Welcome to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" thread, for the week of August 18-24, 2008. We have seven more fascinating stars in TCM's "Summer Under the Stars"; a classic foreign film showing up on IFC, and one of Hollywood's more tragic death stories. As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.

We're going to start off with TCM's star for Monday, Jack Palance. You probably remember him for doing pushups when he won his Oscar for City Slickers, but he had been an actor for 40 years before that. TCM are naturally showing those older movies, and the one I'll recommend is the predictable but fun Second Chance, Monday at 6:30 PM. Palance is only the co-star; the leads are Robert Mitchum and Linda Darnell. Mitchum plays a boxer who's plying his trade in Mexico trying to work his way back up the ladder, who meets Darnell, who seems to him to have a past of her own, too. She does, of course; she's a gangster's moll, and has tried to escape to Mexico to get away from him. You can figure out what happens next: her boyfriend finds her, and makes life difficult for her by sending the thuggish Palance after her. By now, though, she's fallen in love with Mitchum, and the two take a cable car to a mountain resort to try to escape. That taking a cable car gives away an obvious plot point, but if it's not obvious enough for you, consider that the movie was originally released in 3D.

On Tuesday, TCM will be honoring Barbara Stanwyck with 24 hours of her movies. Much of the morning and afternoon will be pre-Codes, which are amongst my favorites. I've recommended Night Nurse (10:00 AM) before, as well as Baby Face (3:15 PM), but who can't help but love movies like Ten Cents a Dance, at 8:30 AM Tuesday, in which Stanwyck plays a dance-hall girl who's romanced by wealthy businessman Ricardo Cortez but is in love with another man -- but uses Cortez's love for her to get her husband a job in his company! Unfortunately for Stanwyck, her husband promptly proceeds to embezzle thousands of dollars from the company. Perhaps the most interesting thing about the movie, however, is that it was directe by -- Lionel Barrymore!

If Hollywood pre-Codes aren't your thing, perhaps you might like a foreign film from the pre-Code era: Fritz Lang's The Testament of Dr. Mabuse, Tuesday at 10:05 AM on IFC. This complex story -- Lang's last in Germany before he fled the Nazis -- tells the story of a series of crimes that are seemingly commited from an insane, Svengali-like criminal mastermind -- including crimes committed from beyond the grave.

Getting back to Stanwyck, some of her later movies show up in prime time and overnight Tuesday on TCM, including B.F.'s Daughter, at 4:00 AM Wednesday. This movie has nothing to do with any football players we all know and love, but with the daughter of an industrialist (Stanwyck plays the daughter, Charles Coburn her father) who falls in love with a liberal college professor (Van Heflin) and wants to marry him even though it wasn't the thing to do in the blue-blood society in which she grew up. It's the sort of glossy soap opera-style drama that Hollywood did such a good job of making in the 1930s. Unfortunately, BF's Daughter was made in 1948, by which time such movies seemed dated. Still, it's fun to watch such wonderful actors, even when they're burdened by a script such as this.

Wednesday on TCM sees us switch from Barbara Stanwyck to the truly wonderful Edward G. Robinson. His best known work kicks off prime time, as Little Caesar airs at 8:00 PM Wednesday, followed by Key Largo at 9:30. However, these two are followed by the lesser-known Tight Spot, at 11:15 PM. In this one, Robinson plays a district attorney involved in a case against the mob. His star witness is an aging Ginger Rogers, who's been released from prison on the proviso that she testify. Of course, in addition to the problem of trying to get her to testify, there's the other problem that the mob are looking for her so that they can rub her out before she can testify. In fact, she's holed up in a hotel room with police guard Brian Keith, who seems to be falling for her. Rogers isn't at her most glamorous here, but she's still quite good, while Robinson is as effective as ever. Perhaps the most fun is seeing Lorne Greene show up as a mobster.

Robinson shows his range in two movies airing earlier in the day on TCM, both of which I've recommended before. First, at 8:00 AM Wednesday, is Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet, in which Robinson plays the man who finds the first effective treatment for syphilis. It's a typical Warner Brothers biopic of the time (1940), but Robinson is stil quite good. It's followed at 9:45 AM by Our Vines Have Tender Grapes, in which Robinson plays a Norwegian-American farmer in World War II Wisconsin, married to Agness Moorhead and raising daughter Margaret O'Brien. I'm sure you'll all love Hollywood's look at Wisconsin.

