This is quite the strange set of picks. The “Summer Under the Stars” thing this week offers a really odd mix of performers so I completely avoided the days devoted to Elvis Presley, John Wayne and Red Skelton. That left several options still, with other hard to find films featuring Deborah Kerr, Jennifer Jones and Miriam Hopkins, plus some early Gene Hackman movies. I may have undersold Thursday night’s triple feature of Lubitsch comedies starring Miriam Hopkins, but that’s the definite highlight of the week overall. As always, all times are EDT and program days begin at 6:00 AM.

Saturday August 15

12:30 PM I See a Dark Stranger (Launder, 1945) - BW-112 mins. - Deborah Kerr fans have something to be happy about today with the schedule devoted completely to her. Several of the films are not available on R1 DVD, though this one actually was put out by Criterion’s all but defunct little sister Home Vision Entertainment. Frank Launder received directing credit but his frequent collaborator Sidney Gilliat helped as a producer and one of the writers on the project. Trevor Howard co-stars with Kerr as an intelligence officer and potential love interest trying to keep her (for her own good and the country’s) from giving away secrets to the Nazis. The character Kerr plays is a young Irish woman with a significant disdain for the English.

2:30 AM Edward, My Son (Cukor, 1949) - BW-113 mins. - Kerr was Oscar-nominated for her role as the alcohol-drenched wife to Spencer Tracy (in a rare villainous turn). Tracy just wants what’s best for his son, even if it involves a multitude of crimes and misdeeds. This London-set drama also includes cinematography from Freddie Young. It was made for MGM, giving Warner Bros. the rights currently. No DVD as of now.

Monday August 17

6:00 PM Love Letters (Dieterle, 1945) - BW-101 mins. - And now it’s Jennifer Jones’ turn in the spotlight. Before the exceptional Portrait of Jennie (following at 8:00 PM), Jones and Joseph Cotten were first teamed with director William Dieterle on this romance, which also earned Jones a nod from the Academy. Cotten is a soldier writing love letters for a friend to his wife (Jones), but he later learns the friend has been killed and the wife may have been involved. Never having gotten over his own feelings for the woman he expressed love for (in another man’s name) yet didn’t meet, Cotten goes looking for her. Love Letters was made by Paramount, but is part of the library which was sold to Universal, thus giving that studio the rights. Universal hasn’t made time for a DVD release.

9:30 PM Carrie (Wyler, 1952) - BW-122 mins. - Late last spring when the Film Society at Lincoln Center was hosting a Jennifer Jones retrospective, they showed this film and had none other than Mr. TCM himself Robert Osborne introduce it. Alas, I didn’t go and my familiarity with this Carrie is minimal, but I thought it was interesting all the same to now see TCM has the film scheduled in prime time when Robert Osborne will yet again be introducing it. Based on Theodore Dreiser’s novel, the plot has Jones as the titular Carrie, a woman coveted by the older, married Laurence Olivier. His wife is played by Miriam Hopkins. I’m not sure what I used to think of director William Wyler, and he’s lost quite a bit of critical prestige in the decades since his last films, but my opinion after seeing things like Dodsworth and The Letter and The Collector is that he was a far more interesting filmmaker than his reputation sometimes suggests. Carrie was released for R1 DVD by Paramount but seems to have gone of out of print. It can still be had affordably through third party sellers and also has an edition in the UK still available.

Thursday August 20

8:15 AM The Richest Girl in the World (Seiter, 1934) - BW-76 mins. - Speaking of Miriam Hopkins, here’s a nice selection of her work in the thirties which is otherwise hard to find. The Lubitsch triple feature starting at 8:00 PM with The Smiling Lieutenant and followed by Trouble in Paradise and Design for Living should not be missed but those can all be obtained (here, here, and here, respectively) on DVD. So here are three more. First up is this romantic comedy where Hopkins is the wealthy lady of the title who trades places with secretary Fay Wray to fool the press. She also ends up fooling Joel McCrea. Norman Krasna’s original story was nominated for an Oscar. The film sounds like a winner. Great poster too. It was made for RKO and hasn’t found a release in R1.

