Weston

Thank you. I really did see it advertised on the website for November 18, 2005 each of the several times I checked. If not for that, I could just assume I'd written the date down wrong--an easy mistake. Yes, Miriam Hopkins is good. Another impossible to find film, which I loved, stars Hopkins as Gene Tierney's mother and also stars John Lund and Thelma Ritter. The name of it is The Mating Season (1951), and it's a really nice comedy.

In September, I happened to see that Olde Acquaintance, starring Bette Davis and Miriam Hopkins--a film that doesn't appear to be available for purchase or rent anywhere--was going to be shown on November 18, 2005 at 2 a.m. Every once in a while I checked the TCM website and saw it was still scheduled. A year earlier, I had reduced my Comcast channels down to Basic because of all the garbage in the Standard lineup. On November 17, I went to Comcast, added the digital cable package that included FXM and TCM, purchased, installed and configured (with phone help) the cable box and, not feeling secure about the cable/VCR interplay, set my clock for 2 am so I could personally tape the movie. The movie wasn't shown. I then learned that TCM has a 6am to 6am schedule, so the following night, I checked and rechecked the website. At what seems to have been the last minute, a different movie replaced Olde Acquaintance. I did not set my clock, I sent TCM an email at their website but received no response. I don't know if anyone from TCM reads these messages (I just registered expressly to vent about this crummy introduction to TCM), but if so, maybe they can tell me how this happened and whether Olde Acquaintance will be shown again in my lifetime.

I don't remember a coin, but I certainly remember Waterloo Bridge, one of the most beautiful movies ever made with exquisite performances by all of the actors. It's reminiscent of another beautiful movie, A Place in the Sun, in which social class also plays a large part; in both films, the tragedy lies in the fact that there are no villains, and the tragedy could have been avoided if the victims themselves had been able to rise above the gap that ironically the persons "above" them had so genuinely ignored. Oh, wait--the film may begin and end on Waterloo Bridge, where Robert Taylor has found something (a coin?) belonging Vivien Leigh and recalls the story. The New Year's Eve scene, with the gradual dimming of candles, is one of the most beautiful scenes I've ever seen on film.