Holiday Movies on Turner Classic Movies All Through the Night

Turner Classic Movies has already started its Christmas Eve/Christmas Day movie marathon, but there's still time to catch a whole lot of classic holiday action. If you're a fan of Jimmy Stewart, Ginger Rogers, Judy Garland, Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck, Katharine Hepburn or Mickey Rooney, there are movies for you in the line-up.

It Happened on Fifth Avenue, a sweet little movie from 1947 about GIs moving into what they think is an empty Manhattan mansion because of the post-World War II housing shortage, begins at 11:15 am Central time, starting the holiday parade. It stars Don DeFore, someone you may remember from the Ozzie and Harriet show, as the first veteran into the mansion, with Ann Harding as a rich girl pretending to be poor to help out her new friends, Charles Ruggles as her robber baron dad, and Victor Moore, a major star of stage and screen you don't hear a lot about anymore, as Aloysious T. McKeever, a gentleman bum who knows how to keep himself in very nice housing even when he doesn't have a nickel. And you'll find Gilligan's Island's Skipper, Alan Hale Jr., in the supporting cast.

After that, Ginger Rogers appears in I'll Be Seeing You, airing at 1:15 pm CST, a 1944 film which has the dubious distinction of turning the beautiful title song into a soggy mess of choral flourishes. Aside from the song and some other melodramatic elements, I'll Be Seeing You is worth a look to see Ginger as a prisoner on a holiday furlough who meets the wonderful Joseph Cotten, playing a shell-shocked soldier who is also on leave, as they both travel home for the holidays by train. Shirley Temple is in the mix as a teenager with a big mouth.

The Shop Around the Corner, a wonderful 1940 movie full of Continental charm, begins at 3 pm CST. Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullavan star as argumentative sales clerks in a shop in Budapest as the holiday shopping season heats up, offering lots of opportunities for snowflakes falling on romantic street scenes with a Mittel-European flair. They are pen pals as well as co-workers, although neither knows the other is the one behind the love letters. Ernst Lubitsch directed this confection with his lighter-than-air Continental touch, pulling perfect performances from the likes of Frank Morgan, the Wizard of Oz himself, as the owner of the shop and Felix Bressart as a member of the team at Matuschek & Co. The movie is based on a play called Parfumerie by Miklos Laszlo and it's been remade a number of times, in films like In the Good Old Summertime and You've Got Mail and the stage musical She Loves Me.

Meet Me in St. Louis is up next, taking us to the World's Fair in 1904, with the Smith family, including Judy Garland and Margaret O'Brien as sisters, enjoying an idyllic life until Dad (Leon Ames) announces they're all moving. Uh oh. Judy sings "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" and there's not a dry eye in the house. It's a classic for a reason. Meet Me in St. Louis starts at 5 pm Central time.

Kaufman and Hart's The Man Who Came to Dinner gets the marquee spot at 7 pm, showcasing Monty Woolley, who reprises his Broadway role as Sheridan Whiteside, an obnoxious radio star who visits a small-town family, suffers a slip and fall on the front steps, and proceeds to take over the household with a non-stop stream of visitors, including eccentric movie and stage stars and a parade of penguins. Bette Davis is on-board as Whiteside's put-upon secretary, with Ann Sheridan as a luscious movie star, Reginald Gardner as a crazy Englishman modeled after Noel Coward, and Jimmy Durane as Banjo, a Harpo Marx-like comedian.

One of my favorites, Christmas in Connecticut, takes over at 9 pm CST, with Barbara Stanwyck at her screwball comedy best as a magazine writer who purports to be a wife and mother and an expert on all things domestic, even though she's really single and doesn't know a stove from a refrigerator. A war hero played by the very handsome Dennis Morgan has one holiday desire -- to spend Christmas with a perfect family like hers -- and her editor, played by Sydney Greenstreet, isn't taking no for an answer. So Babs has to come up with a husband, a baby and a whole lot of picture-perfect food on short notice. S. Z. "Cuddles" Sakall makes an appearance as Barbara's pancake-flipper and general helper-outer. It's delightful.

