Thanksgiving 2024 briefs

We've finally reached Thankgiving here in the US, which means a long weekend for most people as long as you aren't in retail and have to work Black Friday. It also means some changes in programming on regular TV channels and something slightly more special, if you will, on TCM. This year, Thanksgiving morning and afternoon include seven of the ten Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers pairings, starting at 6:30 AM with The Gay Divorcee. Unfortunately, one of the three that's getting overlooked is my favorite of them, The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle. It's only once we get to prime time that TCM is giving us more traditional family movies like Life With Father (1:45 AM) and Yours, Mine, and Ours (9:45 PM).

The "special" programming continues on Friday, which is really why I wanted to do this post. Unfortunately, the morning kicks off with a repeat of all six episodes of The Power of Film, running through to 10:30 AM. After that, it's five films that are celebrating their 75th anniversary in 2004, concluding with two greats, White Heat at 3:45 PM and The Third Man at 6:00 PM. And then, in prime time, it's a night of Monty Python, much if not all of which is I think TCM premieres, starting with Monty Python and the Holy Grail at 8:00 PM.

Unfortunately, I also have to mention a couple of recent passings. Director Jim Abrahams died yesterday at the age of 80. Together with the Zucker brothers, he made several comedies that have become classics, starting with Airplane!. There were also Hot Shots! and the first Naked Gun movie.

Dying on Tuesday, Nov. 25, but not hitting the news until after Abrahams' death, was that of actor Earl Holliman. Holliman was a supporting actor in a ton of well-known movies in the 1950s and 1960s, such as Forbidden Planet, Giant, and The Sons of Katie Elder. He also did a lot of TV, with probably his biggest TV role being opposite Angie Dickinson on Police Woman in the mid-1970s. Like a lot of B-list stars of that era he also did game shows, notably Pyramid in the 1980s. Holliman was 96.