TCM: The Greatest Movie Channel

[voiceover]

7 hours ago, MissAlmond said:

Speaking of A Christmas Carol, 1951's Tiny Tim (Glyn Dearman) is gone while 1938's (Terry Kilburn) is still alive at 96. 

As if this day doesn’t suck enough.

[voiceover]

On a cheerier note 🤣:

It’s not on our channel, but it was the Fathom/TCM series’ December offering, and thus I’m justified for posting about it here.  I just finished rewatching It’s a Wonderful Life.    

[IIRC, last year there was another thread ripping this movie to shreds.  There was also a Washington Post article proposing that Mary was the real hero of the piece, since she was the one who solved the big problems (covering the bank run with the honeymoon money, going all over town to ask for help in Act 3).  It’s an okay argument, but it ignores the fact that Mary doesn’t take the Hero’s journey — she’s pretty perfect from beginning to end.  George is the one whose life lesson is bitterly, then joyously, bought.]

Anyway.  My previous favorite moments included the scene at the graveyard, when George sees Harry’s marker and Clarence explains that the servicemen all died because Harry wasn’t there to save them because George never existed to save Harry (“You really had a wonderful life!”).  Also, there at the end, when the war hero matter-of-factly states in a toast what he’s known all along (“To my big brother George: the richest man in town!”).  Today I found a new best line:

After Jimmy Stewart asks God to “live again”,  Ward Bond arrives.  The cop says they’ve all been looking for him.  George understands then that his prayer’s been answered, *again, and his face lights up: “Bert! do you know me?”

#ImnotcryingItsjustdusty

Merry Christmas, all!

[chessiegal]

We can't watch A Wonderful Life because as soon as the opening credits roll, my husband starts to cry. 

[Bastet]

On 12/25/2022 at 7:00 AM, voiceover said:

[IIRC, last year there was another thread ripping this movie to shreds.

Yep, it's a delightful thread (but it's not just for those of us who hate that fucking movie).

Remember how we recently discussed The Last of Sheila here?  It came up as a clue on Jeopardy! last week.  Rian Johnson of the Knives Out franchise read the clues in a category about whodunits, and the $800 clue was: An underappreciated film is 1973's "The Last of Sheila", a murder mystery written by the unexpected duo of Stephen Sondheim & this star of "Psycho" (with a hint within the clue of pictures of Sondheim and Perkins which, of course, no one here would have needed).

It was fun to see that pop up; I don't know if the film (which is definitely among those to which the newest Knives Out plays homage) has ever before been mentioned on J!

[roseha]

On 12/19/2022 at 8:42 AM, Milburn Stone said:

A good piece, as usual. And, as usual, including some I didn't realize had died. I just wish everyone could have been on a few frames longer than they were. I realize that would have increased the length of the whole piece by a minute or more, but that would have been a good trade for being able to register the passing of someone before they were off my screen. 

I was wondering if anyone else felt that the TCM Remembers this year was too rushed.  Personally I thought it was *way* too rushed.  I just watched it again (the new link) and part of the issue I think is not only the shortened length, but the music which I think is just too fast for all the imagery they are trying to fit in.  Also, did they really have to include 20 something cars/vehicles in a four minute video?  Although I did enjoy seeing the brief clip of Buster Keaton in The Railrodder.

Just for contrast, my favorite tribute has always been the 2014 TCM Remembers.  You get to see all the people without any rushing, and with a reasonable slower pace.  And I have to admit that seeing Bogart tell Bacall "I'll be waiting for you" gets me every time.

[Calvada]

On 12/22/2022 at 11:41 PM, voiceover said:

Just here for the annual registering of my disgruntlement over TCM’s refusal to screen the best version of A Christmas Carol.  Alastair Sim is even in one of the December TCM ads — on TCM!, ffs.

I know it’s Fox’s to hoard, but so is All About Eve, and that’s never mattered. It’s worse than the networks surrendering A Charlie Brown Christmas to AppleTV.  For Christmas this year, I’d like the execs to all pound sand.

<huffs off to purify my soul with  some Student Prince in Old Heidelberg >

I too am irked about this.  This is my favorite version; Alastair Sim is the best Scrooge IMO.  Several years ago I purchased the DVD and that's how I watch it every year.

The only thing about the 1951 Scrooge I take issue with is Tiny Tim.  I think he's too big!  Glyn Dearman was 11 years old when this was filmed.  Also, he doesn't look sickly as Tiny Tim should.  

