Welcome to another edition of Fedya's “Movies to Tivo” Thread, for the week of November 16-22, 2020. YA Tittle is celebrating Thanksgiving this week, so we've got some good movies on Thursday for him. For the rest of us, there's more from TCM Star of the Month Shelley Winters on Monday night; everything from screwball comedy to sci-fi comedy to black comedy – it wasn't my intention to pick comedies disproportionately; it just happened that way. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
Shelley Winters gets another night of her movies as Star of the Month on TCM on Monday night. This includes Tennessee Champ, at 3:00 AM Tuesday. Winters plays Sarah Wurble, the wife of not-quite-honest boxing manager Willy (Keenan Wynn). Willy meets Danny Norson (Dewey Martin), a deacon's son who got into trouble when he got in a fight and his punch killed a man. So obviously Willy thinks that with a punch like that, Danny would make a natural boxer. Of course, this is ultimately going to bring Danny a bit of fame, which you'd think is enough to get somebody to recognize him for that fight that killed a man in the past. But along the way, Danny is just so damn honest that he might even reform Willy and everybody else on his team. And in a ridiculous turn of events, when it comes time for the big fight near the end, Danny finds that his opponent is one Sixty Jubel (Charles Bronson still under his original surname of Buchinsky) – who just happens to be the man Danny thought he killed in that fight! So Danny isn't guilty of murder after all!
If you want a nice little dark comedy, you could do worse than to catch A Shock to the System. You can see it at 4:30 AM Wednesday on MovieMax. Michael Caine plays Graham Marshall, an advertising executive who is a bit henpecked at home by his wife Leslie (Swoosie Kurtz). Graham has been quietly rising through the ranks at the agency, expecting the big promotion. But in the latest round of promotions, that job goes to a younger colleague, Bob Benham (Peter Riegert). This ticks Graham off, especially because his wife won't let him hear the end of it. So one day after work when a bum aggressively pandhandles Graham on the subway platform, Graham snaps and pushes the guy, accidentally doing so onto the tracks in the path of an oncoming train and killing him. But nobody notices! And that gives Graham the idea that perhaps he can get back at everybody in increasingly dark ways.
Another person who recently died is Johnny Nash, who's best known as the singer of songs like "I Can See Clearly Now". But he also had an acting turn as a teenager in the movie Take a Giant Step. You can see it on TCM at 2:00 PM Wednesday. Nash plays Spencer Scott, teen son of middle-class parents Lem and May. They live with Grandma (Estelle Hemsley) and have a maid in Christine (Ruby Dee), and being middle-class, have decided to move in with polite white society, which is of course supposed to be a shocker for the late 1950s. It becomes increasingly difficult for Spencer as he's becoming a young man not certain in his place in an almost entirely white world, while not liking that his parents deal with it by going along to get along and accepting the racism of the day. Meanwhile, Spencer is also developing feelings for the maid that really aren't quite appropriate. Spencer can't decide whether to be like his parents or be more militant. It's an interesting movie although the ending is a bit pat and there's a reason Johnny Nash didn't have much of an acting career.
For those of you who like choo-choo trains, we've got a pair of train movies for you this Thursday. First up is the 1974 version of Murder on the Orient Express, at 3:55 AM Thursday on MoreMax. Based on the book by Agatha Christie, the movie stars Albert Finney as Hercule Poirot, who gets a ticket in a first-class compartment on the famed train thanks to the train line's director Bianchi (Martin Balsam). One of the passengers, Ratchett (Richard Widmark), wants Poirot's help, and it turns out to be for good reason. The next morning, Ratchett is found dead in his compartment, having been stabbed to death. And the train is also snowed in in Yugoslavia. Bianchi asks Poirot to investigate so that the local police don't have to get involved. Everybody is a suspect, as Ratchett was nvolved in a notorious Lindbergh baby-like case some years back and the other passengers all knew Ratchett back then. Among them are nurse Greta (Ingrid Bergman), British colonel Arbuthnot (Sean Connery), a Hungarian countess (Jacqueline Bisset), an American widow and socialite (Lauren Bacall), and a bunch of others in an all-star cast.
A really interesting movie based on a true story is Lost Boundaries, which shows up on TCM at 8:00 PM Thursday. Scott Carter (Mel Ferrer) is a northern, light-skinned black man in the early 1920s who's graduated medical school and is looking to practice. But he and his wife Marcia (Beatrice Pearson) face prejudice everywhere they go, even at the clinic for blacks in the south, where they're not black enough. So Scott decides they're going to go up to New Hampshire where nobody knows them and pass for white. Dr. Carter starts a prosperous practice in a small town and he and his wife father two children, Shelly (Susan Douglas) and Howie (Richard Hylton), who have no idea that legally, they're black. It's not much of an issue for them until 1941 comes. The Japanese attack Pearl Harbor and send the US into World War II, and the Carters want to do their part for the war. The only problem is, the military is still segregated, and this is where Howie's being black becomes a big problem for him.
