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  • TCMFF 2026: Full Schedule and Where You’ll Find Me

    TCMFF 2026: Full Schedule and Where You’ll Find Me

    Well, well, well. Here we are again.

    For those of you unfamiliar, I was a regular attendee of the annual Turner Classic Movie Film Festival (TCMFF) held in April an May and often covered it extensively from my first 2015 to the last one I attended in 2019; you can find my full coverage here. I stopped attending thanks to COVID cancelling the festival for two years and then moving overseas to Germany, turning a three-hour trek into nearly a day and a half.

    But this year, that trek will be undertaken! Things have changed a lot since the last time I attended, both for myself, this site and the network itself. Most notably, one unique thing this year as I cover the festival’s full schedule: I’m on it.

    Yes, there is an author signing event and, in case you’ve somehow found yourself to this post and weren’t aware, Kim and I will be signing copies of our TCM release, Pre-Code Essentials, Sunday in Club TCM at 4:30 PM.

    This is kind of surreal; after years of classic passes and line waiting, I have a VIP pass, and, there, on Sunday, I will be sitting there, with my book that took a decade of hard work and preparation, and marveling at the line in front of Leonard Maltin.

    But it’s very cool, even if that’s all it turns out to be! (Please note that because I have to jet, I will be there for about the first 45 minutes of the event; Kim will be there the full time, and she’s much cooler anyway.) Of course, if you see me or Kim through the festival, as with previous years, I will have pins to give away featuring our book’s cover girl, Myrna Loy.

    This year I’m trying to be flexible more than ever, besides just preparing for the jetlag from Germany, but also because I am simply out of practice for the whole event. Or actually talking to other adults, too; being a stay-at-home dad is weird, I tell ya.

    So as for where I’ll be, there is obviously one important selection that everyone and their mother is already lined up for, the premiere restoration of 1932’s Letty Lynton, a Joan Crawford movie that has been sealed in the vault almost since its release due to a lawsuit accusing the film of being a little too much like another published work. Thankfully it only took them 94 years to sort everything out, and Letty will be shown for the first time outside of wishy-washy bootlegs in the Egyptian Theater on Friday.

    Thanks to having the VIP passes that come with being an author, I assume I will be able to get into the screening, but in a pinch I have also packed an usher uniform and can pretend to be on the Egyptian Theater’s staff. Failing that ruse, I may have to resort to criminal activity including pretending to be Joan Crawford’s ghost haunting the venue, but whatever effort it takes to be there will undoubtedly be worth it.

    There are several other great pre-Codes showing this year as well, including the lovely Blonde Venus, the fun The Mouthpiece, the sublime Trouble in Paradise. (All links here go to my reviews just so you know I’m not bullshitting those adjectives.) There’s also the unseen-by-me Looking for Trouble (1934) which I’m also planning to attend, with Leonard Maltin introducing it; I just can’t escape that man this year!

    I will also be at Robocop. I love Robocop! I’m not ashamed to admit it!

    Apparently years ago I wrote at TCMFF Trips & Tricks article for anyone who’s interested, and I promise to update it after my visit this year. Hopefully this year’s return is the renewal of a happy tradition. For myself, I still get a jolt out of remembering screenings from over the years; 42nd Street. Queen Christian. Cock of the Air. Seeing celebrities like Mel Brooks, Ann-Margaret, Sophia Loren, Angela Lansbury, and, of course, Mr. Leonard Maltin. I love that guy.

    Hope to see you there! If not, I’ll be posting incessantly over on BlueSky and Kim will definitely have some cool stuff on the site’s Instagram, so you can at least get the vicarious thrill of me swooping through the Egyptian’s rafters in my Mildred Pierce cosplay. Cheers!

  • Family Movie Night Menus by Leonard and Jessie Maltin Book Review

    Family Movie Night Menus by Leonard and Jessie Maltin Book Review

    Apologies up front — this post is possibly a little more unhinged than what you usually get around here. (Unless you’ve been around here long enough, I suppose.)

    When the call came out for anyone interested in review copies of Family Movie Night Menus, coming from TCM and Running Press this month from the auspices of the Leonard and Jessie Maltin brand, I eagerly asked for a copy. I have a family! I love to cook! I am a big movie night guy!

