Welcome to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" thread, for the week of November 17-23, 2014. For those who like silent movies, we've got more of those; for the rest of you, we've got some movies that are a bit more recent, like the late 1960s. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
The silent movies conitnue on Monday night on TCM, this time with several themes: Oscar-winning silents; child stars, and the Talmadge sisters. The child star I'd like to mention is Baby Peggy (still alive at 96, I believe), who appears in the movie Captain January, Tuesday at 1:00 AM. Five-year-old Peggy plays a little girl who as a baby was on a cruise with her parents when disaster befalls the ship, and she gets washed away, only to be discovered by a lighthouse keeper (Hobart Bosworth), who christens the girl January for when he saved her. He takes care of her as best he can, but eventually the time is going to come for the girl to get a real education. The real problem, however, comes when one of her relatives sees her, puts two and two together, and wants custody of the child. Baby Peggy is incredibly likable and a delight to watch. Following this movie, at 2:15 AM, is the documentary Baby Peggy: The Elephant in the Room, about Peggy's unhappy acting career. A star at two years old, she wound up as the breadwinner for her family (which must have been an interesting dynamic), who squandered the wealth. Peggy did eventually find happiness as an adult, however.
Tuesday morning moves us not very far past the silent era, with the movie Say It With Songs at 8:45 AM on TCM. Al Jolson plays Joe, a singer with a popular radio show who has a wife Katherine (Marian Nixon) and a son (Davey Lee) whom he loves. The manager of the station also has his eye on Joe's wife, which understandably gets Joe enraged. The two get in a fight which winds up with Joe punching the station manager such that the guy hits his head and dies. So it's off to prison on a manslaughter rap for Joe, while Katherine has to make a living, which she does working for an old boyfriend who is now a doctor. And then Joe gets released from prison and goes to see hsi son -- and wouldn't you know it, the kid gets hit by a car. Who else to perform the operation but that doctor? Ah, but the doctor has a devious plan: he'll do the operation and Joe won't have to pay. But this only if Joe grants Katherine a divorce! Gotta love early talkie melodrama.
Something that has no melodrama is Air Raid Wardens, at 4:45 AM Wednesday on TCM. Of course, you wouldn't expect any melodrama when your two stars are Stan Laurel and Olver Hardy. It's World War II, and Stan and Ollie want to do their patriotic bit by serving in the armed forces. Of course, they're too old, and in crappy physical shape anyhow, so they go back to their hometown, where they become air raid wardens. They're not very good at that, either, until they discover a nest of Nazis in their hometown, who have a nefarious plan to commit sabotage at a local factory, which gives our two heroes a chance to redeem themselves. Unfortunately, Stan and Ollie's last several movies in the 1940s just don't have the charm that their earlier movies do, and this one isn't helped by the wartime theme.
If you want a rather different take on the theme of a 4F guy wanting to serve his country, you could do worse than to watch Where Do We Go From Here, at 7:40 AM Thursday on FXM Retro. Fred MacMuray stars as the 4F guy, a man named Bill He's got two girls kind of interested in him (Joan Leslie and June Haver), but since he can't serve in the military works as a scrap metal dealer. That's where he finds a lamp that turns out to have a genie in it! Bill asks the genie to get him into the army, but like in that Geico commercial where the guy ends up with a thousand male deer, this genie puts Bill in -- the Revolutionary Army! Then when he's just about to get shot by the Hessians, he asks the genie to put him in the Navy, and ends pu as a member of Christopher Columbus' crew! There's then a third sequence involving Bill on Manhattan Island just before the Indians sold it to him (that's Anthony Quinn selling it). Bill does get the girl and gets to join the military at the end of this silly but pleasant enough little piece of fluff.
Also running on FXM Retro this week is It Happened in Athens, at 9:50 AM Monday. Jayne Mansfield gets top billing, although she's not the real lead. That honor goes to Trax Colton, whom you've probably never heard of because this was his only starring role. He plays a Greek shepherd who goes into training to run the marathon in the 1896 Athens Olympics, the first of the modern era. Jayne plays herself more or less, an actress whose looks are her chief asset. She promises, however, a special prize for the winner of the marathon: her. That is, she'll marry whoever wins. So of course everybody wants to win, because who wouldn't want Jayne Mansfield. Unfortunately the movie peters out, and it doesn't help that FXM has been running a pan-and-scan print the last several times they've shown the movie.
