TCM Guest Programmer January 2014: Judith Sheindlin

Tonight sees this month's TCM Guest Programmer on TCM: Judith Sheindlin, who is best known as TV's Judge Judy. Unlike most Guest Programmers, she's only presenting three movies:

The Goodbye Girl, in which aspiring actor Richard Dreyfus worms his way into the apartment rented by divorcée Marsha Mason and her daughter -- you know they're going to fall in love -- kicks off the night at 8:00 PM;
That's followed at 10:00 PM by Elmer Gantry, in which self-proclaimed preacher Burt Lancaster goes on a roadshow with evangelist Jean Simmons, until his past comes back to haunt him;
and at 12:30 AM, Luise Rainer and Paul Muni play a pair of Chinese peasants battling the elements in the adaptation of Pearl Buck's novel The Good Earth.

I'm not a fan of Judge Judy the TV show, as I find her actions from the bench constantly shouting down petitioners she disagrees with to be worthy of a report to the ethics commission if she were still a real sitting judge. That, however, ought not hae anything to do with whether she can make cogent remarks about movies that she likes; besides, I can't imagine her trying to treat Robert Osborne the same way she treats people on her TV show. To continue being fair, she's probably a pretty good sort of person to select as Guest Programmer in the first place, considering that she's got a fairly popular show that appeals to pepole who probably aren't typically fans of "classic" (however you define that word) movies. This is in contrast to somebody like Joel Gray, who I thought would be less likely to bring in people who aren't particularly classic film fans.

The Good Earth will be followed at 3:00 AM the the interview that Luise Rainer did at the first TCM Film Festival back in 2010, and another of her movies, The Great Waltz at 3:45 AM. The Rainer interview is good enough reason to sit through Judge Judy presenting movies.