Welcome to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" Thread, for the week of November 23-29, 2020. Thanksgiving is this Thursday, so a lot of us will have long weekends and some time to catch up on interesting movies. There's a programming salute to a recently deceased star; more from Star of the Month Shelley Winters; and a lot more interesting stuff on, too. All times are in Eastern, and a note to Goldie to note that all of these movies are airing this week, not a week from now.
British stage actress Beatrice Lillie didn't make too many movies in her career, preferring to perfect a role over multiple performances. One of the few movies she did make is the fine comedy On Approval. You can see it on TCM at 1:15 PM Monday. Lillie plays Maria Wislack, a rich widow in late Victorian England. Clive Brook plays George, the Duke of Bristol, who has fallen on hard times and let his London estate to American Helen Hale (Googie Withers) because he needs the rent money. Helen throws a party that Maria attends, as does George, along with his friend Richard (Roland Culver). Richard, who is equally on hard times, is in love with Maria, but doesn't want to tell her because of his financial situation. Maria turns the tables on him by suggesting a pretend marriage “on approval” to see if the two really like each other and can live together, and head up to Scotland for the trial. Helen, who loves George, takes George along to Scotland as well. The servants are aghast that none of these people are actually married to each other, so they walk out, leaving the four upper-class folk to figure out if they can be compatible together.
A search of the site claims I haven't recommended Horizons West since at least the last purge of the archives. So I'll point out that it's on StarzEncore Westerns, at 11:15 PM Monday. Rock Hudson plays Neal Hammond, a young man who is returning home to the modest family ranch in Texas after fighting in the Civil War, along with his elder brother Dan (Robert Ryan). Neil wants to go back to ranching, but Dan wants some revenge after having been on the losing side in the War, so Dan tries to figure out a way to make a fortune. However, he winds up losing a ton of money in a card game to carpetbagger Cord Hardin (Raymon Burr). This gives Dan the belief that the only way to make his fortune and avenge people like Cord is to go around the law. That's bad enough, but then things get worse when Neal becomes a marshal and finds out that he's going to have to deal with his brother's lawlessness. There's a fine supporting cast with a bunch of names you've heard of, including James Arness, Julie Adams, and Dennis Weaver among others.
Shelley Winters returns for another night of her movies on Monday night into Tuesday morning as TCM's Star of the Month. One that I think I haven't mentioned before is Enter Laughing, which runs at 6:15 AM Tuesday. Winters has a smallish part playing Emma Kolowitz, mother to David (Reni Santoni), a young man in late 1930s New York who likes the movies and particularly likes the actor Ronald Colman. David has a girlfriend in Wanda (Janet Margolin) and eyes other young women, also working at a machine repair shop for Foreman where David's obnoxious friend Marvin (Michael J. Pollard) keeps showing up. David has dreams of being an actor despite a spectacular lack of talent for it; when he finds there's auditions for a play starring the actor Harrison Marlowe (Jose Ferrer), he tries out. Harrison's daughter Angela (Elaine May) picks David because she likes his looks. David finds keeping the acting job isn't as easy as it seems.
For those of you who liked Woody Allen before his perviness became public, we've got another of his movies this week: Stardust Memories, at 6:35 AM Tuesday on MoreMax. Allen plays Sandy Bates, a director who became a huge success making light comedies but, having become successful, wants to make “serious” movies the way that Joel McCrea's character did in Sullivan's Travels. However, the critics and fans don't like it because they find it self-indulgent. Sandy attends a weekend festival of his movies at the Stardust Hotel, and finds all the fans wanting his autograph and whatnot, but not for the current movie; they only care about the old stuff. Sandy starts musing about his life and how he got to where he is now, thinking as well about all the women along the way (Charlotte Rampling, Jessica Harper, and Marie-Christine Barrault). It's easy to think of Woody Allen as self-indulgent, but some would argue he was doing what he wanted to send a message to the critics and fans that he didn't necessarily care.
Sean Connery died at the end of last month. TCM is running a programming tribute to him on Wednesday in prime time, concluding with The Man Who Would Be King at 5:30 AM Thursday. Connery plays Daniel Dravot, a former British soldier in India together with his friend “Peachy” Carnehan (Michael Caine). The two, having been demobbed, are in search of some adventure, and hear about the kingdom of Kafiristan in the restive border regions of what is now Afghanistan. The get a few guns and head off, eventually finding a man Billy (Saeed Jaffrey) who also speaks English and can translate for them; together they band a bunch of villages together to conquer large parts of Kafiristan. When David doesn't die after being struck by an arrow, the locals think he's a god, the second coming of Alexander the Great. David lets this godhood go to his head and decides he's going to marry the local queen Roxanne (Shakira, who would become the real-life wife of Michael Caine; they've been married 48 years). That turns out disastrously. Christopher plummer plays Rudyard Kipling, who wrote the short story on which the movie is based; Kipling here is used as a plot device to introduce the story and send it into a flashback.
