Welcome to another edition of Fedya's “Movies to Tivo” Thread, for the week of October 14-20, 2019. The various October programming themes continue, with Paul Muni on Monday, horror movies on Thursday, and Godzilla on Friday. I also made it a point to check for Goldie whether the Hallmark Channel had gone into all-Christmas mode yet, and the answer is no, not yet. So there's interesting stuff for her to watch on the other channels while she's not watching the Packer game. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
The salute to Star of the Month Paul Muni continues on TCM on Monday night. Muni played a lot of “ethnic” characters, as in Bordertown, which will be on at 10:30 PM Monday. This time, Muni is playing Johnny Ramirez, a Mexican-American who is trying to make a better life for himself and his family by becoming a lawyer. However, he gets involved in a personal-injury case where the other party's Anglo lawyer knows how to manipulate the system regardless of justice, leading Johnny to punch the other lawyer in the nose. So Johnny has to leave, going south to Mexico, winding up in one of the towns on the border. It's there that he meets Charlie Roark (Eugene Pallette), who runs the local casino and could use a guy like Johnny to deal with the legal issues. Meanwhile, Charlie has a hot wife in Marie (Bette Davis). She takes a shining to Johnny, and he seeing a beautiful, rich wife, reciprocates. What he doesn't realize is that all of this is just a frivolous game for Marie, and that crossing Charlie could have serious consequences.
Whoever is programming FXM has decided to reopen the vault and start running a bunch of movies that haven been on in a long time. One of those is The Boston Strangler, which will be on at 1:00 PM Monday. This one is based on a true story, that of serial killer Albert DeSalvo (Tony Curtis, who is outstanding in a very atypical role for him), who raped and strangled a series of women in the Boston area in the early 60s. State Attorney General Edward Brooke (William Marshall), who had higher political ambitions (he would be elected to two terms in the US Senate), is desperate for the case to be solved, so he puts law professor John Bottomly (Henry Fonda) in charge of a special investigation. Eventually one victim (Sally Kellerman) survives the attack. Then, mental patient DeSalvo is found to have a wound similar to the one the last victim inflicted on her attacker. So Bottomly starts interviewing DeSalvo to determine whether he's the killer, something that's quite difficult due to DeSalvo's personality disorder. In addition to the excellent performances, the movie makes notable use of split-screen techniques.
TCM is running a spotlight on Wednesdays this month called “Short and Sweet”, of movies running under 75 minutes. There are a lot of programmers in that range, movies that have a cast above B movie status but don't have the budget and prestige of a A movie. An example of this is Don't Turn 'Em Loose, which will be on TCM at 12:15 PM Wednesday. Bruce Cabot plays gangster Bat Williams, which is an alias for Bob Webster, since Bob's dad John (Lewis Stone) is a prominent attorney. Bat has been lying about what he's really been doing, claiming to be an engineer working in all sorts of locations, so when he returns home his family think very highly of him. Detective Daniels (James Gleason) has been pursuing Bat through his girlfriend, and this gets Bat sent back to prison. The big problem comes when Bat comes up for parole. John Webster is now on the state Parole Board, and is bound to find out about his son's true past because of that, and it could hurt Dad professionally in addition to hurting the family emotionally. Betty Grable was under contract to RKO when this was made some years before she moved to Fox, and plays Bat's kid sister Mildred.
Elsewhere on Wednesday, you've got another chance to watch A Fish Called Wanda, which is going to be on The Movie Channel Xtra at 9:00 AM Wednesday. Wanda Gershwitz (Jamie Lee Curtis) is an American jewel thief in London for her latest heist with her lover George (Tom Georgeson) and his friend Ken (Michael Palin). One of Wanda's weapons is her sex appeal, which she's used to get another boyfriend George doesn't know about, Otto (Kevin Kline, who won an Oscar). She's planning to double-cross everybody, starting with George and then the violent-tempered Otto; of course, the others are plotting their own double-crosses. George winds up arrested for the crime and calls his lawyer Archie Leach (John Cleese using Cary Grant's original name) and Wanda, sensing the danger, decides that she has to seduce the ever-so-proper Archie to keep George from revealing the location of the stolen jewels. It's a wild and dark comedy – consider the fate that befalls poor animal lover Ken.
The “Short and Sweet” movies on Wednesday morph into a morning and afternoon of Jean Arthur movies on Thursday, with one fitting both categories being If You Could Only Cook, which will be on TCM at 10:45 AM Thursday. Arthur plays Joan Hawthorne, an unemployed cook stuck on a park bench in need of a job. Taking a seat on the bench next to her is James Buchanan (Herbert Marshall). She reads a classified ad about a job for a cook – but they're looking for both a cook and a butler. Joan gets James to apply with her, although it turns out he's not a butler at all. He's an auto company executive, who has been having trouble both with his board of directors and his fiancée (Frieda Inescourt), and wants to get back at them by taking a break from life. So they go off pretending to be a married couple, and wind up taking the job, which happens to be for ex-gangster Mike Rossini (Leo Carrillo), who may not be that much of an ex. And Mike is extremely fussy about his food. Plus, what's going to happen when James' family and business find out where he's gone?