Immediately after Lost Boundaries, switch over to Starz Comedy for the second train movie of the week, Silver Streak at 9:49 PM Thursday. Gene Wilder plays George Caldwell, a writer who prefers taking trains to flying. On the train from LA to Chicago he meets Hilly (Jill Clayburgh), secretary to a reclusive art historian. That night, George swears that he sees a dead body being thrown off the train, but when he tries to tell people, no one will believe him. It results first in getting forced off the train himself in Arizona and then, after he gets back on, getting framed for murder, something involving possible proof that some art another passenger, Devereau (Patrick McGoohan), owns, is in fact a forgery. Eventually George meets Grover (Richard Pryor), a car thief who is impressed by George's story and is willing to help George get back on that train and prove his innocence, although that's going to be difficult, especially when the train is set to to crash upon reaching Chicago. The movie also has this classic scene:
Herbert Marshall isn't best remembered for his comedies, in part because the ones he made weren't prestige films. A good example of this is Breakfast for Two, on TCM at 2:00 PM Friday. Marshall plays Jonathan Blair, owner of a family shipping line. However, he's not actively managing it, preferring to spend nights out on the town and come home drunk with people like heiress Valentine Ransome (Barbara Stanwyck). She stays at Blair's house when the guard dog won't let him out, and learns both that the shipping company is going bust due to his mismanagement, and that Jonathan has a girlfriend in actress Carol Wallace (Glenda Farrell) that he plans to marry. Valentine realizes that this is all wrong for Jonathan, so she sets out to save the Blair shipping line as well as keep Jonathan from getting trapped in a marriage that isn't going to work out for him. Of course, the two fall in love along the way. Eric Blore is hilarious as Jonathan's butler, while Donald Meek plays the put-upon justice of the peace.
If you want to go out west with Tyrone Power, you get a chance this week, as there's another showing of the film Rawhide, at 2:36 AM Friday on StarzEncore Westerns. Power plays Tom Owens, assistant at a stagecoach station to Sam Todd, Edgar Buchanan. The stage comes in, bringing Vinnie Holt (Susan Hayward), a woman traveling with her infant niece. And then coming to the station is Rafe Zimmerman (Hugh Marlowe) and his men. He pretends to be a deputy, but he's really the head of an outlaw gang that knows the gold shipment is coming through here on the next coach, and they're planning to take it over. They kill Sam, but need Tom alive in order to create an appearance of normality that won't spook the stage driver. However, Zimmerman also thinks that Vinnie is Tom's wife, and this creates some dissension in the ranks when his henchman Tevis (Jack Elam) starts lusting after Vinnie. Tom might be able to use that to his advantage, but what's that going to do to Vinnie and the kid?
A movie that I think is getting its TCM premiere this week as part of TCM Underground is the fun comedy Earth Girls Are Easy, at 2:00 AM Saturday. Geena Davis plays Valerie, who works at a southern California salon with friend Candy (Julie Brown), and is engaged to Dr. Gallagher (Charles Rocket), who she worries isn't being faithful to her. Meanwhile, in outer space, three furry aliens are traveling through the galaxy in a spaceship when they catch 1980s broadcasts that pique their interest because of the depictions of pretty women. Those broadcasts are of course coming from Earth, and the pilot of the spaceship sets a course for the planet, crash-landing in Valerie's swimming pool. The aliens are colorfully hairy, and Valerie takes the three of them: blue Mac (Jeff Goldblum, Davis' reall life husband at the time), red Wiploc (Damon Wayans), and yellow Zeebo (a very young Jim Carrey) to the salon for a makeover. The three aliens pick up Earth culture easily and become a hit, but what will happen if people find out they're aliens? And what will happen to Valerie and Mac as the two find themselves falling in love with each other?
Finally, we'll go back to one of Woody Allen's earlier works, Bananas, which you can see at 8:00 PM Sunday on TCM. Allen plays Fielding Mellish, a man who's not exactly a success in life, working in a dead-end job as a product tester and having no luck with the women, that currently being political activist Nancy (Louise Lasser). She wants him to support the rebel revolution in the Caribbean island of San Marcos, and he goes along just to bed her. But Nancy realizes something is missing in Fielding, and breaks off the relationship. After some thought, Fielding gets the idea that the thing to do to get Nancy back is to go to San Marcos to engage in some rather more direct activism. Dictator Vargas (Carlos Montalban) tries to use Fielding as a stooge and, when that doesn't work, tries to have him killed and the killing framed on the rebels to get the US to support the Vargas regime. But that doesn't work either, and Fielding throws in with the rebels. Howard Cosell cameos in scenes at both the beginning and end of the movie.