[ekelks]

On 11/20/2022 at 10:51 AM, EtheltoTillie said:

PSA:  they’re showing Bigger Than Life on Watch TCM for a few more days. They rarely show it, unlike Nicholas Ray’s other films. It’s based on a medical mystery that originally appeared in The New Yorker, but it is a thrilling Technicolor feast for the eyes and a sly commentary on suburban life in the fifties. 
oh, ETA stars James Mason. This was part of James Mason month or something. 

Right, James Mason was the Star of the Month. Hence The Last of Shelia and many movies going back to the 1930s, including the brilliant ODD MAN OUT. Feast for the eyes, James Mason, for me anyway. 

[MissAlmond]

I want to thank everyone who pointed out The Automat; my only knowledge came from seeing them in movies, I always wondered why characters willingly bought what I thought was stale, who knows how old, food from a machine. 😄

[EtheltoTillie]

On 12/28/2022 at 4:11 PM, ekelks said:

Right, James Mason was the Star of the Month. Hence The Last of Shelia and many movies going back to the 1930s, including the brilliant ODD MAN OUT. Feast for the eyes, James Mason, for me anyway. 

So I’m going to recommend this again for the next time they show it.  James Mason’s steroid-fueled takedown of the locals at the PTA meeting should not be missed. 

[ekelks]

On 11/23/2022 at 3:42 AM, roseha said:

i just watched The Automat also, it was a lot of fun and certainly there was a lot I didn't know about its history.  The odd thing is I have a distinct memory of eating lunch at what I thought was the Automat on 42nd street near Grand Central but I was at a counter with table service.  So maybe it was a Chock Full o' Nuts?  Wish I could be more sure. 

Great to have all those guest interviewees but especially Mel Brooks!

Yes, Chock Full o'Nuts. Times Square? If not Grand Central. 

[Rinaldo]

Another month (and year), new theme programming. Star of the Month (Tuesday evenings) is Marion Davies. Wednesday evenings: Car Chases. Thursday evenings: The Jewish Experience.

I noticed a couple of titles coming up this week that TCM doesn't show often. Early Tuesday is Alex in Wonderland, one of those rites of passage we tended to get from young directors (in this case, Paul Mazursky) in the early 1970s. Big initial success (Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice) is followed by studio permission to make a pet project, which turns to be an excessively personal vision without an audience. (Another example, same period: Altman's MASH followed by Brewster McCloud.) I can't claim anything for Alex in Wonderland -- it's kind of a shapeless mess, in which perhaps the most interesting element is Ellen Burstyn getting her first big chance. But it'll always have a special place for me as one of three occasions when I watched a movie that contained a scene that contained the theater I was watching in. In this case I saw it in a theater on Hollywood Boulevard, which features in a big dream sequence. (The other two are Manhattan and Breaking Away.)

Also, on Thursday, for those who want to eventually see every Best Picture honoree, two titles that I haven't seen scheduled in quite some time: Cimarron and Gentleman's Agreement. (The latter presumably being part of the Jewish theme, as the subject and timing fit.)

Edited January 2, 2023 by Rinaldo

[xaxat]

I've seen several articles about how the recent Warner Brothers Discovery merger has led to major changes in the company, The cancellation of previously greenlit projects, pulling existing content from streaming services etc.

Has anyone read what effect (if any) this merger might have on TCM?

[SomeTameGazelle]

20 hours ago, Rinaldo said:

Also, on Thursday, for those who want to eventually see every Best Picture honoree, two titles that I haven't seen scheduled in quite some time: Cimarron and Gentleman's Agreement. (The latter presumably being part of the Jewish theme, as the subject and timing fit.)

I'm sure that TCM has shown Gentleman's Agreement quite recently sometime within the last few months. I remember because it was one I wasn't familiar with and when I came across it in progress I looked up some information about it. 

[EtheltoTillie]

21 hours ago, Rinaldo said:

Another month (and year), new theme programming. Star of the Month (Tuesday evenings) is Marion Davies. Wednesday evenings: Car Chases. Thursday evenings: The Jewish Experience.

I noticed a couple of titles coming up this week that TCM doesn't show often. Early Tuesday is Alex in Wonderland,

Also, on Thursday, for those who want to eventually see every Best Picture honoree, two titles that I haven't seen scheduled in quite some time: Cimarron and Gentleman's Agreement. (The latter presumably being part of the Jewish theme, as the subject and timing fit.)

Okay, Rinaldo, there you are throwing out those IU references . . . LOL   

I can't remember a movie theater in the movie Manhattan, and I can't find any location in a search.  What theater? 

