VCR Alert for Wednesday's college football films on TCM

Today, I wanted to give you a head's up in time for Wednesday Sept. 3rd, since there to celebrate the beginning of a new college football season, Turner Classic Movies will be showing a series of interesting college football-centered films that are not usually run on TCM.

In many ways, it reminds me of the good old days of American Movie Classics, AMC, when they had Nick Clooney -George's father and brother of Rosemary- the very popular longtime Cincinnati newscaster, play the role of friendly and genial host who introduced films with some good anecdotes and would wrap-up afterwards with some pithy remarks. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWFclvtnseg&feature=related

During the first weekend of the baseball season in April, they'd run a whole marathon of baseball-related films that were interesting for me, especially when they were filmed at the real MLB parks of the era. I was always a sucker for old film of those stadiums. In some cases, they were minor comedy classics, but in every case they were all pre-1964 and thus, films which in the pre-VCR era I grew-up in, I'd heard of but never seen.

Films like Rhubarb, The Pride of St. Louis, It Happens Every Spring, The Kid from Left Field, Pride of the Yankees, The Kid from Cleveland, the original Angels in the Outfield -Original trailer at http://www.tcm.com/video/videoPlayer/?cid=64328&titleId=16 - It Happened in Flatbush, The Stratton Story, Damn Yankees and one of my personal favorites, The Winning Team, starring Ronald Reagan and Doris Day, with the future president playing Hall of Fame pitcher Grover Cleveland Alexander. http://www.baseballhalloffame.org/hofers/detail.jsp?playerId=110127

Alexander's personal comeback and performance leads to his becoming a baseball legend, coming off the bench and leading the Cardinals to victory over the heavily-favored Yankees in the 1926 World Series, one of the greatest 'clutch' moments in American sports history.
While I've read the comments of some modern baseball "analysts" who've discounted the film, in my opinion, the melodrama is much more believable than lots of films being made today, sports or otherwise, and it's my favorite of President Reagan's many films, since I always loved biopic films as a kid. That explains a lot I suppose.

I first saw it on the original SuperStation WTBS one summer night in 1972, while my family and I were staying at the Davis Brothers Motor Inn in Valdosta, on the way to a family vacation in the mountains near the Asheville, NC area, back when Asheville was an Oriole affilate.
I mader sure before we left for the trip that our station wagon had an 'animated' Oriole bird bumper decal on it.
To help me keep my sanity, with my two younger sisters in the back seat, I read about a half-dozen pro and college football guides in the back seat on the way up and back, most of which had Cowboys QB Roger Staubach on the cover, just months after they'd beat the Dolphins in the Super Bowl. I was enraged to see how many of the NY publications predicted the Dolphins falling back to the pack, the exact opposite of what was to occur that coming Perfect Season.

(For details of the baseball films above, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Baseball_films )

Even a truly awful, almost painful to watch film had a reason for me seeing it, as Safe at Home was filmed in Ft. Lauderdale at Little Yankee Stadium, i.e. Ft. Lauderdale Stadium. with Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris.
To get a sense of the cheesiness, watch the original trailer at http://www.tcm.com/video/videoPlayer/?cid=183384&spid=121475

If what I'm saying seems hard to fathom, this was back when AMC showed much higher quality, older films, sometimes actual "Classics," more consistently and didn't have commercials during the film. Ah, the Nineties, I remember it well!

Speaking of George Clooney... see Sarah Larson cheated on The Clooney?! Impossible! at
http://thesuperficial.com/2008/08/sarah_larson_cheated_on_the_cl.php

Tell me whether or not you, too, notice what's ironicabout the storyline below for College Coach at 11:30 a.m.? Original trailer at http://www.tcm.com/video/videoPlayer/?cid=138573&titleId=2541
Pat O' Brien in a film about chemistry and football? (Co-starring Dick Powell and dozens of All-American football playersof the era.)
Well, seven years later, he plays Knute Rockne in Knute Rockne: All American, whose simplistic storyline could very well be as follows: Norwegian-born football-playing chemistry major becomes Asst. Chemistry prof and then head football coach at small Catholic college in Indiana, becoming a living legend in an era full of them.
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from my South Beach Hoosier blog:
The Original Notre Dame Legend Knute Rockne, November 7, 1927;
Sixteen months after his cover appearance, Rockne perished in an airline crash over Kansas on a business trip to California.
"Knute Rockne, All American," the wonderful 1940 film about Rockne's life, starring Pat O'Brien, with Ronald Reagan as ill-fated Irish football legend George Gipp, is a film I've seen at least two-dozen times.
Like the best of films, every new viewing makes me appreciate some aspect of it I'd never noticed before, even though I know it by heart.
Just like 1942's "The Prideof the Yankees" starring Gary Cooper as Yankee legend Lou Gehrig. -----------------------------
My favorite part of Knute Rockne: All American was always the end, when there's a VO over film showing all of "Rock's boys" who become college head football coaches, finally ending with Elmer Layden, dapper in his hat and suit on the sidelines in South Bend, as the latest Notre Dame head coach, as the ND fight song plays in the background. Original trailer of Knute Rockne: All American at: http://www.tcm.com/video/videoPlayer/?cid=27603&titleId=80476

Every time I've ever heard some sports writer -or sports fan call up as ports radio talk show- bloviate about the "Bill Walsh tree of coaches"over the past 25 years, I always think back to that film which I first saw as kid in 1973 one night when I was twelve at the Bob Griese-Karl Noonan summer sports camp in Boca Raton, which I attended three years ina row.