Cover Girl, a 1944 musical with Gene Kelly, Rita Hayworth and Phil Silvers, begins at 11 pm CST, with 1958's Indiscreet, where Cary Grant tries to keep Ingrid Bergman on a string even though he doesn't want to marry her, at 1 am.

As we hit early Christmas morning, John Wayne, Pedro Roca Fuerte and Harry Carey Jr. saddle up for 3 Godfathers, a John Ford Western with a sentimental side. The Duke and his friends are bank robbers on the lam who find themselves unwilling caretakers of an orphaned newborn. They battle sandstorms, sweltering heat, thirst and all kinds of terrifying perils as they attempt to return the baby to her grandfather, who happens to be the sheriff trying to capture them.

Tenth Avenue Angel, a potboiler with Angela Lansbury in an early role, starts at 7 am, followed by Ginger Rogers as a Bachelor Mother at 8:30 am and Reginald Owen as one of the best Scrooges ever in the 1938 screen version of A Christmas Carol at 10:30.

Janet Leigh and Robert Mitchum are unlikely lovers in Holiday Affair, airing at 11:15, where Leigh plays a widowed working mother and Mitchum yearns to build boats in California. Will he give up his dreams to take care of comparison-shopper Connie and little Timmy? Or will she give up her need for security and follow his dream with him?

In the Good Old Summertime, the 1949 musical remake of The Shop Around the Corner, puts Judy Garland together with Van Johnson as squabbling co-workers, this time in a music shop. Liza Minnelli makes her screen debut as the baby Judy carries in the final number. You can compare/contrast Summertime with Shop Around the Corner at 1 pm on Christmas Day.

Then it's the 1933 Little Women, the one with Katharine Hepburn as Jo March, at 3 pm, Love Finds Andy Hardy at 5, and a slew of Mel Brooks' movies, from High Anxiety to Silent Movie, Mel's 1983 remake of To Be or Not to Be, and The Twelve Chairs, all night long.

Barbara Stanwyck No. 2: BALL OF FIRE Tonight on TCM

Yesterday we talked about Barbara Stanwyck month on TCM through the lens of The Lady Eve, her 1941 romantic comedy with director and screenwriter Preston Sturges. The movie TCM will be screening right after The Lady Eve is another gem, and Stanwyck is just as spirited and sparkly.

So what's No. 2?

It's Ball of Fire, a screwball take on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs directed by Howard Hawks, one of Hollywood's most versatile directors, with a fizzy, funny screenplay by Charles Brackett and the legendary Billy Wilder.

In this one, Stanwyck is Sugarpuss O'Shea, which has to one of the best names ever in film history, a nightclub entertainer romantically linked to a gangster. Gary Cooper is her screen partner, but he's not the gangster He's Bertram Potts, a professor of linguistics currently working on an encyclopedia with a group of elderly academic types, each with his own specialty. They're cooped up together in a house, slaving away, desperately trying to finish their project at long last.

But Bertram takes a stroll over to the nightclub where Sugarpuss is entertaining, hears her delicious slang, and invites her to help him out by giving him the inside scoop on her jazzy lingo. She declines, until she needs a place to hide out. It seems the coppers are on her tail to drop a dime on her main squeeze, Joe Lilac, who is on ice after maybe bumping off a rival.

Once ensconced at the house where all the professors live, Sugarpuss takes over, sharing all her best slang with Pottsie (she's given Bertram that nickname) and her slinkiest conga moves with his colleagues. Things are great until Joe Lilac resurfaces, huge engagement ring in hand. But by that time, Sugarpuss is starting to have feelings for shy, awkward professor Pottsie.

Things go south from there. Or maybe west, since they all end up in New Jersey. Gangsters! Adorable old men in a conga line! Barbara Stanwyck in gold lamé with a bare midriff! Gary Cooper in a bowtie! Gene Krupa drumming "Drum Boogie" with matchsticks! It just doesn't get any better than that.

This time, the supporting players include Richard Haydn, Oscar Homolka, Leonid Kinskey, Tully Marshall, Aubrey Mathers, S. Z. "Cuddles" Sakall and Henry Travers as the encyclopedia scribes, Dana Andrews as Joe Lilac the thuggish boyfriend, and Dan Duryea and Ralph Peters as Duke Pastrami and Asthma Anderson, Joe's henchmen.