Allison Hayes is the star of several of the movies on the TCM schedule on Wednesday, even though she's a March birthday. Perhaps the most famous of Hayes' roles is the title character in Attack of the 50 Foor Woman, at 6:45 PM. Hayes doesn't start off a giantess, however; at the beginning she's a rich, bored, heavy-drinking housewife with an unhappy husband who's always off at the local bar cavorting with a woman. One day, the wife claims she's seen a UFO and the guy inside, but nobody will believe her. The husband ks willing to take her back out to look for it, so he can have her certified crazy so he and the mistress can have all that money. Ah, but they actually do find the UFO, and the alien's touch eventually makes the wife start growing... and growing... until she becomes the 50-foot woman. And dammit, she's out for revenge! With the bedding as a makeshift bra and shorts, she goes out on the town to get her husband. The special effects are terrible; the plot is nonsense, there's no continuity, but my is this an entertaining movie!
Bette Davis is one of those actresses whose work as she got older remained entertaining, but in a different way from when she was younger. A good example is Payment on Demand, at 6:15 PM Thursday on TCM. Davis plays Mrs. Ramsey, a woman married to Mr. Ramsey (Barry Sullivan) for a good 20 years. One day, however, he comes home and tells her he's filing for divorce. She should know why, since she's a good part of the reason for that divorce. He's an attorney, but he always just wanted a nice little practice that would allow him to live comfortably. She, however, wanted high status in society, and as such pushed her husband in ways he didn't want, and which cost him friends and the life he dreamed of. Ah, but Mrs. Ramsey is going to fight the divorce to get as much out of her husband as she can. And then when the divorce finally goes through, she finds that being alone isn't all it's cracked up to be. Nowadays, nobody thinks twice about divorce, but this was made in the early 1950s.
On Thursday night we have a night of Rod Taylor, whom you'll recall as the male lead in The Birds, which kicks off the night at 8:00 PM. I think I've recommended all of the movies on Thursday night except Dark of the Sun, airing at 12:15 AM Friday. The setting is the former Belgian Congo around the time of independence in 1960. There's a civil war raging, with more than two sides. Into this, Curry (Rod Taylor) is called in. He's a mercenary, and he'll be taking on the job of taking a specially outfitted train into rebel territory to rescue an important group of stranded refugees. They're important because it turns out they're carrying a fortune in diamonds! Curry assembles a band of mercenaries including an American-educated Congolese (former NFL player Jim Brown); an ex-Nazi (Peter Carsten), and a hard-drinking doctor (Kenneth More). To complicate matters, along the way they wind up with one more refugee in the form of Yvette Mimieux.
The last of our features for this week is Ivanhoe, Sunday at 6:00 PM.on TCM. Based on the novel by Sir Walter Scott, this version stars Robert Taylor as the English knight Ivanhoe, who is returning from the Crusades when he learns that King Richard is being held captive in Austria and that they're looking for a huge ransom from the regent, Prince John (Guy Rolfe). He and his cronies don't want to pay it because they like the trappings of power, so Ivanhow tries to raise the money himself, so he goes to the Jew Isaac (Felix Aylmer) since Jews handled the moneylending at that time. It's here that Isaac's daughter Rebeca (Elizabeth Taylor) meets and falls in love with Ivanhoe. But she's Jewish, and he's got a girlfriend in Lady Rowena (Joan Fontaine). Can Ivanhoe get the King freed and restore his honor? The movie takes some liberties with the book, but the color is lovely and the story, however faithful it is or isn't, is lively.
And now for a short. I've mentioned the Bobby Jones series of golf shorts. But MGM also produced a short in the early 1930s about how to play tennis better, and that short, Tennis Techniques, is on at 7:50 PM Saturday on TCM. This being the early 1930s, it's much before the time of Justine HÉnin, which I know will disappoint all of you. So instead, we get lessons from the most prominent male professional of the time, Bill Tilden, who wasn't exactly a slouch himself.
One other short that looks interesting is Seasoned Greetings, at about 1:30 AM Sunday. I haven't seen this one, which has a basic plot of a woman (played by Charlie Chaplin's second wife Lita Grey) trying to keep her greeting-card store running by coming up with talking greeting cards, which I presume is a front for the Vitaphone musical numbers. But what makes this intriguing is that Lita's boyfriend is played by, in his screen debut, Robert Commuings. And there's a little black boy who's a customer, played by a 7-year-old Sammy Davis Jr.!
Original Post