Briefs for June 30-July 1

Tonight sees the final night of Ann Sheridan's turn as TCM's Star of the Month. This final night looks at one film each with various people she collaborated with a bunch of times over the course of her career. That's not too surprising, considering she was under contract, and under the studio system, people at the same studio would be a lot more likely to work together multiple times. City for Conquest at 8:00 PM, and representing Sheridan's movies with James Cagney, is as far as I understand now out of print because it's only on that four-film box set of Cagney movies, and not on a standalone Warner Archive disc. The one I'll be recording, since it is on DVD and I haven't blogged about it before, is Juke Girl, overnight at 3:00 AM.

Tomorrow is the 104th birthday of Olivia de Havilland, and it's unsurprising that TCM will be spending the morning and afternoon with her films. The interesting thing is that this time, TCM has taken mostly lesser-known films, with the biggest two probably being the last two, In This Our Life (starring Bette Davis) at 4:15 PM, and The Charge of the Light Brigade (with Errol Flynn) at 6:00 PM.

Carl Reiner died yesterday at the age of 98. I've always thought of him more for his television work, but he did a surprising amount of movie work, both in front of the camera with cameos as well as some more substantial roles, and behind the camera as a director (Oh, God! and others) and screenwriter (The Thrill of It All, in which he plays a bit part too).

A lesser-known name who died yesterday is songwriter Johnny Mandel. He wrote the music for the main theme from M*A*S*H, and won an Oscar for composing a song that's definitely not my favorite and not from a favorite movie of mine, "The Shadow of Your Smile" from The Sandpiper. I believe in the movie it's sung over the closing credits by session singers, but it was covered a bunch of times, so I'll include this Youtube video somebody made of Vic Damone's version over scenes from the film: