TCM's William Powell birthday salute, part 1

Born the day after Joe E. Brown was William Powell. TCM will be spending all morning and afternoon on July 29 showing Powell's movies. The morning kicks off at 6:00 AM ET with One Way Passage, which I mentioned briefly back in June 2009. The plot involves Powell, an escaped criminal, who gets caught in Hong Kong and put on a boat back for California where he'll be executed. He meets and falls in love with Kay Francis, a woman who looks healthy but is in fact terminally ill. Each tries to keep their secret from the other.... Also in the cast are character actors Frank McHugh playing a petty thief, and Aline MacMahon playing a confidence woman who passes herself off as somebody of high class, much like Charles Coburn and Barbara Stanwyck in The Lady Eve. McHugh and MacMahon end up falling in love with each other. I mentioned back in 2009 that One Way Passage was not available on DVD. It seems as if it still hasn't even been released via the Warner Archive collection

One Way Passage is a brief movie, lasting just shy of 70 minutes, and will be followed by some more Powell movies I've already blogged about. At 7:15 AM is The Kennel Murder Case, in which Powell plays a detective other than Nick Charles.
Following The Kennel Murder Case, at 8:30 AM ET, you can see Manhattan Melodrama.