Still not on DVD

Looking at today's TCM schedule, I notice that this week's Silent Sunday Nights feature is The Crowd, airing at midnight tonight. I mentioned all the way back in January 2009 when I blogged about The Crowd that it wasn't available on DVD. Surprisingly enough, even with the Warner Archive, it's still not available on DVD. So you're still going to have to catch the TCM showing, I'm sorry to say.

The Crowd is preceded at 10:00 PM by Lady in the Lake. I'm sorry to say that this is one of those movies I've never really been able to get into. Robert Montgomery directed himself in this set-at-Christmastime Philip Marlowe mystery. The problem with the movie is that it has the conceit of being told almost entirely from Marlowe's eyes. Now, I don't mean a first-person point of view in the way that something like the Humphrey Bogart version of The Maltese Falcon is. (A few scenes of The Maltese Falcon are strictly third-person, but not many.) I mean the camera angles are what the Philip Marlowe character would see. There are one or two exceptions: Marlowe has a narration in the beginning and another one halfway through the film or so. And there are a couple of mirror scenes where we see Marlowe's face. But the technique is so contrived that it makes the movie difficult to watch. Lady in the Lake, however, unlike The Crowd, has gotten a DVD release.

A programmer after my own heart

TCM is running Summertime as tonight's Essential at 8:00 PM. Now, it's not my favorite movie. I'm not a huge fan of Katharine Hepburn in general, and some of her spinster types can really come across as self-absorbed, as if you can see the reason why no man ever really wanted her. Venice as it was in the 1950s is lovely to look at though; who knows how much longer the city will retain its lovely character? Seriously, I saw a documentary about the rising water in Venice that mentioned that throughout cities' histories, people just destroyed and built on top of old stuff, which is how Venetians of the past dealt with the rising water. Preservationists of today might actually be compounding Venice's other problems by trying to keep the past from being demolished. (Industrialization in the outskirs has also lowered the water table, leading to subsidence of the land.) None of this is really relevant to a classic movie blog, though. What struck my eye is the rest of tonight's schedule. Following Summertime, we have:

Autumn Leaves at 10:00 PM;
If Winter Comes at midnight;
A Walk in the Spring Rain at 2:00 AM;
and to cap the night off:
A Man For All Seasons at 3:45 AM.

Oh boy is this sort of punny programming theme something I love!

Director of the Month Ernst Lubitsch

TCM usually has, in addition to its regular Star of the Month, one other monthly feature. That could be a subject, such as last month's novel-to-film marathons, or a tribute to a person who was mostly not an actor. I'm reminded, for example, of cinematographer Jack Cardiff back in January. This month, that person happens to be director Ernst Lubitsch. TCM is running 14 of his films every Friday in prime time, before TCM Underground. Tonight kicks off with The Loves of Pharaoh at 8:00 PM, a silent movie Lubitsch made back in Germany before he came to Hollywood. I must admit that this is a movie I had not heard of until seeing it on this week's TCM schedule, so I can't really discuss it very much. It doesn't seem to be on DVD either, so you're going to have to catch tonight's TCM airing. Tonight's other two Lubitsch films are The Smiling Lieutenant at 10:00 PM, a Maurice Chevalier musical that's really not to my taste, although I'm sure some people like that stuff. That's followed at midnight by The Shop Around The Corner, in which James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan play co-workers who don't get along but also pen-pals through the personals column who, not knowing each other's identity, do get along.

One other thing that sounds intriguing tonight is Important News after The Shop Around the Corner, at about 1:40 AM. It's an MGM short about a newspaper editor facing the choice of what story to put on the front page. (Why not both? Do journalists really think their readers are so stupid they can only grasp one story? Apparently yes.) The star is Chic Sale, an actor who can be difficult to take -- he's not to everybody's taste. You may remember him as the grandfather in The Star Witness, playing a Civil War veteran who saves the day. The more interesting thing about the short is an uncredited supporting role from James Stewart.

TCM has been running a snazzy promo for the Ernst Lubitsch salute, and an even snazzier one for this month's Christmas movies that are going to be airing in Sunday night double features along with a marathon close to the 25th. (Trying to recognize all the movies from brief clips is always part of the fun.) I'm sure they've got one for Barbara Stanwyck as well, although I can't remember whether I've seen it.

Why We Fought

Tomorrow, December 7, is the anniversary of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. (Or, I suppose, if you live in the Animal House universe, the German bombing of Pearl Harbor.) So it's unsurprising that TCM will be running a bunch of war movies tomorrow. They're kicking things off at 6:00 AM with Prelude to War.

