George White, 1892-1968

This isn't really a birthday post, since George White was born in March, but tomorrow sees what looks to be the only airing of a movie that the Fox Movie Channel last pulled out of the vault several years ago: George White's 1935 Scandals, tomorrow morning at 7:30 AM on FMC.

White wasn't very involved in the movies; in fact, White was a fairly prominent Broadway producer starting back in the late 1910s. He produced a popular revue show unsurprisingly called George White's Scandals, which the year in question also part of the title. The movie which is airing tomorrow morning is a movie version of the revue, with a fairly thin framing story about White (who actually appears as himself in the movie as well as directing it) travelling down south and finding some novelty acts for his revue. They go back north with him to New York, where they become stars. But they let fame go to their heads. Everything ends happily, however, with a bunch of musical numbers thrown in for good measure.

Although it's a film that's not nearly as good as some of the Warner Bros musicals from the early Busby Berkeley era, and doesn't have the polish of the MGM musicals from the late 1930s, George White's 1935 Scandals is still interesting for having one of the earliest screen appearances of Eleanor Powell, who does a "novelty" dancing act. In fact, this is the film which got her her contract over at MGM, where she wen't on to become fairly famous. The female star of the film isn't Powell, but Alice Faye, a Fox contract player whom White had discovered several years earlier when he cast her in the Broadway version Scandals of 1931. As for Faye's film career, it took off when White took his Scandals to Hollywood, but not in 1935; instead, Faye's first movie was the Scandals of 1934, which also starred Rudy Vallee (who was also in the 1931 Scandals with Faye).

When good TV characters go bad

There are some actors out there who are generally best remembered for characters they played on the small screen. Two such actors show up together to conspire to commit murder in the 1949 film Red Light, airing tomorrow morning at 6:00 AM on TCM

George Raft is not one of those actors; he's the star of the movie, however. He plays Johnny Torno, who runs a successful trucking company in San Francisco. He's got a brother Jess (Arthur Franz) who is a Catholic priest who spent the last several years serving as an army chaplain in World War II, and winning a medal for his heroic work in a POW camp. The kid brother is finally coming home to a happy reunion with his brother and an assignment to a parish of his own in northern California.

Meanwhile, back at the prison ranch, you've got Perry Mason. Er, not Perry Mason, but Raymond Burr playing Nick Cherney. Nick was a bookkeeper at the Torno trucking company, until he rather foolishly decided to embezzle a substantial amount of money from Torno. Torno sent Nick to prison, and Nick wants revenge. Fortunately he's got a way of exacting revenge while keeping the perfect alibi: his prison comrade, Col. Sherman Potter from the M*A*S*H unit. Er, actually it's Harry Morgan, back in the days when he was going by "Henry" in screen credits, playing fellow prisoner Rocky. Rocky is gonig to get out on parole a few days before Nick, so Nick has Rocky kill Jess while Nick is still in prison.

Rocky shoots the brother to death in his hotel room, but the brother survives long enough for Johnny to get there. Johnny hears his brother's dying words, which is that the answer he seeks can be found in the Bible. Johnny looks through his brother's bible, but can't find the name of the killer written in it anywhere. Johnny figures that Jess must have written it in the hotel room's Gideon Bible -- but that's been taken from the room! Johnny tries to find that bible, and even enlists the help of one of the people who had the room after his brother was killed (Virginia Mayo) in his attempt to find it. Mayo, meanwhile, becomes a bit frightened of the lengths Johnny is willing to go to to gain revenge....

Red Light is one of those lower-budget noirish movies which is actually quite entertaining. Raymond Burr, to be honest, had played several heavies before becoming Perry Mason (most notably the killer in Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window), and is good here as Nick. Harry Morgan, I think, didn't play quite so many heavies, but he's just as good as Burr. George Raft never had much range, but his man looking for revenge character fits into that limited range. The one problem with the movie is that it has any number of plot holes. First off is the question of why Jess is being billeted in a hotel room. He's an army chaplain who has a brother who's thrilled to see him. You'd think that either the military would have room at a army base for him; he'd stay at the rectory of the bishop's cathedral; or he'd stay at his brother's apartment. More importantly, you'd wonder why Jess didn't write anything in his own Bible. It would have been just as easy for him to get his personal bible from his suitcase after being shot as it would have been for him to get the Gideon Bible from the desk drawer. (And how big were Gideon Bibles back then? The last time I was in a hotel room that had a Gideon Bible, the thing was surprisingly small and wouldn't have had enough room to write much of anything.)

Despite its plot flaws, Red Light is a fun movie. Sadly, it doesn't seem to have gotten a DVD release, so you're going to have to watch the TCM showing.

Fox mystery series

I briefly mentioned the Lone Wolf mystery series a few weeks back; the movies are airing on Saturday mornings on TCM for the next several weeks. Mystery series -- that is, B-movies in which an actor played the same detective over the course of several pictures -- were quite popular in the late 1930s and early 1940s. 20th Century-Fox had their own series, the seven Michael Shayne movies. Two of them are airing tomorrow on FMC: Just off Broadway at 7:30 AM, followed by Dressed to Kill at 9:00 AM.

