Briefs for August 1, 2014

So we've finally reached this year's Summer Under the Stars, in which each day is given over to 24 hours of movies starring a certain person.Well, not quite starring; for example, tomorrow's salute to David Niven starts off with him billed a good way down the cast in Dodsworth at 6:00 AM, followed by again being well down the cast in The Charge of the Light Brigade at 8:00 AM.

And then there's Jane Fonda today, who even gets some non-movie programming thrown in. To be fair, however, that non-movie programming is the AFI Lifetime Achievement award she received earlier this year. That show, running a little over an hour, kicks off prime time at 8:00 PM and, like many new-to-TCM programs of this type, get a repeat later in the evening at 11:00 PM for the benefit of TCM's viewers on the west coast. In between is one movie, in this case, Cat Ballou at 9:15 PM.

As for the shorts, I've mentioned Mighty Manhattan, New York's Wonder City before; that's on this afternoon at about 3:25 PM, or following The Chapman Report (1:15 PM, 125 min). It technically doesn't call itself a Traveltalks short, but for all intents and purposes it is on, with the main difference being that it's a two-reeler. Watch for the scenes of where the UN building is being built, and the uter lack of traffic.

One other short that looks interesting but that I haven't seen before, is The Story of "The Jonker Diamond", a little aftre 7:45 AM tomorrow, following the previously-mentioned Dodsworth. This one is a Pete Smith short about the finding of an exceedingly large diamond in South Africa in the early years of the last century, and how it was turned from a rough diamond into the state we know today. This was directed by Jacques Tourneur, early in his career.