I was born in the wrong era. The 1930s-1970s is the area I should’ve been in. All the movies, the styles, I loved it (except for the sexism and oppression but let me live in my world where that didn’t happen). I am completely content to lie in my bed and watch TCM all day every day. The majority of my DVD collection consists of films made before 1970. This is the time where movies were great, meaningful and an escape. The movies stars…don’t get me started! Monroe, Hayworth, Hepburn, Leigh, Taylor…they acted like stars. It was always glamour! Not this crazy Amanda Bynes, Anne Hathaway crap.
TCM—that’s my station. I love The Essentials, it’s a Saturday night special hosted by Robert Osborne and another actor or actress (this month was Drew Barrymore). They go over movies that are “essential” to watch. In February they do 31 days of Oscar—all Oscar winning films leading up to the Academy Awards. They have wonderful documentaries…great flicks…it’s wonderful. I didn’t think it could get any better until I found out that this month is “The Woman’s World: The Defining Era of Women on Film”.
From the TCM site:
TCM proudly introduces Friday Night Spotlight, a new month-long festival of films hosted by a special guest. The theme of the inaugural Friday Night Spotlight is A Woman’s World: The Defining Era of Women on Film, with celebrated singer/actress/superstar Cher joining Robert Osborne in hosting the screenings. This Spotlight will shine on the “woman’s film,” a staple from the late 1930s through the early ’50s that viewed life from the female perspective as it changed with the times, creating a genre that was rich, varied, sometimes subversive and always entertaining.
Among films with the theme of Motherhood are dramatic vehicles for two icons of the woman’s film, each playing a mom who sacrifices everything for a daughter: Barbara Stanwyck as Stella Dallas (1937) and Joan Crawford as Mildred Pierce (1945). The War Effort and the Homefront of the World War II era are represented by Claudette Colbert in, respectively, So Proudly We Hail (1943), in which she serves as a Red Cross nurse in the Pacific, and Since You We Went Away (1944), in which she bravely maintains a family while her husband is away at war.
Working Women, a force that would grow considerably during the war years, include Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday (1940) and Katharine Hepburn in Woman of the Year (1942), with Cary Grant and Spencer Tracy, respectively, as the men in the lives of these independent career women. Among the Women Taking Charge are Ginger Rogers as a young working-class woman who marries into wealth yet retains control of her own destiny in Kitty Foyle (1940), and Bette Davis as a genteel but strong-willed socialite who takes over the child of another woman (Mary Astor) in The Great Lie (1941).
Not only are the celebrating women in film…they’re doing it with Cher. Stop being the best TCM I can’t take it! I have a full-time job how the hell am I supposed to live knowing this is going on?! Fine, FINE! You win! I’ll spend every Friday night at home watching your station.