I haven't seen Just Off Broadway, so I can't really comment on it. But Dressed to Kill showed up a few weeks back, and it's a pretty entertaining little mystery. Fox contract player Lloyd Nolan plays detective Michael Shayne, who at the start of this movie is supposed to get married to his long suffereing girlfriend Joanne (Mary Beth Hughes). Suddenly he hears a scream in the apartment hotel where he's staying, and discovers that another of the tenants, a wealthy Broadway producer, has been shot along with a female companion. Just as interestingly, they're both in costume, and the shootings seem to have been particularly ingenious. Michael, of course, begins to investigate and finds a particularly baffling mystery. The producer had gathered together several of the surviving cast members from a show he had done 25 years earlier, and it seems as if everybody at the dinner had a motive to kill him.

To be honest, this is fairly standard stuff for a mystery series. There are the red herrings, the hidden identities, and perhaps most fun in Dressed to Kill, the bumbling police detective, who is played by William Demarest. Demarest was one of the great comedic character actors and is in fine form here as the policeman who is trying to stay one step ahead of Shayne but always seems to be one step behind. The resolution of the mystery isn't perfect, although to be fair, that's the case in a lot of mystery movies. Still, Dressed to Kill provides good entertainment value for its B-movie level.

Reminders

About three weeks ago I made brief mention of the film The Next Voice You Hear..., and mentioned that it would be airing on Novmeber 28. Today is that day, and it's airing at 2:30 PM on TCM. The Next Voice You Hear... is airing on TCM as part of a day of lesser-known movies from 1950, and is one of those Dory Schary films I would lump in with the "trying to put out a message" films. Even though it's clearly got Christian morals, I'd agree with other commenters who say that it's gentler in putting its message across then the similarly-themed The Day the Earth Stood Still (the early 1950s version; not the recent remake).

Another of the films in this morning's TCM lineup is one that I first mentioned two years ago, and has already gotten a release as part of the Warner Archive Collection: Crisis, starring Cary Grant, which comes on at 11:00 AM. Now if only The Next Voice You Hear... could get the DVD treatment, perhaps with some of the other stuff Nancy Davis (Reagan) did in the early 1950s. One of these days perhaps TCM will get around to showing Talk About a Stranger or Night Into Morning again. I thought I'd blogged about one or the other, but apparently not.

TV movies

The Fox Movie Channel from time to time shows some TV movies. One of them is coming up this evening: Karl Malden in Word of Honor at 6:00 PM. Malden plays a small-town reporter who gets an anonymous tip about the location of a woman who's disappeared, and it leads to the prosecution of one of the town's more prominent citizens on murder charges. The problem is, the prosecutor needs Malden's tip, and he refuses to reveal his source, who swore him to secrecy. This causes the typical legal problems for Malden, but Word of Honor goes a bit over the top in having it cause all sorts of other problems in Malden's personal life. Specifically, one of Malden's daughters is about to ger married, and the prosecution means that suddenly everybody in town wants not to go to the wedding.

I don't normally recommend TV movies. Partly it's because they don't show up very often, and partly it's because they're on the commercial cable channels nowadays. Back in the late 1970s and 1980s, however, when we were pretty much in a three-network world, it was a lot more common for the networks to produce original TV movies and show them with a lot of fanfare. It also wasn't uncommon for past stars to show up in these TV movies, such as Karl Malden in Word of Honor. (To be fair, he had become a TV star by the early 1980s as well after his long stint on Streets of San Francisco.) Word of Honor has some other interesting casting: Rue McClanahan, later of The Golden Girls, plays Malden's wife; Ron Silver (later of Reversal of Fortune) plays a big-city journalist covering the press freedom angle of the case; and a young John Malkovich shows up as the fiancé.

And to be honest, I wouldn't mind seeing some of the other old TV movies from back in the day wind up somewhere on TV. I distinctly recall one from my childhood called White Mama with an elderly Bette Davis supporting a black kid who wants to grow up to become a boxer. (I see it's directed by Jackie Cooper.) Davis would go on to make another TV movie about the right to die called Right of Way, which co-starred James Stewart.

I don't know that TV movies like this necessarily need to be on TCM, however. There are a number of nostalgia channels that you can probably get on the digits subchannels of your local broadcasters. I can get ThisTV and RTV for example; there are others out there too. Since these TV movies were originally conceived as having commercial breaks, these nostalgia channels would be a perfect place for the old TV movies. It's just a question of who has the broadcast rights to all these things.

The name's the same

Back in May, 2008, I mentioned the 1937 comedy Easy Living. There's a movie coming up on TCM overnight tonight at 1:00 AM called Easy Living, but it's a rather different movie.

