TCM Morning & Afternoon Movies: I Miss ...the Theatre
TCM, beginning at 3:15 a.m.
Another social gathering place that many people have missed going to over this pandemic year-plus has been the theater. Turner Classic Movies has you covered this morning and afternoon, allowing you to vicariously live out a night at the theater through various films, without worrying about standing-room-only crowds. The lineup begins nice and early with 1950’s “Tea for Two” (pictured). Set in the 1920s, the musical comedy is based on “No, No, Nanette” and stars Doris Day (in her first role with top billing, and the first film in which she danced as well as sang) as a would-be stage singer seeking backing for her Broadway show. Next is “42nd Street” (1933), the toe-tapping, Best Picture Oscar-nominated film that follows the backstage goings-on of a Broadway musical. The day rounds out with “Stage Struck” (1958), a Broadway-set drama starring Henry Fonda, Susan Strasberg and Christopher Plummer in his film debut; the Oscar-nominated “Kiss Me Kate” (1953), with Howard Keel and Kathryn Grayson as once-married musical theater actors who find themselves performing opposite each other as Petruchio and Kate in a production of Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew”; “The Producers” (1967), Mel Brooks’ uproarious, Oscar-winning comedy about a Broadway producer and his accountant (Zero Mostel and Best Supporting Actor Oscar nominee Gene Wilder) scheming to bilk investors by staging what they think will be a certain flop; the Best Picture Oscar-nominated musical biopic “Funny Girl” (1968), starring Best Actress Oscar winner Barbra Streisand as famed Broadway/film star and comedian Fanny Brice; and, finally, Vincente Minnelli’s Oscar-nominated, Broadway-set 1953 musical comedy “The Band Wagon,” starring Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse.