Briefs for the third week of August, 2025

I probably should have done a briefs post over the weekend to mention that James Gleason was the star for Summer Under the Stars on Monday (August 18), as it would have been nice to give you a heads-up on the Hildegarde Withers movies as well as Night of the Hunter. But alas, I've been a bit remiss in doing extras around here, since I'm usually writing up a post and leaving it in the queue to schedule for some later time.

Tomorrow, August 20, brings James Cagney. Quite a few of the movies are worth mentioning, starting at 6:00 AM with The Doorway to Hell. Cagney isn't the star here -- that honor goes to Lew Ayres -- but Cagney shows why he was very soon to become a star as he's much more noticeable when he's on screen. And, at 6:00 PM, you have a chance to catch Cagney doing a western, Tribute to a Bad Man. I actually had this one on my DVR and watched it, but when I went to put it back on for a refresher, I discovered that it had already expired. So, as with Five Steps to Danger last week, I decided that I had enough posts for movies coming up on the TCM schedule that I'd wait for tomorrow's recording to end up on the DVR to do a post on it at some later date.

I'm not overly excited for Patricia Neal on Thursday or Frank Sinatra on Friday, but Saturday is the day for Gina Lollobrigida. Several of the movies are the same ones that TCM ran when they did their programming salute to her last year and that I already did posts on. Apparently she was also in a production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame which comes on overnight between Saturday and Sunday.

Still nothing on FXM that I haven't blogged about before, but tomorrow at 4:45 sees a young Linda Darnell in Day-Time Wife, which I think TCM premiered recently. It's been quite some time since I mentioned Satan Never Sleeps, and you can see that at 6:00 AM Friday (August 22).

Of course, what really prompted me to do a briefs post was news of the passing of British actor Terence Stamp, who died on Sunday at the age of 87. Depending on what sort of movie fandom you're in, you may best remember him for starring opposite Robert Ryan in Billy Budd. Or, you may think of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Some of the more mainstream if you will fans, who don't normally know a lot of the movies I mention, posted his obit remembering Stamp as General Zod in the Christopher Reeve Superman movies. I wouldn't be surprised it TCM has a programming tribute for Stamp at some point, but getting enough films might be a bit of an issue.