In tonight's Easy Living, Victor Mature plays a professional football player who's diagnosed with a heart ailment and so should retire, but his greedy wife (Lizabeth Scott) wants him to keep playing so he can remain in the spotlight for her sake. Lucille Ball also appears as the team's secretary. This is one I don't think I've seen before, so I can't go into too much more detail.

The box guides should have it right that tonight's movie is the football-themed Easy Living: TCM's online schedule lists tonight's theme as "Ready to Retire", kicking off at 8:00 PM with this week's Essential, Dodsworth. As such, the Mature Easy Living certainly fits in with the theme, whereas the 1930s version doesn't. Sadly, this 1940s version doesn't seem to be available on DVD, so you're going to have to catch the TCM showing tonight.

Kick 'em when they're down

I've mentioned a couple of times before that I'm a football fan, so I was looking forward to watching the Packers beat the crap out of the Detroit Lions. And then Ndamokung Suh, dirty player that he is, kicked one of the Packer linemen while he was on the ground. That sort of football violence wouldn't get into a classic movie, I don't think. But it's kind of surprising how violent people could be to each other in old movies.

Gangsters roughed each other up quite a bit, as you can see in the ending of the classic gangster film The Public Enemy when rival gangsters deliver James Cagney back to his family. On the other hand, in some movies such as The Big Combo, the gang boss was careful to make certain there wouldn't be any bruises on the cops they roughed up -- you wouldn't want to leave evidence.

I was just watching The Window on TCM the other morning as part of the salute to Ruth Roman. (Sadly, it's not yet on DVD.) The kid at the center of the story escapes from Roman and her husband (Paul Stewart) and when they catch up with him again they put him in a taxi and smack him around quite a bit. You'd think the taxi driver would have a problem with this.

As for actual kicking of people, I'd guess that most of the time it's bratty little kids kicking adults. Kurt Russell, in his piece that he did for TCM on Elvis Presley, mentions that his acting career started as an extra in It Happened At the World's Fair, in a scene where he gets to kick Presley in the ankle. I know I've seen other scenes of kids kicking adults -- there's one of one of the female child stars kicking a butler, but I can't remember either actor or the movie. When it comes to adults kicking adults, all I can think of is Rosa Klebb in From Russia With Love, and Bette Davis kicking the crap out of Joan Crawford in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

Any other good kicking movies?

Let's Talk Turkey

A mentioned at the beginning of November that I had been asked about the short Let's Talk Turkey. At the time I didn't know when it was going to be on. A week or so later, I noticed that TCM wasn't announcing shorts in its online schedule. That fortunately seems to have changed. And unsurprisingly, Let's Talk Turkey is one of the shorts showing up on Thanksgiving. Specifically, it's showing up at 7:42 PM, just after Miracle on 34th Street.

Roman Bohnen, 1894-1949

Today marks the birth anniversary of character actor Roman Bohnen, a name you might have seen pop up in the credits a number of times, even if you don't necessarily recognize which character he's playing. Bohnen had a fairly brief career, having come from the stage to Hollywood in his early 40s, and then dying of a heart attack while doing more stage work. But his ten years in film were productive, much in the same way that Sydney Greenstreet had a brief but productive career. While Greenstreet made about two dozen films, Bohnen appeared in over 30.

I've recommended a couple of those films before, although obviously not for Bohnen's small roles. Bohnen appears as the warden of the brutal prison in Brute Force, for example. He also shows up at the beginning of The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, as the father of the boy who grows up to be the character portrayed (as an adult) by Kirk Douglas.

Perhaps Bohnen's best role, however, comes in the film The Best Years of Our Lives. Bohnen plays the father of Fred Derry (Dana Andrews), and gets a particularly poignant scene when he reads the commendation report that his son got for one of his medals. I'm sorry to say that I don't have any good video capture software, and couldn't find a good picture of this scene on the web.

Not much on

Thanksgiving is tomorrow here in the States, which means that I'm in a bit of a holiday mood and not really excited about writing much. On the bright side, there doesn't seem to be much to write about today. TCM is continuing its Battle of the Blondes tonight, starting off with a pair of Betty Grable movies from the early 1940s: Sweet Rosie O'Grady at 8:00 PM, followed by Down Argentine Way at 9:30 PM. Both of these were made at Fox in Technicolor; one of the things Fox did well was putting Grable in its Technicolor musicals.

That's followed by a pair of Doris Day movies. Day may have been blonde, but I don't know that I'd select her as one of the actresses in a "Battle of the Blondes". First up is Tea For Two at 11:15 PM, followed by That Touch of Mink at 1:00 AM.

I briefly mentioned the film The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer when I talked about movies with basketball scenes. It's airing at 4:30 AM tomorrow morning.

Finally, there's a Private Screenings interview with a bunch of child stars that Robert Osborne did back in 2006. It's being shown in honor of Margaret O'Brien, one of my least favorite child stars; she's getting the rest of the morning to herself with several of her films, including Meet Me In St. Louis, one of those movies that really makes me retch.