AndyM108

I guess you missed my earlier response to this. I tried to cut an paste it here, but was unable to, and I don't have the time right now to reply fully. Scroll down to June 20 @ 1:23 pm. I mention several mature male stars in the 1930s that were often paired with substantially younger female costars. Here's that earlier reply: Andy, The trauma to the careers of many stars that was the coming of sound pretty much cleared the decks of established stars. But a few men survived, even thrived. By the end of the 30s and into the 40s, mature male stars like Warner Baxter, Ronald Colman, even William Powell were still being cast with younger female love interests. It would have been the same with John Barrymore had his alcoholism not been soadvanced. So the pattern had been around before the 50s,, and most definitely continues to this day. Well, sort of, but not really. Powell/Loy were 13 years apart, but didn't really seem that much so in their many films together, when he was in his 40's and 50's and she was in her 30's and 40's. And anyway, those were mostly comedies, or mysteries with a distinctly comic air. Romances they weren't. Baxter and Loy were 15 years apart, and I suppose you might call Penthouse a romance of sorts, though it sure seemed mostly a gangster movie to me. And you can probably cite a few more examples. But here's the question: How many of those earilier romantic pairings matched couples with a thirty year difference in ages? In Love in the Afternoon, Cooper was 28 years Audrey's senior. In Funny Face, Astaire lapped her birth certificate by 30 full years. In Vertigo, James Stewart was 25 years older than Kim Novak. If you can think of any early sound era films with that sort of age gap in movies that featured either romantic endings or romantic obsessions, and not just gold diggers and sugar daddies, please let me know. I can't think of any.

Andy, what you mention about variety is a key point and valid as it relates to the title of this thread. Do other stations like Me-TV offer films that TCM does NOT? As I noted stations like MOVIES do offer American Studio era films, mostly from Columbia and Fox that TCM does NOT offer. I've just gone over the MOVIES! network schedule for the next two weeks, and it looks a lot like the old Fox Movie Channel before it went completely into the tank. Didn't see any movies I care about that would qualify as TCM premieres, but there were a fair number of noirs that only show up on TCM once every year or two. Absence of Malice and Dead Reckoning were the two highlights, though I've already gotten both of them on DVD via TCM. Key question: Does MOVIES! interrupt its films with commercials? If so, forget it. But if not, it's great to know, since it's included in my FIOS package, and I'll start checking it out more carefully. Glad you mentioned it.

Really? Even with that wall-hitting vanity number (Broadway Melody) that stops the film dead in its track? This isn't probably the best way to express what I'm trying to get at, but the reason I don't think of Garland's A Star Is Born as a typical Hollywood "musical" is that in A Star Is Born the songs are all within the context of a realistic setting, i.e. an after hours jam session or a production. Same goes for the three great Berkeley musicals from 1933, all of which I could watch a hundred times over. While there are exceptions like Singing in the Rain and (even more) My Fair Lady, for the most part I can't stand movies where the actors just start breaking into song for no apparent reason. And then there's also the fact that Garland's Vicki Lester character is one of my many Platonic ideals of what a woman should be like. Solid, down to Earth, loving, understanding, and not incidentally brimming with talent and spontaneous enthusiasm for life, all distilled within that final line that still wells me up every time I hear it. Norman Maine was a bleeping idiot. Also, you don't get even the slightest bit droopy-eyed by the thousandth time you've hear "I Will Wait for You", in CHERBOURG? Nope, that film will never be old for me. Can't really explain my love for it, other than that it melts my heart and charms my socks off, in spite of its sad ending. Not that Catherine Deneuve's presence exactly hurts the cause, either. It's the exception to almost every rule I have that I can think of in terms of my movie likes and dislikes, but you know what Wiki says about what Emerson said about consistency and hobgoblins.

Now, don't you think referring to French foreign films as "obscure Frenchy flicks", and making the erroneous assumption that people don't want to see them on TCM, is also a "put -down", if only of obscure French films. Besides, they're not that obscure. Personally I'd love to see a month where Eric Rohmer were given the Truffaut or Hitchcock treatment, or at least be given a SUTS day for directors. It'd sure beat another SUTS day for Katharine Hepburn's top 10 movies that get played all the time anyway, but the point is variety.

