A month late, I think

A lot of times, TCM has in addition to its Star of the Month, some other spotlight one night a week, every week for a month. Sometimes it's a person behind the camera, as it was back in January with cinematographer/director Jack Cardiff. Other times, it's a theme: in March we had a month of British New Wave movies. This month, TCM is going on Spring Break. However, because TCM spent every night one week with Star of the Month Doris Day two weeks ago, the Spring Break spotlight is every weeknight in prime time this week.

Spring Break generally means students going to some warm climate where there's a beach, and a week of drunken partying. At least, that's what it seems to mean nowadays; there's not so much drinking going on in the movie version of it. And how much drinking did students in the 1960s do, anyhow? I'm sure it's more than portrayed in the movies, but is it as much as today? The week kicks off with Where the Boys Are tonight at 8:00 PM; later in the week we're going to get such well-known films in the genre as Gidget (Tuesday night) and Beach Blanket Bingo on Thursday night. Friday, instead of escaping to the beach, the students will be escaping to the slopes for an abbreviated evening of ski movies.

That having been said, I wonder if the Spring Break movies should have been run in March. I know when I went to college, our break was between the Winter and Spring Terms, starting around March 15 and running around two weeks. I always got the impression that our spring break was a bit later than a lot of other schools. Graduation was at the beginning of June, unlike for my brothers and sisters, who went to colleges that had their spring terms end in early-to-mid May. Having Spring Break in April would have been much too late for them.

That's more or less irrelevant to the TCM schedule. If you like the sort of nostalgia that the 1960s beach movies provide, you'll love this week. I have to admit that these movies aren't exactly my cup of tea, however.