Welcome to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" thread, for the week of November 3-9. There's still another week until the next Packer game, so why not enjoy the time with some good flicks? We're into the first full week of a full month, so we're getting a new Star of the Month of sorts, as well as a new Friday night spotlight on TCM. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
If you like Anthony Quinn, you have a chance to catch him at the very beginning of his career in Bullets For O'Hara, at 2:00 PM Monday on TCM. This B-movie has him third-billed, playing Tony, a jewel thief married to Pat (Joan Perry). She apparently doesn't know that her husband is a criminal, so when he has to go into hiding to avoid being caught, detective O'Hara (Roger Pryor) gives her a way to stay our of prison: divorce her husband. And, to help catch her husband, marry him! The reasoning here being that once Tony realizes what happened, he's going to be so jealous that he's going to come out of hiding looking for Pat! Pat hates O'Hara, but goes through with this! Warner Bros. usually made pretty good B-movies, but this one has a really screwed-up plot, and is only worth watching because of Anthony Quinn.
This month, instead of having a traditional Star of the Month, TCM is devoting a night every week to silent film stars. This first Monday in November sees a bunch of the great ladeis of silent movies. Among the movies is Sadie Thompson, at 11:00 PM. This one has a story you'll recognize, since it was remade a few years later once talkies came about under the title Rain. In this version, Gloria Swanson plays Sadie Thompson, the woman of ill repute who's made her way to an island in the South Pacific, trying to stay one step ahead of the US authorities. There, she flirts with a US Marine (Raoul Walsh, who also directed), and meets a minister (Lionel Barrymore) who tries to reform her
I'd also like to mention Way Down East, which is airing at 4:45 AM Tuesday. This movie, directed by D.W. Griffith, stars Lillian Gish as a young woman who gets tricked into a sham wedding, and then thinking she's married, has sex with the guy (Lowell Sherman), who abandons her after she gets knocked up. This of course is scandalous and Gish has to pay for her "sin". Then, Richard Barthelmess shows up and plays the virtuous man who's going to save her, but not until a stunning climax, on a river that has Gish standing on ice floes trying to get away before she gets swept down a waterfall. The real reason I'm mentioning Way Down East, however, is because it was remade in 1935, and FXM Retru has that remake this week, at 6:00 AM Wednesday. Henry Fonda, just starting out, takes the Barthelmess role, while Rochelle Hudson has the Gish part.
After the silent actress, we get half a day of Susan Hayward on TCM, even though her birthday was in June. One of her movies that I don't think I've recommended before is The Lusty Men, at 2:00 PM Tuesday. Robert Mitchum plays Jeff, a rodeo star who has had to give up the rodeo circuit because of the injuries he's suffered. So he goes home and becomes a ranch hand, which is where he meets fellow ranch hand Wes (Arthur Kennedy) and his wife Louise (that's Hayward). Wes wants to get into the rodeo game, and Jeff could help him, but Louise obviously worries that Wes is going to wind up injured like Jeff. Still, the three of them wind up on the rodeo circuit, with all the troubles that brings, especially the possibility that having two men and a woman on the road together will result in a love triangle.
Wednesday marks the birth anniversary of actor Joel McCrea, so it's no surprise that TCM will be spending the morning and afternoon with him. One of his most frequent costars was Barbara Stanwyck; the two first appeared together in Gambling Lady, at 2:00 PM Wednesday. Stanwyck plays the titular lady, Lady Lee, working with her father at the only honest gambling joint in town. The gangsters muscle in and Dad committs suicide rather than compromise his prinicples, so Lady Lee works as honestly as she can for the gang, which is where she meets Garry (McCrea). He's a wealthy young man with a suitably well-to-do girlfriend (Claire Dodd), but he falls for Lady Lee and the two get married. This even though you'd think the other man (Pat O'Brien) would be more suitable for her. Of course, Lady Lee's past is going to come back to cause problems. Rounding out the cast is the always engaging C. Aubrey Smith as McCrea's father.
On Wednedsay night, TCM is looking at Russian history, although it's probably too early since the revolution actually becan on November 7. Then again, only three of the four movies deal with the revolutionary period, ending at 1:15 AM with Rasputin, the Mad Monk. This was made at Hammer Films, which you'll recall from last month's horror film fest; the studio was best known for its Frankenstein and Dracula movies with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, the latter of whom is still alive at 92 and playing Saruman in the Hobbit movies. It's Lee who plays Rasputin in this one. The other movie I'd like to mention is the one that doesn't deal with the revolution: The Rise of Catherine the Great, at 3:00 AM Thursday. This one is a counterpoint to the Marlene Dietrich film The Scarlet Empress, released the same year (1934), and tells the story of Catherine the Great, at least up until she becomes Empress, more conventionally and with a good deal of inaccuracy. Elisabeth Bergner plays Catherine, born in Germany and plucked to marry future Russian Emperor Peter III. The real-life Peter was weak and not particularly Russian, only being Peter the Great's grandson with his mom having been married off to a German. Here, however, he's portrayed by dashing Douglas Fairbanks Jr. For most of the movie (Peter III was only Emperor for six months before being murdered), the leader is Empress Elizabeth, played by Flora Robson.