My husband and I went on our first date at the New Yorker in 1974, site of the Marshall McLuhan scene in Annie Hall.  It closed many years ago and became an apartment building.

Anyway, I will have to investigate Alex in Wonderland.  I have never heard of it, and I recall Bob and Carol and Next Stop, Greenwich Village as my intros to Paul Mazursky.

[Rinaldo]

1 hour ago, EtheltoTillie said:

I can't remember a movie theater in the movie Manhattan, and I can't find any location in a search.  What theater? 

Now you're making me doubt my memory (which is indeed fallible, more and more). You're right, there's no mention of such a location in IMDb, but nevertheless my recollection is that Manhattan has a brief scene in the Carnegie Hall Cinema, with two of the characters seeing a movie there. And when the scene started, we audience members started uncontrollably buzzing, almost wordlessly -- because the interior we were seeing on the screen was the identical interior in which we were sitting. We were almost characters in the movie, for a few moments.

[EtheltoTillie]

1 hour ago, Rinaldo said:

Now you're making me doubt my memory (which is indeed fallible, more and more). You're right, there's no mention of such a location in IMDb, but nevertheless my recollection is that Manhattan has a brief scene in the Carnegie Hall Cinema, with two of the characters seeing a movie there. And when the scene started, we audience members started uncontrollably buzzing, almost wordlessly -- because the interior we were seeing on the screen was the identical interior in which we were sitting. We were almost characters in the movie, for a few moments.

Okay, this was driving me crazy, so I pulled up a copy of the movie, and it’s the Cinema Studio, a long-gone theater that used to be near Lincoln Center.  Around minute 55.  God, I used to live in all these theaters.  

[Milburn Stone]

9 hours ago, Rinaldo said:

...my recollection is that Manhattan has a brief scene in the Carnegie Hall Cinema, with two of the characters seeing a movie there. And when the scene started, we audience members started uncontrollably buzzing, almost wordlessly -- because the interior we were seeing on the screen was the identical interior in which we were sitting. We were almost characters in the movie, for a few moments.

One reason I liked reading this is that when a similar event happened here in Chicago (I can't remember anymore which movie and which theater), the audience instantaneously erupted (no wordlessness about it), and then cheerfully laughed at itself for erupting. I'd have assumed that in NY and LA, no version of that happens, not even a mild one. Maybe I'm right about LA. 😄 Nice to know that in NY the audiences aren't so jaded that they don't at least buzz wordlessly.

On the Discovery Warner worry brought up by @xaxat, I share it. We'll have to see what happens to TCM. Zaslov has already gutted legacy content from HBO Max for reasons I don't understand, since the company already owns that content. But there is one reason to take heart re TCM. As a smart guy, Zaslov surely values the revenue that comes to him from the cable companies while cable is still viable. Yes, more and more people have cut the cord, but that leaves more than half of all Americans who haven't. Eventually, corded viewing will be a negligible factor, but eventually isn't today, and there's still a ton to be made on it by the content providers. And cable TCM delivers profit to the company. (Its costs don't approach its revenue.) Doesn't mean Zaslov won't gut TCM this year or next year, but he has reasons not to. Here's an article that address the whole issue re TCM.

 

Edited January 3, 2023 by Milburn Stone

[StatisticalOutlier]

10 hours ago, Milburn Stone said:

Here's an article that address the whole issue re TCM.

Thanks for posting that.  From the article:
 

Quote

 

“The Godfather” director Francis Ford Coppola, another devoted fan, said he is still discovering titles on TCM after a lifetime of movie viewing.

“I recently saw a film I never heard of starring John Garfield — ’He Ran All the Way,’” Coppola said. “And I realized that I never appreciated what a great actor he was until I saw his work in this, his final film. It would not have come to my attention if not for TCM.”

 

First, this is what I love about non-streaming TCM--the serendipity. 

Second, I'm kind of shocked Coppola had never even heard of He Ran All the Way.  Even I've seen that one, although I'm sure I have a lot more free time than Coppola does.

On New Year's Eve I watched some of the That's Entertainment movies and all of That's Dancing.  I came away with a greater appreciation of Donald O'Connor's dancing.

And I'd love to see some Busby Berkeley movies on a big screen in a theater. 

I have a question:  Does anybody know if the sounds in the tap dancing sequences was original?  They pointed out that some of the dancing was done in one long take (and showed them moving parts of a set around while a woman was doing a big dance number--amazing), but didn't mention the sound. 

