A
Guide to the interesting and Unusual on TCM
By Ed Garea
STAR
OF THE MONTH – MARY ASTOR
TCM
has some excellent movies lined up with Mary Astor for the last two
weeks in March. All in all, TCM is showing 55 of her movies.
According to IMDb, Astor had 156 film and television credits
stretching back to 1920.
March
19: Any lingering doubts that Mary Astor could not
pull off a comedy should be completely dispelled with her
performance in Preston Sturges’ The
Palm Beach Story (8:00 pm). Astor is the
delightfully dizzy, man-hungry millionaire, Princess Centimillia,
whose bumbling brother, J.D. Hackensacker III (Rudy Vallee), is the
target of Jerry Jeffers (Claudette Clobert). She plans to divorce
her poor inventor husband, Tom (Joel McCrea), marry J.D., and use
his money to finance her ex-husband. It’s one of Sturges’ best,
although Astor herself was not that taken with it, according to her
autobiography.
At
9:45 comes an interesting little film, The
Lost Squadron. From RKO, it about former World War I
flying aces (Richard Dix and Robert Armstrong) seeking work in
movies as stuntmen. Erich Von Stroheim, however, steals the film as
a sadistic director in a performance that verges on self-parody.
Astor plays his wife, and the crap really hits the fan when Von
Stroheim learns she’s still in love with one of the pilots.
Fast
forward to 11:15 pm and we find Astor in one of her best films
from the early ‘30s: The Kennel
Murder Case. In this excellent Whodunit with William
Powell as Philo Vance investigating a murder ties to a swank long
Island Dog show, Astor provides fine support as Hilda Lake, the
niece of murder victim Archer Coe (Robert Barrat). She joins a long
list of suspects who had good reason to kill Coe and has several
nice scenes with Powell.
March
20: In the spillover of Astor films to the next day, the
pick of the litter is The Little
Giant at 7:45 am. This 1933 comedy from Warner
Bros. stars Edward G. Robinson as James Francis “Bugs” Ahern, a
bootlegger whose attempts to crash high society after Prohibition
ends are thwarted by his gangster origins. Mary is Ruth Wayburn, a
real estate agent who rents a mansion to Bugs and becomes his
secretary and adviser. “Bugs” is in love with socialite Polly
Cass (Helen Vinson), but as the film progresses, he comes to realize
that things are not what they seem. There is a superficial
resemblance to Robinson’s later bootlegger-gone-straight comedy, A
Slight Case of Murder (1938), but the latter is more of a
“the slobs meet the snobs” plot and is played for broader
laughs. By the way, look for a couple of scenes where things on the
set begin to shake. That’s because the Los Angeles Earthquake of
1932 struck while The Little Giantwas being filmed.
March
26: At 8:00 pm comes Astor as Marmee in MGM’s 1949 remake
of Little Women,
starring June Allyson, who, by the way, will be the Star of the
Month for May. At 10:15 pm she plays the mother of Judy Garland and
Margaret O’Brien in the totally delightful MGM classic about an
America that never existed: Meet Me in
St. Louis (1944). Following at 12:30 am is her
supporting turn as one of Clark Gable’s lovers in 1932’s Red
Dust. For those who haven’t yet seen this one,
record it! I also recommend the DVD version – it’s a keeper no
matter how you look at it. Another film worth the time is Men
of Chance, from RKO in 1932. It airs at the late hour
of 2:00 am, but is a fascinating movie to watch. A star’s early
efforts are always interesting, and Astor is setting the template in
this film for later performances; the self-possessed woman, classy
on the outside, but inside a cauldron of larcenous past actions.
Simply put – give the “Men” a chance. Finally, there’s
the royal comedy, The Royal
Bed (RKO, 1931), a film Astor almost didn’t
get a chance to make, for a failed sound test put her on the
unemployment line. A role in a prominent Broadway production roused
her spirit, only to be told of the death of her husband, Kenneth
Hawks (brother of Howard), who died in January 1930 in a stunt
accident while on a film location. Her grief, coupled with
exhaustion, resulted in a form of tuberculosis made even worse by
the effects of malnutrition. After taking a cure, she passed a
subsequent sound test and began freelancing at Paramount and Warner
Brothers, acting in any role as long as there was a paycheck
attached. The Royal Bed is
one of those films, but Astor is interesting nevertheless. It’s
definitely worth a look if only to study Astor’s emotional state
during this period, a state that no amount of acting can truly cover
up, and a state of mind that later led to a prolonged battle with
the bottle.
