TCM Star of the Month: Ginger Rogers

Thanks to 31 Days of Oscar, TCM can only devote four weeks in March to any special features, such as the Akira Kurosawa tribute, or the new Star of the Month, Ginger Rogers. Ginger made enough movies that, although she's being honored on Wednesdays in prime time, the movies continue well into Thursday morning. Such is the case this week, when TCM is showing 10 movies that Rogers made with Fred Astaire. The plot is secondary in most of them, and relatively similar: the two get involved in some sort of mistaken identity crisis that can only be solved by their dancing together. There are some exceptions to this, of course. Flying Down to Rio, which shows at 1:15 PM ET Thursday is a big exception, although it's natural, since Astaire and Rogers weren't the stars; instead, it was their dancing the Carioca together that made them a star dancing team. The other interesting exception is The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle, which airs at 9:30 AM Thursday. What makes this different is that it's a biopic, about the famous dance team of the 1910s.

I've argued in the past that musicals aren't my favorite genre, but for those of you who do enjoy musicals more than I do, you'll have a blast tonight.