Born on this date: James Whale in 1889; Vivian Martin in 1893; Marjorie White in 1904; Phillips Holmes in 1907; and Luana Walters in 1912.
All links lead to each actor’s IMDb page, set to open in a new tab.
Classic Movie Daily subscribers will find images of Vivian Martin, Phillips Holmes, and Marjorie White inside today’s issue, along with some related clippings.
TCM TV Alerts through tomorrow at 7 am:
These titles play on TCM’s US schedule and all quoted times are for my own local Eastern time zone.
—After 20,000 Years in Sing Sing (1932 – 6:15 am) TCM’s daytime Spencer Tracy marathon continues to 8 pm with the following: The Show-Off (1934 – 7:45 am) with Tracy and Madge Evans; Tracy and Myrna Loy in Whipsaw (1935 – 9:15 am); Tracy and Jean Harlow in Riff Raff (1936 – 10:45 am); Tracy, Gladys George, and Franchot Tone in They Gave Him a Gun (1937 – 12:30 pm); Tracy and Joan Crawford in Mannequin (1938 – 2:15 pm); Tracy reprising Father Flanagan with Mickey Rooney in Men of Boys Town (1941 – 4:00 pm); Tracy and Katharine Hepburn in Keeper of the Flame (1942 – 6:00 pm).
On the bright side it’s a great day for Spencer Tracy fans to mine out some of the legend’s lesser known titles. But it’s hard to figure out what TCM is doing here, they seem to have picked out several of Tracy’s greatest flops. If they were a Golden Age studio presenting their star with this line-up, you’d suspect they were trying to ruin him. Anyway, I don’t remember The Show-Off all that well, so I may check that out, a few of the others I’m just not going to attempt to sit through again (Whipsaw, Riff Raff). I like They Gave Him a Gun, but it has its problems, the Boys Town sequel is worth checking out, as is the lone Tracy-Hepburn pairing, but—
—but, the best Spencer Tracy movie of the day is actually Boom Town (1940), which plays Wednesday night at 10:15 pm as part of a separate group of films chosen by guest programmer Joan Collins. Tracy and Clark Gable are so good together that they practically make Claudette Colbert invisible. Hey, wasn’t Hedy Lamarr in this too? Yep. Collins does better by oldies fans than many recent guest programmers, slating Boom Town between Gilda (1946) at 8:00 pm and The Women (1939) at 12:30 am, but then these aren’t exactly rare viewing choices. And there’s the Catch-22 of the daytime schedule. Sometimes obscurities remains obscure for a reason (A thought I don’t pay much attention to myself).
—Early Thursday morning, 6:00 am, Frank Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) plays on TCM.
—GetTV features another Capra classic, Meet John Doe (1941) on Wednesday at 1:00 pm.
Cliff’s Notes
—The “super secret” TCM schedule for October is up on their site here. Luckily our pal Laura of Laura’s Miscellaneous Musings spotted it first and puzzled out Star of the Month as David Niven. She previews October on TCM here.
—Yesterday I came across news of the passing of a couple of screen nonagenarians, Theodore Bikel at age 91 and Nova Pilbeam at 95. You’ll find dedicated obituaries for master of dialects Bikel at the Los Angeles Times HERE and pre-Hollywood Hitchcock blonde Pilbeam at the Independent HERE. May they both rest in peace.
—Making for an extra maudlin mailing this morning, look for obituary clippings featuring Phillips Holmes and Marjorie White, both born on this date, to follow. Both died at young ages a very long time ago: Holmes in 1942, White in 1935.
—We’ll let James Whale cheer us up with a small collection of newspaper ads for Frankenstein during its original release. I clipped those right up to publication time, so we’ll leave off here for today.
Back tomorrow,
Cliff
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