Coming up on November 30, 2015

Tomorrow, November 30, marks what would have been the 95th birthday of actress Virginia Mayo, so it's not surprising that TCM is spending a morning and afternoon with her. Mayo might be best known for playing James Cagney's moll in White Heat, but that's not airing. She was also Dana Andrews' wife who enjoyed the good times in The Best Years of Our Lives, but that one is also not airing.

Instead, I'll make brief mentions of a couple of other movies. First, at 11:00 AM is Colorado Territory. This one is a remake of High Sierra, except that the action is moved back a couple of decades to make it a western. Joel McCrea plays the Humphrey Bogart character, that being the criminal who does "one more" robbery that ultimately costs him. Mayo plays his girl, who goes all the way to the end of the line for him.

If you want something lighter, you could try The Girl from Jones Beach at 2:15 PM. Mayo plays that girl, but more on her in a minute. Ronald Reagan is an artist who has come up with a drawing of an ideal girl by drawing the body parts of a bunch of different girlfriends. And then he meets Mayo at the shore, and finds that she looks just like his drawing. How to meet her? Well, she teaches English as a second language at citizenship classes for immigrants, so Reagan tries to pass himself off as a Czech immigrant! Reagan was always reasonably OK at light comedy, and thanks to having Eddie Bracken as a sidekick, the movie does ultimately work.

Over on FXM Retro, you've got one more chance to watch The Shocking Miss Pilgrim, tomorrow at 11:30 AM. I briefly summarized this one at the end of October 2014, and stand by what I said in that post. It's more than pleasant if you like the Fox style of musicals that they were putting out in the Betty Grable era, but if that's not your thing, it's a very trifling, albeit utterly inoffensive, trifle. As I also mentioned in the October 2014 post, the movie was based on an idea from silent movie screenwriter Frederica Sagor Maas who lived to be 111, but Fox changed Maas' ideas beyond all belief.