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Alicia Malone as a TCM employee has NO control over the content she is told to read. So, if you have a problem with her "lecturing," blame the management, not the "reader." The idiotic "Star Signs" spotlight??? Not her idea, I'm sure. She's just the poor host who got the short straw and was forced to deal with these segments. I'm sure Ben and Eddie said: "No way" (and they have the power to do so) and Karger was lucky enough to get out of doing it. I've liked Alicia from Day 1 and she only continues to get better and better.

"Ah, zo Philip, I zee after all zees years you apparently still haven't gotten past zees obsessions of yours about Miss Malone, und especially ven she zez zometink about zex, eh?! Vell, I zink your actions vere you zay you change za channel venever she comez on your TV iz a good zing und you zould stick to doing zis." (...Siggy up there always gives people good advice ya know Phil, and especially in THIS case here and because of the FACT that NOBODY with ANY authority to hire and fire the people employed at TCM ever reads nor really gives a DAMN about what ANYONE around here ever posts at this here website of theirs, THAT'S why...oh wait, UNLESS of course someone uses what they might consider "questionable language" in some post and THEN you're likely to see some action taken and even though I doubt the people in charge of doing THIS have any say in the employment practices at TCM...but other than THAT here dude, well, like Siggy said up there, just keep changin' the ol' channel the next time you see Alicia appear on your TV und zo, ahem, I mean AND SO to avoid these sorts of little mental irritants from continuing to keep messin' with your head too much)

I agree that Jacqueline Stewart isn't used enough. She's obviously brilliant, excellent on camera and should not be used to talk only about race/feminist film issues. I'd love to hear her insights on all kinds of films. Karger has improved (slightly) but he is completely wooden and clearly has no depth of knowledge about "classic" (particularly anything pre-1970) films. Pretty much a waste of the viewers' time and he, more than the others, reads what's on the prompter and brings absolutely nothing to the party. On the evening of Florence Rice films he talked mainly about her co-stars and said practically nothing about her. Perhaps while he was recording his intros and outros he might have asked the director and writer: "Hey. This is salute to Florence Rice. Don't we have any information about HER?" I bet Robert Osborne would have.

Charm goes a long way and Alicia has it in spades. Unfortunately, though, she seems (like Jacqueline Stewart, used mainly for "inclusivity" and little else) hemmed in by whatever trend TCM feels the need to follow/explore/exploit. Ben and Eddie have it easier. These two apparently have carte blanche to be themselves, for better or worse, lol. Dave Karger is a cypher, however. Smiling, wooden, doesn't bring much to the party but I like him anyway. Always looks like a deer in the headlights unfortunately.

The Rains Came (1939) Miracle in the Rain (1956) The Rainmaker (1956 / 1997) (two unrelated films) Rider on the Rain (1970) The Devil's Rain (1975) Who'll Stop the Rain (1978) Black Rain (1989) Raining Stones (1993) Hard Rain (1998) Dancing in the Rain (2018) Also, the climactic battle sequence of Seven Samurai (1954) takes place entirely in the rain. "Chubby Rain" was the film-within-a-film in Bowfinger (1999). And Magnolia (1999) features a memorable quasi-Biblical rain of frogs.

Singin' in the Rain (1952) The Rains of Ranchipur (1955) Soldier in the Rain (1963) Rain Man (1988) Purple Rain (1984)

Like midwestan, I just watched a music documentary 2019's LINDA RONSTADT: THE SOUND OF MY VOICE which is offered free on YouTube with incredibly distracting commercials. Since I've always been a fan & admirer of Ronstadt, little was new to me. But it was fabulous to hear colleagues reminisces & insights from those who worked with her. I was amazed at all the great footage of Linda as a youngster and beginning performer in the folk music world. I love that Linda is a true artist and is not bound by any genre-it's ALL music...and she is our seminal lady singer. This movie was edited perfectly. The interviews of her colleagues were informative & intelligent, none of the crazy drivel so often included in biopics of "how they influenced me" or "the first time I heard..." from strangers. These insights are personal & reflective of Linda, not them. One of my favorite lines came from Jackson Browne who went on tour with Linda, "We'd switch our order each night, I'd go on first one night, she'd go on first the next night. How do you go on & reach an audience after LINDA'S been on stage?" Her career has an unusual trajectory for most pop music performers, but one that was just right for her-and us. Some of you may know she has Parkinson's disease which has taken her mobility & her voice away. Rather than feeling sorry for her, I am so grateful she took the path she did, giving us all she had while she could. Ronstadt's career & legacy illustrates a true life lesson. Thank you Linda & thanks to the guys who made this film.

