Welcome to another edition of Fedya's “Movies to Tivo” Thread, for the week of November 27-December 3, 2017. The Packers are having a crappy season, but most of you are Badger fans, and this weekend is their chance to qualify for the college playoff system. Having to wait all week for the big game will make you nervous, so why not relax with some good movies? There's one more day of Star of the Month James Stewart, some stuff for a new month, and other interesting movies in between. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
Monday on TCM has a lot of movies about the tribulations of marriage, starting off with an early Lana Turner vehicle: Marriage Is a Private Affair, at 6:45 AM. Turner plays Theo Scofield, the daughter of a woman (Natalie Schafer) who was married several times which leaves Theo basically wanting to be pursued by handsome men rather than settling down with one of them. There's a war on, however, so when Theo gets proposed to by airman Tom West (John Hodiak), she jumps at it. But then he returns from the war and the two have to get to know each other. Tom begins to wrap himself up in his work leaving Theo feeling lonely and thinking that perhaps she wants to start partying again. And there's one of her former lovers (James Craig) willing to help her. Of course, all her friends have problems with their own relationships…. And then she has a child; will that finally make her grow up? You can probably guess considering that the Production Code was in full force and that this was made at MGM, the studio that cared least about social issues.
I can't recall if I've mentioned Death of a Gunfighter before, but it's going to be on StarzEncore Westerns multiple times this week, including at 12:25 PM Tuesday. Richard Widmark plays Marshal Patch, who's getting on in years but has what basically amounts to a lifetime contract from the town he serves. He does so with an old-fashioned law and order bent that has come to grate upon the town fathers, who see change a-comin' and feel that they need to get rid of Patch to advance. When Patch kills the town drunk in self-defense, the town fathers figure now would be the perfect time to get rid of him, but there's that pesky contract. Oh, and the fact that Patch knows all the town's dirty secrets. So they come up with more violent means to try to get rid of Patch. Carroll O'Connor plays a saloon owner who sees law and order hurting his business; Lena Horne plays a bordello owner. Widmark had problems with the movie's original director, who was replaced, but the replacement director didn't want screen credit since he only directed a small portion of the movie. The compromise was to come up with the fake name “Alan Smithee” to give credit to, the first time the name was used.
James Stewart gets one more day as TCM Star of the Month this Wednesday, starting at 6:00 AM with Fools' Parade. Stewart plays Mattie Appleyard, an explosives expert who spent a long stretch in prison for using that expertise for criminal purposes. He's finally been released from prison in 1930s West Virginia along with two of his buddies, Lee (Strother Martin) and Johnny (Kurt Russell). They're taking a train to a small town where they plan to start life over again with the money Mattie saved from his time in prison, planning to open a general store. There's a problem, however, in that the money is in the form of a check, and this being the Depression the bank where Mattie plans to deposit the check doesn't have the money available to cash it thanks to the bank president's (David Huddleston) having embezzled the money. So he asks his friend, prison guard Doc (George Kennedy) for help. Since Doc doesn't like ex-cons, he's perfectly willing to help out for a share of the money….
TCM is showing a bunch of Virginia Mayo movies on Thursday. One of her earliest movies is Seven Days Ashore, which kicks things off at 6:00 AM. Gordon Oliver plays Dan, who is doing his part in World War II by serving in the merchant marine. He's also been corresponding with multiple women, all of whom have come to believe that they're engaged to him. He's got shore leave coming up in San Francisco and, wouldn't you know it, all three women decide they're going to show up to meet him. Oops. So Dan gets a couple of his fellow sailors, Monty and Orval (the B-level comedy team of Wally Brown and Alan Carney) to pose as millionaires and escort two of the three women around town while Dan takes care of the third. Of course, complications ensue. This was made at RKO, which just didn't have the resources to make movies quite as spectacular as some of the other studios, and especially wasn't so good in the musical department.
Apparently the 1969 version of True Grit is on StarzEncore Classics this Thursday at 9:39. John Wayne plays Rooster Cogburn, an aging, paunchy, one-eyed former US Marshal. He's approached by Mattie Ross (Kim Darby) after her father was killed by her father's employee Tom (Jeff Corey). Mattie wants Cogburn to help her find Tom so she can extract her ounce of revenge; she's picked him because she's heard he has a reputation for having “true grit”. They're going to need that grit, as Tom has fled into Indian Territory (Oklahoma before the land rush). Meanwhile, they meet up with a Texas Ranger named La Boeuf (Glen Campbell) who informs them that Tom is also wanted for the murder of a politician down in Texas, so he's going to join the two on the dangerous search. Robert Duvall plays a killer who captures Mattie along the way; and, of course, John Wayne won the Oscar for this although it's really more of a lifetime achievement award.
