Lee Remick)