I'm just hoping for a Phrenology series after this one. Maybe a study on which actors have the criminal head shape.

dry titles, but some rain scenes I thought of: a rainy end for The Public Enemy Psycho rainy revenge for Freaks Barbara Stanwyck standing in the rain in Stella Dallas Steamboat Bill Jr.

How's that old joke go again? Oh yeah: "Jews don't acknowledge Jesus Christ as the Son of God. Protestants don't acknowledge the Pope as the leader of Christianity. AND, Baptists don't acknowledge another Baptist inside a liquor store." (...good one, ain't it)

Reminds me of a story once told to me by a famous jazz musician. When he got to be 78 years of age he finally gave in and went to a hearing specialist to get fitted with hearing aids. Right off he was surprised to be able to hear sounds he hadn't noticed for years ..... but when he got home he was even more surprised to discover that he was also married. 😂🤣

Ah youth! BUtterfield 8 refers to the phone exchange in NYC, which serves the Upper East Side. Phone numbers are allocated in batches of 10,000 numbers, and each "batch" is an exchange. Up until the late 50s/early 60s, exchanges had names. In larger cities, names were usually chosen to reflect the neighborhood they served. In other places, it was somewhat random. AT&T maintained a list of acceptable exchange names. For example, in the town I grew up in, our exchanges were CApital 3 and CApital 6, even though we weren't a capital city, and not near one. It was just a name chosen in order to efficiently allocate numbers. Exchange names are why phone dials and buttons have letters on them. The capitalized letters of the name (BU, in the movie) were the ones to be dialed, with the rest of the number. So if someone said their number was BUtterfied 8-1234, you'd dial 288-1234. Early AT&T research indicated that people could more easily remember phone numbers with exchange names rather than phone numbers that were just a string of digits. That's why they started using names for exchanges. AT&T realized in the 1950s that limiting phone numbers to meaningfully named exchanges was too constricting, as more people got phones (not everyone had a phone in the 50s). They would quickly run out of available numbers. So they dropped the names, and just went to two letters (BUtterfield 8 just became BU8). But this was just the first step. Next, they eliminated exchange letters altogether and used numbers only. This was extremely controversial in some cities (paradoxically, it was the larger cities like NYC, Philadelphia and San Francisco that put up the most fuss, as it seems people were attached to the association between neighborhood and exchange name). The reason for all of this was to get the entire nation standardized on 7 digit local phone numbers so that you could place your own long distance calls without operator assistance. Before this occurred, phone number length was not standardized (even within the same city, sometimes). Small towns might have 3 digit numbers. Large cities like NYC and LA would have 6 and/or 7 digit numbers. All were eventually transitioned into 7 digit numbers. Today, many places have 10 digit local numbers, due to multiple area code overlays. There's an old Glenn Miller song called PEnnsylvania 6-5000, which is the phone number of the Hotel Pennsylvania in NYC, and the number still gets you connected to the hotel today, as long as you prefix it with its 212 area code. The hotel is in the Penn station neighborhood, which is how the phone exchange got its name. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_exchange_names

Orphans of the Storm 1921 Summer Storm 1944 Storm Warning 1951 Storm Over the Nile 1955

Breakfast at Tiffany's (at the end - they go looking for the cat)

Noah's Ark (1928)

Eve Arden and Ben Johnson are two that I think don't get nearly enough credit for their abilities. I honestly can't think of a bad performance from either of them that I've seen. And that includes Johnson in The Town That Dreaded Sundown. Crap movie, solid acting (from him at least).

I will never forget when I lived in Los Angeles I was talking to a guy at the Abbey in West Hollywood, he was a college graduate who had a job at a major talent agency if I recall. I mentioned to him that I was raised an Episcopalian and he looked at me, scrunched up his nose and said “Is that some kind of cult or something?” And without missing a beat I replied “yes, and we hold our pagan gatherings at country clubs and golf courses across the nation.”