Thursday is St. Andrew's Day. Since St. Andrew is the patron saint of Scotland, TCM is spending prime time with several movies set in Scotland, including Brigadoon at 1:45 AM Friday. Gene Kelly plays Tommy, an American who is on a hunting trip in Scotland with his friend Jeff (Van Johnson). They get lost and wind up in a town not on any of the maps. It turns out that this is a very special town called Brigadoon. The people who live there go to sleep at night only to wake up a hundred years later, and our two Americans have shown up on one of those special days. Tommy meets Fiona (Cyd Charisse) and falls in love with her, even though there's the problem of her only being around one day every hundred years and his having a fiancée (Elaine Stewart) back in New York. Tommy can't take Fiona back with him to New York, because apparently if any of the townsfolk leave the rest of them will never wake up again. But could Tommy stay in Brigadoon?
Friday is December 1, which means a reasonable time to start looking at Christmas, not in October the way the Hallmark Channel does. TCM is going to be spending Friday nights in December showing Christmas-themed movies. An example of the sappy crap that would be better off over on Hallmark is Tenth Avenue Angel, which comes on at 1:30 AM Saturday. Margaret O'Brien plays Flavia, a young girl living in Depression-era New York with her mother Helen (Phyllis Thaxter) pregnant with a sibling and close to her aunt Susan (Angela Lansbury). Susan has been in love with Steve (George Murphy) for some time, except that Steve is a convict about to get out of prison after being an accessory to a holdup. Not that Susan is going to tell Flavia this as she doesn't want to hurt Flavia with real life intruding in, so she makes up a story about Steve having been traveling abroad on business for some time. However, once Steve shows up, he can't get a job in New York thanks to his real history as an ex-con. Reality threatens to intrude on poor Flavia's life on Christmas Eve….
The start of a new month also means some movies come back to FXM Retro that haven't been on in a while. One example is 13 Rue Madeleine, which will be on FXM Retro at 9:50 AM Friday and 7:50 AM Saturday. James Cagney plays Bob Sharkey, who is training a bunch of people to become OSS (forerunner of the CIA) agents during World War II; after their training, they're going to be parachuted into Europe on an important mission. However, he learns that one of his agents is in fact a double-agent working for the Nazis, and when he tells Bill (Richard Conte) about this, it turns out that he's told the wrong person. One of the good guy, non-double agents gets killed, threatening to destroy the whole operation to find the site of a Nazi rocket base. The only way to save the operation is for Bob himself to parachute into France and get the information. But will the Nazis catch him and break him before the Allies can carry out any plans that Bob knows about? This one is told in a docudrama style as Fox did with several films in the late 1940s, and is very interesting.
One of the great comedies ever made is Kind Hearts and Coronets, which will be back on TCM at 4:00 PM Saturday. Dennis Price plays Louis, who was part of the noble D'Ascoyne family until his mother married an opera singer and was disinherited. They won't even let her be buried in the old family plot. And then there's Louis' unrequited love Sibella (Joan Greenwood) who spurns him for being too poor. So Louis sets out to gain revenge by getting back into the nobility, although as it turns out there are already eight people in line to the dukedom ahead of Louis. All eight – including a woman – are played by Alec Guinness, quite brilliantly. Louis sets out to send all of them to their deaths so that he can become the new Duke. And he would have gotten away with it too if it weren't for those meddling kids. Well, it's not those meddling kids, but he starts the movie in prison for the one murder he didn't commit as the story is told in flashback.
Finally, on Sunday in prime time, we get a pair of movies telling the Carmen story on TCM. I've recommended Carmen Jones before; that one comes on at 10:00 PM. So this week I'll mention The Loves of Carmen, at 8:00 PM. This one removes Bizet's music, which isn't necessarily a bad thing since none of the main cast could sing opera. Rita Hayworth plays Carmen, the Spanish gypsy who has a way of captivating men. She gets involved in a knife attack, which gets her arrested by soldier Don Jose (Glenn Ford). Don Jose is obviously taken with her, and she uses this to make her escape which gets him in trouble with superior officer Garcia (Victor Jory). Carmen eventually induces Don Jose into killing another man, which makes him flee for his life into the mountains. It's a pretty movie to watch even though this, like Briagdoon mentioned above, was done on backlots. It's just too bad Gleen Ford was so horribly miscast.