    So I’ll give you some background first. I’ve had this blog on 1930s movies for well over a decade now and children for exactly a decade. I always wanted to be sure that my kids would be familiar with and connected to classic cinema, so whenever it is my pick for our weekly movie nights at my house, my choices have ranged from Sherlock Jr. to Monkey Business to The Music Man. My kids both love big, bright musicals, and also freaking out watching Harold Lloyd climb the department store in Safety Last. In fact, during the pandemic, my daughter’s love for “Harold” (thanks in no small part to his permanent space on the Criterion Channel) got me to order a book about him from Larry Edmund’s bookstore. The store included a still from Girl Crazy which is still hanging up on her wall, across from a very large poster for Steamboat Bill Jr. we snagged from La Cinémathèque Française last time we were there.

    So my family is more predisposed than most to watching old movies. Adding to that is that I wanted to be sure my children knew their way around the kitchen, and have been baking and cooking regularly with my daughter for the last five years. (My son, god bless him, is yet to be trusted with sharp objects.) For several of the recipes below, she worked under my supervision, practicing her knife skills on onions and doing much of the measuring and stirring herself.

    Family Movie Night Menus is TCM and Running Press’s second cookbook following Movie Night Menus by Tenaya and Andre Darlington, which I have not read. This book from the Maltins cover 25 films ranging from The Kid (1921) to Enchanted (2007), with a number of surprising suggestions included. The duo chooses not to cover any animated films, Disney or otherwise, which is surprising given Maltin’s history with the studio. There is also only one silent film included, with the introduction explaining that the writers felt that including the Marx Brothers, Buster Keaton or Harold Lloyd would be too big of a topic to cover.

    (There are no pre-Codes in this book. I’m sorry it took me this long to get to it, but there is Bride of Frankenstein which is a sequel to a pre-Code, and we take what we can get around here.)

    Besides the book’s introduction, each movie gets a 4-5 page discussion of the movie’s background with details and trivia. It’s very easy to read in Maltin’s voice, though the book sometimes slips into his direct first-person with a direct “I (Leonard)” which, unfortunately, made me think of I, Claudius and then Leonard Maltin writing this book adorned in a toga. There are worse things to picture, I guess.

    The passages themselves aren’t written as aimed at families or children but at the adults who are introducing the films, which seems like a missed opportunity. It’s a big colorful book, and sometimes feels aimed almost too broadly. Some of the movies covered are To Kill a Mockingbird and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, which are not the type of fare my youngest would jump into by any stretch of the imagination.

    Calam’s Biscuits

    Saturday night I picked out a favorite of my mother’s, Calamity Jane with Dorris Day and Howard Keel, as the movie night pick. My daughter helped before the movie to make the jam, which requires a bit of reducing and prep and was time consuming but worth it.

    The recipe itself was easy to make, though not without its bumps. First, the recipe doesn’t specify how many biscuits you’re supposed to make, which left me with a few big ones and too many nickel sized biscuits. (I thought they’d grow!) Also, since no one in their right mind just fries up a handful of bacon for the bacon grease, I used the remainder to make some garlic potatoes. Also (not pictured) a plate of scrambled eggs finished up the rustic ‘breakfast for dinner’ vibes.

    I’d never made jam before and it turned out quite well, very sweet with a nice salty texture. The biscuits were good, too, and gone very quickly. My family were happy with both the movie and the meal and thanked me on the hard work to get everything to completion.

    “Don’t thank me, thank legendary film critic and Mystery Science Theater 3000 guest star Leonard Maltin,” I said.

    They stared at me, but it was true.

    Harper Lee’s Crackling Cornbread

    Attached to Maltin’s entry on To Kill a Mockingbird is the recipe for Harper Lee’s own Crackling Cornbread. I was optimistic for this one, as my family is wild for cornbread, and the promise of a new recipe from a person who was played by Catherine Keener in 2005’s true Best Picture, Capote, seemed enticing.

    Unfortunately, there were a couple of issues with the recipe. First is the fact that I could not find pork cracklings for sale anywhere here in Germany. Perhaps they use a different word for it that I couldn’t grasp, perhaps cracklings are less popular in the Rhineland than one might imagine, but I was immediately out of the recipe’s most unique selling point.

    Undeterred, my daughter still mixed up the ingredients we had. One thing we noticed was odd; the picture included in the book showed corn kernels clearly in the sliced up cornbread. The recipe included no such thing, which was odd, until I looked into the front of the book and found that all of the pictures of food here are from stock image sites. We added some corn kernels in on our own for texture, but it didn’t seem to make much of a difference since the cornbread turned out flat and dry. Another factor may have been, reviewing the recipe, the addition of flour which is not in Harper Lee’s original directions. (Mind you, Lee’s original directions, published in a cookbook collaboration by various authors in 1961 and reprinted by the Smithsonian and in the recent collection of her short writings, does suggest you purchase a whole pig for the recipe, which I also notably did not do.) My family dutifully ate a few bites and moved on with our lives.

