Welcome to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" Thread, for the week of November 19-25, 2018. Thanksgiving is this week (unless you celebrated it last Thursday), so a lot of people have a good deal of time off from work to watch good movies. As always, I've selected a whole bunch of movies that I know everybody will find interesting. There's more from Star of the Month Glenda Farrell; family fare for the holiday; college football; and more. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
We get another round of movies featuring Star of the Month Glenda Farrell on TCM starting Monday afternoon. Among them is The Keyhole, at 4:15 PM. The actual star of the movie is Kay Francis, playing Anne, a woman who stupidly married young to dancer Maurice (Monroe Owsley), only to get a divorce and marry wealthy Schuyler (Henry Kolker). Except that Maurice shows up to point out that he never went through with the divorce, and is going to blackmail Anne to keep the marriage private. Schuyler's sister comes up with an idea that if Anne goes off to Havana, Maurice will follow, and then the sister can get Maurice's visa revoked. But Schuyler suspects something is up and hires detective Neil (George Brent) to follow Anne. Neil investigates, and finds himself slowly falling in love with Anne, which as you can guess is a problem. As for Farrell, she plays a gold-digger who provides the comic relief, along with Neil's assistant Hank (Allen Jenkins).
Night People recently returned to FXM Retro after a long absence. It's on again this week, at 9:30 AM Monday and 7:45 AM Tuesday. Gregory Peck stars as Col. Van Dyke, working in American military intelligence in West Berlin in the time before the wall went up. Somebody has captured a young American army corporal, and they're holding him for a ransom. It's Van Dyke's job to see that the corporal comes back to the west safely, preferably without paying any ransom. The first problem is that whoever it is that's kidnapped the corporal don't want a monetary ransom, but an exchange for a couple of Germans whose past makes them wanted by people working for the Communists. That's bad enough, but the corporal's wealthy industrialist father (Broderick Crawford) shows up in Berlin. He's use to getting his way, and dammit, he's going to run the show to see that his son gets back if at all possible, which it probably isn't when you're dealing with the US military. And Van Dyke also has a complicated past with Hoffy (Anita Björk) the East German liaison working the deal from the other end.
I'm not certain which movie I should recommend from TCM's Tuesday prime time lineup. I was thinking of recommending Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets at 12:15 AM Wednesday, but then I noticed it's followed 2:30 AM by Secrets and Lies, which is even better. Hortense (Marianne Jean-Baptiste) is a black 20-something optometrist in London whose parents have recently died. Hortense knows she was adopted, so she decides that now would be a good time to go to the adoption agency and lean the truth about her biological parents. The agency is able to provide her with the name of the mother, Cynthia (Brenda Blethyn). They meet, and... Offense is shocked to discover that her biological mother is white! Cynthia, who is decidedly of a lower class, and has a daughter Roxanne (Claire Rushbrooke) whom she kept, never wanted this part of her past to come to light. And now that it has, it threatens to tear the family apart. Cynthia has a brother Maurice (Timothy Spall) who has married up and owns a photography studio, and this revelation brings strains in his own relationship to the surface as well.
A movie that I'm not certain if I've recommended before is Way of the Gaucho, which will be on StarzEncore Westerns at 10:51 PM Wednesday. Rory Calhoun plays the gaucho , an Argentine named Martin Penalosa who falls afoul of the law in the late 19th century when he accidentally kills a man in a fight. The choice is either trial and likely prison, or joining the army, so he chooses the latter. Unfortunately he gets a nasty commanding officer in Maj. Salinas (Richard Boone), who treats him like dirt, treatment which ultimately leads Martin to desert and become a bandit! As a bandit he becomes a bit of a folk hero among the poor people of the outlying regions, and he saves a damsel in distress Teresa (Gene Tierney), the two falling in love. Teresa, however, is a city girl, who was only out in the pampas visiting Martin's old friend Don Miguel (Hugh Marlowe). That's not the only complicated thing about their relationship. A lot of the exteriors were filmed on location in Argentina, making the movie lovely to look at. (Well, that and Gene Tierney.)
It's been a while since TCM ran The Great McGinty, but it's going to be on at 8:00 PM Wednesday. Brian Donlevy plays Dan McGinty, who at the start of the film is in a bar in some Latin American country, having fled America for, well, reasons that will be explained in flashback. Some years ago, Dan was a bum in a big city in need of a job. But he's tough and a willing worker, which brings him to the attention of The Boss (Akim Tamiroff). The Boss is a political boss of a corrupt political machine, and McGinty proves himself adept at bringing in the votes. When the machine needs a clean candidate without a past, they turn to McGinty, who gets elected alderman, and then mayor, and eventually governor. But he needs the image of a family man in politics, so he's been put into a marriage of convenience with his secretary Catherine (Muriel Angelis). However, she wants an honest man. That, combined with the feds' investigation of the machine, leads McGinty to be honest for the first time, which might just be his downfall.