OMG, that silly Susan Miller is back again and my eyes are glazing over. All I need is another podcast commercial to send me over the edge. Help!

How about THE GROUP (1966)? I think it would qualify! Next: A movie that's a really big waste of talent! (And you can't use "The Cannonball Run II" because that's too darn easy!).

There's a similar orchestra in the UK: The John Wilson Orchestra. They're usually at the BBC Proms every year, and you can find videos of them on YouTube. They also specialize in Broadway scores, and often team up with vocal performers as well. The instrumentation of the orchestra follows the old movie studio orchestra model, and his intent is to use the original studio arrangements wherever possible. Most orchestral concert presentations of film score music that we hear today in symphony or Pops concerts have a different arrangement/orchestration from the original film score. Here's one example from Hermann's Psycho score:

Showing stars' movies during their respective astrological sign could be an extremely light, even fun, way of sorting them at times, just for kicks, but to have Alicia acutually interviewing someone who's an "expert" in this, and with what seems to be with some degree of seriousness? WTH? I was watching this stunned, as Alicia seems to be truly soaking this in as a believer, and assuming we might be too, or maybe "educating" us on it. How very mind numbing! I was very disappointed that TCM would allow this horribly laughable idea to see the light of day and insult its viewership. I had to change channels in disgust before the interview was over. It's a shame, because it was to introduce a very good movie, but I'm done w/ TCM for the night, shaking my head.

The pivotal scene with Jo and Prof. Bhaer in any iteration of Little Women. ...and so on, and so forth...

When all is said and done regarding Alicia, it's that damned accent that seduces me every time, despite any reservations about the astrology misfire. Far from irritating, I find it refreshing to hear English spoken with an Aussie accent and after 15 years or so in the US I am happy that it doesn't seem to have faded. As an Aussie woman once assured me, "you can take the girl out of Australia but you'll never take Australia out of the girl!" I think she would be a wonderful femme fatale in a noir film. Charming, lovely to look at and listen to, and ever ready to perforate the male lead with bullet, knife or whatever is handy. I would marry her just to hear that delicious accent every day., despite the risk of perforation. Alicia Malone, if you should happen to read this thread, consider this entry to be a formal proposal of marriage. No prior baggage on my end. 🥰😍😛💘💖

Yes, and also contributing far less to the inevitable "Husband's Selective Hearing Loss Syndrome" as the years roll by too, I would suppose.

I love the accent. As someone married to an English girl, i can vouch that it's a good thing when a man likes the sound of his wife's voice.

Pitts, Zasu

Gotta admit, you may have me on this one. The terror actually looks like a giant green sex toy, but according to IMDB.com, a much better monster created for the film was stolen just before shooting began, so they used a handy pile of carpets as a substitute. No end to resourceful creativity in that business.

Casablanca (1942) Roman Holiday (1953) Monsoon Wedding (2001) Match Point (2005)

one of my favorite reviews on the Letterboxd site: "One of the weirdest things I've ever seen. It's barely a movie. It's like Robert Altman made 3 Women and kept looking at Shelley Duvall and saying to himself "God, DAMN that woman looks like Olive Oyl" and then he couldn't get it out of his head and it gave him bad dreams and he was begging his brain, "PLEASE, stop, I don't want to make a Popeye movie!" but his brain just kept showing Shelley Duvall going "Ohhhhhh!" in a high pitched voice and finally Robert Altmans therapist told him to just make the damn thing and he did it to make the nightmares go away..."

A Shot in the Dark (1935) A despondent and conflicted college boy commits suicide but it is a poorly disguised murder. This is a sufficiently nice little murder mystery but I would have higher regard for it if it had been made five years earlier. The very early talkies can be forgiven for being a play that was filmed but to be so stagey at this late date is somewhat questionable. I can easily envision all of the action taking place in a college dormitory room or lounge. It is a Poverty Row 'B' movie so production values would not be high but I feel it is the quirks in the screenplay and direction which let it down most. I found also that it works against believability that the 'college students' were quite obviously in their late twenties or early thirties. I feel the screenplay should be praised for using a plot device that is seldom seen and could be quite effective. It is unfortunate that the screenplay did not exploit it to its full potential. The flaws I have mentioned do not seriously detract from the fact that there are far worse ways to spend an hour. I am glad that I watched it even although I doubt I will wish to watch it again soon. 6.2/10 It is available for viewing free with commercials on: TubiTV.