Well, those characters played by the older actors in the '50s weren't exactly poor. Cooper's character in LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON didn't have a job as a night watchman or dishwasher. I never said that he was poor. He was basically an aging self-styled ladies' man living the Hugh Hefner dream with a few "refined" touches, such as a string quartet substituting for a jazz trio. But the difference here is that in real life the Hepburn character would have been a gold digger, not a virgin looking for romance from a man who was more than old enough to be her father, especially one with as weird a set of habits as Cooper's. ------------------------------------------------------- I think that misses the point Andy was making. In LITA I don't get the impression that the Audrey character was after the Cooper character because he was rich. She wasn't looking for a sugar daddy. She wasn't even looking for love. It just happened. But the point is that such an improbable "romance" never would've happened in a 30's movie. The entire premise would've been considered laughable, because the young leading ladies in the 30's almost always, if not 100% always, wound up with young leading men. You never saw such unlikely pairings as Audrey had with the likes of Cooper or Astaire, both of whom were 30 years her senior.

And I think the reason for the advent of all those May-September films of the 40's and 50's was simple: Here were all these box office proven leading men, and here was this new crop of young leading women. Why not pair them together and hope that moviegoers will suspend reality and just enjoy seeing their familiar characters with beautiful young women? Never mind that few women in their early 20's in real life were likely to be chasing men in their 50's for anything other than mink coats and tickets to riches. This is Hollywood, and they don't have to show us any stinking badges----I mean, reality.

I have the same problem with Mississippi Burning as I used to have with Amos 'n' Andy. Amos 'n' Andy was a terrific show, and it featured some of the best comic talent of its time: Tim Moore, Spencer Williams, Ernestine Wade, Amanda Randolph, Alvin Childress, and so on. And for production values, Mississippi Burning was an excellent movie. The problem with Amos 'n' Andy wasn't the show itself. The problem was the fact that Amos 'n' Andy was the ONLY representation of African American life featured on TV at the time. Great a show as it was, and as human as its characters were, it contributed mightily to stereotypes about blacks in the absence of competing images that reached the mass audience. Similarly, the problem with Mississippi Burning lies in the fact that Hollywood has yet to produce any movie that fully portrays the reality of Mississippi Summer, and as a result the misrepresentations and omissions in Mississippi Burning come to be conflated with reality among those who never get exposed to the many first rate documentaries that reach only a limited audience. For anyone interested in that reality, I'd strongly suggest tuning into the Freedom Summer documentary that will be airing on PBS TV at 9:00 Eastern time tomorrow night, with several repeats later in the week.

I don't have anything against the TCM database per se, but like many others here, I'm not exactly sure what counting its results might mean. Some of us only use it to look up unfamiliar titles or people. I use it for that, and also to see an actor's full filmography if I'm trying to place a movie that I've partly forgotten. Others may well be using it to look up fun facts about a favorite of theirs. I have no idea how we're to distinguish among these motivations. I'm only glad that it's there, but I wouldn't dream of using search numbers to influence programming choices. Hell, if TCM ever wants to know what to program and not to program, just ask me and I'll be glad to tell them. I guarantee that at least one steady viewer will be pleased.

Nobody seems to want to advance the point that ME-TV and other channels are competition for TCM. Doesn't it seem odd that this whole point is being overlooked? I think it's a valid point. Given the enormous variety of the TCM repertory, and the extremely limited repertory (and commercial interruptions) of any other movie channel, I think it wouldn't be too far-fetched to say that the only real competition for TCM is Netflix. The only other non-commercial station that's remotely competitive with TCM's vintage offerings is Fox, and they're only non-commercial from 3 AM to 3 PM. Not to mention that they keep running the same movies over and over again, and cutting more and more of their best movies from their lineup. At best they've got about 1/50th of what TCM will offer in any given month or year. Bottom line is that for most of us who won't watch movies with commercials and who like a wide selection, it's either TCM or Netflix. Those other networks are the 1962 Mets or 1916 A's of cable movie channels.

LOL. It's true Bette still played leads in her Baby Jane phase, but they werent romantic leads that so many older actors played (including Matthau). I agree there are exceptions...... I've made this point before, but I think it's still worth pointing out that casting older men in romantic roles, regardless of their looks, only started to happen when the original crop of male sound era stars (Cooper, Stewart, Astaire, Gable, Grant, etc.) turned into middle age in the 40's and 50's. Prior to that, you'd see May-September "romances" portrayed as taking place primarily between golddiggers and dirty old men, with the true romantic pairings almost exclusively reserved for couples of roughly the same age, with maybe a 10 year gap a most, rather than one of 30 years and counting.