C'mon. Who can resist a movie with people named Sugarpuss, Asthma and Pastrami?

Don't resist. Give in to Ball of Fire. It's at 12:15 am (Central time) tonight on TCM, right after The Lady Eve. You'll be drum-boogieing all night long.

Barbara Stanwyck No. 1: THE LADY EVE Tomorrow on TCM

Turner Classic Movies is celebrating Barbara Stanwyck this month, and tomorrow night you have a chance to catch two of her best and most charming movies.

The first one, beginning at 10:30 pm Central time, is The Lady Eve, a 1941 romantic comedy from director/screenwriter Preston Sturges. Sturges was one of the Big 7*, the group of directors who made film comedy of the 30s and 40s so fabulous, and he was a step ahead since he did his own scripts. A definite wordsmith, Sturges specialized in movies with a) crazy characters, b) an amazing ensemble of character actors, and c) madcap situations that could get a little risque. So Trudy Cockenlocker, the girl in The Miracle of Morgan's Creek who got hit on the head during a USO dance and doesn't remember who she slept with to create the bun in her oven, is par for the Sturges' course.

Barbara Stanwyck's Jean Harrington is a con woman traveling over the Atlantic on a posh ocean liner with her cardsharp dad, played by the irascible and adorable Charles Coburn, one of those character actors I was telling you about. When sweet, dopey and rich Charles Poncefort Pike, played by Henry Fonda, gets on board their ship, every girl there tries to attract his attention. He is, after all, the heir to a beer fortune, even though he's more interested in snakes than Pike's Pale Ale. But Jean is smarter than most, and she knows exactly how to tempt Hopsie, as she begins to call him. Soon after she's got him hooked, she begins to fall for him, too, even though he has a cynical bodyguard, played by William Demarest, best known as grumpy Uncle Charley on the TV show My Three Sons, who has her number, and dear old dad, the cardsharp, is just dying to take Hopsie for all he's worth. Dad pulls his games, he and Jean are revealed as well-known shipboard swindlers, and all is lost between Jean and Hopsie.

Ah, but that's when the plot takes a detour. Because Jean is really angry that Hopsie dumped her, she takes on a new identity as Lady Eve Sidwich, a classier, more cultivated sort of woman. And then she cozies up to the Pike family at home, intending to pull the wool over the poor, deluded guy's eyes once again for revenge. Even though Uncle Charley, er, Muggsy, the right-hand man, insists she's "the same dame," Hopsie falls for it, hook, line and sinker.

Two more of my favorite character actors show up during this part of the plot, with the sly Eric Blore as a fellow con man who helps "Eve" get close to the Pikes, including gravel-voiced Eugene Pallette as the Pale Ale patriarch.

Everybody is wonderful, especially Stanwyck, who positively sparkles as naughty Jean/Eve, and Fonda, who comes off quite attractive even though his Hopsie is also completely befuddled. That's not an easy combo! The two show great chemistry as they navigate their way through all kinds of fizzy and sizzling little moments, and Stanwyck sells Sturges' crazy story with cheeky conviction.

The Lady Eve is outrageous, unbelievable, and yet so good-natured about all of it, you are perfectly willing to leap over that threshold of disbelief and root for Hopsie to fall prey to Jean's schemes so the two of them can be together.

There's just something about The Lady Eve.

*The other six were Frank Capra, George Cukor, Howard Hawks, Mitchell Leisen, Ernst Lubitsch and Leo McCarey, according to a film class I took long ago. If you go find It Happened One Night, The Philadelphia Story, Holiday, tomorrow night's Ball of Fire, Bringing Up Baby, Midnight, Easy Living, Trouble in Paradise, The Awful Truth and Sullivan's Travels, you will have a very nice overview of the best film comedies of the 30s and 40s, and they were each directed by one of those seven guys.

No Turning Back Now -- It's December!

