Tuesday, January 2, 2024

January 2024 TCM Star of the Month: Robert Mitchum

Robert Mitchum (l.) and Deborah Kerr in Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (Jan. 32, 9:45 PM)

As always, now that we're into a new month on TCM, it's time for a new Star of the Month. (OK, not during 31 Days of Oscar or Summer Under the Stars. But you get the point.) This time, that Star of the Month is Robert Mitchum, who has been honored before but ages ago -- I think I saw somebody else mention that the last time was even before I started blogging. Mitchum started at RKO, I believe, and he made enough movies that it's not awfully difficult for TCM to be able to show five nights' worth of his films, every Tuesday this month and continuing into the Wednesday morning daypart on a couple of occasions.

Robert Mitchum (l.) along with Robert Ryan and Robert Young in Crossfire (6:30 AM, Jan. 3)

I've got a handful of photos of Mitchum in various things, so those are going to be the movies I'm highlighting, not necessarily because they're the best. The spotlight kicks off tonight at 8:00 PM with Out of the Past, among a bunch of noirish movies, but surprisingly, it looks like the photos I currently have from that film are of Kirk Douglas, so instead the noir I'll mention in this first week is Crossfire, airing in the early hours Wednesday morning.

The second Tuesday looks to be Mitchum in westerns. I thought I had recorded The Good Guys and the Bad Guys, but apparently I didn't, and it's not on the Watch TCM app, so nothing much to talk about that night.

January 16 brings the first night of war movies, starting at 8:00 PM with Mitchum's lone Oscar nomination for The Story of G.I. Joe. That's followed by a diverse lineup on the 23rd, with the night being 1950s and 1960s stuff, including a showing of Thunder Road together with Robert's son James Mitchum, at 11:45 PM. If you missed one of the 4259028476 showings of Holiday Affair during TCM's Christmas marathon, this is another chance to catch it, as you can see it at 2:30 PM on January 24.

Oh, I forgot Night of the Hunter at 8:00 PM on January 23.

Finally, on January 30 we get movies from late in Mitchum's career, including Cape Fear which is currently scheduled for 10:00 PM. I say "currently" because as I write this, the 8:00 PM slot is still "to be announced", which means that TCM may or may not be able to get whatever it is they intend to show. Mitchum has a small role in Scrooged, which would be fun to see show up on TCM, and I don't think TCM has had a problem in the past getting the rights to The Friends of Eddie Coyle, so I don't know what they're currently thinking of putting in that slot.

No comments: