Guest Programmer programming note

Tonight sees November's TCM Guest Programmer, Ron Pearlman of the series Sons of Anarchy (among other roles) sit down and discuss some of his favorite movies in segments that were taped with Robert Osborne some months ago. If you've seen the spot on TCM, you'll have noted the odd fact that the segments start at 9:45 PM, rather than 8:00 PM. Also, Pearlman is only shown as presenting three films. On the other hand, on the TCM website, Pearlman is listed as having picked four movies.

The reason is presumably that Pearlman selected and taped a segment on something that TCM later discovered it couldn't get the broadcast rights to. Indeed, if you have an older copy of the printable schedule for November, you would see that the 8:00 PM movie for tonight is the Preston Sturges comedy Sullivan's Travels. They apparently don't have the broadcast rights to Sullivan's Travels at the present time, so Pearlman then selected Sweet Smell of Success. But by this time, Robert Osborne was on his vacation (or perhaps Pearlman himself wasn't available), so TCM would have been unable to film a new segment on Sweet Smell of Success. The odd thing is that TCM decided simply to substitute in Sweet Smell of Success at 8:00; I would have thought it would make more sense to move up the three movies with Osborne and Pearlman and then stick Sweet Smell of Success at the end of the evening.

Anyhow, tonight's four-film lineup is:
Sweet Smell of Success at 8:00 PM;
Red River at 9:45 PM;
Gunga Din at 12:15 AM; and
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington at 2:30 AM.