Welcome to another edition of Fedya's “Movies to Tivo”, for the week of November 6-12, 2017. Election Day is this week, so if you're sick and tired of Dom Capers, cast a write-in vote for him for the cemetery commission or some other low-level office and make him take that job instead. Anyhow, while waiting for those election results, why not spend the time with some good movies? Once again, I've used my discerning taste to select a bunch of movies that I know you'll all like. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
On Monday, TCM is showing a bunch of the movies in the Falcon series. One thing interesting about these is that the character of the Falcon was played first by George Sanders, and then by Tom Conway, who in real life was Sanders' brother. One of the Conway Falcons is The Falcon and the Co-Eds, at 1:30 PM Monday. As you might be able to figure from the title, this one has a lot of female students, being set at a girls' school. One of the teachers has committed suicide, and one of the students brings the Falcon in to investigate so that there isn't any scandal. As he investigates, he gets the distinct feeling that this was not a suicide, but a murder. Adding to this is the fact that one of the students claimed to have a premonition of the teacher's death, and she's got a premonition that another teacher is going to die, something which does happen. So clearly we've got murder, and the Falcon has to solve it to save the school. Because we know the cops (Cliff Clark and veteran character actor Edward Gargan) aren't going to figure it out.
A movie back on FXM Retro that I haven't mentioned in these parts in a long while is The Dolly Sisters, airing at 6:00 AM Monday. Jennie (real name Yansci, played by Betty Grable) and Rosie (real name Roszika, played by June Haver) were real-life twin sisters who emigrated to New York from Hungary about 1905. Fast forward in the film to 1912, and they start doing the vaudeville circuit as a dance act, which is where they meet fellow vaudevillean Harry Fox (John Payne). In real life he was Jennie's dance partner, although in the movie he plays a frustrated singer-songwriter, giving them an opportunity to use the song “I'm Always Chasing Rainbows”. Jennie and Harry fall in love, although this threatens to split the sister act because of the traditional attitudes towards married women being away from their husbands. Anyhow, the Dolly sisters become successful both in the US and Europe, and Harry goes off to World War I. Harry and Jennie do get married, although the marriage eventually goes tits up because Jennie won't settle down with him. And then she gets in a serious car crash…. The movie takes some serious liberties with the true story, most notably ignoring Rosie's first two husbands. She was married during most of Jennie's marriage to Harry. Oh, and that Hollywood ending is complete fiction.
I've mentioned Jane Russell in 3-D in The French Line a couple of times before. It's a remake of an earlier movie, The Richest Girl in the World, which will be on TCM at 9:30 AM Tuesday as part of a half-day of Miriam Hopkins movies. Hopkins plays the title role, a rich girl named Dorothy who has been scrupulous about maintaining her privacy, being worried that men will want her for her money instead of her personality. That, and some men might be intimidated by her money the way some men find tall women intimidating. So Dorothy gets the idea of pretending to switch places with her secretary Sylvia (Fay Wray). The two meet young Tony (Joel McCrea), and it's at this point that the complications begin to show up. Tony thinks he's falling in love with Sylvia as the rich girl and just having secretary Dorothy as a pal, but he's really falling in love with both of them. And then there's Sylvia, who is only doing all this as a sort of job since she was already planning to get married to another man Phillip (Reginald Denny).
For those of you with a bizarre fetish for more recent movies, I've got one from the 1990s for you this week. It's the 1990s remake of Cry, the Beloved Country, airing at 12:27 PM Tuesday on StarzBlack. Reverend Kumalo (James Earl Jones) and wealthy landowner James Jarvis (Richard Harris) live near each other in a rural part of South Africa's Natal province during the apartheid era; thanks to apartheid, neither man knows the other. One day, Rev. Kumalo receives a letter that he needs to come to Johannesburg because of some pressing family matters. It turns out that his son has been involved in a shooting in which a white South African was killed. And that white guy just happens to be Jarvis' son. However, Jarvis' son was not like his father: while Dad accepted the separation of the races as a natural thing, the son didn't, and was even doing social work with the poor blacks. Ultimately, Kumalo's son is given a death sentence even though he's been cooperating with the authorities, and Kumalo and Jarvis have to figure out a way to forgive people while dealing with their own personal tragedies.