It's been quite some time since I've recommended Fatal Attraction. It's going to be on again this week, at 9:10 AM Thursday. Michael Douglas plays Dan Gallagher, a successful New York lawyer who's got a wife Beth (Anne Archer) and daughter Ellen. One weekend the wife and kid go away on vacation, and Dan runs into Alex (Glenn Close), an editor at a company that's a client of Dan's firm. Dan rather stupidly gets involved in a relationship with Alex, but he's insistent that it's only going to last u too Beth and Ellen get back. Alex, however, wants Dan to know she'd like the relationship to keep going even after Beth returns. Dan tries to break it off, it Alex starts stalking him, calling him constantly and even trying to visit their co-op when Dan and Beth plan to move. Dan, unsurprisingly, doesn't want Beth to know any of this. That only enrages Alex further, and she takes ever more extreme steps to keep Dan hers, to the point he fears his life may be in danger,
Friday morning and afternoon on TCM are given over to the movies of Walter Huston. One worth mentioning is Storm at Daybreak, which comes on at 3:00 PM Friday. This one is set against the backdrop of the start of World War I, which as you'll recall was set off by a Serb nationalist killing the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne. Huston plays Dušan Radović, Serb mayor of a town in the Hungarian part of the empire. His best friend Geza (Nils Asther) is ethnic Hungarian and a commander in the army, so tensions rise with the assassination. Dušan tries to keep the peace what with the local Serb residents not liking the Hungarans, while Geza is looking for Serb partisans. There are some in this town, and it's up to Dušan's wife Irina (Kay Francis) to try to defuse the situation, which she does by putting the moves on Geza to give the partisans enough time to escape. Eventually the war ends, but there are still old scores to settle. Yeah, the idea of Walter Huston and Kay Francis as Serbs is ridiculous.
We're back to the B westerns this week, but this time the star isn't Audie Murphy. Instead, it's got a rather odd cast. The movie is Wild Heritage, which is going to be on StarzEncore Westerns at 8:33 AM Sunday. Top billing goes to Will Rogers Jr., in a small role as a judge in a part of the west that doesn't have much law. Second billing goes to Maureen O'Sullivan, playing Emma Breslin, the matriarch of a family going west by covered wagon. They stop in one town where a pair of rustlers ambush and kill the father, and the judge tells them to keep going west. Emma and her children, including eldest son Dirk (future poet Rod McKuen!) wind up at a place called Break Wagon Hill, at which point their wagon breaks so they decide to set up shop there. Also in the area are the Bascombs, with Ma (Jeanette Nolan), and son Jesse (Troy Donahue in an early role). This being difficult country, the Breslins and Bascombs help each other out since that's how you survived in those days. And then the two rustlers who killed Pa Breslin show up again.
We've got another biopic this week, this one being The Last Emperor, which will be on . This one is the story of Puyi, the last emperor in China's Qing Dynasty, before the revolution that led to the Republic of China in 1912. Puyi lived a turbulent life, spending 10 years in prison after the Communist revolution of 1949, during which time he wrote his memoirs, and it's as a flashback from this time in prison that the story is told. Puyi was about to turn 3 when the previous empress named him her successor and died, leaving him far too young to assume real power. So the regents spoiled him for their own political purposes, with him living in a gilded cage where he became a bit of a sadist because his every whim was tended to. Since he was only 6 when he was deposed the first time, there wasn't much he could have done in any case. But Puyi remained in Beijing's Forbidden City until 1925, and was named leader of the puppet state of Manchukuo after the Japanese invaded. Adult Puyi is played by John Lone, while some star power is provided by Peter O'Toole as Puyi's real-life western advisor Reginald Johnston.
Rip Torn died earlier this year, and I notice that one of his movies is on TCM this week: Sweet Bird of Youth, at Sunday. Paul Newman is the star here, playing Chance Wayne, a gigolo who went to Hollywood and failed to become a star. He's come back to his hometown in Florida, with faded alcoholic actress Alexandra Del Lago (Geraldine Page) in tow, hoping she can help get a project for him off the ground. Torn plays Tom Finley Jr., son of the local political boss (Ed Begley, who won an Oscar). The Finleys are none too pleased to have Chance back in town, in part because they're in the midst of a campaign and in part because Chance had a prior relationship with the Finley daughter Heavenly (Shirley Knight). For both of those reasons, the Finley men want to get Chance out of town, by force if necessary. Add to that the fact that the Finleys are carrying some secrets. This one is based on a Tennessee Williams plays, so it's overheated at times but one of the better film adaptations of a Williams play.