As you may have already guessed, that actress is Loretta
Young—who, because she celebrates her centennial birthday in January (January
6, for those of you keeping score at home), will be the focus of a 38-film
retrospective taking place on every Wednesday night during the month. While I certainly wouldn’t consider myself a dues-paying
member of Gretchen’s cult, she did appear in some dandy movies (many of the pre-Code variety)…so fortunately TCM has seen fit to schedule them for the
benefit of her fans (and me). Here’s the
lineup:
January 2, Wednesday
12:30am Life Begins
(1932)
01:45am The Squall
(1929)
03:45am Show of Shows
(1929)
January 3, Thursday
06:00am Loose Ankles
(1930)
08:30am Road to Paradise (1930)
10:00am The Truth
About Youth (1930)
January 9, Wednesday
12:15am Midnight Mary
(1933)
03:00am The Hatchet
Man (1932)
04:30am Play-Girl
(1932)
January 10, Thursday
January 16, Wednesday
12:45am The Life of
Jimmy Dolan (1933)
02:30am Beau Ideal
(1931)
04:00am Big Business
Girl (1931)
January 23, Wednesday
02:30am Week-End
Marriage (1932)
03:45am Grand Slam
(1933)
January 30, Wednesday
08:00pm The Farmer’s
Daughter (1947)
02:45am Key to the
City (1950)
04:30am Cause for
Alarm (1951)
05:45am The Unguarded
Hour (1936)
Tuesday nights on Tee Cee Em, the channel will host 27 movies
that spotlight one of the cinema’s most popular genres: “the caper film.” Anything that can be boosted—jewelry, money,
works of art—is fair game, with classic feature films spotlighting heists that
are successful…and some that go south:
January 1, Tuesday
12:00am Rififi
(1954)
02:15am Big Deal on Madonna Street
(1953)
04:00am Jack of
Diamonds (1967)
January 8, Tuesday
12:15am Bob le
Flambeur (1955)
02:00am Kaleidoscope
(1966)
04:00am 5 Against the
House (1955)
January 15, Tuesday
12:15am Dead Heat on
a Merry-Go-Round (1966)
02:15am Odds Against
Tomorrow (1959)
04:00am The Day They
Robbed the Bank of England (1960)
January 22, Tuesday
12:30am The Happy
Thieves (1962)
January 23, Wednesday
06:00am The Split (1968)
January 29, Tuesday
03:00am Guns, Girls
and Gangsters (1958)
04:15am The Hoodlum
(1951)
And if that’s not enough to satisfy your classic movie
itch—here are some more highlights from January…keeping in mind, of course,
that the films scheduled are subject to change (and that all times are EST).
January 1, Tuesday – Before you nestle in with this evening’s
caper festival, the morning hours will feature film adaptations of some of
Broadway’s biggest hit musicals. Finian’s Rainbow (1968) kicks things
off at 6am , and that’s followed by Funny Girl (1968; 8:30am ), My Fair
Lady (1964; 11:15am ), Camelot (1967; 2:15pm ) and Hello,
Dolly! (1969; 5:30pm ).
January 2, Wednesday – Oh, sure…you could spend most of your valuable television watching time
engrossed in Ghost Hunters (and who knows—my father might even be up to
joining you). But here’s a spoiler
warning for you: they never find any! TCM, on the other hand, spotlights
mesmerizing tales of folks trapped between this world and the next today with a
festival featuring The Cockeyed Miracle
(1946; 6am), A Guy Named Joe (1943;
7:30am), Cabin in the Sky (1943;
9:45am), Topper (1937; 11:30am), A Matter of Life and Death (1947;
1:30pm), Angel on My Shoulder (1946;
3:30pm) and Here Comes Mr. Jordan
(1941; 5:30pm).
January 3, Thursday – Marion Davies celebrates what would have
been her 116th natal anniversary today…and while I’m kind of bummed the channel
couldn’t squeeze in one of her silent features, fans of her sound flicks can
nosh on The Bachelor Father (1931;
11:15am), Polly of the Circus (1932;
1pm), Page Miss Glory (1936; 2:15pm)
and her cinematic swan song, Ever Since
Eve (1937; 4pm).