March
27: Because Astor made so many films, there’s a runoff
into this morning and afternoon, with the most interesting being The
Lash from 1931. It’s interesting because it’s
a Western and Astor didn’t make many in that genre. This is a
Robin Hood story set in 1850s California with Richard Barthelmess as
a totally unconvincing Spanish nobleman who returns to find his
homeland being run by tyrants. Astor is his long love, Rosita
Garcia. It’s very rarely shown, and I’d be lying if I said I saw
it. So I’ll be tuning in as well.
OUT
OF THE ORDINARY
March
16: In the afternoon is playing one of Preston Sturges’ best
movies: Hail the Conquering
Hero (12:00 pm). From Paramount in 1944, it’s
the hilarious story of Woodrow Lafayette Pershing Truesmith (Eddie
Bracken), a sickly son of a Marine hero who could never live up to
the image of his heroic father. He enlists in the Marines, but is
sent home because of chronic hay fever. Bracken becomes so
distraught that he decides not to return home, finding employment in
a shipyard. He sends letters home so his mother and girlfriend will
still believe he’s overseas fighting. One day, while nursing a
drink in a local bar, he runs into some Marines who just returned
from Guadalcanal. He spills the sad story of his life to them, and
they decide to help by making him into a war hero sent home not from
hay fever, but from jungle fever. He returns to his hometown a war
hero and finds that he can’t escape from that role. It’s yet
another of Sturges’ brilliant satires on the current world and all
its foibles. Though he takes on a familiar target to him in the
small-town politician, he also adds thoughtless hero-worship and the
knee-jerk worship of Motherhood. Well acted by the Sturges stock
company, it was the eighth – and last – picture Sturges would
make for Paramount, capping off a wonderful series of satires that
began in 1940 with the vastly underrated The Great McGinty.
By
all means set your alarm clocks or recorders for 2:00 am. Showing at
this incredible hour is a real rarity; a film you’ve probably
never seen and one that I can definitely say did
not play at the local theater. The film is called Without
Pity. Directed by Alberto Lattuada and boasting a
screenplay by none other than Federico Fellini, it’s the arresting
story of the relationship between Angela (Carla Del Poggio), a local
Italian girl, and Jerry (John Kitzmiller), an African-American
G.I., during the later days of World War II. I do not believe
it has ever been released on videotape or DVD, and the closest I
came to it was reading about it during my college days in an essay
on Fellini’s time as a screenwriter. I’ve been yearning to see
it ever since. Also look for the great Giulietta Masina as one of
Angela’s friends.
At
3:45 am follows a 1944 Neorealist film directed and co-written by
Vittorio DeSica, The Children Are
Watching Us. This is a touching and moving film about
the breakup of a marriage due to adultery on the part of the wife as
told from her son’s point of view. As with The
Bicycle Thief (which airs on March 30, at 2:00
am, naturally), Umberto D, and Two Women,
the only people that would fail to be moved by this film are those
that are dead.
March
18: Among the films we can cast today as Interesting
Failures is Joseph Losey’s The
Boy With Green Hair (9:00 am). Losey directed
this gentle anti-war fable about a war orphan (Dean Stockwell) who
awakens one day to find his hair has turned bright green. He becomes
the joke of his small town, with the locals urging him to shave his
head. He runs away, but returns because of dreams in which he is
urged by other war orphans to return to town and make everyone aware
of what can happen when little differences blow up into armed
conflagrations. Unfortunately for Losey he happened to make this
film for RKO, which was run by super-reactionary Howard Hughes.
Hughes hated the pacifist message in the film and did his best to
neuter it. Honestly speaking, though, the film is too over the top
and the message too obvious to be truly effective. But it is
interesting viewing nonetheless.
