Classic Movie Picks: August 2013

by Lani

Each month, I scour the Turner Classic Movies schedule for upcoming films that I can't miss. The highlights are posted here for your reading and viewing pleasure! (All listed times are Eastern Standard, check your local listings or TCM.com for actual air times in your area. Each day's schedule begins at 6:00 a.m.; if a film airs between midnight and 6 a.m. it is listed on the previous day's programming schedule.)

TCM's Summer Under the Stars is back! Because each day in August is devoted to the films of a single actor or actress, this is the perfect time to discover new films featuring your favorite stars. This year's line-up includes S.U.t.S. perennials like Doris Day, Bette Davis, and Humphrey Bogart, as well as never-before-spotlighted actors like Maggie Smith, Wallace Beery, and Mickey Rooney. I've picked out eight stars whose films I'm especially looking forward to watching, including three Oscar-winners. Most of the films I've picked here are new to me, but when one of my favorites, like After the Fox or The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, shows up I can't pass up the opportunity to watch it again.

8/4: Mary Boland
Boland was a popular character actress in the 30s and 40s, usually cast as a society matron or zany matriarch. In the western comedy Ruggles of Red Gap (8 PM), Boland and her real-life husband Charlie Ruggles play wealthy ranchers who win an English butler in a card game. (But Boland's husband isn't the Ruggles of the title, that's Charles Laughton as the butler.) The silly screwball He Married His Wife (9 AM) stars Joel McCrea and Valerie Randall as a married couple  pulled apart by horse racing and brought closer by divorce; however, Boland reportedly steals the show as a giddy socialite whose home serves as the film's main location.

8/8: Ramon Navarro
After the death of Rudolph Valentino, Mexican-born Ramon Navarro became Hollywood's top Latin lover; however, Navarro's greatest success was as Judah Ben-Hur in 1925's Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (8 PM). Navarro's stardom didn't transition to talkies for some reason; it wasn't the fault of his voice - Navarro was a trained tenor. And he's in full voice in the operetta The Cat and the Fiddle (6:15 PM) opposite Jeannette MacDonald. (The New York Times review from 1934 notes that Navarro appeared in person at one of the 2 NYC theaters showing the film, performing several songs on a program which included "dancers, Ruth Harrison and Alex Fisher; George Campo, pantomimist; the Chester Hale dancing girls, and Little Jack Little and his Radio Orchestra." I'd like to request that this sort of personal appearance become standard again. Just think, after a screening of The Wolverine, Hugh Jackman could do his cabaret show!)

8/12: Catherine Deneuve
French beauty Catherine Deneuve is an actress who I enjoy more with each role I see her in. She stars in one of my all-time favorites, the gorgeous and haunting musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (8 PM). She's said that one of her personal favorites is Tristana (10 PM), directed by Luis Bunuel, about an older man's obsession with his young ward. However, critical opinion points to 1993's My Favorite Season (12 AM) as Deneuve' finest performance to date, as a middle-aged woman caring for her aging mother and reconnecting with an estranged brother.

 8/19: Randolph Scott
Last May I really enjoyed discovering Ride the High Country (9:30 PM), Randolph Scott's final film after over a decade of appearing exclusively in westerns. So I'm really interested to see some of his westerns from the 50s directed by Budd Boetticher, which Scott also co-produced with Harry Joe Brown. Though regarded as popular B-movies at the time, these collaborations have gained critical attention in recent years. Ride Lonesome (5 PM) casts Scott as a cowboy seeking revenge and along the way he becomes entangled with a couple of outlaws and a beautiful widow. In The Tall T (8 PM), Scott plays a down-on-his-luck rancher who falls for a woman being held for ransom.

8/20: Hattie McDaniel
It's unfortunate that the immensely talented Hattie McDaniel spent most of her career playing maids. But no matter how small the role, McDaniel brings a wonderful spark to each of her films and she's the only Oscar-winning actress on my list this month. Her award-winning role came in 1939's Gone with the Wind (8 PM); anyone watching that film cannot deny that McDaniel's performance is a highlight. Where that film is epic and heavy, Janie (8:15 AM) is breezy and light; however, both films depict a nation at war and in both McDaniel plays the family maid. This comedy in the vein of the Hardy Family pictures centers around an innocent teen who falls for a soldier when her hometown becomes the site of an army base.

8/24: Charles Coburn
Whenever Charles Coburn shows up in a film, I smile just a bit more. I'm usually already smiling because Coburn's films tend to have really silly plots. For example, in Together Again (1 PM), Irene Dunne stars as the mayor of a small town, an office inherited from her late husband. When a statue of Dunne's husband is accidentally beheaded (!), Dunne's father-in-law, played by Coburn, encourages her to find new love, which comes in the form of sculptor Charles Boyer. The More the Merrier (10 PM) is a cute comedy set during a wartime housing shortage in Washington, DC. A hilarious Coburn plays cupid for his two reluctant roommates Jean Arthur and Joel McCrea, and the performance won him the Best Supporting Actor Oscar of 1943.

8/27: Martin Balsam
Prolific character actor Martin Balsam is the other Oscar winner on this list (Best Supporting Actor for 1965's A Thousand Clowns). Balsam is a supporting player to stars Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster in Seven Days in May (8 PM), a tense drama about a military coup. Apparently Balsam was made even more tense by director John Frankenheimer's habit of firing off guns during his scenes. In the kooky caper film After the Fox (4 PM), Peter Sellers stars as an Italian thief who uses a "new wave" film production as a cover for a gold heist. Balsam plays the manager of the washed-up Hollywood actor who stars in the fake film.

8/29: Glenda Farrell
Glenda Farrell seems to have found a niche playing tough newspaper reporters. She first tried on that role in 1933's The Mystery of the Wax Museum (9:15 PM), as the sharp-tongued comic relief in a horror film about, well, a mysterious wax museum. Farrell then went on to star in the successful Torchy Blane series, starting with Smart Blonde (8 PM) in which the ambitious reporter investigates a murder alongside her policeman boyfriend. As hardboiled Torchy, "the Lady Bloodhound with the Nose for News," Farrell was even the inspiration for Superman's love interest Lois Lane.

Get the full line-up at http://summer.tcm.com/ - and enjoy the rest of summer!