As my Facebook chum Archie Waugh often says: “So…it has come
to this.” Moviedom’s most nauseatingly
cheerful moppet raises the blood sugar of diabetic viewers in the evening with The Littlest Rebel (1935) at 8pm,
followed by Captain January (1936;
9:30pm), Curly Top (1935; 11pm), I’ll Be Seeing You (1944; 12:30am), Fort Apache (1948; 2am) and Adventures in Baltimore (1949;
4:15pm). (Well, at least I know where Page will be if I need
her.)
January 4, Friday – Jane Wyman’s 96th birthday gets celebrated
today…but you’ll have to wait until later in the day to see the film that
nabbed her a Best Actress Oscar, Johnny
Belinda (1948; 6:15pm). Before that,
it’s My Love Came Back (1940; 6am), The Body Disappears (1941; 7:30am ), Honeymoon
for Three (1941; 8:45am ), Larceny, Inc. (1942; 10:15am ), The
Doughgirls (1944; 12noon), Night and
Day (1946; 1:45pm ) and The Yearling (1946; 4pm).
Come nightfall, a nice little sampling of director Jack
Arnold’s outstanding science fiction film oeuvre; Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954) kicks the evening off at 8pm,
followed by Tarantula (1955;
9:30pm), The Incredible Shrinking Man
(1957; 11pm) and It Came From Outer
Space (1953; 12:30am). Not a bad one
in the bunch—pay no attention to that smartass who wrote about Tarantula back in July 2011.
January 5, Saturday – In December 2012, TCM started scheduling
films from the Torchy Blane franchise
at the noontime hour…and in 2013; they continue that practice with the second
of the Blane B-pictures, Fly Away Baby (1937), today. January 12 features The Adventurous Blonde (1937), then Blondes at Work (1938) on the 19th and Torchy Blane in Panama (1938) finishing out January on the 26th.
But at 10:45am on
each Saturday, it’s another Warner Bros. hero—Brass Bancroft! Yes, the B-picture series that Ronald Reagan
couldn’t quite disavow in his career kicks in with Secret Service of the Air (1939).
Code of the Secret Service
(1939; January 12), Smashing the Money
Ring (1939; January 19) and Murder
in the Air (1940; January 26) complete the quartet of programmers that I
wrote about in this post back in March 2009.
When evening shadows fall, TCM Essentials schedules
at 8pm the classic Bogie & Bacall
feature where “Baby” taught all the young horny guys in the audience that the
only thing involved in whistling was putting your lips together “and blow”: To Have and Have Not (1944). And that’s the channel’s cue to usher in
“Blowing the Whistle”—an evening of films in which whistling or blowing (one’s
cover) is involved. It’s as silly as it
sounds…but you’ll get an opportunity to see the first film in The Whistler franchise at 10pm, Fritz
Lang’s 1931 masterpiece M at 3am,
and TDOY fave Theodora Goes Wild (1936) at 4:45am. Libel
(1959; 11:15pm ) and A Fistful of Dollars (1964; 1am) round
out the offerings.
January 6, Sunday – At 8pm ,
a more mature James Stewart headlines one of the feature films from later in
his career: Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation
(1962), a fairly lame comedy (despite the presence of Maureen O’Hara) whose sole bright spot is when he calls some
kid “a little creep.” (Well, it’s funny
the way Jimmy says it.) That’s followed
by Take Her, She’s Mine (1963;
10pm), in which father Jimmy attempts to keep college-age daughter Sandra Dee
from being embroiled in scandal. (It’s
Sandra Dee—what could she have possibly done, worn white after Labor Day?)
On TCM’s Silent Sunday Nights: a Sessue
Hayakawa double feature…beginning with Cecil B. DeMille’s The Cheat (1915) at midnight—a film I recently purchased in a Kino
Lorber DVD sale (it was paired with DeMille’s Manslaughter…I couldn’t resist).
The Dragon Painter (1919)
follows at 1am, and on TCM Imports it’s The Story of Oharu (1952; 2am)…one of
those Mizoguchi films I keep meaning to watch in an effort to class up this
place.