March
20: Speaking of Howard Hughes, TCM is showing his 1930
aerial epic, Hell’s Angels,
at 2:00 am. (Why are the most interesting films always being shown
on the graveyard shift?) The film is concerned with the adventures
of two brothers in World War I (Ben Lyon and James Hall) who, when
not occupied fighting the Germans in aerial duels, are fighting each
other for the charms of local English muffin Jean Harlow. The film
was the teenaged Harlow’s big break on the silver screen (it was
her 19th appearance in a film), and her line, “Would
you be shocked if I put on something more comfortable?” became one
of the catch phrases of the day, and brought the platinum blonde
even more attention despite her atrociously wooden acting at the
time. Although Hughes tried to glom the directing credit, Edmund
Goulding helmed the flying sequences and James Whale directed the
dramatic scenes. Reportedly Whale was so disconcerted by Harlow’s
non-acting that, despite all his efforts to teach her, he wound up
resorting to bringing a flask filled with cognac to the set each day
and slowly anesthetizing the pain with it.
March
21: The Friday Night Spotlight on “Food in the Movies”
grows discernibly weaker tonight, with food being only a periphery
instead of the main event: Oliver, The
Gold Rush, The Loved
One, Cool Hand Luke,
and the Adventures of Robin
Hood have
dining scenes, but cannot be said to be about food. Looks like the
programmers are really reaching here.
March
23: The superlative Italian film, Il
Posto, is being shown during the graveyard shift
(naturally), at 4:00 am. Directed by Ermanno Olmi, this is a clever
and perceptive satire about how the corporate world crushes the
hopes and ambitions of those that work in it. Domenico Cantoni
(Sandro Panseri), the eldest son of a working-class family living
outside Milan, has the chance of a lifetime: to work for one of
Italy’s major corporations. After taking a battery of surreal
tests, he wins a job and becomes a cog in the machine. He even meets
a girl, Antonietta (Loredana Detto), at the factory. They strike a
spark and have coffee during lunch, but that’s it, as they are
assigned to different sections and never have a chance to
get together. Watch for the final scene when a worker dies and his
desk goes up for grabs. It’s all too real.
March
28: Looking for a film rarely seen? May I recommend John
Gilbert in the 1931 MGM crime drama, Gentleman’s
Fate, which is airing at 5:45 p.m. (What, the
afternoon?) Gilbert is Jack Thomas, a man of leisure who learns he
is not the orphan of a wealthy society scion, but actually the son
of dying gangster and bootlegger Francesco Tomasulo, whose money
financed his lifestyle. Of course, he learns all this barely a month
before his upcoming marriage to socialite Marjorie Channing (Leila
Hyams). He also meets a brother, Frank (Louis Wolheim) he never knew
he had, and after the marriage to Marjorie predictably goes south,
Jack fully embraces the gangster life. Gilbert is excellent,
as is Wolheim as his resentful older brother. Gilbert’s
sound films are a whole ‘nother world entirely, and as such are
definitely worth the viewing investment.
The
final Friday Night Spotlight offerings for “Food in the Movies”
partially redeem TCM from the travesty that was the week prior. We
begin at 8:00 pm, with Babette’s
Feast from 1987. I could present a review of the
plot here, but David previously featured this film as one of his
best bets for February 1-8, so I shall reprint his recap below. Why
guild the lily?
This
1987 Danish movie (and the Oscar winner for Best Foreign Film) is
one you shouldn't miss. It's a special film about loyalty, passion,
faith, sacrifice and love. The title character moves to a small
village and lives there for 14 years as the cook of two elderly
sisters who had found true love decades earlier, but didn't marry
because their father, the leader of a religious sect, didn't
approve. The sisters and the rest of the village become very fond of
Babette, and she feels the same. She wins 10,000 francs in a French
lottery. Rather than take the money and return home, she spends it
on an extravagant feast for the sisters, their lost loves and others
in the village. The story is beautiful, the acting is exceptionally
strong, and the message is powerful.
