Norma Shearer Day

From left to right: Norma Shearer, Clark Gable, and Leslie Howard in A Free Soul (1931)

Today is TCM's day for 24 hours of movies starring Norma Shearer, the wife of Irving Thalberg and one of the original queens of the MGM lot in the early days of the studio. I probably should have posted last night, since there's a documentary on women in pre-Code movies that shows up at 10:00 AM ET, and The Divorcee, which deserves a post of its own, follows at 11:00 AM.

A Free Soul, one of Shearer's Oscar-nominated performances, is not among the movies airing today, even though it's the one for which I've already got photos. That having been said, there are two of Shearer's movies coming up this evening that I haven't seen before, and am looking forward to: the silent The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg at 8:00 PM, followed by Noël Coward's Private Lives at 10:00 PM. And, for fun, watch the beginning of Romeo and Juliet at 11:30 PM. The movie used many of MGM's contract players, and the opening scenes have Edna May Oliver and Andy Devine doing Shakespeare!