Former monthly contribution by late TCM host Robert Osborne to the TCM newsletter Now Playing in August, 2016.
Most of you in the TCM family will instantly recognize the beautiful glamour puss on the cover of this month's “Now Playing Guide.” It is, yes indeed, Lucille Ball, dressed and coiffed for her role in the 1942 drama The Big Street, a movie role she inherited when her great friend Carole Lombard was killed in a plane crash on January 16, 1942, 10 days after the U.S. became embroiled in World War II. (Both the war and the sudden death of 33-year-old Lombard sent major shocks across America.) Lucy was 31 at the time but was no fledgling as an actress: she already had appeared in 55 films as well as 10 movie shorts, her big career seeming to be right on the verge of taking off although, as it turned out, it would be 10 more years until she would put on an apron as Lucy Ricardo–a full decade before she and husband Ricky would rent that apartment on New York's East Side from Fred and Ethel Mertz.
Well, as part of this year's "Summer Under the Stars" with 31 movie notables–when we devote a full 24 hours each day to a different actor–we'll have some great samplings of Lucy's work in the film arena for anyone who remains a bit hazy about Lucy's past. Highly recommended that day: The Big Street which gives Lucy the best role she was given to play in her entire movie career; 1946's The Dark Corner, Lucy in a terrific example of 1940s film noir; and The Long, Long Trailer, made during the era when Lucy and Desi ruled television, and a movie which is still as hilarious as it was the day it premiered at New York's Radio City Music Hall in 1954
But the treats never stop all month long. We'll be giving 24-hour salutes to 19 stars we've not focused on before, such as Bing Crosby (including two Crosby hits which will be TCM premieres, 1936's Rhythm on the Range and 1938's Sing, You Sinners), also our good friend Roddy McDowall (including, for the first time on TCM, Roddy's star-defining My Friend Flicka [1943]), Angie Dickinson, Robert Montgomery, Boris Karloff and Charles Boyer, as well as a salute to Janet Gaynor on Aug. 12 which includes one of the three films for which she was the first winner of the Best Actress Academy Award–that film being 1928's Street Angel (prizes given in a bygone era when Academy rules for eligibility were far different than they are today).
On August 25, we'll be ringing bells and uncorking champagne bottles to toast one of our favorite of all MGM stars, Van Johnson, on the 100th anniversary of his birth; and on August 8, we'll toot horns in celebration of Esther Williams' 95th birthday (the Esther who, for years, brought more attention to H2O than the Titanic and Moby Dick combined). There's one especially curious film you dyed-in-the-wool fans should check out: The Phynx, made in 1970 and never given a regular release; to the best of my knowledge, it went straight to cold storage. But when we show it, check out the cast. For some, it was the last film they made, the names in the film including: Dorothy Lamour, Ruby Keeler, Joan Blondell, Johnny Weissmuller, Maureen O'Sullivan, Martha Raye, Xavier Cugat, Marilyn Maxwell, James Brown, Louis Hayward, Patsy Kelly, Butterfly McQueen, Pat O'Brien, and the list goes on...