So today is 12-02-12. I believe there is a theory of some sort that says the world will end this month. Mayan prediction, 12-21-12, etc... Never mind the fact that the Mayans are long gone and have no reason to have predicted the end of anything a thousand years after they were gone, and if they were going to predict, wouldn't they have chosen to predict (in order to guard against) the end of their own civilization? Okay, never mind. I don't know anything about any of this and I don't watch disaster movies, so I didn't see 2012, either. But in honor of this eschatological theory (gotta love the word eschatological), I am commemorating your What to Do in December post with the poster from the Roland "King of Crackpot Theories" Emmerich movie that pushed the End of Days '12 idea. As far as I know, no one is showing that movie on 12-21 or any other night, so you'll have to find it yourself for your 12-21-12 Eschatology viewing party.

No 2012 on the schedule, but Champaign's Art Theater is showing a 2011 version of  Wuthering Heights directed by Andrea Arnold and shot on location in Yorkshire, England. That's playing now through December 6, and will be followed by the new version of Anna Karenina with a screenplay by Tom Stoppard. Keira Knightley stars as Anna, with Jude Law as her stuffy husband and Aaron Taylor-Johnson as dashing Count Vronsky, the one she can't stay away from, even though it will ruin her life. Watch out for that train, Анна Каренина!

Also in Champaign-Urbana... The Station Theatre continues its production of Lee Blessing's Independence through December 9 -- you can read more about the play here -- while Parkland College welcomes a Bah Humbug production of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever from December 14 to 23.

Community Players' White Christmas, the stage musical version of the classic Bing Crosby film, opened last week and continues through December 16th. Deb Smith directs for Community Players, with a cast that includes Ray Rybarczyk and Jason Strunk as the song-and-dance men who fall for a pair of pretty sisters, played here by Lindsey Kaupp and Larisa McCoy. Click here for ticket info for White Christmas and other upcoming Players shows.

The other White Christmas, the Bing and Danny Kaye film one, starts December 7 at the Normal Theater, with showings on the big screen till December 9. After that, the Normal Theater offers holiday favorites National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, A Christmas Story and It's a Wonderful Life to finish up 2012.

Illinois State University's Fall Dance Concert is scheduled for December 6 through 8, with three evening performances and one matinee.This concert promises to be a "celebration of movement, costumes, light, and music, featuring new choreographic works by faculty in the School of Theatre and Dance and invited guest artists." And don't forget to bring canned goods or other non-perishable food items to donate to the Redbird Giving Tree.

Ian Mairs' Our David, a play about sparring neighbors who find common ground over a tacky statue of Michelangelo's David, comes to New Route Theatre at the Bloomington YWCA beginning December 7. This David is directed by Bridgette Richards and stars Nathan Bothorff and Carol Scott as Clyde and Velma, who couldn't be more different and yet turn out to be strangely alike.

You also have a choice of the Holiday Spectacular at the Bloomington Center for the Performing Arts from December 7 to 9 or a variety of Nutcrackers in different cities at different times.

It's Barbara Stanwyck Month (on Wednesdays, anyway) over on Turner Classic Movies, with two of my favorites, The Lady Eve, from director/screenwriter Preston Sturges, and Ball of Fire, a Howard Hawks' gem, on December 12. Both movies came out in 1941, which may just be the best year ever for Hollywood movies. In The Lady Eve, Stanwyck is a con woman who woos a befuddled Henry Fonda, loses him, and then pretends to be another woman who looks just like the first one to pull the same scam on the same guy, while in Ball of Fire, she's a jazzy mob moll version of Snow White hiding out with seven pointy-headed encyclopedia writers (including Gary Cooper) who function as her Seven Dwarfs. It's adorable. It's screwball. It's fabulous.

Heartland Theatre is still accepting entries in its annual 10-minute play contest. This year's theme is The Parcel, the Package or the Present, and each play must include a package of some sort that fuels the play. All of which means that the holidays are a perfect time to come up with a play, what with all those parcels and packages arriving at your door. What's inside that box? Will it be a dream or will it be a dud? Will it go BOOM? You have a maximum of four characters and ten minutes to tell your Parcel/Package/Present tale.

Failure: A Love Story, a new play by Philip Dawkins, will be part of the Illinois Shakespeare Festival next summer. If you want a sneak peek or to set up a compare/contrast situation when it plays here next year, you can see the play now in its premiere production at Chicago's Victory Gardens Theater. Failure finishes up at Victory Gardens on December 30.