AndyM108

These seem like the most classic choices if we're going with a star who appeared memorably in the horror genre: Peter Lorre (selected in 2004) Christopher Lee Boris Karloff (selected in 2003) Peter Cushing Lon Chaney Bela Lugosi Mia Farrow Anthony Perkins Janet Leigh DING, DING, LADIES AND MONSTERS, WE HAVE A WINNER!

James, I realize the point about availability, but Ms. Dee had nearly 60 distinct feature credits under her belt, and I'm talking about a tribute of maybe 12 hours maximum. It would be a great opportunity to go beyond the few movies of hers that have already been shown a lot, though I'd include those as well.

Rae Robinson in The Jackie Robinson Story (1950) Connie Brooks in No Way Out (1950) Ruth Younger in A Raisin In The Sun (1961) I agreed Dee was a good actress. First two of these films are hardly great classics. I'd disagree about No Way Out, which was one of the first Hollywood movies to deal forcefully with race prejudice. You could also add Edge of the City, Take a Giant Step, The Incident, and Do The Right Thing. You could probably also show a fair number of her lesser known later movies that suffered from lack of distribution. There shouldn't be any more problem filling a good tribute to Ruby Dee than there was for Eli Wallach.

Mid-Life? Cooper in LITA looked closer to end-of-life (which, it turned out, he WAS) True, but I was referring to the potential audience, not to Cooper himself. ("Hey, if that horsefaced old goat can score a babe like that, what's to stop me from picking up the next Playboy bunny I see? And I won't even have to take her to the opera!")

As you know in Love In The Afternoon, Audrey has a strong reliable father but no mom. I don't know of any psychological theory that leads one to seek an old worn out looking Gary Cooper based on her situation. But getting serious, this is why I mentioned the creative angle. Say Cooper was also a musician. I can see them bonding over music since the sharing of a creative interest can create a strong pull. The only way that Love In The Afternoon makes any sense is as a marketing pitch to men going through a midlife identity crisis. I'm only half joking when I say this. That pairing is about as plausible as Harold and Maude.

Like so many discussion this one about 'is cable today better than T.V. in th 'old days' becomes too black and white. Anyhow Andy, you make some very valid points and I tend to agree; overall T.V. is WAY BETTER than the 'old days' as far as access to content. It is crazy to think otherwise. What is concerning about T.V. today is the lack of pricing options. Even if al-carte isn't the answer it would be great if cable providers offer multiple T.V. station bundles packages instead of starting out with 'basic' (which already is too expensive and has too many stations), and than going right to extended basic etc.... e.g. have stations in pricings tiers. allow users to pick a set number of stations from these tiers with limits on the number of choices from the upper tiers. Hey, I'm sure one can pick holes in my idea here but you get the general idea. Sounds like a good idea to me. What might be a good place to begin would be to get a list of what each cable network charges the providers in order to carry their content in their non-premium packages. I know that ESPN is the most expensive network in my Fios lineup. That doesn't bother me, since I watch ESPN a lot, but I can see the complaints of non-sports fans in having to subsidize people like me. Of course I doubt if many people at all ever watch more than a dozen or so "regular" channels. For me it's just TCM, ESPN, TBS, the two local Comcast Sports channels, PBS, the occasional CBS/ABC/NBC/Fox sports presentation (never any of their regular programming), Al-Jazeera America (infinitely better than the competition for serious 24 hour news coverage, as opposed to nonstop partisan flaming), the MLB, NFL and NBA channels, and that's it. Adding them up, it's 14 networks,10 of which I watch exclusively for sports. Overall TCM is far and away the one I watch most, especially if you count the overnight recording hours. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- My family pays $85 a month for cable, and I am still furious that TCM disappears from their lineup for periods of weeks at a time sometimes. We've got Fios, and so far so good. I dropped Comcast in favor of DirecTV because at that point it didn't carry TCM. Had to switch to Fios because of satellite problems during bad weather.

Good point, in distinguishing MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT. In films like LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON, the impression conveyed is "Age gap? What age gap? Which is why Middle of the Night is an engaging movie that's both a period piece and timeless, whereas Love in the Afternoon is a piece of forgettable fantasy fluff with no appeal beyond Audrey Hepburn's always effervescent persona.

Andy, just out of curiosity, is your cable tv bill connected with your internet service? Like is is all "bundled" together in a package? It's part of a Fios bundle, but the TV connection, the Set Top box and the taxes add up to almost exactly $85.00 a month. What really kills me is keeping both a landline and a cellphone, not so much the TV or the internet connection.

