Year: 2009

Back home in Indiana

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image-Remember the Night posterIf you think you’ve seen every classic Christmas picture (and one too many times, at that), you’ll be pleasantly surprised, we hope, to learn of one that’s flown under the radar of many a classic movie buff.

Remember the Night (1940) was the last movie Preston Sturges wrote before moving into the director’s chair with The Great McGinty (1940). Mitchell Leisen directs here, and though Sturges was said to have been disappointed with Leisen’s efforts, it’s hard to imagine why. It’s a terrific picture, one that should be every bit the holiday favorite that pictures such as It’s a Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th Street, The Shop Around the Corner, and others have become.

Remember the Night finds Fred MacMurray portraying an ambitious assistant D.A. in NYC who finds himself with shoplifter Barbara Stanwyck on his hands because he has asked for a delay in her trial, so as to avoid the jury feeling any holiday-inspired sympathy for her.

It soon comes out that both the D.A. and the dame are Hoosiers, so she accompanies him on a road trip to visit their respective families. Stanwyck’s brief visit with her mother doesn’t go so well, though, so she sticks with MacMurray, whereupon romance and laughs ensue.

Remember the Night is plenty sentimental enough to qualify as a holiday classic, but like It’s a Wonderful Life, it’s got a dark side, too, delivered with gimlet-eyed bite.

It’s a favorite of ours, a picture that deserves much greater fame and acclaim that it has been afforded. Turner Classic Movies has teamed with Universal to offer it on DVD (though it’s available only via the TCM web site, as far as we can ascertain), but if you’d like to try before you buy, it’s airing on TCM on Saturday at 2pm eastern. Give it a look; you won’t regret it.

Take a break in Bizbee

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image-The Shady DellIf you’ve never spent the night in a vintage travel trailer at the Shady Dell Trailer Park in Bizbee, Arizona, you owe yourself a trip south, and pronto.

The Shady Dell, which opened in 1927, still operates in the traditional way: If you have your own travel trailer, you can pull in, pay the fee, and park for the night, but the Shady Dell’s real appeal is the 10 restored vintage trailers that reside permanently on the lot, like motel rooms on wheels.

We stayed in a 1957 El Rey a couple of years back when we were road-tripping through Arizona, and we couldn’t have enjoyed our stay more. Bizbee’s a delightful little town, and the Shady Dell can’t be beat.

Be sure to have lunch or breakfast at Dot’s, a restored diner built in the 1950s by the Valentine Manufacturing Company of Wichita, Kansas. It resided for years at the corner of Ventura Boulevard and Topanga Canyon in Los Angeles before being transplanted to the Shady Dell in 1996.

To learn more, peruse this recent Toronto Star story on the Shady Dell or visit TheShadyDell.com.

Back from the brink

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Sorry we’ve been scarce of late — a debilitating case of the flu laid us low for longer than we might have wished.

But we’ll be adding scads of new tunes to the playlist in the next day or so. While many of the new offerings will be holiday favorites, many others are less familiar seasonal songs that we think you’ll enjoy.

Also, if you’ve been tempted by the Cladrite Radio gear we offer — T-shirts, hoodies, water bottles, and much, much more — you can enjoy great savings through midnight on Sunday, Nov. 29, by using the coupon code SAVE25 at checkout.

To start shopping, just follow the link on the upper left. But don’t dally — remember, the sale ends on Sunday at midnight.