TCM Alert

Sunday, Turner Classic Movies has an interesting double feature. At 5 PM (at least on my TV), they're running The Twelve Chairs, the 1970 Mel Brooks movie about some guys running around Russia in 1920, searching for twelve matching dining room chairs, one of which is stuffed with money. Then at 7 PM, they're running It's in the Bag, the 1945 Fred Allen-Jack Benny movie about a guy running around, searching for twelve matching dining room chairs, one of which is stuffed with money. The former was a very loose remake of the latter. Neither is a great film but both are worth seeing once.

On Monday at 5 PM, they're running The World of Henry Orient, a low-key but charming comedy made in 1964. Peter Sellers and Paula Prentiss are in it but the film is stolen by two young ladies playing teen-agers — Tippy Walker and Merrie Spaeth — and also by some wonderful cinematography of 1964 Manhattan. Again, if you've never seen it, see it.

Then on Tuesday, they're saluting writer-producer Ernest Lehman on what would have been his 100th birthday by running Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Sweet Smell of Success, North by Northwest, Somebody Up There Likes Me and Executive Suite. They're all great films, especially Sweet Smell of Success and North by Northwest. One of the more memorable days of my life was when I took my friend, the great cartoonist Mike Peters, up to spend an afternoon with Ernie Lehman. Mike couldn't believe he was meeting the man who'd written some of his favorite movies. Ernie couldn't believe he was meeting the man who drew his favorite comic strip, Mother Goose and Grimm.

We sat there for hours as Ernie told stories about his films. At one point, he had to leave us for a half-hour to take an important phone call so he handed us a book and said, "You can look through this until I get back." It was a bound volume of his original screenplay for North by Northwest with studio memos and notes from Alfred Hitchcock interspersed between the relevant pages. You could read Ernie's original scene, then read how "Hitch" (as he called him) had asked him to change and then read the revised scene.

Lehman told us he was planning to publish the entire book as soon as he cleared up some rights issues and wrote a proper foreword. I don't think he did and since he died in 2005, I've occasionally wondered what became of that book.

Also for some reason, TCM is running both The Man Who Came to Dinner with Monty Woolley and the 1938 A Christmas Carol with Reginald Owen twice this month. They both air on the 6th and again on the 11th. Then later in December, they're airing every movie they can find in the vaults with the word "summer" in the title. That should make America feel warm all over.