[Rinaldo]

2 hours ago, StatisticalOutlier said:

Does anybody know if the sounds in the tap dancing sequences was original?

I can't speak for every single case, but in general, the sounds of tapping in such sequences were dubbed in afterwards. For a simple practical (and in retrospect, obvious) reason: none of the sounds we hearing during a number like that are "live." We're hearing prerecorded orchestra and vocals, after all. Once shooting is complete, then it's possible to add the tap sounds to the soundtrack. 

In the Astaire-Rogers pictures for RKO, Astaire was on hand for the editing process (he wanted to make sure the best takes of a song were used, and that cuts within a number were minimal and appropriately placed -- ideally it should feel like one long take, but certain changes of viewpoint at a new section were allowed -- and that dancers were completely visible from top to bottom), and he would dub his own taps. Usually his dance assistant, Hermes Pan, would supply the taps for Ginger (who was often off making a nonmusical during the hiatus).

I can't speak to what happens in recent decades, with possibilities of multichannel recording and mixing of live and prerecorded sound.

[StatisticalOutlier]

45 minutes ago, Rinaldo said:

For a simple practical (and in retrospect, obvious) reason: none of the sounds we hearing during a number like that are "live." We're hearing prerecorded orchestra and vocals, after all.

Well of course.  Now that you mention it.  😀

It does make me wonder about some of the more remarkable tap sequences, like where someone was doing one-footed wings and really nailing the taps.  But I'm just going to decide not to care.

[EtheltoTillie]

I caught part of one of the Marion Davies movies last night, Beverly of Graustark, a silent.  I found her performance quite winning--she plays a boy and a girl.  She's masquerading as a prince and she also plays her real girl self.  But as happens with many silents, I found myself growing impatient and could not stick with the whole thing.  I felt I saw enough. 

[Rinaldo]

6 hours ago, EtheltoTillie said:

I caught part of one of the Marion Davies movies last night, Beverly of Graustark, a silent.

Ha! I wish I'd caught this. The Graustark novels were briefly an interest of mine when my parents emptied out their attic preparing to downsize into an apartment, and the first book in the series turned up in a carton. I'd heard the adjective "Graustarkian" to describe adventure tales set around small fictional European kingdoms (similar to "Ruritanian" derived from the Zenda story), often with an element of American romance with someone who turns out to rule that obscure country. Beverly of Graustark is the second book in the series, and the fifth (and last) movie to be made from them. I need to watch the upcoming schedule more carefully. 

[EtheltoTillie]

@Rinaldobeverly of graustark is on watch TCM!  According to IMDB there’s also.a 1914 version with different plot more like the books. 

Edited January 5, 2023 by EtheltoTillie

[MissAlmond]

I only noticed yesterday that TCM redid TCM Remembers  a third time, this round simply to add “Warner Bros. Discovery”with logo at the end Hmmm. 

Edited January 7, 2023 by MissAlmond

[Rinaldo]

On 1/4/2023 at 7:06 PM, EtheltoTillie said:

beverly of graustark is on watch TCM!

And I just watched it there. The story itself, even if altered, is true to the Graustark tradition (secret identities, commoners romancing with royalty), and I read that Marion Davies's boy-haircut (then received as daring and "severe") created a sensation, and a brief vogue. The restoration was made as recently as 2019 (including the original 2-strip Technicolor finale) and released on home media just last year.

Edited January 9, 2023 by Rinaldo

[SomeTameGazelle]

What was the short musical they showed after Bye Bye Braverman tonight? I came in partway through and didn't recognize anyone or any of the music. It was in colour with women dressed in pink or green. I came in when they were dancing around a kind of maypole on a platform above a circular bar. Then a large tall woman sang "Uncheck my husband" at a smaller woman in pink. Then the next section seemed to be about a department store possibly called Drake selling various articles of clothing and babies. 

ETA: this must be it, my googling improved after typing that out.

IMDb: : Over the Counter 
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0023311/

Edited January 13, 2023 by SomeTameGazelle
Answered my own question

[Rinaldo]

10 minutes ago, SomeTameGazelle said:

What was the short musical they showed after Bye Bye Braverman tonight?...

Ooh! I can answer this one! (I recorded BBB but haven't yet watched it.) It's a 1932 MGM 18-minute short called Over the Counter. Directed by Jack Cummings,  with a cast in which I recognize only Franklin Pangborn and an uncredited Betty Grable. Filmed in 2-strip Technicolor, hence the emphasis on pink and green.