9:45 AM Wise Girl (Jason, 1937) - BW-70 mins. - The next Miriam Hopkins thirties comedy pits her against Ray Milland. She’s rich again in this one. The plot has Hopkins’ heiress going to Manhattan’s Greenwich Village to track down her dead sister’s children who are living with their artist uncle Milland. Director Leigh Jason’s next film would be the screwy classic The Mad Miss Manton. RKO again, same thing regarding the lack of a DVD. Another comedy with Hopkins and Joel McCrea, 1937’s Woman Chases Man, follows at 11:00 AM.

1:00 AM Barbary Coast (Hawks, 1935) - BW-90 mins. - After the Lubitsch pictures, we get this adventure story where Hopkins appears yet again with Joel McCrea, as well as Edward G. Robinson, Walter Brennan, and Brian Donlevy. Miriam goes west to Gold Rush-era San Francisco and picks up a job working the roulette wheel at Robinson’s gambling joint. She falls for miner McCrea much to the displeasure of Robinson. William Wyler’s These Three, which he later remade as The Children’s Hour, follows at 2:45 AM. Barbary Coast can be had on DVD from MGM, but a Hawks film is always worth a mention.

Friday August 21

6:00 AM Mad Dog Coll (Balaban, 1961) - BW-87 mins. - Gene Hackman all day, though it’s hard to tell from this picture since I guess he’s barely in it. Going by IMDb, Hackman’s role is “Cop (uncredited).” Better days were eventually ahead for Mr. Hackman. Mad Dog Coll was one of just a handful of pictures directed by Burt Balaban, and his follow-up to Murder, Inc. It’s about the infamous gangster, played here by John Davis Chandler. A couple of years earlier, Clu Gulager gave a fairly explosive guest turn in The Untouchables as Coll. Among this movie’s cast, look for Jerry Orbach, Telly Savalas and Vincent Gardenia playing Dutch Schultz. Nice of TCM to show it, though I wouldn’t expect too much. Columbia distributed on release. Nothing DVD-wise.

7:30 AM The Split (Flemyng, 1968) - C-89 mins. - Hackman was definitely on the upswing by this point, with Bonnie and Clyde released a year earlier. If you like great, eclectic casts, The Split might be your thing. Here we get Jim Brown (fresh from The Dirty Dozen), Diahann Carroll, Ernest Borgnine, Julie Harris, Jack Klugman, Warren Oates, James Whitmore, and Donald Sutherland. Music score by Quincy Jones. Cinematography from Burnett Guffey. And based on a Donald Westlake novel. Wow. That’s enough cool points already to make any discussion of quality almost irrelevant. Of little consequence then, but the plot seems to be about a gang of thieves who want to rob the box office at a Los Angeles Rams football game. Times sure have changed. Nowadays the Rams obviously are in St. Louis and I can’t imagine a box office being worth the trouble for any sort of elaborate heist. Interesting trivia from IMDb is that The Split was apparently the first theatrical release to receive the “R” rating. MGM was the studio so it’s now with Warner Bros. No dice on the DVD, but it seems like a potential Warner Archive title at some point.

2:30 PM I Never Sang for My Father (Cates, 1970) - C-92 mins. - Continued recognition for Hackman, as he earned his second Oscar nomination here before winning for The French Connection the following year. Melvyn Douglas (also nominated) plays the newly widowed father and Hackman is his son who’s ready to get married, live his own life. I understand the almost constant cobwebs inside Sony’s catalog distribution (some of which seem to be finally getting knocked down), but it’s still shocking that this movie hasn’t been released on DVD. It even got a laserdisc release. According to Amazon, back in 1998 - when DVD had already started - Columbia put out a VHS (the second edition, I believe). With Blu-ray slightly hovering, if not fully taking off just yet, maybe we’ll get one of those hideous Martini Movies-style covers for this fairly soon.