“Summer Under the Stars” continues this week on TCM with a great lineup featuring Shelley Winters, Ray Milland, Lena Horne, Kirk Douglas, and Jane Wyman. There is more than enough to keep any cinephile occupied all week long. Even though I did the big comprehensive post early last week, I thought I’d do as I did last year and repost in shorter bits what’s coming up over the coming days, so that’s what you get beyond the jump.
I implore you, however: if for some reason you’ve never seen The Lost Weekend starring Milland (and, as it happens, Wyman as well, but it’s Milland’s movie and his day), please do yourself a favor and make sure to catch or at least record it. There are a lot of great movies by fantastic filmmakers on all this week, including for example Fritz Lang‘s noir thriller Ministry of Fear from a novel by Graham Greene which also stars Milland and will air immediately before The Lost Weekend; or Stanley Kubrick‘s anti-war masterpiece Paths of Glory with Douglas airing on Thursday at 10:30 PM. Still, for my money, as great as those and many other films this week are (and I’m sure plenty of you might disagree with this statement, especially with the Kubrick film in the mix), none of them are as personal, harrowing and moving as The Lost Weekend. Watch it.
And check out this stuff too …
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Aug. 8 — Shelley Winters: Who knew choosing just one film to highlight featuring Winters would be this hard, but looking at the lineup brings into focus what a great resume she has. Charles Laughton‘s brilliant The Night of the Hunter (12 AM), Stanley Kubrick‘s often unfairly criticized Lolita (1:45 AM) and and the original Alfie (8 PM). If you can only watch one though, take a peek at John Frankenheimer‘s 1961 drama The Young Savages (2:45 PM), which also features the first of five times Frankenheimer worked with star Burt Lancaster.
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Aug. 9 — Ray Milland: There are so many great Milland performances and movies, but none better than the one that brought him his Oscar, the role of Don Birman in The Lost Weekend (11:30 PM). Billy Wilder‘s harrowing 1945 drama of a man’s descent into alcoholism during a four day binge remains one of the most amazing portraits of addiction ever committed to the big screen.
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Aug. 10 — Lena Horne was the first black performer to sign a long-term studio contract and for that reason alone is one of the most important figures in the history of Hollywood. As big a star as she was, the tenor of the times did not necessarily allow her to always have starring roles. One, however, was in the 1943 Vincente Minnelli musical Cabin in the Sky (8 PM). It’s a notable film for many reasons: it was Minnelli’s first feature as director; it was an “all-black” cast at a time when that meant anything but guaranteed box office success; it was only the fourth all-black studio film since the beginning of the sound era; and it was one of Horne’s few actual acting roles on film, as opposed to either portraying herself or simply appearing in a short musical number. Check it out.
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Aug. 11 — Kirk Douglas: This wouldn’t be my blog if I didn’t mention one of the top-three films noir of all time, Out of the Past (4 PM), but since I’ll do that any time I see the film scheduled, my “official” highlight for Douglas-day this year will be Lust for Life (8:15 AM). No, I’m not suddenly trying to draw more attention to the work of Vincente Minnelli, but the filmmaker’s biography of artist Vincent Van Gough is quite interesting, and Douglas’s Oscar-nominated performance is spectacular.
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Aug. 12 — Jane Wyman: Now probably more remembered for being the first Mrs. Ronald Reagan, Wyman was a great star in the 1940s and ’50s, and one of the most versatile actresses in Hollywood able to handle musical comedy and stark melodrama with equal aplomb. An absolute must-see on the TCM line-up is All That Heaven Allows (10 PM), the 1955 technicolor melodrama from the king of such films, Douglas Sirk. All That Heaven Allows received a bit of press three years ago as it was the inspiration for Todd Haynes‘s fantastic Far From Heaven.
Out of Focus 