Briefs for May 18-19, 2020

Tonight's lineup on TCM is "College Musicals", a genre that isn't always my favorite, especially when it includes something like June Allyson and Peter Lawford in Good News (overnight at 3:15 AM). But one of the movie is Too Many Girls, which I recommended ages ago and which I really like. This movie, which has Desi Arnaz playing a college football player(!) who with a couple of other stars (including Eddie Bracken) is sent to a cow college to spy on Lucille Ball, shows up at 1:30 AM. Bracken gets to dance with Ann Miller and is great. The movie got a DVD release ages ago but seems to be out of print. You can find it on Prime Video however.

I should have mentioned a couple of deaths over the past week, which you've probably heard of by now. Jerry Stiller died last week at 92; I had forgotten that he has a small role in The Taking of Pelham One, Two Three:



Fred Willard died over the weekend at the age of 86 (although some sources claim he was only 80). He was in several of Christopher Guest's mockumentaries, such as This Is Spinal Tap:



Finally, I notice that French actor Michel Piccoli died this morning aged 94. The name seemed familiar although I couldn't remember offhand where I'd seen him. It turns out he's in several well-known movies, starting with playing Brigitte Bardot's husband in Contempt. There are English-language movies like Peter Ustinov's Lady L and Alfred Hitchcock's Topaz. Back in his native France he was also Danielle Darrieux's fiancé who runs a music stor in The Young Girls of Rochefort and appeared in some of Luis Buñuel's films like Belle du Jour and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.




(Sorry I couldn't find a subtitled version.)