Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Jack Lemmon night

For some reason I thought I had done a full-length blog post on The Fortune Cookie before, but I haven't. It's airing at 8:00 PM tonight on TCM, and the one-paragraph synopsis is going to have to suffice again, I'm sorry to say.

It's being followed at 10:15 PM by My Sister Eileen, which is of course the 1950s musical version; Lemmon's career not having started when the 1941 Rosalind Russell version was released.

The movie that interests me is one I haven't seen before: Cowboy, at 12:15 AM. The idea of Lemmon in a western is intriguing, although once you read the synopsis, it seems he was well-cast. It's based on the true-life story of writer (played by Lemmon) Frank Harris, who in the 1870 went west to try to remake his life by becoming a cowboy. Glenn Ford plays the leader of the cattle drive. Lemmon's not the first person you'd think of for a western, but if the role is for somebody new to the west, then why not Jack Lemmon?

I've briefly mentioned The Days of Wine and Roses quite a few times; that airs at 2:15 AM. Lemmon and Lee Remick play a husband and wife who together descend into alcoholism. Being the sort of person who only drinks a glass of wine a day, I wouldn't know how realistic this is, so I'd have to rely on reviewers who say it is. At least, the whole thing looks well-done.

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