sewhite2000

I enjoyed when Fred MacMurray was Star of the Month, and TCM ran a little promo showing him saying "baby" in many different films.

If you took a drink every time Sidney Poitier says "man", you'd be blotto in a similar amount of time.

It's like that thread when one of the cable providers moved TCM to a "sports and entertainment" package and charged an extra $10/month for it. People were hot about that for much longer than I expected.

People have been bemoaning the disappearance of the Maltin reviews in the new incarnation of the website and have speculated on why this might be so. But it appears that Maltin still has some relationship with the network.

Other posters have called it a paddle ball. That sounds better than my use of Ping-Pong which isn't quite right. I defer.

MCOH posted a link in the thread titled "January 2021" that shows the schedule all the way to the end of January. I think it's the very first post in that thread. You'll have to scroll way down to get to January.

That's a great shot for 1942. There are probably whole articles devoted to how they pulled that off, and it's even possible I may try to find one.

I found the November Schedule is Up! thread, and TopBilled has "extended families'" listed as the primetime theme for Nov. 25. I have no idea what the movies were, though.

Another very unofficial count, but here is the breakdown of movies airing by decade of release in January: 1910s 1 1920s 7 1930s 90 `1940s 91 1950s 55 1960s 75 1970s 23 1980s 16 1990s 8 No movies from this millennium. Looks the '50s are a little underrepresented this month and maybe the '60s a little overrepresented, compared to most months.

I watched The Maze on YouTube a year or two ago and wish I could see that scene in 3-D.

Looks like a great lineup. The only one of these movies I'd ever even heard of is The Mob, and only because I watched the first hour of it on YouTube earlier this year. All the others sound intriguing, and I certainly wouldn't mind if the feature continued. Alas, I'm unable to watch TCM tonight, but I'll look out for these movies in the future.

House of Wax was probably the first 3-D movie I ever saw in a theater, and that Ping-Pong scene really blew me away. Looked like the Ping-Pong ball was about to hit me in the face!

I've got nothing else to do, so I looked it up. Here's the Noir Alley lineup for January. No MGMs! Actually, three out of five are "out of library". I'm happy they give Eddie that luxury. The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry (George Sanders, Geraldine Fitzgerald) (Universal, 1945) The Glass Key (Alan Ladd, Veronica Lake) (Paramount, 1942) Witness to Murder (Barbara Stanwyck, George Sanders) (United Artists, 1954) Born to Kill (Claire Trevor, Lawrence Tierney) (RKO, 1947) The Killers (Lee Marvin, Angie Dickinson) (Universal, 1964)

This speculation got me curious, so I went back and checked, and in fact none of the Miriam Hopkins movies being shown were made at MGM! By my count, five each from Paramount and United Artists, four from Warner Bros., two from RKO and one from Columbia. But every theme of the month is pretty heavily saturated with MGM films. And the themeless Saturdays and Sundays are also pretty heavy with them. There are also a couple of very late nights between the end of one night's theme and the next morning's theme that are filled in with MGM product. And MGM is getting twice as lengthy a block for the Studio Systems theme than any other studio.

Oh, sorry. That's my count for the January films.

Okay, here is my very unofficial count of releases by studios. Most of the old majors are pretty well represented this month. The Studio System monthly theme probably boosted the numbers of the less frequently seen studios a bit. I only hope that TCM didn't blow its whole budget for out of library films this month, forcing 31 Days of Oscar to come 90% from the usual MGM/WB/RKO/UA fare. But I remain hopeful. MGM 106 Warner Bros. 57 United Artists 38 RKO 35 Columbia 27 Paramount 23 Universal 22 20th Century Fox 12 Embassy/Allied Artists/Orion 3 each Tri-Star/National General/Monogram 2 each ABC/Seven Arts/Selznick International/New Line/ABC/AIP 1 each At least 22 other films from other studios or films I couldn't find any production info for

Primetime January 31 Cicely Tyson Double Feature A Man Called Adam (Sammy Davis, Jr., Louis Armstrong) (Embassy, 1966) Sounder (Cicely Tyson, Paul Winfield) (20th Century Fox, 1972) Silent Sundays: The Battleship Potemkin (Alexsandr Antonov, Vladimir Barskly) (Dist. in the US by Amkino Corp., 1926) TCM Imports Two more Almodovar films: Live Flesh (1997) and All about My Mother (1999)

Daytime January 31 No-theme Sunday Gabriel over the White House (Walter Huston, Karen Morley) (MGM, 1933) Hold Back the Dawn (Charles Boyer, Olivia De Havilland) (Paramount, 1941) Then a repeat of the previous night's Noir Alley. Then: I Married a Witch (Frederic March, Veronica Lake) (United Artists, 1942) The Red Badge of Courage (Audie Murphy, Bill Maudlin) (MGM, 1951) From Here to Eternity (Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift) (Columbia, 1953) My Fair Lady (Rex Harrison, Audrrey Hepburn) (Warner Bros., 1964)

