A couple of mysteries

The mystery of the TCM scheduling of last night's Mack Sennett movies was obviously solved last night. It turned out that wile TCM and IMDb both claimed Mickey runs just over 90 minutes, the print TCM aired was only about 76 minutes. That's one mystery solved, although I suppose there's another mystery over what happened to the other 15 minutes (or whether the movie ever did run to 90 minutes). I watched the first few minutes of Hearts and Flowers, and was very favorably impressed by the print. I didn't stay to see if the MGM short that I mentioned yestarday also aired, although TCM would have had just enough time for that to run and finish up just before 10:00 PM.

TCM is putting the spotlight on Adolphe Menjou tonight. The first movie, at 8:00 PM, is Easy to Love. The plot sounds rather familiar, but I'm not certain whether I've actually seen it before. Menjou plays a wealthy man married to Genevieve Tobin. She begins to suspect that he's having an affair with her best friend (Mary Astor), so she decides to get back at him by pretending to have an affair with his best friend (Edward Everett Horton). Complicating matters is the fact that while Aster doesn't really love Horton, he's in love with her. That, and the adults aren't role modelling good behavior for their 20-something children. There were a lot of movies in the pre-Cdoe era with simliarly convoluted plots, and I have a feeling I'm mixing this one up with another one. I distinctly seem to recall one with domestic violence treated almost humorously -- the opening scene is of a bridge game or something where the main couple nearly comes to blows -- but for the life of me I can't remember which movie that was.