And coming up on TCM

I did a post the other day about movies coming up on FXM Retro after a long absence, something I do from time to time when I can't think of anything else to blog about. Normally, when I mention what's coming up on TCM without doing a full-length blog post, it's to mention some of the shorts.

There are a couple of interesting shorts that I've blogged about before showing up in the next 24 hours or so. London Can Take It!, which was filmed during the Blitz at the beginning of World War II before the US got involved and is clearly designed to elicit sympathy from American audiences to the plight of the British, can be seen overnight at 3:18 AM, or following Joan of Paris (1:45 AM, 92 min). I have not actually seen Joan of Paris before as far as I am aware.

The other short is Romance of Radium, airing at 9:19 AM tomorrow. This is a Pete Smith short which looks at the discovery of radium, the first of the radioactive elements to be isolated. In addition to its discovery, the short looks at its use in medicine, which as I mentioned once before is something I think would have been a novelty to the audiences of the late 1930s when this short was made. The short would be well paired with the 1943 feature Madame Curie, but instead it comes on after The Green Goddess. This is another movie I haven't seen before, starring George Arliss as a raja in British India (gotta love the casting!) who holds a couple of Brits hostage when their plane crashes. The TCM schedule claims the movie is in color, but IMDb says it's in black and white, and I presume they'd be correct. I've always found George Arliss interesting to watch so I'm going to have to clear some space from my DVR to record this one.

Following The Green Goddess is Stage Door at 9:30 AM, which probably would have been the subject of a full-length post today if I hadn't blogged about it back in 2012. Lucille Ball vs. Katharine Hepburn. Nice.