Point by point: Today, you have one channel on basic cable that shows movies (redoubtable movies mostly, but movies nonetheless) without commercials. All others you pay extra. I wouldn't commend cable for that. In the old days, you had Playhouse 90 and the GE Theater and Rod Serling et cetera on regular FREE television. Guess you didn't have WNET where you lived? I watched free movies without commercials since WNET began. Sorry you missed that.Of course WNET is nothing but the local PBS affiliate in NYC, just like WETA in Washington. WETA showcases all of one movie a week, and 99% of the time it's identical to one of those "Essentials" that gets shown half a dozen times a year on TCM. Maybe WNET goes beyond that, but I wouldn't know that by watching WETA. As for Playhouse 90, etc.: Put them all together and they added up to less than 10 hours a week. With commercials. And anyway, you can see all those shows today on YouTube, or on your TV if you want to connect your computer to it. My $85.00 cable bill for TV includes TCM but not HBO, Showtime, etc. For the most part I have no interest in the movies those premium channels show, and anyway, for $8.99 a month more, I can get those movies via Netflix. And BTW when did PBS cease to be free? I know more than a few people without cable hookups who watch PBS every day. Sorry you don't like sports. To each his own.

Yes, the cable companies are the death of good television. Is this crazy or is this insane? In the pre-cable days we had four networks, featuring: No movies without commercial interruptions; A tiny handful of selected sporting events; History and science confined to a few "specials" that were largely starved for funding; "Entertainment" that consisted of a mix of a few great shows and a ton of wholly forgettable ones; All on an analog screen that often flickered and distorted the color, if indeed it was in color to begin with. Sorry, but when it comes to TV, the "good old days" are now. And BTW if your cable TV bill runs about $85 a month as mine does, that works out to about $11.00 a month in 1964 dollars. How many people in 1964 do you think would have complained about a deal like that, complete with a big screen color TV that costs less in real dollars than their cheesy 21" RCA?

The entire situatioin leading to love could not have happened had he not been rich. Can you give me an example of an older man younger woman pairing in films (other than Bogart and Bacall) where the man is not wealthy, or at least comfortable? (Fredric March in MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT) Middle of the Night is distinguished from pretty much all the other May/Late Autumn movies in one key respect: There was an honest recognition of the age gap problem. In nearly all of the other movies of that type, you've either got highly implausible scenarios (Dark Passage*) or impossible fantasies. OTOH Middle of the Night deals with the issue right from the beginning and all the way to the end, which IMO makes it far and away the most interesting May/Late Autumn film of the lot. *A movie I love, but which is about as real as Cinderella.

Wow, that was a GREAT vintage clip, mr6666. It must have been from TCM's very early years, no? I sure don't remember it over the past few days.

Tierney also had a major role in the 1992 gangster movie Reservoir Dogs. He was the same old Lawrence Tierney that we all have come to love (and keep our distance from).

I think the notion that is getting people's blood flowing on this subject is the sense that tcm programmers are not programming for the vast cable-viewing audience but for a small eclectic-minded few. Given that you don't have the slightest idea of what movies "the vast cable-viewing audience" prefers, all you mean by this is "Why doesn't TCM let me make up its schedule?" I'm sure there are plenty of other people like me who are sick of seeing endless showings of Mickey Rooney and John Wayne and Rock Hudson, not to mention those unspeakably trite and boring "Teen Idol" and "beach party" movies, but we know better than to project our tastes onto "the vast majority" of TCM viewers. Plenty of viewers obviously find Elvis Presley and Annette Funicello movies their cup of tea, and more power to them, but it's a big world out there, and not everyone has tastes as narrow as yours seem to be. Now maybe at some utopian point, TCM will open up its vast holdings and let people personalize their own schedules, but until that glorious day, I'm afraid you're going to have to live with the occasional "Frenchy" film just as people with differing tastes have to put up with all the goo-goo "family" fare that takes up far more slots on TCM than all the foreign movies put together.

I wouldn't be opposed to giving Marion Davies a SOTM tribute, but not until first there's one for Lon Chaney.

I always thought they blended together into one big old Barbie Doll.

Andy, The City of Angels PBS station (KOCE, Channel 50) ran Freedom Summer this evening. It is a subject near and dear to my heart and one reason why I also find the time to vote. I agree wholeheartedly with you about Mississippi Burning and would love to hear your thoughts about Freedom Summer after you view it. I was out last night and recorded two TCM movies in my absence, but Freedom Summer is being replayed on the Washington PBS affiliate (WETA) at 4:00 PM today and again at 2:30 PM on Sunday. If it's half as good as the documentary on the Freedom Riders, and Spies of Mississippi (on the infamous Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission), it'll be well worth watching. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Freedom Summer was excellent, so much I didn't know (i.e., the LBJ revelations) or had forgotten with time. Documentaries (for me at least) are often so much more compelling than the films based on the actual events, though the films certainly have their place. I'd love to see a mainstream movie about the civil rights movement that conveyed the day-by-day reality of the American South in the Jim Crow era, from the perspective of African Americans who were living through it, in the manner of 12 Years a Slave about the slavery era. The problem is that at present there is no such movie. Certainly not Mississippi Burning. The idea of reducing Mississippi Summer to a "thriller" centered on the FBI is frankly obscene. Once again the black people of Mississippi were reduced to bit players while the white folks came in to clean up the mess. We've seen this film before.

