TCM's Salute to Fox, Part 2

Last Wednesday, TCM began a two-night salute to 20th Century Fox studios. With only 11 movies, there's a lot that has to be skipped over, but even with that, there are some things that could have been done differently. At any rate, the second half of the salute is on tonight, with just five movies since they absolutely have to be done by 6:00 AM for the start of Summer Under the Stars.

Kicking off the night at 8:00 PM is the second showing of Star Wars, that being the 1977 original. It's definitely a movie that has a huge place in movie history, although I have to admit I don't really associate it with Fox. I've always thought of Lucasfilm, and was surprised when I realized the movie was distributed by Fox. Of course, Disney had the rights to the franchise for several years before buying up Fox.

Then at 10:15 PM there's Young Frankenstein. Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder made quite a few worthwhile movies at Fox from the 70s into the early 80s, and some of Brooks' work remains a large part of the culture. With that in mind, I think I would have picked Blazing Saddles instead of Young Frankenstein, but that's really just my personal preference. Or, there's Gene Wilder in Silver Streak but with only 11 movies, that wasn't going to get selected.

Third up, at 12:30 AM is The French Connection. An excellent choice; it's another of Fox's Best Picture winners and is one of the earliest movies to present the grittier New York City as opposed to the sanitized New York that had been in most mainstream Hollywood movies before this.

Next, at 2:15 AM, is Niagara. Marilyn Monroe was probably Fox's biggest star in the 1950s, and considering what a cultural icon she remains 57 years after her death, you absolutely have to program one of her movies. Although I like Niagara, I think for a limited size retrospective like this I would have picked her in How to Marry a Millionaire. The reason for this is that it was the first movie to be filmed in Cinemascope (although it was released after The Robe), which brought about a major change to the movies as all the studios eventually switched to making movies in one wide-screen process or another. Fox started it, and that is worthy of mentioning.

The last selection is the one that I would delete, that being The Fly at 4:00 AM. As I said last week, there's no Bette Grable in the salute. There's also no Henry Fonda, who was an important dramatic star for Fox before leaving to fight in World War II (granted, Fonda didn't like most of the movies Fox put him in, even if I think he was being too harsh on them). The Grapes of Wrath would have been a good one to include.