    When I return to the States, my highest priority is to find some cracklings and make this recipe correctly. But still with the corn kernels, because that’s just how I like it.

    Doggone Good Gumbo

    The Gumbo was another trick. Once again the image of the completed recipe is a stock image, and here contains okra, which is very recognizable and not in the recipe. (I love okra, so it was kind of a bummer to see it missing.) I had to make some adjustments for my family, namely omitting the shrimp and jalapeno as getting my kids to even eat plain smoked sausage can somehow still elicit complaints of ‘too spicy’.

    The recipe was a little confusing again, with a weird inconsistency where the ingredients section called for ‘chicken broth’ but within the recipe referred to it as ‘chicken stock’. These are two different ingredients, and I ended up using the broth which may have been my error, and didn’t help with the roux, which I think I undercooked simply because it looked pretty chunky and dry.

    Essentially, I ended up making gravy with veggies, sausage, chicken, and perhaps too much garlic. (I put too much garlic in everything though.) With a scoop of white rice on the side, it still ended up tasting pretty good. I wish the instructions had suggested saving some green onions as garnish, as they disappear in the mixture without a trace otherwise.

    Of the three recipes of I tried, the biscuits and jam turned out the best, with the other two leaving me wanting to return to them with experience gained and some better ingredients. My daughter got to practice her knife skills and learned how to make rice, while my son got to eat a lot of bacon. It was a fun few days, if not time-consuming at that.

    Overall, Family Movie Night Menus looks nice, and the Maltins have a fun, charming authorial voice. That’s what I’ve got.

  • Pre-Code Movies on TCM in April 2026

    Pre-Code Movies on TCM in April 2026

    Well, it’s a quiet month on TCM for pre-Codes, but that’s okay. At the end of the month the annual Turner Classic Movies Film Festival kicks off in Los Angeles. I will be attending for the first time since 2019, so I’m looking forward to returning and seeing what’s changed. I’ll be posting about it here and over on my BlueSky, so expect incessant chatter.

    I did want to take one quick moment to highlight a piece of personal violence to me, and that is that TCM is showing 1999’s Varsity Blues at the end of the month. For members of my weird ‘xennial’ generation who lived in the Midwest, this was basically our Star Wars; unavoidable and, after a while, pretty insufferable. I had completely blocked this movie out, and that stupid schedule just brought all of it back. … Thanks, okay, I’m better now, I just needed to vent.

    Pre-Codes on Criterion Channel in April 2026

    Only one movie to note added over on Criterion Channel is King Kong, which is, of course, great (c’mon), but really cool is that they’ve uploaded the film with its original Criterion commentary track with Ronald Hayer from 1984. The track, recorded for the Collection’s LaserDisk release, is considered the first ‘commentary track’ ever recorded. You can listen in here.

    Pre-Codes Movie on TCM in April 2026

    All movie times listed below are EST and subject to change. Movies marked with an asterisk appear in my book Pre-Code Essentials. Links go to my reviews of the movies. Full schedule here.

    Hope you find a good watch this month! But not Varsity Blues, c’mon.

  • Pre-Code Movies on TCM in March 2026

    Pre-Code Movies on TCM in March 2026

    If you want a little insight as to how things go behind-the-scenes here, I was putting together the schedule below and said out loud, “Oh, god, is George Brent Star of the Month?” Folks, I was right. Our long anticipated national nightmare has arrived.

    I kid! I kid. But Brent being here means there’s a ton of pre-Codes laid out filling out the last half of the month, plus the channel has a nice tribute to Betty Compson on the 19th plus a Joan Blondell day on the 27th.

    This month has a Joan Blondell day! That’s something good out of 2026, right?

    On another note, Karen at Shadows and Satin, still my favorite classic film blog, gave pre-Code Essentials a favorable review; check it out!

    From the press book from 1934’s Desirable.

    Pre-Code Movies on TCM, March 2026

    All times are EST.Films marked with an asterisk (*) are movies featured in my book, pre-Code Essentials. Links go to my reviews. Schedule subject to change. Full schedule here.