If you like Robert Wagner and also like Wrold War II movies, you get two of both this week. The first one comes up at 11:35 AM Wednesday on FXM Retro: Between Heaven and Hell. Wagner plays Gifford, a young man who's the son of a well-to do farm owner in the South. There are a lot of people working the farm as sharecroppers, and Gifford being a jerk dislikes all these poor folk. And then comes World War II, and Gifford's Natoinal Guard unit gets called up to fight. Surprise, surprise: Gifford is now fighting in the South Pacific alongside all those poor sharecroppers he hated before, forced to depend on them to keep him alive. It doesn't help that the unit has a nasty commander in the form of Broderick Crawford. Needles to say, Wagner is going to learn some important life lessons along the way, including a scene in which he has to save Buddy Ebsen.
A year or so after making Between Heaven and Hell, Wagner made In Love and War, which FXM is running at 1:15 PM Saturday. Where The Best Years of Our Lives looks at the lives of soldiers once they return home, In Love and War looks at their home lives during the war. Wagner plays Frankie, a young man who grew up on the poor side of town and has a stepfather who thinks Frankie will never be enough of a man for him. Jefrey Hunter plays Nico, a Marine who's got a pregnant wife (Hope Lange). He worries about what will happen to his wife and child if he dies. And Alan (Bradford Dillman) is a spoiled rich playboy with a rich girlfriend (Dana Wynter); he winds up falling in love with a nurse (France Nuyen) once he hits Hawaii. The second half of the movie looks at how all these troubles on the home front affect our Marines once they actually have to fight.
Up against this airing of In Love and War (I'm sure FXM will show it several more times again) on TCM is The Southerner, at 1:45 PM Saturday. Zachary Scott, whom you'll remember as Monte Beragon in Mildred Pierce, made this very different picture in the same year, 1945. Scott plays Sam, working as a farm hand on a large cotton farm, who has dreams of owning his own farm under the thinking that it would offer a better future for his family: wife Nona (Betty Field), two children, and mother (Beulah Bondi). So he rents a fallow plot, only to find out that owning and running your own farm is hard work, and nature doesn't always conspire to make life easier for you. Can this family survive on the farm, or will their dreams be broken? Scott is quite good in what is a very unusual role for him, helped out by a well-conceived, if predictable at times, story.
Going back a bit, to Thursday night, we get this month's Guest Programmer: Jeff Garlin, whom you'll probably best recognize from the show Curb Your Enthusiasm. (Nobody watched The Goldbergs, do they?) He's selected four of his favorite films, and his sit-down with Robert Osborne shows up on Thursday evening:
First up at 8:00 PM is Meet John Doe, in which Barbara Stanwyck's newspaper columns turn Gary Cooper into a folk hero;
Steve McQueen tries to find the men who killed the mob witness he was assigned to protect in Bullitt, at 10:15 PM;
Joseph Cotten comes to Vienna to visit his friend Harry Lime and then learns the disturbing truth about Lime in The Third Man, at 12:15 AM Friday; and
Retired automaker Walter Huston travels with estranged wife Ruth Chatterton and meets divorcÉe Mary Astor in Dodsworth, at 2:15 AM.
And on Friday night we get a new spotlight series. Bill Hader, who's been presenting Essentials Jr. in the summer for several years now, takes us on the road wiht some classic road movies. The series kicks off at 8:00 with Detour, which you would have seen a couple of weeks ago when TCM had its Edgar G. Ulmer night. Tom Neal stars as a piano player in New York whose girlfriend goes west to make a better life for herself, with him saying that he'll join her as soon as he can get enough money. Well, he can't get that money, so he starts hitch-hiking his way to LA, eventually getting a ride with a fairly sickly man driving west to get a piece of an inheritance. Unfortunately, the guy drops dead, and our hero, figuring nobody would believe the truth, decides to take the guy's identity and keep going west! Yeah right this is going to work. Watching it go wrong with one of the fatalest femmes fatales out there is a joy to behold, even if the movie does tend to betray its ultra low budget.
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