The Best of the Holiday Movie Barrage Tonight and Tomorrow

We get an onslaught of holiday-themed movies this time of year, although a few of my favorites always seem to get left out. But this year, Turner Classic Movies is airing five of my favorites between 5 pm (Central) today and 4 am Wednesday morning.

The 1970 Albert Finney version of Scrooge is up first at 5 this evening. There are lots of Christmas Carols around, with excellent versions ranging from the 1938 black-and-white one with Reginald Owen to Alastair Sim in 1951, George C. Scott in 1984, Bill Murray in 1988, The Muppets (with Michael Caine) in 1992, and Patrick Stewart in 1999. You can also choose versions of this popular story that involve Barbie, Blackadder, The Flintstones, Susan Lucci, Mickey Mouse, Scrooge McDuck or Mr. Magoo. But the Albert Finney one is really fine, using the classic Victorian setting and co-stars like Edith Evans and Alec Guiness, plus music from Leslie Bricusse, to bring the tale of Ebeneezer Scrooge to life. Finney is one of the few Scrooges to play both old and young Ebeneezer, and that gives this version something extra.

The musical Meet Me in St. Louis, with young Judy Garland singing up a storm as part of a family enjoying the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair plays on TCM at 7 pm tonight as well as 8:15 tomorrow morning. Meet Me in St. Louis covers more holidays than Christmas -- its Halloween scenes are famous, as well -- but when Judy sings "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" as the family prepares to move away from St. Louis, this particular holiday trumps everything else. It's the saddest, sweetest Christmas song you can imagine, and it gets me every time. Margaret O'Brien repeatedly attempts to steal the show as Judy's youngest sister, while Mary Astor and Leon Ames play her parents and Marjorie Main makes a dandy family servant.

Ernst Lubitsch's lovely The Shop Around the Corner is up at 1:30 pm Tuesday. You know the story of two feuding co-workers who don't realize they are also romantic pen pals from other versions of it, from Parfumerie to She Loves Me, In the Good Old Summertime and You've Got Mail. But the light Lubitsch touch makes The Shop Around the Corner and romantic leads Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullavan something special. It doesn't hurt that the supporting cast -- Felix Bressart and The Wizard of Oz himself, Frank Morgan, among them -- is also first-rate. Christmas enters into the story as the shopping season that stresses out our gift shop employees and the family time that upsets the singles among them. It's truly a sweetheart of a movie.

The marquee seven o'clock slot on Tuesday is saved for Christmas in Connecticut, that jolly wartime charmer with Barbara Stanwyck as a magazine columnist who pretends to be the perfect housewife, cook, mother, wife and general home and hearth expert, even though she is really none of those things. Her ruse is discovered when a soldier (handsome Dennis Morgan) asks to spend Christmas with a "real" family like hers. And hilarity ensues! Look for S.Z. "Cuddles" Sakall and the always irascible Sydney Greenstreet in the ensemble. For more about my thoughts on Christmas in Connecticut, click here.

You'll need to stay up late Christmas Eve or set the DVR to get my all-time favorite holiday movie, aptly titled Holiday, at 2:15 am Central time. This one pits Cary Grant against Katharine Hepburn -- he's a self-made man who wants to marry her sister and quit the biz to enjoy life, but the Seton family is too entrenched and too rich to let that happen. Edward Everett Horton and Jean Dixon play eccentric friends of Grant's Johnny Case, while Lew Ayres does an affecting turn as Hepburn's character's brother. As I said the last time I wrote about Holiday, "When it's Cary Grant playing Johnny, it's hard not to support his holiday. It's hard not to try to book a cabin on that ship and go right along with him. As Linda says, 'If he wants to dream for a while, he can dream for a while, and if he wants to come back and sell peanuts, oh, how I'll believe in those peanuts!'"

Right there with you, sister." Even at 2:15 am.

What's Up at Peoria Players in 2013-14

Peoria Players, the venerable theatrical institution over on the other side of the Illinois River, continues its tradition of four musicals plus two plays -- one comedy and one drama -- for their 95th season, with old favorites at every turn. Season tickets are available at the Peoria Players box office at Lakeview Park or by calling 309-688-4473.

September will see Les Misérables, directed by Connie Sinn,with performances from the 6th to the 15th, including a Wednesday show on September 11. The cast includes Charlie Brown as Jean Valjean, John Huerta as Inspector Javert, Chloe Morton as Cosette, Lindsey Pugh as Eponine, Ashley Rufus as Fantine, and Brian Witkowski as Marius. Individual tickets for Les Mis will go on sale August 26.

Next up is Neil Simon's Barefoot in the Park, that classic comedy of mismatched newlyweds -- he's a straight-arrow lawyer and she's one of the original Manic Pixie Dreamgirls -- trying to make it work in a 6th-floor walkup in Greenwich Village. Director Liz Landes Reed held auditions last weekend, so cast details should be forthcoming. Performances of Barefoot in the Park are scheduled for October 4 to 13.

Meet Me in St. Louis will be Peoria Players' third show of the season and their last show in 2013. This musical, based on the film of the same name, takes place in and around the 1904 World's Fair, as various members of the Smith family deal with a possible move, love with the boy next door, and having themselves a Merry Little Christmas, if the fates allow. Look for Meet Me in St. Louis, directed by Mary Ellen Ulrich, at Peoria Players from November 8 to 17.

Oliver! will open 2014, with Bryan Blanks directing performances scheduled for February 7 to 16. The musical, with music and lyrics by Lionel Bart, is based on Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist, a novel about an orphan adrift in the underbelly of London in the 1830s. The musical take on young Oliver's tale, featuring songs like "Where is Love?" and "As Long as He Needs Me," opened in London's West End in 1960 before a successful Broadway run from January 1963 to November 1964 and then an Oscar-winning movie adaptation in 1968. Oliver! has never really fallen out of fashion, with an acclaimed London production in 2009 and rumors that Cameron Mackintosh will be reviving it on Broadway sometime soon.

William Gibson's The Miracle Worker, another winner of multiple Tony Awards, is the season's drama entry. For Peoria Players, director Charles Killen takes the reins of this gripping story about young Helen Keller and her relationship with her teacher, Annie Sullivan. Gibson first wrote a teleplay based on Keller's writings about her life, and then adapted that script into a full-length play for the 1959 Broadway production directed by Arthur Penn. That production earned Anne Bancroft a Best Actress Tony and young Patty Duke, who played Helen, a Theatre World Award, while the 1962 movie version scored Oscars for both actresses. Helen Keller, Annie Sullivan and The Miracle Worker will take the stage at Peoria Players from March 14 to 23, 2014.

The only new show in the bunch, Disney's Shrek the Musical, will finish up the season, with performances from May 2 to 11. The original Shrek movie was another Oscar winner (Best Animated Feature) and the subsequent Broadway musical was nominated for a pile of Tony Awards, although it won only one, for Tim Hatley's costume design. I'm betting everybody knows it's a fractured fairytale about a green ogre and his talking donkey pal, who venture away from their friendly neighborhood swamp, whereupon Shrek falls in love with a princess and complicates his life incredibly. Travis Olson and Mary Keltner will direct Shrek the Musical in Peoria.

So that's the tuneful, award-heavy line-up coming from Peoria Players. For season information, including how to order season tickets and when tickets to individual shows will be on sale, click here.