Primetime January 30 Small Town Musicals Double Feature Small Town Girl (Jane Powell, Farley Granger) (MGM, 1953) The Music Man (Robert Preston, Shirley Jones) (Warner Bros., 1962) Noir Alley. Wow, the '64 version, with Ronald Reagan, I believe in his final movie role. The Killers (Lee Marvin, Angie Dickinson) (Universal, 1964) Not sure if the overnight films have some connecting theme, other than they're both '70s thrillers. The Carey Treatment (James Coburn, Jennifer O'Neill) (MGM, 1972) The Late Show (Art Carney, Lily Tomlin) (Warner Bros., 1977)

Daytime January 30 One more Saturday. Sorry I didn't list any of the shorts this month. They seem to be of particular interest to a lot of people on these boards, but I rarely watch them. Anyway, there are comedy shorts, travel shorts and musical shorts and another chapter of a Tarzan serial. Here are the features that are airing: Captain Blood (Errol Flynn, Olivia De Havilland) (Warner Bros., 1935) A Shot in the Dark (William Lundigan, Nan Wynn) (Warner Bros, 1941) Knockout (Arthur Kennedy, Olympe Bradna) (Warner Bros., 1941) Knights of the Round Table (Robert Taylor, Ava Gardner) (MGM, 1953) On the Waterfront (Marlon Brando, Eva Marie Saint) (Columbia, 1954) The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Tony Randall, Eddie Hodges) (MGM, 1960) Oh, God! (John Denver, George Burns) (Warner Bros., 1977)

Primetime January 29 Laurence Harvey. Apologies to the person on here who calls him He Who Must Not Be Named. I've forgotten who that was. Butterfield 8 (Elizabeth Taylor, Laurence Harvey) (MGM, 1960) The Manchurian Candidate (Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey) (United Artists, 1962) Of Human Bondage (Kim Novak, Laurence Harvey) (MGM, 1964) TCM Underground When a Stranger Calls (Carol Kane, Charles Durning) (Columbia, 1979) The Caller (Malcolm McDowell, Madolyn Smith) (Empire, 1987) Then it's all short films until the next day's programming.

Daytime January 29 Young Adventurers. The schedule is full of repeats. Captains Courageous already aired on Freddie Bartholomew day. Treasure Island aired, I think, the first Saturday morning of the month. Jungle Book also aired previously, though I forget when. They become the fifth, sixth and seventh non-Noir Alley movies to air twice in January. That leaves us with: Adventure Girl (Joan Lowell, Ula Holt) (RKO, 1934) The Yearling (Gregory Peck, Jane Wyman) (MGM, 1946) Bomba the Jungle Boy (Johnny Sheffield, Peggy Ann Garner) (Monogram, 1949) Lord of the Flies (Dist. in the US by Continental, 1963) Zebra in the Kitchen (Jay North, Martin Milner) (MGM, 1965)

Hopefully finish this today. January 28 Primetime. The last night of Miriam Hopkins' Star of the Month run. The Heiress (Olivia De Havilland, Montgomery Clift) (Paramount, 1949) The Children's Hour (Audrey Hepburn, Shirley MacLaine) (United Artists, 1961) The Chase (Marlon Brando, Jane Fonda) (Columbia, 1966) And then we round out the night with a couple of movies about mail-order brides out in the West: Mail Order Bride (Buddy Ebsen, Keir Dullea) (MGM, 1964) Zandy's Bride (Gene Hackman, Liv Ullman) (Warner Bros, 1974)

January 28 Daytime. First, Alan Ladd Westerns The Iron Mistress (Alan Ladd, Virginia Mayo) (Warner Bros., 1952) Drum Beat (Alan Ladd, Audrey Dalton) (Warner Bros., 1954) The Badlanders (Alan Ladd, Ernest Borgnine) (MGM, 1958) Guns of the Timberland (Alan Ladd, Jeanne Crain) (Warner Bros., 1960) Followed by Randolph Scott Westerns (Everybody doff your hats and sing "Rannn-dolph Scottt!") Badman's Territory (Randolph Scott, Ann Richards) (RKO, 1946) Canadian Pacific (Randolph Scott, Jane Wyatt) (20th Century Fox, 1949) Carson City (Randolph Scott, Lucille Norman) (Warner Bros., 1952)

January 27 Primetime. The last night of Whodunit Wednesdays? I think tonight is all famous detectives from literature. Green for Danger is a personal favorite of mine. The Kennel Murder Case (William Powell, Mary Astor) (Warner Bros., 1933) Case of the Lucky Legs (Warren William, Genevieve Tobin) (Warner Bros., 1935) After the Thin Man (William Powell, Myrna Loy) (MGM, 1936) Bulldog Drummond Escapes (Ray Milland, Guy Standing) (Paramount, 1937) The Saint Strikes Back (George Sanders, Wendy Barrie) (RKO, 1939) The Woman in Green (Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce) (Universal, 1945) Green for Danger (Alistair Sim, Sally Gray) (Dist. in the US by Eagle-Lion, 1947)