January 7, Monday – Bill Paxton is the channel’s guest
programmer, and has chosen Juliet of the
Spirits (1965; 8pm), The Spirit of
the Beehive (1973; 10:30pm ), California Split (1974; 12:30am ) and The Last Detail (1973; 2:30am )
as the four films with which he’ll discuss with Bobby Osbo. And then it’s game over, man…game over! (Okay, I have no idea if Robert Osborne has returned
to his hosting duties on TCM yet or not…I just wanted to make an Aliens joke.)
January 8, Tuesday – The King celebrates his 78th birthday
today…and since we all know Elvis did not die (he just went home), he’ll be
able to pick up TCM on his home planet and watch some of his greatest movies. Okay…except for Jailhouse Rock (1957) at 2:45pm they’re all pretty much mutts—the
canines include Speedway (1968;
6:15am), Kissin’ Cousins (1964;
8am), Live a Little, Love a Little
(1968; 11:30am), Viva Las Vegas (1964;
1:15pm), It Happened at the World’s Fair
(1963; 4:30pm) and Love Me Tender (1956;
6:30pm). (Oh…they’re also showing my
favorite Elvis guilty pleasure—Tickle Me
at 9:45am . A movie written by the two men who guided both
the cinematic fortunes of the Three Stooges and the Bowery Boys? Who couldn’t love that?)
January 9, Wednesday – OTR film alert: the second in the
short-lived I Love a Mystery movie
series, The Devil’s Mask (1946), is
scheduled at 1:30pm . (I like the Columbia
ILAM films, though I’ll readily admit
they can’t measure up to the radio show.)
Oh, and if you’re strapped for cash and can’t afford the recently
released The Iron Petticoat DVD (the
1956 Ninotchka with Bob Hope and
Katharine Hepburn) it will also air at 4:45pm .
January 10, Thursday – Sal Mineo celebrates what would have
been his 74th birthday today. Start
movin’ in his direction with the 1966 telefilm The Dangerous Days of Kiowa Jones at 8:15am, followed by Cheyenne Autumn (1964; 10am), The Gene Krupa Story (1959; 1pm), The Young Don’t Cry (1957; 2:45pm), Crime in the Streets (1956; 4:15pm) and
Rebel Without a Cause (1955) winding
down the celebration at 6pm.
Come nightfall…well, if Bobby Osbo is back by this time he’s
got some movies to show. Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954)
kicks things off at 8pm , and then
it’s Roughly Speaking (1945; 10pm), Old Acquaintance (1943; 12mid) and The Hurricane (1937; 2am).
January 11, Friday – The channel devotes the daylight hours to
the cinematic oeuvre of George Raft…who, despite his thespic limitations made
some pretty good flicks including Each
Dawn I Die (1939; 7:15am), They
Drive by Night (1940; 9am), Manpower
(1941; 10:45am) and Background to Danger
(1943; 12:30pm). Johnny Angel (1945; 2pm), Nocturne
(1946; 3:30pm ), Race Street (1948; 5pm) and A
Dangerous Profession (1950; 6:30pm )
are also on tap.
At 8pm , “Epic
Roadshow Comedies” are the theme with a double feature of It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963) starting things off, followed
by The Great Race (1965) at 11pm . (World has its moments, but Race just goes to prove that bigger
isn’t necessarily better.)
January 12, Saturday – The TCM Essentials scheduling of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)
at 8pm ushers in a night of films
with a “sibling rivalry” theme…though I can’t for the life of me find any
evidence of that in the film that follows at 10:30pm ,
A Streetcar Named Desire
(1951). (Blanche DuBois has more serious
issues than competition with her sister, it seems to me.) The theme does gets stronger afterward with The Little Foxes (1941; 12:45am ), East
of Eden
(1955; 2:45am ) and Steel Against the Sky (1941; 5am).
January 13, Sunday – An Irene Dunne double feature of Anna and the King of Siam (1946) (The King and I without the music) and Magnificent Obsession (1935) occupies
the evening hours at 8pm and 10:15pm respectively. But those of you who’ve stopped by here every
now and then know that I’d be more jazzed about the Silent Sunday Nights presentation
at midnight, which features three shorts from the Holy Trinity of Silent
Comedy: Bumping Into Broadway (1919;
Harold Lloyd), The Scarecrow (1920;
Buster Keaton) and The Pilgrim
(1923; Charlie Chaplin).