Thursday is given over to the lovely Ava Gardner, with the best-known of the movies being shown that day probably being On The Beach at 10:00 PM ET. It's a star-studded story about survivors of a nuclear war huddled together in Australia, realizing that the fallout is going to come their way just as it's come to the rest of the world, and that their remaining time on earth is quite brief. In addition to Gardner, there's Gregory Peck as a US Navy captain; Anthony Perkins as an Australian naval adjutant; and Fred Astaire in a rare dramatic role as a cynical scientist.

Perhaps more interesting, however, may be a movie airing over on the Fox Movie Channel on Thursday morning: Hangover Square, Thursday at 7:30 AM. Laird Cregar stars as a composer who has periodic blackouts, and kills somebody during that time. George Sanders plays a Scotland Yard detective who investigates the murders, while Linda Darnell plays a singer with whom Cregar falls in love, but eventually stranlges. This was Cregar's last movie, as he died before it was released. He was built like an offensive lineman, being 6'3" and weighing close to 300 lbs., as can be seen in movies like Heaven Can Wait. However, in order to play the lead in Hangover Square, Cregar went on a crash diet, losing close to 100 pounds. The crash diet put a severe strain on his internal organs, though, and he had to have emergency stomach surgery, and died of a heart attack shortly thereafter in hospital, at the young age of 28.

Getting back to some happier movies, we have a day of Trevor Howard movies on TCM on Friday -- and the best part is that they're not showing Brief Encounter! Trevor Howard is in The Third Man, though, and that shows up at 10:00 PM Friday. However, I'd like to give more attention to a movie I haven't recommended before: I See a Dark Stranger, Friday at 4:15 PM on TCM. The real star of this movie is a young Deborah Kerr, playing an Irish woman in 1944 who hates the British so much that she's willing to become an IRA terrorist. She goes to England, and eventually gets involved in a plot to get a Nazi out of an English prison, which is where she meets British officer Trevor Howard, who immediately falls in love with her. Unfortunately for Kerr, though, she gets into deeper and deeper trouble as she tries to cover her tracks -- she's a novice in the spy game, and has no idea what she's doing. It's the sort of movie that the British were really good at making in the years just after the end of World War II.

Another such movie with Trevor Howard in it is Green for Danger, which follows at 6:15 PM. Here, the star is actually Alastair Sim, playing a police inspector who has to determine what happened when a postman died on the operating table in a hospital in rural England. It's an excellent movie, with quite a few twists and turns, and some very good cinematography as well.

Saturday sees a pair of stars in "Summer Under the Stars" on TCM: Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. A lot of the offerings during the morning and afternoon on Saturday will be the two-reelers they made for Hal Roach, while several of their feature-length movies will air in prime time, such as Way Out West at 9:45 PM, and Saps at Sea at 3:30 AM Sunday.

Finally, on Sunday, TCM's star is Henry Fonda. First up is a little-seen movie from before Fonda became a contract player at Fox: 1937's Slim, at 6:00 AM Sunday. Fonda plays a son of farmers during the Great Depression. Seeing no job prospects on the farm, he decides to join a gang of workers involved in the Depression-era project of bringing electricity to the masses. It's a natural subject for a movie, as you've got the high tension of working on top of electric pylons with dangerous juice running through them, dealing with problems that plague us even to this day, such as power outages in really bad weather. Of course, there's also the tacked-on buddy tale (Pat O'Brien as Fonda's friend) and the love interest (Margaret Lindsay). Fonda considered this one of his favorite movies.

Later on Sunday, as part of TCM's "Essentials Jr.", at 8:00 PM, is the pleasant comedy Yours, Mine and Ours. Fonda plays a widowed naval officer with ten children, who meets naval nurse Lucille Ball, who is a widow with eight children of her own. You can guess what happens next: fate (or in this case, mutual friend Van Johnson) conspires to bring them together romantically. It's a good comedy for the whole family (avoid the remake), although the one frightening thing about it is that it's based on a true story.

If you don't care so much for Henry Fonda, you can always switch back to the Fox Movie Channel, which is showing Young Frankenstein. Gene Wilder stars as Dr. Frankenstein, the grandson of the original Dr. Frankenstein in this movie, Mel Brooks' parody of the horror genre. You'll want to check your local listings, however. While FMC's site is claiming this airs at 5:30 PM on Sunday, some TV listing sites show it as being scheduled for 10:00 PM Sunday.

Good stuff as always. The syphlis cure movie sounds like a must-see!

Didn't you see it when I recommended it last October?

Robinson is however quite good in a role that's atypical for him.

I know I'm probably the only one but I've always thought that Young Frankenstein was the stupidest movie ever made. Just not my type of humor I guess.

Master thinks Vantage Point sucked