The Sean Connery tribute also includes Marnie, at 12:45 AM Thursday. The movie will also be on Friday at 2:00 PM on Thursday as part of a 24-hour salute to Alfred Hitchcock beginning at 8:00 PM on Thanksgiving. However, I'd prefer to mention a Hitchcock movie that hasn't gotten as many airings on TCM recently: the 1950s version of The Man Who Knew too Much, at 10:00 PM Thursday. James Stewart plays Dr. McKenna, a midwestern doctor going to a medical conference in Europe. He decided to take his wife Josephine (Doris Day) and son along and make a vacation out of it by taking a detour to Morocco to see the sights. However, while at the marketplace in Marrakesh, a man comes up to Ben, whispers something in his ear, and gets stabbed for it. Meanwhile, the McKennas' son has been kidnapped. The secret the good doctor heard is that there's going to be a political assassination in London, so the McKennas head back there to try to foil it, trying to keep the police out of it since the baddies (Brenda de Banzie and Bernard Miles) have threatened to kill the kid. Doris gets to sing the classic song “Que Sera Sera”, which won an Oscar; Bernard Herrmann wrote the score and can be seen conducting the orchestra in the climactic scene in the Royal Albert Hall.
If you stay up late on Thanksgiving, or if you don't want to go out and do Black Friday shopping, then you may want to stay in for Leadbelly, which is on at 4:10 AM Friday on Flix and again at 7:45 AM Saturday on SHOxBET, the new collaboration between Showtime and Black Entertainment Television. This is a biopic, based on the life of Huddie Ledbetter (played by Roger E. Mosley), nicknamed Lead Belly (often misspelled as one word), a Louisiana man who was a folk and blues singer from the early 1900s on until his death in 1949. He had quite a few run-ins with the law, which resulted in his spending quite a lot of time in prison on the chain gang. It was in prison that he was discovered around 1933 by professor John Lomax (James Brodhead), who was studying American folk songs. After Lead Belly's release from prison, Lomax brought him north to New York, although commercial success did not follow.
Surprisingly, I don't have that many vintage classics for you this week. The most “classic” of the week's selections would probably be Key Largo, on at 6:00 AM Saturday on TCM. Humphrey Bogart plays Frank McCloud, a World War II veteran who is going down to the Florida Keys to see the family of one of the men he served with and who died in the war. The dead guy's widow Nora Temple (Lauren Bacall) and father James (Lionel Barrymore) manage the hotel, but Frank seems to have come at a bad time. One is that there's a hurricane about to hit the keys (this being the days before weather satellites nobody knows how bad it might be). The other is one Johnny Rocco (Edward G. Robinson). He's a gangster who has come down to Florida to get away from the law, and picked the Temples' hotel to ride out the hurricane, basically holding the Temples and Frank hostage together with his henchmen (Thomas Gomez and Harry Lewis) and his moll Gaye Dawn (Claire Trevor in an Oscar-winning role). How can Frank save the Temples?
For those of you who like mindless 1980s action movies, we've got an exemplar of the genre this week in Action Jackson, at 5:49 AM Sunday on StarzEncore Action. Apollo Creed (er, Carl Weathers) plays Jackson, one of those cops who doesn't quite do things by the books and actually got demoted for that when he brutally beat an alleged sex criminal Sean Dellaplane whose father Peter (Coach – er, no, Craig T. Nelson) is a wealthy businessman. Peter is in the auto industry, and officials in the local autoworkers' union who are less conciliatory toward Peter start winding up dead, murdered by a seemingly invisible army. Action Jackson suspects Peter is involved, and finds that Peter has a mistress Sydney (Vanity, Prince's former protégée) who is a heroin addict whom Peter keeps hooked. Peter is even nastier in that he kills his wife Patrice (Sharon Stone before she spread her legs in Basic Instinct) and plants the body in Jackson's apartment to frame him! Eh, just sit back and enjoy the ride.
We conclude on Sunday night with a pair of Cary Grant movies on TCM. The second of them is That Touch of Mink, at 10:00 PM Sunday. Grant plays Philip Shayne, a wealthy businessman who is being chauffeured in his Rolls-Royce one day when it drives through a puddle, splashing water all over unemployed Cathy Timberlake (Doris Day). Philip finds out who the woman is and has one of his assistants, Roger (Gig Young), give her some money to cover the cost of the coat that was damaged. Cathy wants a more personal apology, and wants to tell Philip a piece of her mind, so she intends to go to his office and throw the money back in his face. However, when Cathy meets Philip, she immediately falls in love with him. The two start a relationship, but Cathy is thinking about marriage while Philip is only thinking of having a fling. You can probably guess where the movie winds up going. There's also a scene set at Yankee Stadium that has cameos from Roger Maris, Mickey Mantle, and Yogi Berra.