I agree that it is good to see what Osborne said at the beginning, but I do not think as many people watch TCM to see the more current and watchable stars as they do to see the earlier watchable stars. Right, and this is reflected in TCM's schedule, which features far more vintage American films than films from any other time and/or place. There has never been, and never will be, any "lack of studio era movies on TCM". That's little more than a baseless canard, no matter how many times some people (not you) like to repeat it.

Be that as it may, I still say looks are less important to women than men as far as leading men/women. How else to explain the career of Walter Matthau??? Cant think of single female lead as homely who had such a long career (except maybe Marie Dressler but then she died, so hard to say how long her career would have lasted...) I think your general point is correct, but there are always exceptions.

Experiment in Terror played on Lee Remick's SUTS day in 2010, then again the next March. There was a big stretch of Glenn Ford films that straddled April and May of 2013, but Experiment in Terror wasn't among them. I'd thought it was, but I was confusing it with the somewhat similar plot in another Ford movie, Ransom, which also involved the taking of hostages.

Actually Singing in the Rain is one of the few musicals between Footlight Parade and The Umbrellas of Cherbourg that I can watch without falling asleep or groaning in agony. I like the Garland version of A Star Is Born even more, but maybe that's because I don't really think of it as a musical in the same way.

And right before that, there's this terrific short featuring Edward Arnold as The Devil. It's a perfect complement to the Hal Roach film: 9:15 AM Inflation (1942) In this wartime short film, the Devil assists Hitler in causing mischief with the U.S. economy. Cast: Edward Arnold, Esther Williams, Vicky Lane. Dir: Cy Endfield. BW-17 min.

Would have been a good time for TCM to show this movie. Yesterday was 50th anniversary of the murder of the civil rights workers in Mississippi and Mississippi Burning is now 25 years old. Did watch it on a premium channel this morning even though I have the DVD. I was in SNCC in 1963-64, and there's not a single veteran of the civil rights movement I've ever met who doesn't view Mississippi Burning as a complete travesty of history. Julian Bond once spoke of the current cartoon view of the civil rights movement as "Rosa sat down, Martin stood up, and the white kids came down and saved the day." Substitute "the FBI" for "the white kids" and you've got the long and short of Mississippi Burning. Technically it was a terrific film, but in every other respect it's a joke. The best way for TCM to commemorate Mississippi Summer would be to forget Hollywood features and try to get the rights to show some of the many first rate documentaries like King: From Montgomery to Memphis; Eyes on the Prize; and the upcoming Freedom Summer documentary which is making its debut this Wednesday night on PBS. Getting those rights would probably be impossible, but even this short documentary ( and ) would be an improvement over Mississippi Burning.

Tcm oughta compromise. Put the frenchy stuff on between midnite and six in the morning so most viewers don't have to be burdened with watching it. That's exactly the time slot I was going to suggest for John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Mickey Rooney, Elvis Presley, and just about every musical made after Footlight Parade and before The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.

MeTV has a competitor in the NY market GetTV which also shows similar fare, albeit also with commercials Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play? The only commercials I would ever want to see on a movie channel would be a collection of classic commercials from the 40's through the 70's, as MeTV has on its website. I certainly don't want to see any current commercials interrupting the middle of a movie---not even the multiplexes have sunk that low, though I'm sure they'll get around to it.

As for TCM viewers not being interested in European films, I think the interest in an "artsy" film from a Italian director (BLOW-UP) on TCM's search database indicates otherwise But Holden, I think there is a limit to how many art or European films should be scheduled in one evening. And as you said, Peter Sellers is not everyone's cup of tay, sorry to say. THE MOUSE THAT ROARED would have worked much better as an Essential than ALICE B. What'shername. I'm not a fan of Peter Sellers, and I'm not a fan of The Mouse That Roared or Alice B. Hoozis, but I'm also not a fan of having TCM's programming determined by who gets the loudest shoutouts on these message boards or the most searches on the Database. There is no way of knowing what the motivation is behind those searches. For me I use it simply whenever I'm not familiar with a movie; if I already know and love a movie, there'd be no reason for me to do a search. But others may only use it to confirm their pre-existing biases. What I'm very comfortable with is letting TCM's programmers survey the wide variety of WORLDWIDE films that might be available, and using their knowledge and judgment to provide us with the BEST movies out there. Not necessarily the most popular or the most "artsy" (whatever that's supposed to mean), but simply the best. And as it's worked out, I think they do a terrific job, especially if a viewer takes the time and trouble to study the schedule in order to watch or record movies that don't get repeated over and over. I personally wish we'd get more foreign movies in prime time, but I understand the reasons that we don't, and plan accordingly to record them at midnight or 2:00 AM. That's hardly a cause for complaint. Some evenings they may show a run of foreign movies, some I'll like and some I won't. I love Gabin and Kurosawa and don't care for Sellers or Jacques Tati. We all have our own tastes that need not be defended. But many more evenings we'll get a solid bloc or westerns, musicals, screwball comedies, noirs, or Mickey Rooney movies, some of which we'll love and some of which we'll either not love or have seen a hundred times already. That's part of the deal, too. You can't please all of the people all of the time, and IMO it's not the mission of TCM even to attempt to do this. The mission of TCM is to provide the widest variety of great movies from all eras and all countries, weighted towards the studio era of Hollywood, but not to the point of crowding out first rate foreign movies just so we can see Yankee Doodle Dandy or Stagecoach six times a year instead of three. And as Rey has pointed out time and time again with the numbers to back him up, there is no shortage of 30's through 50's Hollywood films on the TCM schedule, in spite of all the whining to the contrary from a handful of constant bellyachers here.

