A spate of remakes, and a sequel

Hollywood's been making remakes forerver and a day, something that I've mentioned in several posts over the years. The next two stars in TCM's Summer Under the Stars show this, as we've got a couple of more recent remakes, and some older remakes.

First up is today's honoree, Faye Dunaway. She's one of the stars of the 1979 version of The Champ, which is coming up at 11:15 AM. Jon Voight plays the alcoholic boxer who wants to fight one more bout in order to maintain custody of his son (Ricky Schroeder). If it sounds familiar, it's because the original version of this movie came out all the way back in 1931. As you can see from the link I've blogged about the Beery/Cooper version, but I'm not certain if I've seen the more Voight/Schroeder film in its entirety.

The next movie is technically not a remake: a 1973 version of The Three Musketeers, at 8:00 PM. I'm not certain you can call something a remake when it's an adaptation of a piece of literature that was already in the public domain when the original version was made, although it's a bit of a gray area. This is another movie that I have to admit to not having seen.

Tomorrow brings us 24 hours of Herbert Marshall. Back in June, 2013, I mentioned the 1941 film When Ladies Meet, which is airing tomorrow morning at 7:30 AM. It's a remake of a 1933 movie by the same title, which I blogged about in February 2013 and which is linked to in the above link on 1941's When Ladies Meet.

Marshall was also in both versions of Somerset Maugham's play The Letter, and those will be showing back to back on Saturday night into Sunday morning: the 1940 film with Marshall as the cuckolded husband at midnight, followed at 1:45 AM by the 1929 version with Marshall as the murdered boyfriend. The 1940 version, starring Bette Davis, is certainly well made, but I really like the 1929 version. The only problem is that the print is in poor shape.

Finally, I didn't realize that Herbert Marshall had done an Andy Hardy movie, but apparetnly he did. That film, Andy Hardy's Blonde Trouble, shows up tomorrow morning at 9:30 AM, and has Marshall playing one of Mickey Rooney's college professors.