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TCM Spotlight: Radio Days: ‘Radio to Screen’
TCM, Beginning at 7 p.m.
Movies and radio started coming of age as popular media forms over roughly the same decades during the first half of the 20th century, so it makes sense that they would cross over from time to time, with movie stars sometimes appearing on radio programs, or radio shows being adapted into films. Each Monday night this month, Turner Classic Movies continues to look at the intersection between radio and cinema during the golden age of both forms through various themes. Tonight’s lineup features movies based on popular radio shows and personalities of the day: Crime
Doctor (pictured) (1943), the first of 10 Warner Baxter-led crime dramas based on the 1940-47 CBS radio program; I Love
a Mystery (1945), the first of three films based on the radio mystery drama; Look
Who’s Laughing (1941), a comedy based around popular radio characters Fibber McGee and Molly (portrayed in the film by real-life couple Jim and Marian Jordan, who also voiced them on radio); The Great Gildersleeve (1942), the first of a series of film adaptations of NBC’s 1941-58 radio sitcom, with Harold Peary reprising his voice role in person as Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve;
The Whistler (1944), a film noir based on the 1942-55 mystery/crime anthology radio series, the first of eight movies based on the show starring Richard Dix; and A Date With
Judy (1948), a musical led by Wallace Beery, Jane Powell, Elizabeth Taylor and Carmen Miranda, and based on the teen-focused radio comedy that ran from 1941-50. — Jeff Pfeiffer