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Welcome to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" thread, for the week of November 12-18, 2018.  Election Day has come and gone, and sadly, none of Wisconsin's QBs got elected to anything, since you're still stuck with them as we saw on Saturday.  You can drown your sorrow either by booking your tickets for the pre-Christmas bowl game, or by watching some of the good movies I've selected this week.

 

For some reason, I thought I recommended the movie You Can't Escape Forever when it ran on TCM a few weeks back. I mention that because this week I'm recommending the original, Hi, Nellie!, at 6:30 PM Monday on TCM. Paul Muni plays Sam Bradshaw, the editor of a newspaper who refuses to run a story accusing a bank manager who's gone on the lam of embezzlement. To punish him, publisher Graham (Berton Churchill) demotes him to the nom de plume of Nellie Nelson, who writes the paper's lonelyhearts column. Star of the Month Glenda Farrell plays Gerry, who had been doing the Nellie column, but now sees this as her chance to get into doing real journalism and uncovering real stories. But wouldn't you know it that the Nellie column gets a letter from a woman that leads Bradshaw to clues to the banker's disappearance, and a chance for Bradshaw to do real journalism again. Fans of the old character actors will enjoy looking for Donald Meek, Ned Sparks, and John Qualen among others. This is actually the first of four versions of the story; another version, Love Is on the Air, was Ronald Reagan's screen debut.

 

Speaking of Glenda Farrell and journalists, this Monday night is the night in her turn as Star of the Month that TCM is running all of her Torchy Blane movies.  I've mentioned Torchy a whole bunch of times, mostly because Farrell is such a dynamo as the lady journalist who is much better at cracking cases than her dumb cop boyfriend.  Pick one or pick all of them; you can't go wrong.

 

Who ever imagined Ed Asner in a western?  If you've wanted to see that, you're in luck this week, as El Dorado is going to be on at 8:34 PM Monday on StarzEncore Westerns and again at 8:03 AM Thursday on StarzEncore Classics.  Asner plays Bart Jason, a rancher who hires gunman Cole Thornton (John Wayne) to deal with rival landowner McDonald (R.G. Armstrong) in the Texas town of El Dorado.  When Cole gets to El Dorado, he finds that his old friend J.P. Hannah (Robert Mitchum) is the sheriff, and tells Cole some of the back story of the feud between Jason and McDonald, leading Cole to believe Jason isn't quite on the level.  Making matters worse is that McDonald, understandably thinking Cole is out for him, has his sons on guard (Johnny Crawford, a few years after The Rifleman), one of whom accidentally shoots Cole leading Cole to shoot back.  Several months later, Cole hears that his old friend Hannah has been hitting the bottle from another hired gun, McLeod (James Caan).  Thornton returns to El Dorado, only to find out that McLeod has been hired by Jason for the same job that Cole turned down.  He's got to help MacDonald, but will MacDonald accept the help?

 

If you've ever depended upon the kindness of strangers, you may enjoy the movie A Streetcar Named Desire, which will be on TCM at 8:00 PM Tuesday.  Vivien Leigh plays Blanche Dubois, who's lost the decaying family plantation and her job in Mississippi, forcing her to go to New Orleans to visit her sister Stella (Kim Hunter), who lives there with her husband Stanley (Marlon Brando) in a small apartment.  Blanche and Stanley don't get along at all, in part because Blanche finds Stanley vulgar, and in part because Stanley thinks Blanche sold the estate and is keeping Stella's share of the proceeds.  It doesn't help that Blanche is on the verge of a nervous breakdown, seeking a man to take care of her.  She thinks she's found that in Stanley's poker buddy Mitch (Karl Malden), but boy is she wrong.  All of this, combined with the sultry weather, only serves to make Blanche's mental state more precarious.  I'm not the biggest fan of Tennessee Williams, but those who are will like this one.

 

 

A movie that's going to be back on FXM Retro is Woman Obsessed, which you can catch at 11:30 AM Wednesday and 7:50 AM Thursday.  Susan Hayward plays the woman, Mary Shannon, who lives on a farm in a middle of nowhere forested part of western Canada not far from the Rockies.  She's recently become widowed, and has a young son Robbie (Dennis Holmes) who seems more interested in one of the deer (courtesy of some terrible stock footage) than in learning to become a farmer.  Since Mary needs somebody to help out, she hires handyman Fred (Stephen Carter).  The two eventually get married if only to quell the gossip in town, but Robbie doesn't like having a stepfather he thinks is taking Mom away from him, while Fred is quite harsh with Robbie because Fred knows that's the only Robbie's going to become a functioning adult male.Mom doesn't get the relationship between stepfather and stepson but events -- first her difficult childbirth and then Fred's getting stuck in a quicksand pit -- eventually turn things around for everybody.  Hayward isn't really obsessed, and that stock footage really sticks out like a sort thumb.

