A special month on TCM

If you've been watching enough TCM, there's no way you could have msised that TCM's 20th anniversary is coming up. That will be the 14th, with a special just before prime time, with prime time that night airing Gone With the Wind, which was the very first movie run on TCM all the way back in 1994. That, combined with the TCM Film Festival coming up later in the month, means that there are some programming changes on TCM in April.

First, if you paid close enough attention, you'll note there was no Star of the Month this week. True, Monday was still part of March, but rather than having a traditional Star of the Month, John Wayne is going to be the Star of the Month the entire week beginning April 21. He'll be showing up in prime time every night, and a lot of the daytime too.

There's no Friday night spotlight either. This first Friday night in April brings a memorial to Charlton Heston, who was born in October 1923, but whose death was almost exactly six years ago. The night kicks off with Ruby Gentry at 8:00 PM.

Next week brings five nights of TCM Fan Programmers, with 20 of them (for the 20th anniversary) each presenting one movie. Sorry, I wasn't selected, and I don't think you'd want to see my ugly mug anyway. It looks like four programmers a night for the five weeknights next week.

Finally, a post-script to yesterday's post. I was a bit surprised to see that the closing shot of Stopover in Hollywood was indeed the Hollywood sign, and more surprised to see that it wasn't in as decrepit a state as it would be by the 1970s just before the restoration. The rest of the short was slightly odd and desperately in need of a restoration (not going to happen, I'd presume) as the color was so uneven.