Quick Preview of TCM in April
TCM celebrates its 20th anniversary in April, and the TCM Classic Film Festival takes place in April as well! There's a new program on the schedule called TWENTY CLASSIC MOMENTS which I assume is an anniversary special.
John Wayne is the April Star of the Month. TCM is doing something fairly unusual, compressing the Wayne celebration into a marathon which runs from Monday evening, April 21st, through Saturday morning, April 26th. It will be all Wayne, all the time that week! It's quite a schedule, ranging from some of Wayne's earliest work to his best-known classics.
The last time I remember TCM doing such unusual Star of the Month scheduling was in April 2012, when Doris Day's films were shown five nights in a row.It's worth noting that the fine biographer Scott Eyman has a new book coming out from Simon & Schuster on April 1st, JOHN WAYNE: THE LIFE AND LEGEND. I wonder if TCM may possibly have plans to feature Eyman in some way during the series?
The month will also include multi-film tributes to Doris Day, Alec Guinness, Shelley Winters, Charlton Heston, Dana Andrews, Samuel Fuller, Robert Z. Leonard, and Robert Mitchum. There's baseball and beach themed movies too!
One of the more unusual themes in April is an evening of films about butlers, including IF YOU COULD ONLY COOK (1935), MY MAN GODFREY (1936), MERRILY WE LIVE (1938), and THE REMAINS OF THE DAY (1993). A night of fairy tales will feature BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (1946) and THE GLASS SLIPPER (1955), plus Danny Kaye in HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN (1952).
Among the month's "obscurities," I'm especially looking forward to WAR NURSE (1930) with Robert Montgomery and Anita Page, MARRIED BACHELOR (1941) with Robert Young and Ruth Hussey and BLACKMAIL (1939) with Hussey and Edward G. Robinson. I'm also interested in the British WWII film WENT THE DAY WELL? (1942), which was shown at a past TCM Classic Film Festival.I'll have a more detailed look at the April schedule during the last week of March.
The current TCM Star of the Month is Joan Crawford. February will be the annual 31 Days of Oscar festival, followed by the Star of the Month for March, Mary Astor.
Update: For a more detailed look at TCM in April, please visit TCM in April: Highlights and TCM Star of the Month: John Wayne.
posted by Laura @ 9:30 AM
2 Comments:
Having an entire week of nothing but John Wayne films is a bold move, if not a particularly enjoyable one as far as I'm concerned! It'll be a good week to catch up on my backlog of other movies, at least.
Dana Andrews night should be interesting, since they're showing all 3 of the films he did with Gene Tierney. I haven't seen "The Iron Curtain" yet, so I'm looking forward to that.
Thanks as always for keeping us up to date on the TCM schedule!
Wow, "The Sea Spoilers" on 4/21. That's a rarity and I hope it shows up as scheduled.
That's one of the non-western adventure movies Wayne made for Universal. I think there were six of them, and have never been released on any form of home video before.
I thought Universal missed the boat by not releasing them on the John Wayne Centennial Year a few years ago, but maybe the elements weren't there. Still, I hope this is the first. I would love to see the rest of them.
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