Newley, Anthony

I like Alicia Malone. From what I've gathered from her website, she's a bit of a feminist- and i will say i'm kind of turned off when discussions on gender, class, sexuality and race get pushed when it obviously wasn't the intent of the filmmaker, but coming from a film theory background i obviously see the importance they do have in some discussions and the extra layers of meaning they can bring to a film. I don't think Alicia forces anything from what i have personally seen. Personally, i like her retro style and find her to be a breath of fresh air on TCM and seeing that she's published books on gender studies in film, she clearly knows what she's talking about even if people won't agree with her take on everything. She's actually one of my favorite hosts on TCM!

The Quiet Man (1952) Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) Say Anything (1989) The Goodbye Girl (1977)

The Hurricane 1937 The Mortal Storm 1940 Slattery's Hurricane 1949 Baby the Rain Must Fall 1965

maybe even moreso than VIVIEN LEIGH being BORN to be SCARLETT O'HARA, SHELLEY DUVALL was BORN to be OLIVE OYL.

Another one... The Big Country

No thank you. Alicia is far too yummy for me to even think about removing her from the interstitials. Her appearances are as a balm to my battered nervous system.

GREGORY, James (1911-2002)

I can recall the time some kids were making a commotion of some kind outside our home and Mom opened the door to see what was happening. I don't recall any details except that one or two of them must have mouthed off to her. She responded, before shutting the door on them, by yelling, "Ah, your mother wears army boots!" They were stunned into silence, undoubtedly uncertain what she meant. There were probably a lot of quizzical expressions on their faces. There's an insult tucked away in there somewhere but what is it exactly? Well, I just looked the expression up on the internet now and read that during WW2 prostitutes following troops around apparently wore combat boots. Therefore the expression is a way of calling someone's mother a hooker. I can't imagine, though, that Mom had a clue what the expression meant when she used it on those kids. She probably had enjoyed the sound of it and it just popped out of her mouth. I still think it's a pretty funny way of telling someone off, especially if, as would be the case with the vast majority of people, they have no idea what the heck the expression means.

lol, yes, along with Mimi Pond and Wayne White.

MOGAMBO again?? (for Scorpio Grace) Couldn't they have chosen THE COUNTRY GIRL, REAR WINDOW or TO CATCH A THIEF?

Jean Peters Sabu Isabel Jewell

Because Episcopalians, unlike some Southern denominations, were not opposed to drinking alcohol (almost as great a sin as dancing, according to some fundamentalists), they were known as "Whiskeypalians."

I do, and I also remember in 2000 assisting her deplane off a Northwest Airlines flight into LAX along with her husband Roger Smith and right after she had had a pretty bad spill in Minnesota off her motorcycle. She had just recently suffered three broken ribs and a fractured shoulder, but still was very pleasant to interact with that day. (...I remember actually kidding her by telling her that if perhaps she had been riding a better handling Triumph motorcycle instead of a Harley, maybe this wouldn't have happened to her...she got a kick out of that...nice lady who I had known had been a fellow avid motorcyclist for years)

it's ok, plenty of others have, BA-BING!

Well this is about painters of a different sort...house painters. The scene in "Mr Blandings Builds His Dream House" (1948) LOL the painters scene still kills me!

I bow down to you. Because I'm afraid. LOL Seriously, every sign has their dark side. It's just that Scorpios, bless 'em, have more than their fair share!

According to Jean Arthur, it was Harry Cohn.

I grew up in the Catholic church just after Vatican II, and at least where I lived, it was not a guilt-trip at all. The homilies (sermons) were never about sin, eternal damnation, or other similar topics. My parents called it hippie church, because they were raised in the 30s and 40s under a very different church regime.

My old man dropped out of school in the sixth grade during the Great Depression to help feed his five sisters and brother by working in the Kentucky and West Virginia coal mines. Two days after the attack on Pearl Harbor he found the local recruiting station and signed up for the army going on to serve in the Pacific (That's right. Being shot at was a more attractive scenario than going down into the mines). So his vocabulary and phrasing was colorful to say the least. More than a few of the things I was called by him during my escapades would have hurt my feelings...if they weren't so impressively inventive