It's about being perfect in an otherwise non-perfect world. And it's about expecting everyone else to share your own definition of perfection. Good luck with that. Not really. It's what everyone else may think should be perfect, not what I consider to be perfect. Nothing is perfect in this world. I think you may have misunderstood my comment. It wasn't aimed at you, but at those people who seem to conflate their own idea of perfection with that of the world at large. I certainly don't consider you to be in that category.

Here's what I notice about our latest threepeat spammer, "timdt". Member Since Today, 11:16 AM Offline Last Active Today, 11:30 AM In those 14 minutes he dropped three spam eggs and then left us forevermore. I wonder whether TCM might instigate a policy of not allowing new members the privilege of starting new threads until they've participated coherently in at least 10 other threads. By "coherently" I mean engaging in the topic at hand with other people, not just posting random comments that have nothing to do with anything germane to the thread. Is there any particular reason why such a policy couldn't be put in place? It would be similar in intent to those programs that require you to copy a series of random letters before your comment will be posted.

It's about being perfect in an otherwise non-perfect world. And it's about expecting everyone else to share your own definition of perfection. Good luck with that.

I don't think what is being discussed has anything to do with a definition. Clearly it must, since there are competing definitions that are subject to context. But don't worry, I'm not trying to Control+x over Maryland and then Control+v over Birmingham. I can read a map. As as you noted Maryland at the time had a deep south type of mentality as it relates to race. So all the original user of the term had to do is say 'she came from Maryland, which had a deep south mindset at the time,,'. But when one uses a term literally one should expect that term to be taken literally. The original reference was here: LOL, Hey, guess what!? Edna Ferber wrote those lines, not Elizabeth Taylor. Taylor's character was from Maryland the DEEP SOUTH, and she would have already been instructed by her millionaire husband to NEVER INTERRUPT OUR MEN'S POLITICAL MEETINGS. Remember, money, money, money. Also, that part of the film was in the 1920s or thereabouts, and the husband would have assured the wife that he would never interrupt any of her ladies stuff and private ladies talks, such as he would have promised her to never be drunk around her lady friends or use any bad words around them, and to always be nice to the preacher, etc., etc. That description of time and custom could just have easily have applied to Maryland's Eastern Shore as to the dew line from Georgia through Louisiana.

As for TCM making it more difficult to personalize (or find) a printable schedule, I hear you. My theory is that corporate wants to discourage downloadable schedules in favor of selling subscriptions to their "Now Playing" guide. If that's the reason, it's rather ironic, as I've not only subscribed to Now Playing since 2010, I recently bought all the available back issues that I was missing from 1998 on up. Set me back over $300 and it took about 4 or 5 months for them to arrive.

Though I have seen posts regarding who the SUTS are and the order their films are in each day I haven't seen a link to print an August schedule. Does one exist and, if so, can someone post the link? This page has links to the full TCM schedules for June, July and August. But on the subject of monthly schedules, if anyone knows of any better format that exists for any of these months, please let me know. TCM changed the font and format of its monthly schedules radically for the worse back in June of 2011, making them slow and cumbersome to edit into a personalized schedule as a Word document. We never did get any explanation for this change despite several threads devoted to the subject at the time, as it was nothing but one big stonewall. It used to take no more than about half an hour to an hour to personalize a schedule for an entire month, but now it takes so long that I don't even bother to do it more than a week at a time.