[StatisticalOutlier]

For those of you whose interest in Beverly of Graustark has been piqued, they're showing it again, on Monday, January 30, at 12:00 a.m. EST.  Like the midnight between Sunday and Monday.

[Tom Holmberg]

Tonight (1/18) TCM is showing "The Bank Dick."  It's been a while since I've seen a W.C. Fields on any channel.  Locally they used to show Marx Bros. and W.C. Fields movies on New Year's Eve, but its been a long time since that happened (they also used to show "The St. Valentine's Day Massacre" on St Valentine's Day).

[Tom Holmberg]

Tonight (1/19) TCM is running the French Holocaust movie directed by Louis Malle "Au Revoir les Enfants" (1987) about a Catholic boarding school hiding Jewish children from capture.

[EtheltoTillie]

I watched a bit of The Bank Dick.  Had seen it before.  The beginning, where he is pretending to be a movie director, is quite funny.

[Charlie Baker]

On CBS Sunday Morning:

Harrison Ford with Ben

[SomeTameGazelle]

Glancing at Night and Day and its apparently splendid disregard for Cole Porter's biography, including Monty Woolley as "himself" -- except of course he is a middle-aged professor to Porter's youthful law student when in reality they would have been contemporaries as undergraduates. Is there any precedent or parallel for this type of anachronistic portrayal?

[Rinaldo]

18 hours ago, SomeTameGazelle said:

Glancing at Night and Day and its apparently splendid disregard for Cole Porter's biography, including Monty Woolley as "himself" -- except of course he is a middle-aged professor to Porter's youthful law student when in reality they would have been contemporaries as undergraduates. Is there any precedent or parallel for this type of anachronistic portrayal?

Monty Woolley's portrayal of an age-advanced "self" may indeed be an extreme example of this sort of thing (aside perhaps from some biopics in which famous people played themselves, including their early years; I haven't seen these, but a quick search will turn up quite a list). But a number of show-business biographies were filmed in the first two decades of sound, and it seems to have been de rigeur to enlist some of the subjects' associates to play themselves, for that added bit of "authenticity" (even as events, people, even shows were outright invented; but that's another topic, on which I could go on even longer, so I'll stifle myself). In most cases, the events depicted belonged to relatively recent history, so the imposture wasn't so extreme.

• In Night and Day itself, we also have Mary Martin, re-creating her "discovery" 7 years earlier, as the soubrette whose one song turned out to be the biggest hit of the show.
• In The Great Ziegfeld (1936), Fannie Brice and Ray Bolger play themselves, the former reaching back about two decades.
• In Rhapsody in Blue (Gershwin; 1945) Paul Whiteman, Oscar Levant, and George White all play themselves, without serious visual incongruity despite a gap of perhaps 20 years; the veteran Al Jolson as his eager thirtysomething self is perhaps more of a stretch. There's also the odd circumstance of Anne Brown, the original Bess, appearing uncredited to sing a different character's song. Perhaps even odder, Tom Patricola performs (alongside Joan Leslie) the song he introduced in 1924, "Somebody Loves Me"; but he's uncredited and unnamed (so nothing is gained by this authenticity), and being visibly decades older than Joan Leslie, he just makes the brief sequence seem strange. I wonder if he was just in Hollywood looking for a job, and they decided they might as well cast the original guy as anybody, but as he'd never been a star they made no attempt to feature him.

No doubt there are many more. There are also two related phenomena: people playing their relatives onscreen (Geraldine Chaplin playing her grandmother, Gloria De Haven playing her mother); and the subject of a fact-based film appearing in a small bystander role, to watch themselves be played by the star (Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff, Melvin Dummar in Melvin and Howard).

Edited January 23, 2023 by Rinaldo

[EtheltoTillie]

Gene Kelly tap dancing on roller skates from It's Always Fair Weather.  This was a between movie filler last night, and it's thoroughly enjoyable.  The tap dancing starts about 2.5 minutes in.  I remember skating with those heavy metal over-the-shoe skates as a kid, and that just adds to the challenge. 

[EtheltoTillie]

And even if they dubbed in the tap sounds later, as was discussed recently, it doesn't detract.  He's really doing some first class hoofing!  I took tap for a while as an adult amateur, so I can recognize what he is doing.  It's hard enough to do a time step in regular shoes! 

[voiceover]

😡

So I’m gonna have to stick a crowbar in my wallet & pony up for the TCM festival because they are screening One Way Passage.

I wonder if cocktail shakers are allowed in the theater?

[Tom Holmberg]

On Saturday TCM is playing "The Terror of Tiny Town", the best midget Western ever made (of course the only midget western).