From the 40's through the 50's through the early 60's and the mid/late 60's19

I've never quite understood the "accusation" (if you'd call it that) that Katharine Hepburn wasn't glamorous. Other than a tiny handful of actresses like Loretta Young, Rita Hayworth or Ava Gardner, it's hard for me to think of too many who had classic features quite on Kate's level. And other than Young or Lilli Palmer, it's hard to think of many who kept those features almost right up to the end. I could flood this page with examples of what I'm talking about, but hepclassic's already done that for me.

Arturo, Thanks for the list of Powell, Colman and Baxter movies. I'd only seen the two Powells with Harlow but didn't think much of them, and out of sight out of mind. But were these really romance movies on the same level as Funny Face? That's not a rhetorical question, since I'm familiar only with their titles but not their plots. Most of these films seem rather forgotten today, but saying that isn't a refutation of your point.

I'm with speedracer. The library is an excellent source to see if the book is worth owning. Many star/charactor actor biographies come from small independent publishers and aren't available elsewhere. While sometimes interesting, I find these too are often poorly written (by fans with little writing credentials?) and generally not worth the high purchase price. One bio put out by McFarland is an exception to that general rule: Franklin Jarlett's Robert Ryan: A Biography and Critical Filmography. Unfortunately, McFarland is one of those publishers that almost never overprints or remainders its books, so you're generally stuck with paying nearly the full list price, but I read this book straight through from cover to cover and couldn't put it down. The only problem for me is that it's only available in paperback, a format that I usually avoid like the plague, but in this case I had to make an exception. You'll note that all seven reviewers gave it the full five star rating.

I bought the Wilson book when it came out and have read the first half dozen or so chapters. My only reservation would be its length, but if you're willing to take the time it's definitely worth the price. Stanwyck is far and away my favorite actress, but my problem is that I have too damn many interests and there's always a newer book to entrap me. Books along with blank DVD disks and jewel cases probably account for 75% of my discretionary spending.

The source material for Love in the Afternoon was a 1920 french novel called "Ariane, jeune fille russe" which involved an older man and a younger woman. The male lead wasn't made older in the movie to suit an aging star. The novel was first brought to the screen in 1932 as a french film. This is just the first title I've researched. Other titles mentioned thus far may also have come from source material that featured the May-December element quite apart from the actors who later dramatized it. Its an idea as old as literature. I'm stunned it is suddenly sparking so much discussion. But though the May-December idea dates back forever in literature, it only began to flourish in Hollywood in the late 40's with Bogie and Bacall, and didn't really take off full force until the 50's, when all those formerly young leading actors coincidentally started to turn into their 50's. That was my only point. The literary sources of those movies have nothing to do with it.

Bogie and Bacall were 25 years apart... With the exception of To Have and Have Not, they were a married couple, so perhaps it lessens the May/December romance aspect. I believe I originally dated the coming of May-Septembers in the late 40's. Bogart and Bacall first appeared together in 1945, so that was a year or two off. But even though they were also a "real" couple, I'd still consider them part of the pool, maybe the first ever under my definition. Dark Passage was probably the most intensely romantic of the four----we all (meaning men) would have loved to have been in that little South American cafe by the bay when the piano began playing "Too Marvelous For Words". . Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn were also 25 years apart in Charade. Right. That was in 1963, and I'm not sure when the practice ended, if in fact it even has. I've watched very few romances from later years, and the ones I remember usually involved Meg Ryan and an actor who's roughly her age. There's always James Mason and Sue Lyon who were 37 years apart in Lolita... But that's kind of the point of that movie... so perhaps it doesn't count. Yeah, I wouldn't count that, either, since it was more a perversion than a true romance.

Sorry but MOVIES does have commercials. Now they do NOT cut their movies to fit into a, say, two hour time slot and they cut to their commercials between scenes (unlike say AMC which will cut to a commercial right in the middle of an actor's lines). So yea, the commercials stink but I found myself watching both of the movies you mention as well as many other noirs, comedy films and series (e.g. Mr Moto movies), since TCM was showing something I had already seen multiple times. Thanks for letting me know, and if I see something there that I don't have already recorded I may watch it "live". So far in looking I haven't seen any movies that meet that description, but then I was recording off the FMC for several years when they were showing films like Thieves' Highway and others that TCM doesn't ever seem to get. Clara Bow's fabulous pre-code Call Her Savage is just now beginning to get some TCM play come this September, but I must have seen that movie on the FMC a dozen times a few years ago.