Sleepless Summer Nights
When I was a teenager, I was very lucky to have a small 13 inch black and white television set in my room. This is when cable tv first came out (hard to believe that cable hasn’t been around for ever!). But of course, we did not have cable. I was stuck with ABC, NBC, and CBS on the main dial, and various “independent” channels on the UHF channels.
But you would never know what you could catch on those UHF channels. I actually saw music videos – and it wasn’t MTV! And I swear I say Jon Stewart on a comedy show, sitting behind a desk with a female counterpart. Anyway…
It was those summer months… stay up late… sleep in late… that I got exposed to “old” movies. Now they have their very own channel – TCM (Turner Classic Movies). I saw some great movies:
1) Portrait of Dorian Grey
2) The Ghost and Mrs. Muir
3) African Queen
4) all the Bikini Beach movies with Annette Funicello & Frankie Avalon
5) The Invisible Man and The Invisible Man Returns
6) Fred Astaire – Funny Face, Top Hat, Holiday Inn, Royal Wedding, Daddy Long Legs
7) ELVIS movies – the cheesier, the better!
8) Arsenic and Old Lace
9) My Favorite Brunette
10) My Three Angels
11) Twelve Angry Men
12) Katharine Hepburn – Stage Door, Bringing Up Baby, Philadelphia Story, Desk Set
13) Father of the Bride and Father’s Little Dividend
14) Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House
15) TopperAt Home With Faith › Edit — WordPress
16) Rope
Maybe that’s when I really started to love movies. I loved them just as much as books. I’m sure that some of them were “bombs” when they were released, but 40 years later they were entertaining enough for me! It’s the same now – there are plenty of movies out there – they weren’t blockbusters or career-defining roles for the actors, but it’s a good way to pass an hour or two. I still haven’t seen The Crying Game (released 1992) yet!! (I hear it was kind of good, with a twist!)
So we are starting a Movie Night with some friends from work. We will rotate from house to house, and each host gets to pick the movie(s) we watch. It’ll be fun to see what other people have in their collections and see if they are favorites of mine or new movies I haven’t discovered yet.
8/9 – Editor’s Note: I apparently forgot about Fred McMurray’s Absent Minded Professor and Son of Flubber. I was upstairs this morning, not being productive (a.k.a. surfing the net for new blogs) and I heard his voice coming from the downstairs tv. I listened for a moment and shouted down – “is that Fred McMurray?” After getting an affirmative response, I said – “what movie is it – Flubber?” Reply back: “Absent Minded Professor”. I say to myself – yup, Flubber. Robin Williams might have done it in ’97, but Fred had it down in ’61.