TCM is running a bunch of family movies on Thanksgiving, such as the 1949 version of Little Women, at 3:45 PM Thursday. Based on the novel by Louisa May Alcott, this tells the story of the March family: sisters Jo (June Allyson), Meg (Janet Leigh), Amy (Elizabeth Taylor), and Beth (Margaret O'Brien), who are towing in Concord, MA during the Civil War. Their father is off fighting in that war, which means the family has to make a bunch of sacrifices. Next door are the Laurences, grandpa (C. Aubrey Smith) and his grandson Laurie (Peter Lawford). Laurie falls in love with Jo, but she swears she's never going to marry. She only wants Laurie as a friend. There's also the German immigrant Bhaer (Rossano Brazzi) as another love interest for Jo. Various tragedies befall the March family, what with the war on, including their father being wounded. But the sisters stick together through thick and thin. Mary Astor plays Marmee, the Marches' mother.
Meanwhile, over on StarzEncore Classics, they'll be running a family-friendly movie like Roman Holiday at 5:09 PM Thursday. Audrey Hepburn plays Princess Ann, representing an unnamed European country on a visit to Rome. She's deeply unhappy about her diplomatic duties and wants to see the sights. So she escapes from the embassy despite having been given a sedative, and it's in this drugged state that she finally collapses and is discovered by Joe (Gregory Peck). Joe is a reporter for the Rome division of an English-language news outlet, and his boss is constantly harping on him to get the big story. When Joe realizes who the young lady he rescued is, he sees that he's got that big story on his hands. So with the help of his photographer friend Irving (Eddie Albert), he takes Ann around Rome taking pictures and having a series of adventures with her. But he falls in love with her and worries about the propriety of the story he's pursuing, while she has to return to her duties eventually; her government wouldn't be able to keep up the lie of her absence forever.
Audrey Hepburn returns two dozen years later in Robin and Marian, which will be on TCM at 6:00 PM Friday. You can probably guess from the title that it refers to Robin Hood and Maid Marian, and if you've done your math you'll know that Hepburn was in her mid-40s at the time she made this movie, her first since Wait Until Dark nine years earlier. Robhin Hood (Sean Connery) left England to fight in the Crusades, and he's returned after that long absence, a good deal older and less vital, although not really wanting to admit he's getting old. Richard the Lionhearted (Richard Harris) has died in the meantime, and now John (Ian Holm) is king. John and the Sheriff of Nottingham (Robert Shaw) don't intend to give Robin much peace, remembering what he did to them in the past. The rest of the usual suspects -- Friar Tuck, Will Scarlett, Little John, and the like -- are all here, having gotten old along the way too. An interesting look at the topic of heroes whose time has passed.
After Thanksgiving, you can watch another nice family movie like the 1983 version of Scarface, airing on Showtime at 3:05 AM Friday. Al Pacino plays Tony Montana, a man who wants to escape the hell that is Communist Cuba and is able to do so thanks to the Mariel boatlift. Castro, scumbag that he was, used this as a way to get rid of a bunch of undesirables, of which Tony would have been one in spades. After spending time in a refugee camp, arrangements are made for him to get an illicit green card if Tony works for dug kingpin Lopez (Robert Loggia). Tony proves to be an apt pupil, and starts rising in the underworld as he deals drugs on an international level. Of course, the illicit wealth starts leading to an over-the-top luxury lifestyle and hubris that will eventually be Tony's downfall. This is loosely based on the 1930s Scarface, although it's very different. For one, they never would have been able to get away with Pacino's amount of swearing back in the 30s. The violence is also rather more explicit.
If you want to see football teams with more imaginative play calling than the Packers, try the short Football Headliners, airing on TCM at 11:30 AM Saturday. RKO in its final years made a number of short series together with Pathé, some focusing on current events, some on travel, and some on sports. This one looks at some of the big college football games of 1955. There's Paul Hornung at Notre Dame, and Wisconsin once again losing to Ohio State, among others. (Apparently that game was played at Camp Randall you you can see how much it's changed in 60 years.) There's not much here for normal viewers, but football fans will enjoy seeing the vintage football.
Our final selection this week will be the weekly Noir Alley selection, The Killing, which is on TCM at 10:00 AM Sunday. Sterling Hayden plays Johnny Clay, who's recently gotten out of prison and is in need of money. To that end, he comes up with a scheme that he thinks is brilliant, taking the day's proceeds from a big racetrack. To then end, he assembles a group of accomplices who don't know each other: the bookkeeper financing it, Marvin (Jay C. Flippen); racetrack cashier George (Elisha Cook); corrupt cop Randy (Ted de Corsia); and a sniper (Timothy Carey) whose job it is to shoot a horse that creates the commotion and confusion during which the robbery can take place. But as always with these exquisitely-conceived schemes, there are going to be things that bring it down. One is an inquisitive parking lot attendant harassing the sniper; the other is human nature. George has a shrewish wife Sherry (Marie Windsor) who is cheating on George with Val (Vince Edwards). The two of them want a share of the money, and that could scupper the whole plan.