An abundance of things kept me away from this thing of ours last week and I don’t think a Fox Movie Channel post for July is going to happen either. Hopefully I’ll get back to that in August. My top 50 films of the 1990s list is just around the corner from being posted so look for that possibly next week if I can finish it or the following one at the latest. The good news here is that TCM has put together a most interesting week highlighted by some Stewart Granger films including Moonfleet and a pre-Code Columbia day on Friday that includes three movies starring Mae Clarke. We never had it so good.  As always, all times are EDT and program days begin at 6:00 AM.

Saturday July 4

12:00 PM The Scarlet Coat (Sturges, 1955) - C-101 mins. - Sometimes I wonder if maybe I’m not patriotic enough. It’s not that I’m not proud of my country, but the consistently inane traditions that pass through year after year always make me grumpy. I get older and the things that accompany holidays which should be meaningful just look increasingly tacky. The same things each year, turning tradition into the equivalent of fruitcake. Amid the smell of barbecues and cacophony of the local fireworks display, there’s always the accompanying schedule of related programming. Ever the creative sort to rise above the fray, TCM has opted for a mix of films, including a few actually about the Revolutionary War. One of these is John Sturges’ dramatization of the Benedict Arnold saga, starring Cornel Wilde as Major John Boulton. Anne Francis, John McIntire, Bobby Driscoll and Robert Douglas as Arnold fill out the cast. The prime time schedule is devoted to “The Birthplace of America” and features films concerning Philadelphia. Made for MGM, The Scarlet Coat hasn’t hit DVD yet, with Warner Bros. controlling the rights.

Sunday July 5

12:00 AM Mockery (Christensen, 1927) - BW-70 mins. - A silent film starring Lon Chaney, Mockery looks to have been the second Hollywood film directed by Haxän filmmaker Benjamin Christensen. It was made for MGM and I’m not aware of a DVD release anywhere. The setting is Siberia during the Russian Revolution. Chaney is a peasant who inadvertently befriends a countess (Barbara Bedford). Ricardo Cortez plays the soldier who falls for her.

Monday July 6

12:15 PM Safari (Young, 1956) - C-91 mins. - Future director of three early James Bond films Terence Young made two exotic location adventure movies with Victor Mature in the same year, both produced by Albert R. Broccoli. One was Zarak and the other this African-set production where Mature goes on safari with Janet Leigh but only has eyes for the Mau Maus. The white man wants revenge for the horrible savagery of tribesmen. If your blinders can get past that aspect, the film sounds fairly interesting. It was released theatrically by Columbia, but nothing DVD-wise from Sony. More movies with the lovely Janet Leigh follow, including My Sister Eileen (2:00 PM) and Who Was That Lady? (6:00 PM), which also stars Tony Curtis.

5:00 AM The Seventh Sin (Neame, 1957) - BW-93 mins. - This is a version of Somerset Maugham’s The Painted Veil, filmed earlier with Greta Garbo and Herbert Marshall and more recently with Naomi Watts and Edward Norton. Here we get Eleanor Parker and Bill Travers. French actor Jean-Pierre Aumont plays the man with whom Parker has an affair. Spurned by her lover, she re-commits herself to husband Travers, a doctor, and travels with him to China to help fight an epidemic of cholera. George Sanders joins in. I’m not sure about Parker as an adulteress, but so be it. Vincente Minnelli is listed as having done uncredited directing work on the film. It was made for MGM and isn’t on DVD yet via Warner Bros.

Tuesday July 7

6:45 AM Our Betters (Cukor, 1933) - BW-83 mins. - George Cukor films all day until the prime time schedule starts at 8:00 PM. Cukor’s name on a picture has never affected me either way, but he tends to get that label of being particularly accommodating to actresses. Some other interesting titles air later in the day (Greer Garson and Robert Mitchum (!) in Desire Me at 11:45 AM and Lana Turner and Ray Milland in A Life of Her Own at 3:30 PM), but I thought this pre-Code, British-set adaptation of a Somerset Maugham play was particularly worth mentioning. Constance Bennett stars, as she had in Cukor’s What Price Hollywood? the year before, and here she plays an American heiress who lovelessly marries into British aristocracy. David O. Selznick produced for RKO. The film isn’t on DVD to my knowledge. The Actress, a Cukor picture that’s available only through the Warner Archive’s burn-on-demand DVD-R service, airs later in the day at 6:30 PM.

