I’ve cheated a little to include the early Saturday morning showing of The Outfit, but otherwise this is as back to normal as I can get for the time being. Things have been busy with reviews mostly taking up my writing time that usually would at least partially go to posts here. The good news is that I’ve covered some really interesting things like the BFI’s Blu-ray release of Ozu’s Late Spring. Thanks for sticking around and I hope to be back next week. As always, all times are EDT and program days begin at 6:00 AM.

Friday August 13

4:00 AM The Outfit (Flynn, 1973) - C-103 mins. - Be forewarned that TCM’s website doesn’t indicate letterboxing for this airing so it’s likely to be in full frame instead of the original aspect ratio (1.85:1). That aside, the film is rarely shown and not on DVD. It’s here as the cherry on top of Robert Ryan day, a lovely and well-deserved tribute that also included excellent fare like Men in War and The Set-Up. The star here isn’t Ryan though, it’s Robert Duvall, who plays newly released ex-con entangled with the syndicate of the title. It’s based on a Donald Westlake novel, which is reason enough to check the movie out. In addition to Ryan, the supporting cast includes Joe Don Baker, Karen Black, Timothy Carey and Richard Jaeckel. It should be a Warner Bros. property, having been distributed originally by MGM.

Saturday August 14

8:00 AM Personal Affair (Pelissier, 1953) - BW-82 mins. - What a glorious day on TCM to have all of the movies starring Gene Tierney. This is really special also because Tierney was under contract to Fox and only rarely does TCM show films from that studio. Personal Affair has Tierney play the wife of a teacher (Leo Genn) whose rumored to be having an affair with a student (Glynis Johns). The town explodes in gossip after the student disappears. This might be with MGM since United Artists is listed as U.S. distributor at IMDb. It isn’t on DVD I don’t think.

4:30 PM China Girl (Hathaway, 1942) - BW-96 mins. - Six of the Tierney films on the schedule today are listed as TCM premieres, including this one. It stars George Montgomery as an American newsreel photographer helped out of Japan by the beautiful Tierney. Another picture she did for director Henry Hathaway, Sundown, airs just previous. It’s scheduled to get a TCM-exclusive DVD release at the end of the month. Mitchell Leisen’s The Mating Season follows at 6:15 PM. China Girl is a Fox property, not available on DVD, at least in R1. I wonder why Fox never bothered to release a box set of Tierney’s films.

Monday August 16

2:15 PM Great Day in the Morning (Tourneur, 1956) - C-92 mins. - Robert Stack all day and night, and most of the pictures being shown aren’t on DVD. This is probably minor Jacques Tourneur, but it looks to have come during a good time in his career considering it’s sandwiched alongside Wichita, Nightfall and Night of the Demon. The film has Stack play a Southerner who wins a Denver hotel in a card game and gets there just in time for the Civil War to break out. Virginia Mayo and Ruth Roman are the ladies in town. It’s classified as a western but doesn’t sound terribly action-oriented. Made for RKO, Warner Bros. probably controls in R1 and hasn’t put out anything.

9:45 PM The Tarnished Angels (Sirk, 1957) - BW-91 mins. - Strangely, Stack’s Oscar-nominated performance in Written on the Wind isn’t being shown today but the harder to see reteaming of that film’s director Douglas Sirk and lead cast members Stack, Rock Hudson and Dorothy Malone is on the schedule for tonight. The source material is nothing less than a William Faulkner novel. Stack is a barnstorming pilot married to Malone and Hudson is the newsman trying not to do the wrong thing. The black and white CinemaScope image is well-represented on a DVD in the UK but hasn’t been available in the U.S. That will change soon, when TCM and Universal combine forces to release the film on DVD. It will be available individually and in a Sirk set, but only at TCM’s website and through Movies Unlimited.

Tuesday August 17

7:45 AM The Fallen Sparrow (Wallace, 1943) - BW-94 mins. - John Garfield stars as a Spanish Civil War veteran inadvertently embroiled in an international Nazi search for something that had belonged to his murdered friend. Maureen O’Hara, whose Summer Under the Stars day it is, tags along. Director Richard Wallace also made a pretty good film noir called Framed, four years later. The Fallen Sparrow is based on a novel written by Dorothy B. Hughes, whose other books were adapted to become the films Ride the Pink Horse and In a Lonely Place. The picture at hand is now a Warner Bros. property in R1, having been made for RKO. It’s available, you guessed it, through the Warner Archive on a pricey DVD-R.

Wednesday August 18

2:00 AM The Unfaithful (Sherman, 1947) - BW-109 mins. - Ann Sheridan finally gets some attention, though most of these are movies that do often get shown on TCM and/or can be found in the Warner Archive (Nora Prentiss, Juke Girl). Add The Unfaithful, a film I’ve neglected to see for much too long, to that list. Even more than it starring Sheridan and being considered film noir, I’m most intrigued by the fact that David Goodis worked on the screenplay. I don’t know the extent of his contributions but he is credited alongside just one other writer. The story, a reworking of Maugham’s The Letter which had already been filmed twice before, has Sheridan play a married woman who claims to have killed a stranger in self-defense when it was actually her lover. Zachary Scott is the husband and Lew Ayres is her attorney. I’ve never much cared for either actor. As hinted at, this is available from the Warner Archive Collection.

Thursday August 19

8:45 AM The Shopworn Angel (Potter, 1938) - BW-85 mins. - One more Archive title for good measure. This stars Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart as, respectively, a showgirl and soldier who fall in love just before he goes to fight in WWI. Walter Pidgeon plays Sullavan’s initial love interest, a gangster. The Sullavan-Stewart romance is a ruse at first but does develop into something. Any of the films those two made with each other is highly worth watching. This was MGM, and, like I mentioned, is in the Warner Archive.

12:15 PM Design for Scandal (Taurog, 1941) - BW-85 mins. - Walter Pidgeon is back, as he is all day, and now has Rosalind Russell in tow. He’s a reporter and she’s a judge. It’s a match made in professional, ethical heaven. The actual plot begins with newspaper big shot Edward Arnold talking Pidgeon into investigating Russell, who had ruled heavily for Arnold’s now ex-wife in their divorce proceedings. The romantic comedy roots surely poke through soon enough. This looks to have been an MGM production, likely handing off the rights now to Warner Bros. It isn’t on DVD.

8:00 PM Man Hunt (Lang, 1941) - BW-102 mins. - I’m not sure how Walter Pidgeon ended up being so well-represented in this week’s picks but here it is nonetheless. Fox has a strong, affordable DVD out in R1 of this film but it hasn’t been a regular part of the TCM rotation so I figured a mention couldn’t hurt. The plot centers around a plan to kill Hitler, but, unlike Valkyrie from a couple of years back, this isn’t based on the actual assassination attempt that went awry. Pidgeon is the lead, an Englishman who ventures to Germany and flirts with shooting Hitler. Joan Bennett, beginning her frequent and fruitful period of collaborating with Fritz Lang, co-stars as a Cockney prostitute Pidgeon meets upon returning to London.