Later in the wee a.m. hours: one of the most beautiful
examples of cinematography can be found in Nicolas Roeg’s cult classic Walkabout (1971), which starts at 3:30am .
January 14, Monday – The October 11 tribute to Lew Landers must
have been an unqualified success…because the channel is giving Louis
Friedlander another go-around with a day of his quickies. Living
on Love (1937) starts things rolling at 7:15am, followed by Crashing Hollywood (1938; 8:30am), Double Danger (1938; 9:45am), Law of the Underworld (1938; 11am), Fixer Dugan (1939; 12:15pm), Twelve Crowded Hours (1939; 1:30pm), The Boogie Man Will Get You (1942;
2:45pm), Stand by All Networks
(1942; 4pm), Submarine Raider (1942;
5:15pm) and The Truth About Murder
(1946; 6:30pm).
The evening hours will feature another segment in TCM’s American
Film Institute Master Class series, The Art of Collaboration – Robert
Zemeckis & Don Burgess…which will air at 8 and 11:30pm (a showing of 2000’s What Lies Beneath is sandwiched between the two showings at 9pm ).
Since I lost interest in Zemeckis’ work about the time he got an Oscar
for the execrable Forrest Gump, I’ll
find something else to do until 12:45am, when a trio of Jack Nicholson films
will be the focus: Carnal Knowledge (1971),
Five Easy Pieces (1970; 2:30am) and Easy Rider (1969; 4:15am).
January 15, Tuesday – Academy Award-winning actress Susan
Hayward gets a salud from the channel this morning that kicks off with her
first credited film, Girls on Probation (1938)
at 7am . The
Hairy Ape (1944; 8:15am ), Deadline at Dawn (1946; 10am), They Won’t Believe Me (1947; 11:30am ), Tulsa (1949;
1pm), I’ll Cry Tomorrow (1955; 2:30pm ), Top
Secret Affair (1957; 4:30pm ) and
I Thank a Fool (1962; 6:15pm ) round out your viewing choices as far
as Hayward is concerned.
January 16, Wednesday – Here’s a birthday that doesn’t get
celebrated on TCM too often: that of stage and screen legend Diana
Wynyard. You’d think that with Rasputin and the Empress (1932)
occupying a shelf in their film library it would get off the bench…but no, the
channel is going to go with Men Must
Fight (1933) at 6am, and then follow that with Where Sinners Meet (1934; 7:15am) and Gaslight (1940; 8:30am).
With the Wynyard entries apparently exhausted, the focus then shifts to
Alec Guinness with Oliver Twist
(1948; 10:15am ), Malta Story (1953; 12:15pm ), The
Detective (1954; 2pm), The Prisoner
(1955; 3:45pm ) and Cromwell (1970; 5:30pm ).
January 17, Thursday – The Godfather of Noir, Eddie Muller,
will be sitting in with Bobby Osbo this evening for “A Night in Noir
City ” (and Osborne will be there, as
you can see in this picture on the right I liberated from Muller’s Facebook page). Two movies of interest…well, they’re all
pretty great but for our purposes I’m going to single out 99 River Street (1953; 9:30pm )
because a reprint of a review I wrote on this film was recently posted at my
friend Richard’s Noir Babes site. Cry Danger (1951), a film restored by
Muller’s Film Noir Foundation is on before Street at 8pm and after Street
it’s a film that I’ve yet to see the end of: Tomorrow is Another Day (1951; 11pm). (I’m not making this up, by the way; I
watched it one evening when it was playing on Encore Mystery back in the late
90s…and never got to see the conclusion.) TDOY
faves The Breaking Point (1950) and The Prowler (1951) follow at 12:45 and 2:30am .
January 18, Friday – Happy birthday to Cary Grant! That Bristol
boy will celebrate what would have been his 109th birthday today, and TCM is
ready, willing and able to accommodate him with a festival of his films: Suzy (1936; 6:15am ), Mr. Lucky
(1943; 8am), None But the Lonely Heart
(1944; 10am), Gunga Din (1939;
12:00noon), The Philadelphia Story (1940;
2pm), Notorious (1946; 4pm) and Monkey Business (1952; 6pm).