What happens when you take a young Star of the Month James Stewart and stick him in a picture with practically every character actor on the MGM lot? You get something like Of Human Hearts, which will be airing at 3:30 PM Wednesday. James Stewart plays Jason Wilkins, son of the Wilkins family, with parents Mary (Beulah Bondi) and preacher father Ethan (Walter Huston). They're new arrivals to a rural midwestern town in roughly the 1830s (in a prologue with a child Jason played by Gene Reynolds), and Jason learns from a tough childhood – the ministry won't give you a comfortable life – that he wants something better out of life, which leads him to want to study medicine. But there are a couple of problems. The first is that the only doctor he can apprentice under before going off to med school, Dr. Shingle (Charles Coburn) isn't exactly a role model, and then Dad dies, which makes affording med school a serious problem. Worse, going off to med school means leaving Mom behind. And then just as Jason graduates, the Civil War starts and Stewart enlists in the medical corps. Mom wonders if she's ever going to see the son she sacrificed so much for again.
Before Elvis Presley got stuck in those Tom Parker-inspired brainless movies, he actually made some serious stuff like a western, Flaming Star. It'll be on StarzEncore Westerns at 12:27 PM Thursday. Elvis plays Pacer, a man of mixed race living in West Texas in the years after the Civil War. Dad (John McIntire) is a white rancher, while Mom (Dolores del Rio) is a Kiowa Indian. He's also got an older half-brother (Steve Forrest) who is fully white, having been born of Dad's first (white) wife. Pacer doesn't really fit into either world, and this is going to become a problem when the inevitable clashes between the ranchers and the Indians begins. Pacer would like to be a peacemaker, but he finds that events keep drawing him in inexorably, ultimately forcing him to take sides. He's horrified by the violence against the Kiowa, but equally put off by the way the Kiowa injure his half-brother. This is one of Elvis' best roles, and one that has very little singing. A young Barbara Eden gets to play the female lead.
If you want a different sort of World War II movie, I can highly recommend The Burmese Harp, which will be on TCM at 3:30 PM Thursday. Mizushima (Shoji Yasui) is a soldier with the Japanese army in Burma, at a time when the rest of Japan has surrendered but there are still isolated pockets of resistance. The British have captured a bunch of Japanese and are trying to get the remnants to surrender, so they send Mizushima to those other Japanese soldiers so he con convince them. The other Japanese would rather die with honor, and the British are more then willing to kill them if they don't surrender. Mizushima is the only survivor, discovered by a monk, so he winds up in disguise as a monk which is how he plans to get back to his fellow Japanese. But then he sees the horrors of war, and decides that he'd rather do what a real Buddhist monk would do, try to bury as many of the war dead as he can.
Those of you interested in high school football may enjoy All the Right Moves, which will be on StarzEncore Classics at 3:27 PM Friday. Tom Cruise plays Stefan, a high school senior who plays cornerback on his high school team in one of those western Pennsylvania mill towns that are now largely dying due to all the steel mills moving elsewhere. People know the town is going downhill, so those who think they have a shot want to escape the town. For Stefan, this means getting a football scholarship so that he can study engineering, since this is the only way he's going to college. His girlfriend Lisa (Lea Thompson) bemoans the fact that it's even more difficult for a music student to get a scholarship. And even Coach (Craig T. Nelson, before the sitcom Coach) would like to get a coaching gig on the college level. Other players get their girlfriends knocked up or get in legal problems. And then the mill hits more financial difficulties….
It's been a while since I've recommended This Property is Condemned. It will be on TCM at 12:30 AM Saturday. Natalie Wood plays Alva Starr, daughter of a mother Hazel (Kate Reid) who runs a boarding house/quasi-brothel that serves the men who work the Depression-era railroad that runs through their southern town. Alva doesn't like the work her mother makes her do entertaining the men, and dreams of going someplace better, usually living out those fantasies in the abandoned rail car near the property. Into all this comes Owen (Robert Redford). Alva immediately falls for him, but it turns out that Owen isn't just from the big city; he's from the head office of the railroad company and his job is to shut down unprofitable lines and lay the workers off, so the men all know he's there to kill their town. But Alva is determined to escape with Owen even if it kills her. The story, based on a work by Tennessee Williams, is told from the point of view of Alva's kid sister Willie (Mary Badham, of To Kill a Mockingbird fame).
Finally, I'll mention that this weekend is Veterans' Day. TCM generally celebrates the day by showing a bunch of war movies, but this time around they've decided to something a bit different: find a bunch of veterans and have each of them select a movie to show. Apparently there are going to be four movies on Saturday afternoon and four on Sunday, and even though the article doesn't mention it, I'd assume the veterans sat down with Ben Mankiewicz to discuss the movies. They're also not all war movies, as one of the veterans has selected National Velvet (Sunday at 11:30 AM). Indeed, none of the movies on Sunday afternoon are war movies.