Who should be Star of the Month?

Tonight marks the opening night of Claude Rains' turn as TCM's Star of the Month. Every Wednedsay night in September (and into Thursday mornings), they're showing a lot of his movies. Now, I happen to enjoy Rains, and think he made a lot of wonderful movies. Notorious, from which the photo at left is taken, is just one of them, and is airing overnight at 2:45 AM ET. It's preceded by some even better-known movies that he made, with Mr. Smith Goes to Washington kicking the night off at 8:00 PM, and Casablanca following at 10:15 PM. The only problem is that Rains has already been Star of the Month before, although it was all the way back in 1998. TCM have at least gone to the trouble of getting a new piece on Rains for Star of the Month, narrated by Richard Chamberlain, (who starred with Rains in Twilight of Honor at the end of Rains' career. (TCM have a piece from Rains' previous stint as Star of the Month narrated by the late John Gielgud, which may show up this month as well.)

It should also be said in TCM's defense that there aren't too many people who would make a good Star of the Month. The person has to be a star. Although I enjoy the movies of somebody like Eugene Pallette, he's really not a star. Star of the Month is one of the simpler ways to bring in people who don't necessarily realize they might enjoy older movies, too. If you can show them something recognizable like Casablanca at an easily accessible hour, they'll be more likely to watch than showing something like the Torchy Blane movies. Also, the person has to have made enough movies to fill a night of prime time every week for a month. No James Dean here, despite the fact that he'd still be recognized by even a fair number of the younger people of today. And, the Star of the Month is going to have to be somebody who worked at a studio from which TCM can get the broadcast rights to a lot of the movies they'd want to show. As much as I like the beautiful Gene Tierney, she worked at Fox, and TCM can't generally get quite that many Fox movies to show. Ditto Tyrone Power and Don Ameche.

So, who would make a good Star of the Month for TCM? I don't think Fredric March has ever been Star of the Month before. True, he spent a good portion of the early part of his career at Paramount, and those movies are now controlled by Universal, one of the worse studios for dealing with TCM. But March made a lot of stuff later in his career that shows up on TCM. There's also Charles Boyer, who probably ought to be recognized by younger views, at least as a source for the Pepe Le Pew cartoons. As for the women, I'm not sure if Lana Turner has ever been Star of the Month. I don't think I've ever seen the sort of piece on her that would have been recycled from a former time as Star of the Month.