As noted previously in a South Beach Hoosier post, that's where Roy Firestone was one of my counselors and first became a friend of sorts, while he was still a student at the U-M.
Years later, because I always kept in touch, when Roy was doing the Noon and Weekend sports here at Channel 10, before he left for Los Angeles, he urged me to go to Syracuse instead of IU because of the Newhouse School.

Perhaps if I'd done that, I'd personally know all the very annoying Syracuse grads we all see at ESPN and the TV networks, the ones who always want to tell you about how they used to make audition tapes when they were kids. Yeah, we know, we know!

Listening to those tapes must surely qualify for one of the 'Rings of Hell' at Syracuse. Guys on campus constantly walking around talking to themselves, trying to come up with signature taglines!
Myself, back then I was taping former Hoosier grad school Dick Enberg's play-by-play on Eddie Einhorn's syndicated TVS of Notre Dame's upset of UCLA to end their 62-game winning streak on my Radio Shack tape recorder.

To me, as impressive as Bill Walsh's disciples/branches became,they were never as influential on the sport as Rockne's.
But then I've seen the Rockne film about three dozen times and can still picture the scene when Rockne pal and ND QB Gus Dorais is throwing a pass to Rockne while they're summer lifeguards, which gives Rockne the idea of instituting more specialized passing plays in that era of the 'passing box,' which leads to their famous upset win over Army in 1913, which only, well, changed their lives forever.
And Notre Dame's.

Realistically, my only real disappointment with the list of football films being televised are that it doesn't include: a.) Number One, from 1969, starring Charlton Heston as the Saints QB, back when future Redskin Billy Kilmer was there, whose poster I recall as a kid at the theater.
See http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title.jsp?stid=18960&atid=23995&category=overview and http://www.imdb.com/media/rm560635136/tt0064743
b.) the 1987 remake of Heaven Can Wait with Warren Beatty.

Last might I watched the Big Ten Network for the first time since June and saw the replay of IU's home opener against the Western Kentucky Hilltoppers.
Since we don't play Ohio State or the Maize and Blue of Michigan this year, there's really no reason for IU to be anything less than 7-4, but then I'm an optimist.
Now IF they could only recruit in the state of Florida -for a change- to continue their upward trajectory!

See the College Football Hall of Fame at http://www.collegefootball.org/ and http://www.collegefootball.org/psa.php , plus The National Football Foundation at http://www.footballfoundation.com/

I get the Football Foundation's great email newsletter, which really gives you a wealth of facts and information that you simply can't find on your own, no matter how much you love college football
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6:00 am Freshman Love (1936) A college coach uses a beautiful blonde to woo athletes into joining his team. Cast: Frank McHugh, Patricia Ellis, Warren Hull. Dir: William McGann. BW-67 mins, TV-G

7:15 am Hold 'Em Jail (1932) Two salesmen sent to jail on trumped-up charges build a prison football team. Cast: Bert Wheeler, Robert Woolsey, Edna May Oliver. Dir: Norman Taurog. BW-66 mins, TV-G

8:30 am Huddle (1932) A steelworker's son becomes a college football hero. Cast: Ramon Novarro, Madge Evans, Una Merkel. Dir: Sam Wood. BW-103 mins, TV-G

10:15 am Sport Parade, The (1932) College team mates follow different paths after they graduate. Cast: Joel McCrea, William Gargan, Marian Marsh. Dir: Dudley Murphy. BW-65 mins, TV-G

11:30 am College Coach (1933) A timid chemistry major becomes a college football star. Cast: Dick Powell, Pat O'Brien, Ann Dvorak. Dir: William A. Wellman. BW-76 mins, TV-G

12:47 pm Short Film: One Reel Wonders: Pro Football (1934) BW-9 mins

1:00 pm Gridiron Flash (1935) A college football team recruits a tough convict.
Cast: Eddie Quillan, Betty Furness, Grant Mitchell. Dir: Glenn Tryon. BW-64 mins, TV-G

2:15 pm We Went To College (1936) Three middle-aged men try to recapture the joys of their college days. Cast: Charles Butterworth, WalterAbel, Hugh Herbert. Dir: Joseph Santley. BW-68 mins, TV-G

3:30 pm Big Game, The (1936) A quarterback stands against gangsters out to control the college sports scene. Cast: Philip Huston, James Gleason, June Travis. Dir: George Nichols, Jr. BW-74 mins, TV-PG

4:45 pm Over The Goal (1937) A college football star risks his health to play in the big game.
Cast: June Travis, William Hopper, Johnnie Davis. Dir: Noel Smith. BW-63 mins, TV-G

6:00 pm Saturday's Heroes (1938) A college football star rebels against the exploitation of the game and its players. Cast: Van Heflin, Marian Marsh, Richard Lane. Dir: Edward Killy. BW-60 mins, TV-G

7:00 pm Cowboy Quarterback, The (1939) A football scout tries to get a legendary runner back into the game. Cast: Marie Wilson, Bert Wheeler, William Demarest. Dir: Noel Smith. BW-56 mins, TV-G