12:00 AM Moonfleet (Lang, 1955) - C-87 mins. - I never imagined I’d be so grateful for Stewart Granger occupying the Star of the Month mantle, but since it means I’ll finally get to see this film, all hail Stewart Granger. He plays a buccaneer and from there I’m not sure what happens. I know Fritz Lang directed it for MGM and I know I’m anxious to see it because TCM rarely shows the movie. There is a French DVD I’ve read about, but nothing released by Warner Bros. over here.

Thursday July 9

10:45 AM Mrs. Brown, You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter (Swimmer, 1968) - C-95 mins. - So I guess Peter Noone and his pop band Herman’s Hermits were a fairly big deal at one point. They’re a ways before my time, but my dad mentions them quite often. Like their British brethren, Herman’s Hermits ventured into film more than once. TCM has the earlier Hold On! scheduled just before this airing, at 9:15 AM. What’s this movie about? I haven’t a clue. Probably nothing. I’m sure there are songs in it. Stanley Holloway and Mona Washbourne play Mr. and Mrs. Brown. Thank MGM for making it and Warner Bros. for not releasing it on DVD. Other weird sixties quasi-musical, quasi-comedy pictures air throughout the day.

3:45 AM Blind Alley (Vidor, 1939) - BW-69 mins. - If you’ve not seen The Oklahoma Kid, watch that at 2:15 AM. It’s a pretty good movie, and a real experience seeing Cagney and Bogart in a western, the former with a moustache. James Wong Howe’s photography is stunning. If you have seen that one or are still awake afterward, TCM continues one of its 1939 mini-marathons which will pepper the month with an earlier version of the William Holden-Lee J. Cobb movie The Dark Past. This original telling has Chester Morris as the gangster who takes psychiatrist Ralph Bellamy hostage only to have the doctor analyze his captor. Columbia and Sony haven’t released either incarnation on DVD.

Friday July 10

10:00 AM The Good Bad Girl (Neill, 1931) - BW-67 mins. - When I first skimmed through the July schedule this was the day that really stood out for me. I knew of Mae Clarke from The Public Enemy as the unfortunate recipient of Cagney’s grapefruit for awhile, but it wasn’t until seeing Lady Killer (also with Cagney tormenting Ms. Clarke) that I really took notice of her as an actress. She unfortunately faded into increasingly smaller roles after the early thirties, but kept working for decades. The James Whale version of Waterloo Bridge is particularly worth a look to see just how compelling Mae Clarke could be on screen. It seems that someone at TCM finally took notice and gave her a small, fractured block of films today, beginning with this rarity (not even 5 votes on IMDb) where Clarke is a gangster’s moll looking to get out and marry a regular guy. Columbia was the studio. It’s not on DVD.

1:45 PM Three Wise Girls (Beaudine, 1932) - BW-68 mins. - After The Good Bad Girl, TCM has Attorney for the Defense scheduled, a 1932 lawyer movie in which Mae Clarke doesn’t seem to appear. She is in Final Edition, playing a newspaper reporter alongside Pat O’Brien, at 12:30 PM, as well as this comedy starring Jean Harlow. All of these pictures were done for Columbia and have no DVD releases. Harlow, Clarke, and, I’m guessing, Marie Prevost are the three ladies of the title, models in search of husbands. Immediately next on the schedule, one pre-Code movie from Columbia has been substituted for another. Deception was the original choice, but now it’s Virtue, an interesting film I wrote about last year that stars Carole Lombard as a prostitute trying to reform and Pat O’Brien as the cabbie who marries her without knowing what she’d been, penciled in for 3:00 PM.