Another night of worthy movies in TCM's Spotlight on Jazz

TCM has been running a spotlight on "Jazz in the movies" every Monday and Thursday in prime time, and tonight sees a couple of movies that I probably should have mentioned a bit earlier.

The night kicks off at 8:00 PM with New Orleans, a movie with a slightly trite plot (musician falls in love with new sound, only in this case there's also the race aspect), but what sets New Orleans apart is the presence of Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday. It still doesn't seem to be on DVD, so you'll really want to catch this one.

That's followed at 9:45 PM by the Holiday biopic Lady Sings the Blues, which just aired a month ago but is running again. If you didn't catch last month's showing, you might want to try tonight's.

Third up, at 12:30 AM, is Pete Kelly's Blues, which is Jack Webb taking on jazz as only Jack Webb can, which of course is a double-edged sword. Still, it's also worth a watch.

At 2:15 AM you can catch Blues in the Night which isn't a bad little movie in its own right, but might be more notable for an acting performance by a young Elia Kazan, who rather wisely switched to directing. This one also seems to be out of print on DVD, although Amazon lists it as available on Prime Video.

Finally, at 4:00 AM, there's Rhapsody in Blue, which as you might be able to guess is a biopic on George Gershwin, played here by Robert Alda. It's about as realistic as Lady Sings the Blues; as I understand it, the two actresses who play Gershwin's love interests in the film are playing characters who didn't exist in real life.