Second week of June, second week of TCM picks at the new place. A good mix of directors these next few days, though I’m not sure about having a day’s worth of George Sidney. As always, all times are EDT and program days begin at 6:00 AM.

Saturday June 6

7:45 AM These Three (Wyler, 1936) - BW-93 mins. - William Wyler day on TCM. Dead End starts off at 6:00 AM and is followed by this film, adapted by Lillian Hellman from her own play. Miriam Hopkins and Merle Oberon play two school teachers who face small town scandal at the hand of a student played by the Oscar-nominated Bonita Granville. Both teachers are in love with town doctor Joel McCrea. Twenty-five years later Wyler returned to the same material with Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine in The Children’s Hour (airing at midnight), but this time kept the original lesbian angle in Hellman’s story. These Three has not made it to DVD that I know of, and should be an MGM property.

4:45 AM Hell’s Heroes (Wyler, 1930) - BW-68 mins. - The last Wyler film being shown is actually the oldest. It’s one of several tellings of the story that was also filmed as 3 Godfathers by John Ford, and later tweaked into a Japanese anime movie by Satoshi Kon called Tokyo Godfathers. Set on Christmas Eve, the plot concerns three outlaws who come across a pregnant woman after they’ve robbed a bank. When the woman dies in child birth, the men, headed in Wyler’s film by Charles Bickford, find decency and try to bring the newborn out of the harsh desert into safety. This early sound film was done for Universal, reportedly the studio’s first sound picture made outdoors, and hasn’t received a DVD release.

Sunday June 7

12:00 PM Four’s a Crowd (Curtiz, 1938) - BW-92 mins. - A fairly loaded picture in terms of talent, but not one that gets mentioned much. Michael Curtiz directs (all day!), and the three leads are Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland and Rosalind Russell. Flynn, coming right off of The Adventures of Robin Hood, plays a publicist involved romantically with newspaper woman Russell but increasingly interested in the daughter (de Havilland) of his millionaire client (Walter Connolly). Attempts at screwball comedy follow. A well-rounded supporting cast also includes Patric Knowles, Hugh Herbert, Franklin Pangborn and Margaret Hamilton (aka the Wicked Witch of the West). IMDb even has Lana Turner down as an uncredited passerby. This is Warner Bros. and no DVD has been put out so far. At one point the movie could’ve been a candidate for a Flynn set, but I’m not sure the WB is still in that business. Another three Flynn movies follow.

4:30 AM The Cabin in the Cotton (Curtiz, 1932) - BW-78 mins. - This is an early Bette Davis movie not on DVD where the star is really Richard Barthelmess. I wasn’t going to mention it until I read TCM’s article that begins with, “Ah’d love to kiss ya, but ah just washed mah hair,” which Davis later said was her favorite line she ever had. You can’t really deny that sort of writing. The story is about the plight of a sharecropper (Barthelmess), including his romantic dilemma involving the forward daughter (Davis) of the plantation. Warner Bros. again, with no DVD available.

Monday June 8

8:30 AM Human Desire (Lang, 1954) - BW-91 mins. - You could do worse than to just take Monday off and sit in front of the television all day with it tuned to TCM. Generally, TCM nails a fine order with scheduling, but the channel is off today. The excellent (on DVD in R1 from Kino) Hangmen Also Die kicks things off at 6:00 AM and the much more difficult to see re-teaming of Glenn Ford and Gloria Grahame in Human Desire follows. The two had just a year before starred in Lang’s masterpiece quality The Big Heat, which can be seen much later in the day at 6:15 PM. Even if Human Desire is hardly as good, there’s still a fascination about pairing Ford and Grahame again. It’s based on an Emile Zola book which also served as the basis for Renoir’s La bête humaine in 1938. The plot has Ford as a railroad engineer just returned from fighting in Korea. He develops an unhealthy fascination with co-worker Broderick Crawford’s wife (Grahame) and something unseemly quickly ensues. While The Big Heat and Lang’s previous noirs were in Academy ratio, Human Desire was photographed in widescreen and that little difference, for me anyway, makes for a slightly strange transition. The latter picture can be had on DVD in an edition from Japan (DVD Beaver captures) and an R2 from Spain. Sony is the rights holder, and while two film noir sets have been unofficially announced for later this year in R1, Human Desire is not one of the titles said to be included.

Tuesday June 9

11:15 AM Night Ambush (Powell, 1957) - BW-105 mins. - Several Michael Powell films made with fellow Archer Emeric Pressburger air while the sun’s out today. All are now available on R1 DVD except this war drama (the only one of these I’ve not watched), called Ill Met by Moonlight in the UK and released to R2 by ITV. British military men must kidnap a Nazi general in Crete and bring him to Cairo. Dirk Bogarde stars and is joined by Marius Goring, David Oxley and Cyril Cusack. The movie was produced and distributed by the Rank Organisation. I’m not sure where the rights sit in R1. The brilliant A Matter of Life and Death follows at 1:00 PM.

Wednesday June 10

4:00 AM The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (Sturges, 1947) - BW-90 mins. - Despite being a massive fan of Preston Sturges, this is a film I haven’t seen. Harold Lloyd plays the title character, a former football hero who loses his job as a store clerk and proceeds to live it up (presumably). The production was marred by conflict between Sturges and Lloyd and the picture didn’t prove successful at the box. Producer Howard Hughes re-cut and gave it a new release under the title Mad Wednesday a few years later, also with little luck. Sturges rebounded with Unfaithfully Yours for Fox, but the golden years were over soon enough. Lloyd didn’t make another movie. There are so many cheap DVD releases of this one that it must be in the public domain.

Friday June 12

6:00 AM Timbuktu (Tourneur, 1959) - BW-92 mins. - Jacques Tourneur fans can really load up today, as TCM is showing four currently unreleased-on-DVD films of his in a row (including Nightfall which should be in a Sony film noir set soon). Victor Mature stars as an American gunrunner who gets caught up with the wife (Yvonne De Carlo) of a French colonel while in the title city. Reviews don’t seem too favorable for this one, but it’s rarely shown. With United Artists originally releasing, MGM should now have the rights.

9:30 AM The Fearmakers (Tourneur, 1958) - BW-85 mins. - Korean War vet Dana Andrews is working in Washington at a PR firm and discovers that Communists are running the joint. Red Scare, all the way. And why is Mel Torme in a supporting role? This too was put out by United Artists and can’t be found on DVD (in R1 anyway), with MGM controlling. Berlin Express follows at 11:00 AM.

1:15 AM The Purple Rose of Cairo (Allen, 1985) - BW-82 mins. - I think this may be Woody’s most magical film, a total confection marred slightly by Danny Aiello’s overbearing tendencies but nonetheless one of the movies that truly make the filmgoing experience seem transcendent. It’s also short in length and, somewhat ironically, perfect for television viewing. There’s an MGM disc, but it has no extra features. I’m also fond of Broadway Danny Rose, which TCM is showing at 8:45 PM after Richard Schickel’s interview documentary with Allen.