Following
this at 10:00 is a truly exceptional film. The fact that Steve Herte
has not seen this always amazes me, for it was surely made with him
in mind. It’s Big Night,
a wonderfully offbeat film from co-directors Campbell Scott and
Stanley Tucci about two brothers from Italy, Primo (Tony Shaloub)
and Secondo (Tucci) who have opened an Italian restaurant, named
Paradise, on the Jersey Shore during the ‘50s. The restaurant is
failing, in large part to Primo’s insistence on authentic cuisine.
The other Italian eatery in the area is wildly successful, featuring
dishes more suited to the American palette, such as spaghetti and
meatballs, while Primo insists on serving risotto, which was
something of an exotic dish back then. They have a chance to gamble
everything on big night (hence the title) to save the business. It’s
quite an endearing look about the culture clash between Old World
Italy and ‘50s America. Minnie Driver, Isabella Rossellini,
Liev Schreiber, Ian Holm, and Alison Janney supply able support, and
make the film even better.
For
the other films featured with the theme on this night, skip below to
the “Psychotronica” section.
March
29: At 2:00 a.m., TCM reaches out to the roots of
independent film and screens the documentary Free
Radicals: A History of Experimental Film. Following
is a series of shorts made from 1919 to 1972 by such names as Viking
Eggling (Diagonal Symphony),
the wife/husband team of Myra Deren and Alexander Hammid (Meshes
of the Afternoon), Ken Jacobs (Orchard
Street), Hans Richter (Ghosts
Before Breakfast), and Arthur Swerdloff (Gang
Boy). As one who has seen several of the shorts
featured, I can vouch for their unique perspectives on life and film
itself. It’s worth the time and effort to record and watch at
leisure.
PSYCHOTRONICA
March
22: A double-header of the boring Zardoz (1974)
at 2:00 am, followed by the incredible The
Green Slime (1969) at
3:45. Zardoz is so pretentious and boring, directed
by John Boorman (Correct pronunciation here – Bore-man), that not
even the combined talents of Sean Connery and Charlotte Rampling can
save it. On the other hand, The Green Slime is
unremittingly and unintentionally hilarious. Read the article
about it on TCM.com; it’s almost as hilarious as the
film itself, with the author trying to sell us on the “importance”
of the film. He notes that it was the first co-production with a
Japanese crew and a Western cast, and that it’s director, Kinji
Fukasasu, was a favorite of Quentin Tarantino; Tarantino having
dedicated Kill Bill, Vol. 1 to him. So far, okay,
but when our author gives out with sentences such as: “From
idiosyncratic movies like the film noir-like Black
Lizard (1968), starring transvestite actor Akihiro
Maruyama, to a downbeat tale of youthful rebellion, If You
Were Young: Rage (1970), to the Sam Peckinpah-inspired
violence of Sympathy for the Underdog (1971),
Fukasaku's empathy for characters living on the margins of society
is obvious and so is his interest in exploring apocalyptic culture
and survivalist scenarios. In this context, even the anarchic,
rampaging monsters of The Green Slime achieve a
greater significance in Fukasaku's filmography,” we firmly
begin to suspect that he’s been smoking something really good. All
I can say is this: try to watch it without laughing, especially at
what are possibly the goofiest monsters in film history.
March
28: After going through their stock of serious themed
movies, TCM finishes it’s Friday night Spotlight on “Food in the
Movies” with a Psychotronic triplex. At 10:00 pm, viewers can
see cast members chow down on people crackers in Soylent
Green (1973), people themselves in George
Romero’s Night of the Living
Dead (1968), and finally, Bette Davis serves
Joan Crawford a meal she’ll never forget in What
Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962).
March
29: At 10:00, TCM is airing Sam Fuller’s Shock
Corridor (1963). It’s plot of ambitious
reporter Johnny Barrett (Peter Breck) having his stripper girlfriend
(Constance Towers) pose as his sister and commit him to asylum so he
can investigate a murder committed there, was savaged by critics at
the time. But it has aged with time into a classic of its
kind. The question that haunts the viewer throughout the film is
just how long can Barrett hold up until he really requires mental
help? Highly recommended.
No comments:
Post a Comment