TCM Spotlight: The Greatest Stories Ever Rolled
TCM, beginning at 7 p.m.
Airing films about roller skating or featuring famous roller-skating scenes will be how Turner Classic Movies rolls starting tonight and continuing the next two Thursday evenings. Incredibly, Xanadu somehow does not appear on any of the nights, but there are still some great titles. One of those is tonight’s leadoff film, filmmaker/star Charlie Chaplin’s comedy classic Modern Times, which, despite being produced in 1936, is a silent film. One scene famously finds Chaplin’s Little Tramp character roller skating on the fourth floor of a department store while blindfolded, unaware that he is consistently and dangerously close to the edge of a long drop (clever visual effects ensured Chaplin was actually in no danger but still makes it hilariously harrowing for the audience to watch). Chaplin and his roller-skating skills return in the following film, a silent production that was actually made during the silent era — The Rink (pictured) (1916). Here, a skating party at the title location turns into chaos. Finally, in Shall We Dance (1937), Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, not content to make most of us envious of the dancing skills they display when they are just in their shoes, really show off with a famous comic tap-dance number performed while they are wearing roller skates at a Central Park rink to the tune of George and Ira Gershwin’s “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off.” —