Come nightfall—an evening of shorts featuring the greatest
movie comedy team of all time. Stan
Laurel & Oliver Hardy star in Chickens
Come Home (1931; 8pm), Blotto
(1930; 9:45pm ), Be Big (1931; 11:30pm )
and Laughing Gravy (1931;
12mid). But what many classic movie fans
may not know is that several Laurel & Hardy shorts were also adapted for
Spanish audiences…with Stan & Ollie reciting Spanish dialogue phonetically
and some of the supporting roles cast with Spanish-speaking actors. You’ll get the opportunity to see some of
these shorts: Politiquerias (1931; 8:45pm ), La
Vida Nocturna (1930; 10:15pm )
and Les Carottiers (1931; 12:45am ) following the English versions of
these classic comedies.
January 19, Saturday – Academy Award-winning actress Shelley
Winters takes charge of the evening’s viewing choices beginning at 8pm with the TCM Essentials showcase
of Lolita (1962). Afterward, it’s The Big Knife (1955; 10:45pm ),
The Chapman Report (1962; 12:45am ), I
Died a Thousand Times (1955; 3am) and Tennessee
Champ (1954; 4:45am ).
January 20, Sunday – Loretta Young is not the only celebrity
celebrating her centennial this month…Danny Kaye would be having cake and ice
cream on this day as well if he had lived to reach the century mark. The movie that I contributed a review for
both The Paramount Centennial Blogathon
and The Camp & Cult Blogathon in
September, The Court Jester (1956),
will be one of several films showcased…not to mention a classic telecast from
the entertainer’s 1960s variety show.
The lineup is as follows:
06:00am The Danny Kaye Show
07:00am Up in Arms
(1944)
08:45am Merry Andrew
(1958)
10:30am The Dick Cavett Show (with guest
Danny Kaye from 1971)
02:00am Wonder Man
(1945)
04:00am The Man from
the Diners’ Club (1963)
January 21, Monday – Great viewing awaits TCM devotees today
with a slew of films featuring Sidney Poitier: No Way Out (1950; 6am), Blackboard
Jungle (1955; 8am), Something of
Value (1957; 9:45am), Edge of the
City (1957; 11:45am), A Raisin in the
Sun (1961; 1:15pm), A Patch of Blue
(1965; 3:30pm) and To Sir, With Love
(1967; 5:30pm).
Then as evening shadows fall, the channel pays tribute to
the star of what I continue to maintain is the greatest television situation
comedy of all time: Dick Van Dyke, who will receive the Screen Actors Guild
Lifetime Achievement Award on January 27, gets his due on TCM with Divorce American Style (1967; 8pm), Cold Turkey (1971; 10pm), Stacia holiday fave Fitzwilly (1967; 12mid), Bye Bye Birdie (1963; 2am) and Some Kind of a Nut (1969; 4am).
January 22, Tuesday – One of the drawbacks to marriage is that
happy ever after sometimes means that you might have mistakenly said “I do” to
a lunatic murderer. The films scheduled
for today on the channel will offer perspective on this matrimonial hazard,
beginning with Cast a Dark Shadow
(1955) at 6am, followed by Gaslight
(1944; 7:30am), The Two Mrs. Carrolls
(1947; 9:30am), Autumn Leaves (1956;
11:30am), Undercurrent (1946;
1:30pm), Experiment Perilous (1944;
3:30pm) and Rebecca (1940; 5:15pm).
January 23, Wednesday – Bad movie aficionados are well
acquainted with the moniker of “Arch Hall”—though there were actually two
Arches, Senior and Junior. Arch, Sr. was
the auteur of such vehicles as Eegah
and Wild Guitar (both 1962)…with
Junior his nominal star (“Wowzie-wow-wow!”).
But The Sadist (1963) is
actually a decent little B-thriller (Arch, Sr. didn’t have much participation
in this one, save for the opening narration and some radio announcements) and
has earned a little cult cachet of its own.
Judge for yourself when TCM runs it at 7:30am ;
it precedes a day of horror films—The
Terror (1963; 9:15am ), The Reptile (1966; 10:45am ), The Nanny
(1965; 12:30pm ), The Mummy (1959; 2:15pm ), The Body
Snatcher (1945; 4:45pm ) and The Haunting (1963; 6pm).
