After a much longer than expected absence, I’m cranking up the TCM Ten again this week. The Mickey Mouse Mafia will be knocking down my door any day now if I don’t get a few things reviewed very soon, but December is such an exciting month on Turner Classic Movies, with hours upon hours being devoted to Humphrey Bogart, that I have to get things going here. As always, all times listed are EST and program days begin at 6:00 AM.

Saturday December 5

8:30 AM Street Scene (Vidor, 1931) - BW-79 mins. - Producer Samuel Goldwyn paid big money for the rights to this popular play, set entirely in a New York tenement location, and handed it off to director King Vidor. The early sound picture has an ensemble cast including a young Sylvia Sidney, Beulah Bondi, and Walter Miller. A murder takes place, but little otherwise occurs plotwise. Anything Vidor directed around this time is worth a watch. Hard to believe, but the out of print R1 DVD from Image will now cost you at least $300 through Amazon’s third party sellers.

12:00 PM Fitzwilly (Mann, 1967) - C-102 mins. - That would be Delbert Mann of the (unrelated) filmmaking Manns behind the camera for this one. Dick Van Dyke stars as a loyal butler to an old lady (Dame Edith Evans) whose fortune has run out. Not wanting to let their boss down, Van Dyke and other staff members conceive ways of redistributing the wealth via criminal enterprise. Barbara Feldon (yes, Agent 99) plays a new secretary and love interest to Van Dyke’s character. The Christmas Eve department store raid explains the film’s two appearances on the schedule this month, with another showing set for December 10th at 10:00 PM. Walter Mirisch produced and United Artists originally released the movie. It’s not on DVD and should be controlled by MGM (though who will control MGM is of course another matter).

Sunday December 6

12:00 AM Miss Mend (Otsep, 1926) - BW-250 mins. - TCM kills two birds with a single Soviet serial tonight as both the silent and import quotas are met by this airing. I can’t claim much familiarity with this four-plus hour serial but the plot seems to involve three reporters who must stave off western capitalists’ plans to spread germ warfare in the USSR. It sounds fascinating and fun. If you miss the TCM showing or just want it for your library, Flicker Alley will be releasing a two-disc set with bonus features on December 15.

Tuesday December 8

3:30 PM The Prize (Robson, 1963) - C-135 mins. - Most of Monday’s schedule is devoted to Frank Capra, and it’s interesting to see the WWII documentaries airing during the day. All, or almost all, are on DVD. Completely unrelated to that, The Prize is a Paul Newman movie about Nobel Prize winners embroiled in intrigue while in Stockholm. Edward G. Robinson and Elke Sommer co-star. People seem to really go for this film, often making comparisons to Hitchcock, but Warner Bros. opted not to release it on DVD either with the Newman box a few years ago or in the more recent wave of single titles. Who knows if it’ll see the light of day now.

Wednesday December 9

11:30 AM Racket Busters (Bacon, 1938) - BW-71 mins. - Bogart Bonanza continues with several of his pre-stardom crime and adventure pictures that haven’t made it to DVD yet. Men Are Such Fools, directed by Busby Berkeley, immediately precedes this one, at 10:15 AM. The Manhattan produce racket is the subject of Lloyd Bacon’s Racket Busters and Bogie plays the leader. George Brent is the good guy truck driver while Walter Abel gets to be the buster of the title, reportedly based on Thomas E. Dewey. What drew me to the film was Robert Rossen being credited for the story and screenplay. He’d later direct The Hustler and All the King’s Men, but his writing credits (films like Blues in the Night and The Roaring Twenties) were typically strong as well. Warner Bros. is the studio and no DVD of the film yet. Barring another Gangsters Collection or Bogart box, I’ll expect the Warner Archive treatment at some point.

5:45 AM King of the Underworld (Seiler, 1939) - BW-67 mins. - W.R. Burnett wrote the story for the earlier Paul Muni film Dr. Socrates and this picture is a remake with a gender twist where Kay Francis plays the Muni role of a doctor forced into providing medical services for gangsters. Humphrey Bogart ended up with top billing as the main tough guy/arm twister. This too is not on DVD and a Warner Bros. property. The Oklahoma Kid, a Cagney and Bogart western that I like a whole lot, airs in prime time at 8:00 PM.

Thursday December 10

12:00 PM Lonelyhearts (Donehue, 1958) - BW-103 mins. - A Nathanael West novella formed the basis for this film starring Montgomery Clift as a young advice columnist who gets too emotionally involved in the plights of his readers. A lot of sadness runs through the story, with Robert Ryan as a newspaper editor who berates his alcoholic wife (an against type Myrna Loy) and Oscar-nominated Maureen Stapleton making her film debut as one of the paper’s correspondents. John Alton was the cinematographer. I’m not sure why now but I watched this a long while ago and didn’t get much out of it. I probably owe it another shot. United Artists released and there’s no DVD available to my knowledge. MGM should control the rights.

2:00 AM Susan Slept Here (Tashlin, 1954) - C-98 mins. - Dick Powell is a Hollywood screenwriter and Debbie Reynolds plays the juvenile delinquent runaway who combine to form an unlikely romance. Not your typical holiday fare. This was one of director Frank Tashlin’s earlier features and he’d further his “live-action cartoon” style with movies starring Jerry Lewis and the best two appearances of Jayne Mansfield’s career. The film was made for RKO and hasn’t been brought to DVD yet. It’s with Warner Bros. here. If you can’t catch this showing, TCM also has Susan Slept Here lined up for the 13th at 2:00 PM and again on Christmas Day.

Friday December 11

10:15 AM This Land Is Mine (Renoir, 1943) - BW-103 mins. - It looks like a Spanish R2 DVD exists for this Jean Renoir picture, but nothing yet here. Charles Laughton is a school teacher in Nazi-occupied France who’s reluctant to choose sides at first but ultimately finds himself drawn to the resistance. I really have to see this, and it seems amazing to consider a film with this sort of plot would have been made when it was. Maureen O’Hara and George Sanders are among the supporting cast. Released by RKO, Warner Bros. likely controls in R1.

2:00 PM The Bribe (Leonard, 1949) - BW-98 mins. - More Laughton, after Jules Dassin’s enjoyable The Canterville Ghost at 12:15 PM. I’m mentioning The Bribe because, for one thing, it’s an excellent little noir starring Robert Taylor as a federal agent tempted by Ava Gardner. John Hodiak plays Gardner’s husband and Vincent Price rounds out the sleaze. What bothers me is that Warner Bros. threw this very deserving film into the Archive trash compactor so there’s virtually no hope in getting a proper DVD release of it. It’s the sort of picture I like well enough to own on DVD but not really so essential that I have to have an overpriced DVD-R of it right now.