Independence Day 2025 and beyond briefs

As I write this, it's midafternoon on July 3, which of course means that tomorrow is the Independence Day holiday in the US. For various reasons, Hollywood didn't make as many movies about the Revolutionary War. Part of it is that those would have to be historical dramas; another part I think is that once World War II came along there was a need for a different type of war movie and that generation drove movies for quite a few decades. It's not as if there are a whole lot of movies about the Civil War, either.

I say that because it always feels as though the Revolutionary War gets short shrift when TCM is programming for July 4. There's a tendency to get the same smallish set of war movies every year, and beyond that a bunch of "Americana" musicals. This year seems to tend even more to the musicals, at least in the morning and afternoon.

However, TCM's website does put up some of the shorts on their daily schedule a couple of days in advance. In between the musicals are a couple of historical shorts worth mentioning. The Bill of Rights (approx. 9:40 AM) fills out the time slot following Girl Crazy (8:00 AM), while The Declaration of Independence (approx. 5:35 PM) takes the rest of the slot that's left at the end of Take Me Out to the Ball Game (4:00 PM).

Prime time sees two musicals and two war movies:
8:00 PM Yankee Doodle Dandy, about the life of George M. Cohan;
10:30 PM 1776, the musical about the adoption of the Declaration of Independence;
1:30 AM Drums Along the Mohawk; and
3:30 AM The Scarlet Coat.

There's not going to be a tradtitional Star of the Month post here on the blog because there isn't a traditional Star of the Month. Instead, TCM is looking at "actresses of the 1980s" on each of the following four Tuesday nights. Why they didn't come up with enough movies for five Tuesdays is a bit beyond me; perhaps they could have done the four Mondays in July. In any case I've got a post this coming Tuesday I think for one of movies in the first night of the salute. The post might be going up Monday, though, since there's another movie on July 9 that's getting a post and I think that post is going to be scheduled for July 8.