January 24, Thursday – No one was more surprised than I when
the legendary Ernest Borgnine passed away in July of 2012 at the age of
95. I would have bet cash money that the
actor was going to live forever…even to the point of wondering if that really was makeup on him in the movie The Devil’s Rain (1975). TCM spotlights some of Borgnine’s first-rate
film work on what would have been his 96th natal anniversary with From Here to Eternity (1953; 6am), Bad Day at Black Rock (1954; 8:15am), The Catered Affair (1956; 9:45am), Torpedo Run (1958; 11:30am), The Badlanders (1958; 1:15pm), The Flight of the Phoenix (1966;
2:45pm) and Howard Hughes fave Ice
Station Zebra (1968; 5:15pm).
At 8pm , the
channel begins what will ultimately be a two-night salute to Academy
Award-winning composer Jimmy Van Heusen, the tunesmith responsible for such
ditties as Swingin’ on a Star
(written with Johnny Burke) and High
Hopes (with Sammy Cahn). On
Thursday, the movies featuring Van Heusen’s music are Road to Morocco (1942; 8pm), Welcome
Stranger (1947; 9:30pm ), Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967; 11:30pm ), Some
Came Running (1958; 2:15am ) and Under the Yum Yum Tree (1963; 4:45am ).
For Friday (January 25): The
Tender Trap (1955; 8pm), Robin and
the 7 Hoods (1964; 10pm) and Ocean’s
Eleven (1960; 12:15am ).
January 25, Friday – Since I missed it the last time TCM had it
on, I must remember to catch Night
Flight (1933) at 8:15am . (I’ll stand a better chance of seeing it then
because my father’s got his nose buried in the newspaper at that time in the
morning.)
January 27, Sunday – Three of the best films from the Master of
Suspense’s “British period” are showcased on the evening schedule, with the Hitchcock
classic The 39 Steps (1935) at 8pm,
then The Lady Vanishes (1938;
9:30pm) and Sabotage (1936; 11:15pm)
after that. That pushes the Silent
Sunday Nights presentation up to 12:45am …but
since it’s a doozy of a Lon Chaney film, The
Penalty (1920), hopefully there won’t be too much heated discussion.
January 28, Monday – “It’s just another Pre-Code Monday/I wish
it was Sunday…” No, I don’t—what am I
saying? On the schedule are After Tonight (1933; 6:15am), Hat, Coat and Glove (1934; 7:30am), Let’s Try Again (1934; 8:45am), Dance Hall (1929; 10am), She’s My Weakness (1930; 11:30 am), Lovin’ the Ladies (1930; 12:45pm), The Public Defender (1931; 2pm), The Royal Bed (1931; 3:15pm), Secret Service (1931; 4:30pm), No Marriage Ties (1933; 5:45pm) and No Other Woman (1933; 7pm).
TCM schedules one of Tyrone Power’s best showcases, The Mark of Zorro (1940), at 8pm …and the exchange of cold steel follows at 10pm with ClassicBecky heartthrob
Errol Flynn in The Adventures of Don
Juan. The swordplay continues
through the night with Cyrano de
Bergerac (1950; 12mid), Raiders of
the Seven Seas (1953; 2am) and At
Sword’s Point (1951; 3:45am ).
January 31, Thursday – We close out the month with a double
ice-cream-and-cake celebration! The
morning hours honor the natal anniversary of actor-singer Mario Lanza, with
schedulings of The Toast of New Orleans
(1950; 7:15am), Because You’re Mine
(1952; 9am) and Serenade (1956;
10:45am). Come afternoon, it’s Jean Simmons’
turn in the birthday spotlight: Home
Before Dark (1958; 1pm), Divorce
American Style (1967; 3:30pm )
and The Actress (1953; 5:30pm ) are on tap.
Then the channel selects TDOY
god Lee Marvin as the focus for the final night of classic film viewing in January;
Marvin’s Oscar-winning turn in Cat
Ballou (1965) at 8pm , followed by
the underrated oater Monte Walsh
(1970) at 10. The Dirty Dozen (1967;
12mid), Point Blank (1967; 2:45am ) and the Walter Matthau-directed Gangster Story (1959; 4:45am ) play us out.