Prelude to War is the first part in a seven-part series called Why We Fight. The US, having been through World War I, was quite isolationist in the 1930s, not wanting to have to fight another European war. The perceived need to educate Americans on the importance of defeating the Nazis was seen by the British, who commissioned what eventually became the film 49th Parallel. Even once the Japanese attacked, the US government knew there were still going to be people not thrilled with having to go to war. So the government decided to engage in some domestic propaganda to explain to the reluctant soldiers why they were going off to fight.

Hollywood was part of the war effort, something I've mentioned before in conjunction with the short Winning Your Wings: several Hollywood stars who were drafted joined the Motion Picture Unit to make instructional films. Why We Fight is somewhat different in that regard, having been made directly by the War Department. It's still quite suitable for TCM, however, in that the series was mostly directed by Frank Capra, with Walter Huston providing the voiceover. Sure, it's propaganda, but it's also an interesting historical document.

As with all media produced by the US government, Why We Fight is by law in the public domain. It's made it to several DVD sets, although I don't know whether any of them are still in print.

TCM December 2012 Guest Programmer: Lee Child (and a few other schedule notes)

I don't read too much current fiction, so I know nothing about the work of "[i]nternational best-selling and award-winning crime thriller writer Lee Child", as he's called in the TCM blurb for him. (I wsa hoping maybe he was the son of Julia Child or something.) It seems reasonable to guess that part of the reason he's been selected as Guest Programmer now is that one of his books has finally been turned into a movie, which is being released later this month. If it brings perople who are fans of Child, but not so much fans of classic cinema to TCM, so much the better. Child's selections are the sort of thing that will probably drive a certain section of TCM's fans nuts: how dare he select the "same" well-known stuff! Doesn't he know he's supposed to cater to "us" with more obscure stuff; the more obscure the better? At any rate, his four selections are:

Casablanca at 8:00 PM;
The Third Man at 10:00 PM;
Days of Heaven at midnight; and
The Dam Busters at 1:45 AM.

Just before Casablanca, and having nothing to do with Lee Child, are two other things worth mentioning. TCM is concluding its first day of Barbara Stanwyck's turn as Star of the Month with a documentary, Barbara Stanwyck: Fire and Desire, at 7:00 PM. That runs 46 minutes, leaving time for a short, that being 42nd Street Special, which is a bunch of stars getting on the "42nd Street Special" in part to promote the movie, and in part to go to Washington DC for the inauguration of Franklin Roosevelt. (Remember, this is the last inauguration that took place in March as scheduled, before the 20th Amendment changed the inauguration date to January 20.)

December 2012 Star of the Month: Barbara Stanwyck

Walter Pidgeon and Barbara Stanwyck in Executive Suite (December 6, 3:15 PM)

Now that we're in a new month, we have a new Star of the Month on TCM, that being the always-enjoyable Barbara Stanwyck. Her films are going to appear every Wednesday night in prime time, but Stanwyck made so many movies that TCM is able to continue the marathons of Stanwyck movies well into every Thursday. Executive Suite, from which the photo at the top of the post is taken, won't be airing until 3:15 PM tomorrow, for example. I've recommended quite a few of Stanwyck's movies before, including the relatively rarely-seen This Is My Affair at 9:45 PM, which I'm mentioning again largely because it's not on DVD and, being a Fox film, doesn't show up on TV very much. I was also surprised to see that Stella Dallas (overnight at 3:00 AM) isn't available to purchase on DVD from the TCM shop. (It has gotten a DVD release according to Amazon, but it's presumably out of print considering the prices for the DVD.)

Reviews on last night

Well, not so much reviews as quick comments. Unsurprisingly, I found the documentary Baby Peggy: The ELephant in the Room to be quite enjoyable. I knew the brief outline of the Baby Peggy story, but not all the horrible details. I find it difficult to believe Sol Lesser's claim that Captain January lost money, and that this is the reason why he wanted to get out of the Baby Peggy contract. Studio accounting can do magical things, however, and apparently could do so all the way back in 1924. You also have to feel really bad for Peggy's sister Louise, who was put into this situation without any say. I'm reminded of the true stories dramatized in the movies Hilary and Jackie (about cellist Jacqueline Du Pré, written by her sister and brother who grew up with the world-class cello prodigy), or Searching for Bobby Fischer. I also wonder how much of the Baby Peggy story was remembered by the people who made What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? Of course, that movie made the title of Peggy/Diana Cary's own autobiography, What Ever Happened to Baby Peggy? much more appropriate.

Captain January was charming. That poor dog, getting his tail bit by the pelican. The interesting thing was seeing which scenes survived well and which didn't. There were scenes where I thought the print looked to be in great shape; other times -- sometimes within the same scene, such as one where the two biological relatives are visiting the lighthouse -- the print looks murky and blurry, as if it were taken from a 16mm television print, as bad as something like The Black Book.

