More lazy Hollywood

I've commented several times about how Hollywood has remade its own movies for decades. Of course, there are other ways that lazy people can get movies made in Hollywood, as a look at today's TCM lineup of Fredric March movies shows.

The day kicked off with We Live Again at 6:00 AM. The title and story may not sound that familiar, but the movie is actually an adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's novel Resurrection. It's not the only adaptation of a Tolstoy novel that March made and TCM is showing today; his appearance in the 1935 version of Anna Karenina is showing up at 11:45 PM ET tonight.

Indeed, Anna Karenina is the last in an evening of literary adaptations. Prime time starts at 8:00 PM with Fox's 1930s version of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables; as further evidence of just how lazy Hollywood could be, Fox remade Les Miserables in the early 1950s. Les Miserables is followed at 9:45 PM by the 1932 version of Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which is another movie remade by MGM, in the early 1940s with Spencer Tracy. It must be nice not having to pay for the rights to a book in order to make a movie out of it.

Of course, if books aren't your thing, you can always go to history for your Hollywood inspiration. Fredric March played Christopher Columbus in a 1949 biopic, which TCM is showing at 3:30 PM ET, and appeared in Mary of Scotland, which shows up at 11:00 AM.