I suppose I should mention Judy Garland

TCM has been running a salute to Judy Garland on what would have been her 90th birthday if she hadn't insisted on overdosing to death, and will be continuing the birthday salute until 6:00 AM tomorrow. Interestingly, it's one of not very many birthday salutes on a weekend. I'm not certain why TCM generally doesn't do birthday salutes on Saturdays and Sundays, but for whatever reason it doesn't happen very often. Perhaps the powers that be want Ben Mankiewicz to have a bunch of different people to talk about when he's on.

The even more unfortunate thing about today's birthday salute is that TCM are running a lot of the musical movies. The Clock aired earlier in the week as part of a night of movies with important scenes in train stations, while A Child Is Waiting doesn't show up at all. Worse, we get the dreadful 1950s version of A Star Is Born; I have to admit that I don't like the idea of adding still photos back into a cut movie to try to "complete" it. When I mentioned Greed some time back, I made the same point. I'm not a fan of "director's cuts" either. It always strikes me as the director trying to do the 1984-style sending stuff down the memory hole, as though we're not supposed to know there was ever a different version of the movie out there before the one the director wants us to know about now.

TCM is running a documentary about the making of The Wizard of Oz at 7:00 PM, followed by the film itself as this week's Essentials Jr. selection. That's certainly a good movie for the kids.