Briefs for December 30-31, 2019

First up, a couple of obituaries I probably should have mentioned. Broadway composer Jerry Herman died on Thursday at the age of 88. Although he wrote for Broadway, some of his musicals were famously turned into movies, with the most notable being Hello, Dolly!. There's also a movie version his musical Mame, based on the Rosalind Russell movie (and I think short stories before that), which starred a way-too-old Lucille Ball in the title role. I haven't seen any of the movie versions of La Cage aux Folles, so I don't know if any of them keep the musical numbers.

Actress Sue Lyon also died on Thursday, aged 73, although her death wasn't announced until rather later. Lyon is probably best known for her role as the title character in Lolita, although I mentioned her several months back as the jailbait in Tony Rome. There's also The Flim-Flam Man.

In those countries that give out honors and titles, the annual year-end titles have been anounced. Director James Cameron was named to the highest ring of the Order of Canada, a "Companion of the Order of Canada", joining Donald Sutherland who was named in June in advance of the Canada Day holiday on July 1. Looking through the list, other notable movie names who are Companions include directors Norman Jewison, Atom Egoyan, and David Cronenberg, as well as actor Christopher Plummer. Over in the UK, the New Year's Honours List was announced, with directors Sam Mendes (American Beauty) and Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave) among the nominees.

Tomorrow being New Year's Eve, it's time for TCM to have some relatively special programming to ring in the New Year. I say "relatively" because what they're doing isn't that much different from what they've done in several previous years. Starting at 9:00 AM you can see the six Thin Man Movies, and in prime time, they'll have the That's Entertainment! trilogy and That's Dancing. Nice movies all, but nothing we haven't seen a bunch of times.