[HyeChaps]

I watched this on VHS years ago when it appeared on a list of the worst movies ever made. 

[Charlie Baker]

The hosts address  the future of TCM with the Warner/Discovery merger in Entertainment Weekly.

[MissAlmond]

13 hours ago, Charlie Baker said:

The hosts address  the future of TCM with the Warner/Discovery merger in Entertainment Weekly.

Interesting article. Funny enough, none of the reasons listed is why I'm skeptical of Warner/Discovery's intentions. It was pulling TCM Remembers for the second time simply to slap the W/D name/logo at the end.

 

Edited January 28, 2023 by MissAlmond

[BooksRule]

On 1/27/2023 at 12:16 PM, Tom Holmberg said:

On Saturday TCM is playing "The Terror of Tiny Town", the best midget Western ever made (of course the only midget western).

I was just getting ready to post about this movie!  I had read about it years ago in 'The Golden Turkey Awards' book, but had never seen it.  Other than the cast all being little people, it's basically a fairly bad formulaic western (feuding families, rustlers, stagecoach robbery, posses chasing the bad guys, star-crossed lovers re-unite at the end, a few songs thrown in here and there, etc.). The actors all ride ponies (instead of big horses), but everything else seems to be sized for non-little people.. This results in some scenes that I assume were supposed to be knee-slapping hilarious, such as struggling to step up on the wooden sidewalk in town, walking under the saloon doors instead of through them, the cook climbing into a cabinet to retrieve a pot, etc. Oh well, I know that parts for little people were few and far between, so I guess this was a good thing (and I read that almost the entire cast was hired the next year for 'The Wizard of Oz'). I'll probably never watch this movie again, but I'm glad I did finally give it a watch.

The only question I have is why was there a brief shot of a penguin sitting on a stool in the barber shop scene?  

[EtheltoTillie]

On 1/27/2023 at 7:50 PM, Charlie Baker said:

The hosts address  the future of TCM with the Warner/Discovery merger in Entertainment Weekly.

Wow I found myself so skeptical of this effort at positive PR. It sounded so phony. Let’s see how it goes. 

[Milburn Stone]

9 hours ago, EtheltoTillie said:

Wow I found myself so skeptical of this effort at positive PR. It sounded so phony. Let’s see how it goes. 

It's like a hostage video.

[Charlie Baker]

Ben profiles veteran actor and activist James Cromwell, who has a tie to old Hollywood.

[MissAlmond]

On 1/28/2023 at 11:04 PM, EtheltoTillie said:

Wow I found myself so skeptical of this effort at positive PR. It sounded so phony

 

How many times after these acquisitions have we heard: "Yes! Of course we're keeping X!" only for X to disappear a year later. 

Edited January 30, 2023 by MissAlmond

[Tom Holmberg]

On 1/28/2023 at 9:00 PM, BooksRule said:

 Oh well, I know that parts for little people were few and far between, so I guess this was a good thing (and I read that almost the entire cast was hired the next year for 'The Wizard of Oz'). I'll probably never watch this movie again, but I'm glad I did finally give it a watch.

 

I think the movie would have worked better if it was only a short, maybe 10-15 minutes in length.

[Tom Holmberg]

On Thurs. TCM will be running all the Young Dr. Kildare series.  I watched them a few years ago and was surprised at some of the subject matter.  I wouldn't have thought they would tackle some of these in those times.  (I also liked how they got rid of Kildare's fiance when they realized him being married might hurt the box office.)  I also feel sorry for the treatment of Lew Ayres (even though he won battle stars as a medic), who was a conscientious objector during WWII.

[BooksRule]

5 hours ago, Tom Holmberg said:

On Thurs. TCM will be running all the Young Dr. Kildare series.

I've never seen any of them (or any of the Dr. Gillespie movies, which are being aired as well), so I have my DVR set up to record all of them. I love medical movies and TV shows, especially the old ones (it's always interesting to see the old uniforms, instruments, and the cases they tackle).

[Tom Holmberg]

20 hours ago, BooksRule said:

I've never seen any of them (or any of the Dr. Gillespie movies, which are being aired as well), so I have my DVR set up to record all of them. I love medical movies and TV shows, especially the old ones (it's always interesting to see the old uniforms, instruments, and the cases they tackle).

The studio changed the titles to "Dr. Gillespie" after Lew Ayres was let go due to his being a conscientious objector. "Calling Dr. Gillespie" completed principal photography when the studio decided to replace Ayres and all of Ayres' footage was scrapped.