FRIDAY, JULY 19 @ 03:15 AM (ET)

You got Burt. You got Kirk. You got Frederick March. You got a crackerjack script by Rod Serling from the novel by Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey II. What more do you need? How about Ava Gardner, Edmund O’Brien, Martin Balsam, John Houseman, Hugh Marlowe and George Macready. Just add the taut direction of John Frankenheimer, the master of the political thriller, and bake for one hour and fifty-eight minutes.

Lancaster is James Matoon Scott, right-wing Army general and chairman of the Joint Chiefs. He’s a vociferous opponent of President Jordan Lyman (March) and his nuclear disarmament treaty with the Soviet Union. When a series of coincidences sparks the interest of Scott’s adjutant, Colonel Jiggs Casey (Douglas), his innocent questions uncover what appears to be a plan for a military coup to prevent the treaty’s ratification. He takes a deep breath and goes to President Lyman with an “I may be crazy but….” description of what he’s found. Lyman finds the clues sufficiently alarming to establish a war room to ascertain first, if this is really happening, and then, to figure out how to circumvent the plot. and then how to prove to the public that this has actually happened. Zero hour is one week away (you guessed that from the title).

The film moves forward on multiple fronts, as Lyman’s team tries to come up with the  the evidence that will allow the denunciation of General Scott, a cult-like figure with support from, among others, a prominent U.S. senator and a popular TV and radio figure.

Senator Clarke (O’Brien) goes in search of the phantom military base from which the assault will be mounted. Presidential aide Paul Gerard (Martin Balsam) journeys to an aircraft carrier in Gibraltar to confront and secure the written confession of a prominent admiral (Houseman). Jiggs must romance

old friend Ellie (Ava Gardner), who happens to be Scott’s former extra-marital lover, to try to obtain love letters for the purpose of blackmail. The tension builds as the clock ticks down, and these operatives  meet with mixed success. Frankenheimer is in his element.

Seven Days in May garnered Oscar nominations for Edmond O’Brien for Best Supporting Actor and Cary Odell and Edward G. Boyle for Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White.

 

 

SUNDAY, JULY 14 @ 10:00 PM ET

Desk Set is a pleasant but light-weight romantic comedy, the eighth of nine Tracy/Hepburn films. She’s Bunny Watson, the head of the research department at the Federal Broadcasting Network. He’s Richard Sumner, an “efficiency expert” employed by FBN to install an “electronic brain:” a computer called EMIRAC (an obvious reference to ENIAC, the first fully functional electronic computer which had been developed a decade earlier at the University of Pennsylvania). Bunny and her “girls” in research naturally see this as an existential challenge. When one of her staff exclaims that “He’s trying to replace us all with a mechanical brain,” Hepburn counters that “I’d match my memory against any machine’s any day….” Even in 1954, that line probably sounded a little ridiculous; today-well, let’s call it quaint.

But the battle is joined. EMIRAC is installed and “the girls” prepare for the research showdown: “let’s show him what people can do.” It’s the old “man vs. machine” contest: John Henry vs. the steam-powered drill; the horse vs the horseless carriage. No spoiler alert on who wins the showdown. Watch the film and find out.

Gender issues are also a subtext of interest in watching this film six decades later. Hepburn is a strong, competent professional woman who nevertheless is subservient to her fiancé Mike (Gig Young). He’s an executive who comes to her with his most pressing problems. She gives him solutions, but maintains the fiction that he “wears the pants.” Meanwhile, she’s a department head, and her staff of ultra-competent young women (Joan Blondell Dina Merrill and Sue Randall) are known condescendingly as “the girls.”

P.S. Pretty funny that in the credits for this early film about computers,  I noticed that the Color Consultant was named Leonard Doss (you probably have to be as old as me to remember the DOS prompt).

To watch promo CLICK HERE

 

FRIDAY, JULY 5 @ 3:15 PM ET

In Howard Hawks’ Only Angels Have Wings, Cary Grant is the head honcho of a group of pilots trying to carve an airmail service out of the South American jungle. He’s Geoff Carter, “the guy who only goes up when others won’t risk it.” Jean Arthur is Bonnie, an entertainer who “arrives” in the village (kind of like Lauren Bacall in Hawks’ To Have And Have Not (1944).

As in so many of Hawks’ films, there is a fraternity-a group of men engaged in some endeavor, impacted by an outside force or series of outside forces. And frequently that force is a woman.

In His Girl Friday, it’s Rosalind Russell’s Hildy Johnson who invades the male fraternity of newspapermen. In Ball Of Fire/A Song Is Born it’s Barbara Stanwyck/Virginia Mayo’s nightclub singer who brings a breath of fresh air and the scent of perfume into the musty hermitage of academic research. In Air Force, it’s Winocki (John Garfield) and the pursuit pilot (James Brown) who disrupt the unity of the crew of a B-17 bomber.

In Only Angels Have Wings, it’s Bonnie, who wants to domesticate Geoff. She’s fallen in love and can’t stand the anxiety of his airborne exploits. It’s also the arrival of replacement pilot Bat MacPherson (Richard Barthelmess) and his wife Judy (Rita Hayworth). He’s a blacklisted pilot responsible for the death of the brother of “Kid” Dabb (Thomas Mitchell), one of the pilots. She’s Geoff’s former lover. These relationships play out in the context of the life and death struggle maintain their airmail delivery service. Neither fogged in mountain passes nor  zero visibility nor geese crashing through the windshields of their creaky crates can keep them grounded.

To watch the promo CLICK HERE