Captain January was followed by the short Bubbles, from WB/Vitaphone in 1930. The title card mentions Technicolor, but the surviving print is black and white. It looked like some of the people in the short had odd shadowing around their eyes, which makes me wonder whether that was make-up for color cameras, which just comes out looking wrong in black-and-white. The title cards only mention the "Vitaphone Kiddies", but apparently Mae Questel was in the opening scene, and the Gumm sisters (that's Judy Garland, who was born Frances Gumm) were among the Kiddies. The Kiddies performed a bunch of musical and dance numbers which were even odder than the ones in Show Kids, with a very bizarre MC.

Carmen Jr. was a hoot. Baby Peggy dancing with the little boy was a riot, and the scenes leading up to that, which were almost entirely the child actors, were so much fun. The intertitles were in Danish with English subtitles, rather than removing the Danish intertitles and replacing them with a reconstruction of the English. I don't speak Danish, but the intertitles looked a bit old-fashioned. All of the nouns were capitalized, as in German (I can read German, and with Danish being from the Germanic family of langugaes, I can recognize a fair number of root words). I don't believe Danish does that any more. Also, I don't think I saw the Danish letter å show up anywhere, instead it was replaced by -aa. Most interestingly, Baby Peggy's last name was mispelled as Montgommery, with a double M.

Baby Peggy

Er, that's not the right Peggy

I briefly mentioned yesterday that tonight's TCM lineup is going to be dedicated first to Baby Peggy and then to several other child stars. Baby Peggy, still alive at 94, was a big star in the early 1920s who lost her entire savings thanks to parental mismanagement and the Depression. Her story, like Jackie Coogan's, is one that's not always happy, and in part responsible for changing Hollywood's child labor laws. To be fair, Hollywood does need children. I mean, what kind of idiot would think a 26-year-old woman could play a 12-year-old girl? Also, the studios treated everybody pretty badly. And a lot of the fault can be put on the parents; heaven knows parents can be much too pushy in the vicarious pursuit of fame for their children. At any rate, Baby Peggy's story is told in the documentary Baby Peggy: The Elephant in the Room, which kicks off tonight's proceedings at 8:00 PM, with a repeat at 11:30 PM. That's followed at 9:00 by Captain January, a title you might recognize because it was remade in the 1930s as a Shirley Temple vehical. After Captain January come several of Baby Peggy's shorts. Not that too many of those survive; sadly, the studio where she started burned to the ground in a fire in 1926.

As for the other stars, the one I'm looking forward to is Baby Rose Marie: The Child Wonder, at 11:20 PM. This is the same Rose Marie who would grow up to play one of Rob Petrie's colleagues on The Dick Van Dyke Show. If you want to see adult Rose Marie in all her wide-screen glory, you could watch Dead Heat on a Merry-Go Round, a movie I briefly mentioned back in 2010. Some of you may like the Private Screenings episode on child stars, which is airing overnight at 1:45 AM.

Well, it is December

Now that we're into December, it means a bunch of Christmas movies all over TV. (One of the local radio stations switched to all-Christmas all the time back around Veterans' Day.) TCM is no exception, although this year is a bit different in that most of the Christmas stuff won't be coming until a lot closer to December 25.

Instead, TCM will be running Christmas double features every Sunday in prime time, leading into Silent Sunday Nights. This week sees the 1949 version of Little Women at 8:00 PM. Surprisingly, I haven't seen the Margaret O'Brien Word of Mouth piece where she talks about making that movie, including Elizabeth Taylor and the chipmunk she brought with her to the studio until she turned 18 (or at least, that's what O'Brien says). Considering that tomorrow night is going to be devoted first to Baby Peggy and then to other child stars, with the Private Screenings: Child Stars episode that includes O'Brien, I would think TCM would have run that particular O'Brien piece.

The second movie is All Mine to Give, which is airing at 10:15 PM.

Another round of repeats

TCM's theme for this evening is "On the Road": a night of movies about people going cross-country, more or less. I've recommended four of the night's movies before, and haven't seen the fifth one. But the four I've blogged about all deserve another mention.

The night kicks off with this week's Essential, Sullivan's Travels, at 8:00 PM, which last aired all of five weeks ago.
That's followed at 10:00 PM by Harry and Tonto, which I blogged about four years ago, but which I just mentioned a week or so ago since the recently deceased Larry Hagman has a supporting role in the film.
I haven't seen Lost in America (midnight) before, so I can't really comment on it.
Lucille Ball hits the road with Desi Arnaz in The Long Long Trailer, which airs at 2:00 AM.
The night concludes with Claudette Colbert showing us all how to hitchhike in It Happened One Night at 4:00 AM.