Saturday, November 17, 2012

The short sounds familiar

Sometime within the past couple of weeks, I tuned in to TCM towards the end of a short, which seemed to involve a big band in some fictitious kingdom, where the government didn't like jazz music and was trying to capture the band. The band plays, however, and the king's emissary falls in love with the music. Unfortunately, I didn't think to go to TCM's schedule to see what this short was.

However, TCM is airing The Prisoner of Swing tomorrow morning at 7:38 AM. The plot of this sounds like it could be the short I had seen some time back (although I'd think TCM wouldn't rerun the same shorts within a few weeks). The Prisoner of Swing is apparently based on The Prisoner of Zenda, which involves kidnapping the king and replacing him with a lookalike, who in this one is a fan of swing music. The plot summary mentions a big ball, which I probably wouldn't have seen anyhow since I only saw the last few minutes of the short. But in what I saw the band was hiding in what looked to be some sort of rural or forest area. I guess I'll find out tomorrow whether The Prisoner of Swing is the short I saw the end of a few weeks back.

One other thing that should be mentioned is that TCM almost certainly has decided to run The Prisoner of Swing tomorrow because it's running immediately before the 1937 version of The Prisoner of Zenda at 8:00 AM.

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