 

Next up is The Life of the Party, at 6:00 AM Wednesday on TCM.  Fatty Arbuckle plays lawyer Algernon Leary, who's gotten himself involved in a case with a milk cartel.  The corrupt judge suggests to the cartel that they should hire Algernon, but some good-government women impress upon Leary that he should take their side.  It eventually winds up in his running for mayor on a platform of milk in the schools for the kids.  But when the good-government group holds a costume party with everybody dressed as kids, Leary loses his outer (adult) clothes, having to walk home dressed as a four-year-old, and all sorts of havoc ensues.  This movie was thought lost for a long time because it was released just before the party that resulted in an actress' death and Arbuckle's trial for her death, which pretty much ruined his career.  Copies were found in Europe, but new intertitles had to be made and a few stills used to fill out the missing footage.

 

You probably remember The Guns of Navarone.  A good 15 years after that movie, a sequel was finally made, called Force 10 From Navarone, and that one will be on StarzEncore Classics at 1:01 PM Thursday.  Two of the main characters from the original return, played by different actors since the original actors were too old.  Mallory (Robert Shaw) and Miller (Edward Fox) are British officers given the task of going to Nazi-occupied Yugoslavia and finding the spy "Nicolai" who has infiltrated the Partisans.  To do that, they're going to need help from an American band of saboteurs with their own mission, the titular Force 10.  The unit is led by Col. Barnsby (Harrison Ford); among the Americans is Lt. Weaver (Carl Weathers).  After getting in a plane crash and escaping from the collaborationist Chetniks, it turns out that their two missions are going to coincide: the Americans are trying to destroy a bridge and dam, while the group of Partisans supposedly helping is commanded by none 9other than Nicolai.  This one would probably have a better reputation if it had had no connection in name to The Guns of Navarone.

 

TCM is running a bunch of Marlene Dietrich movies on Friday morning and afternoon.  I've recommended most of them before, but one that I think I haven't is The Devil Is a Woman, which will be on at noon Friday.  As you can probably guess, it's Dietrich playing the devil woman, here named Concha, a woman in late 1890s Spain.  Antonio (Cesar Romero) sees Concha at a carnival, and immediately falls in love with her and begins to pursue her.  But then Antonio meets the much older Pasquale (Lionel Atwill), a captain in the Civil Guard.  Pasquale sits Antonio down to tell the young man Concha is bad news.  Pasquale should know, since he had a disastrous relationship with Concha himself, which is why he's able to give Antonio such a stark warning.  Still, Antonio can't be bothered to heed Pasquale's warnings.  Pasquale hates this because, deep down inside, he still has a thing for Concha in spite of how badly she treated him.  This is the last of seven Dietrich films directed by Josef von Sternberg, and they all have stunning visuals even if the plots sometimes leave something to be desired.

 

I'm not certain if I've recommended The Seven-Ups before.  It's going to be on TCM at 2:00 AM Sunday.  Roy Scheider plays Buddy Manucci, a NYPD detective in a unit that solves cases leading to long sentences, but which uses unorthodox methods that get their bosses in hot water and makes them unpopular with the regular cops.  Things take a turn for the worse when a Mafia kingpin is kidnapped for ransom, and it's part of a string ok kidnappings.  The problem is that the kidnapper was dresses as a police officer. So it's up to Buddy and his men to investigate.  Buddy relies on help from his informant Vito (Tony Lo Blanco), but as the investigation continues, one of the cops gets killed and Vito may be more of a hindrance than a help.  It's another of those good vintage looks at 1970s New York City, with the highlight being a car chase that rivals the ones in Bullitt and The French Connection. (They were all produced by Philip D'Antoni, who also directed this one.

 

It might be hard to imagine, but it's been a quarter century since the release of The Fugitive, which will be on HBO Signature this week at 9:00 PM Sunday.  Based on the popular 1960s TV show, the movie stars Harrison Ford as Richard Kimble, a surgeon who comes home one day to find that his wife Helen (Sela Ward) has been murdered!  Dr. Kimble is put on trial and convicted, but on the way to the prison where he's scheduled to be executed, the prison bus crashes and Kimble is able to escape.  This enables Kimble to start a search for the real killer, a mysterious one-armed man.  But, unsurprisingly, there's a police search for Kimble, led by US Marshal Gerard (Tommy Lee Jones, who won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar).  Gerard is unrelenting in his hunt for Kimble, but along the way, he begins to get the feeling that things aren't quite as clear as they seem.  It all leads up to the inevitable climax.

 

Finally, I'll mention this week's Noir Alley selection, The Woman in the Window, which will be on at 10:00 AM Sunday.  Edward G. Robinson stars, although of course he's not the title character.    He's college professor Wanley, with a wife and two kids he's just sent off on a vacation, so he's baching it with the guys.  He sees a portrait of a lovely woman in a shop woman, and his friend the DA Frank Lalor (Raymond Massey) makes fun of Wanley's swooning over it.  After an evening at the club, Wanley passes the portrait on the way home, only to find that there's a woman Alice (Joan Bennett) looking at the picture.  She was the artist's model, and unsurprisingly, Wanley is as taken with her in real life as he is with the portrait.  They have coffee and then go back to her apartment, where eventually her boyfriend comes knocking and attacks the two, thinking Alice is cheating on him!  The boyfriend gets killed in self defense, with Lalor prosecuting the murder case.  How is Wanley going to get himself out of this one?

 

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