Have you written to mother?

Today being Mothers' Day, TCM is showing a lot of films focusing on mothers and their relationships with the rest of the family. I don't think I've ever blogged about Pocketful of Miracles (12:30 PM) before, other than to mention that it's a remake of Lady For a Day, which I first blogged about over four years ago.

Irene Dunne as the mother in I Remember Mama (5:30 PM) got a mention last year on Mothers' Day, which I suppose says something about the originality of TCM's programming. Then again, it's not as if there are too many movies where the mother relationship is the point of the plot to the extent that it is in I Remember Mama. Sure, there are films such as Mildred Pierce (10:00 PM), but there the parent-child relationship is in a rather less positive light.

And wait until you get to Ingmar Bergman's Autumn Sonata, which is this week's TCM Import coming up overnight at 2:00 AM. There's a wonderful family relationship. At least TCM isn't showing the mother/son relationship in Psycho this year.

As for the title of this blog post, it seems almost a stereotype for a sign reading something along the lines of "Have you written to/called Mother today?" to be on the wall of a mission in movies that feature such. I'm pretty certain one showed up in Sullivan's Travels, in the scene were Joel McCrea and Veronica Lake spend the night in a homeless shelter and McCrea gets his boots stolen right off his feet. I also seem to recall a similar sign when Montgomery Clift calls his mother, who does some sort of mission work, in A Place in the Sun.