    Would you like to join our effort to send whoever decided to make George Brent ‘Star of the Month’ to The Hague? Not for, like, prison time, but just a chance to hang out with the Dutch. Chime in below!

  • Pre-Code Movies on TCM and Criterion Channel, February 2026

    Pre-Code Movies on TCM and Criterion Channel, February 2026

    Wow, what a year, everyone. I’m glad we made it all through. Can’t believe 2026 is drawing to a–

    I’m sorry, I’m getting news in that that was only January.

    Well. That’s not great.

    Plenty of stuff happened this month that I guess is movie related, so let me dive right in.

    Book cover for Pre-Code Essentials.

    Thank you, thank you, thank you to anyone who has picked up Pre-Code Essentials, either at a screening, online, at a bookstore, or even checked it out at a library. I have not been told how successful or unsuccessful the book is yet, but people have said and posted some really nice things about it, and that’s really all I wanted. (I mean, I also wanted to be in WorldCat, but that’s a weirdo librarian thing, so there.) If you read the book and liked it, leaving a review at Amazon or Goodreads or StoryGraph genuinely helps the book out in the algorithm and I would appreciate it.

    As I will post again, now and forever, you can order the book at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, and Larry Edmunds.

    If you enjoyed the book, I made a list of the movies it covers over at Letterboxd. I also made, for anyone curious, a list of movies I would put in a sequel to the book, The (Almost) Essential Pre-Codes, if you want more.

    Other important and extremely time consuming thing I did! I announced it on my Bluesky, but I guess it’s probably helpful to share here. Check out my list of where to find the films of 1930, which covers all of the feature films that came out that year and where you can see them at, organized by release date.

    I’m hoping this list helps people watch more pre-Codes now that they can freely find them and they are mostly free!

    In other news, I’m moving back to the States in June after five years in Germany. My wife and I were talking about actually subscribing to cable again if only to save ourselves from hour plus marathons of Teen Titans Go!, and because, truly, deeply, I would love to get to watch TCM on my TV again. This is, of course, precisely when it has been announced that TCM is in the process of being acquired by Netflix.

    As someone who worked at multiple video stores and loathes Netflix, I can’t say I’m super thrilled with this news, but I’m not despondent over it. Not when there are so many other things to be despondent about, I guess.

    Pre-Codes on Criterion Channel

    Criterion Channel is hosting a Mervyn LeRoy pre-Code retrospective which includes some absolute bangers. I’m even a little excited to revisit some of these.

    Links below go to my reviews of the movies. Films marked with an asterisk have a chapter dedicated to them in Pre-Code Essentials.

    Pre-Codes on TCM in February 2026

    Lots of great pre-Codes to catch on TCM this month. They’ve changed the annual 31 Days of Oscars so it no longer runs the entire month and instead runs straight into a lead up of the Oscar ceremony on March 15th. (Everyone else putting their bets on Sinners getting Best Pic, I’m with you.) The event now starts on the 13th of February, so the first half of the month includes some non-Oscar classics plus some fun pre-Code flyers on the 3rd and a night of pre-Code Lubitsch on the 9th.

    Full TCM listings available here. All times listed below are EST and subject to change. All links go to my reviews of the listed films. Movies marked with an asterisk are covered in a chapter of my book Pre-Code Essentials, out now from TCM and Running Press.

    Are you excited about getting to revisit 1932’s High Pressure like I am? Maybe, maybe not! Regardless, I hope this February treats you right!

  • Along Came Youth (1930) Review, with Charles ‘Buddy’ Rogers, Stuart Erwin, and Frances Dee

    Along Came Youth (1930) Review, with Charles ‘Buddy’ Rogers, Stuart Erwin, and Frances Dee

    Along Came Youth, released December 20, 1930. Directed by Lloyd Corrigan and Norman Z. McLeod. Starring Charles ‘Buddy’ Rogers, Frances Dee, and Stuart Erwin. Released by Paramount Pictures. Runtime 74 minutes. 

    Where to See It

    Along Came Youth is in the public domain. Here’s a copy on YouTube

    Proof That It’s Pre-Code

    • Frances Dee and Betty Boyd appear briefly looking out a window in lingerie, but with all the sexiness and care of an underwear advertisement. 
    • A garden of scantily clad nymph statues leads to some vaguely risque situations, from a dandy “swabbing” one to Stuart Erwin stumbling head first into another’s chest. 
    • Near-sighted Stuart Erwin, thinking that she is a horse, ends up enthusiastically patting Mathilde Comont’s rear end. 

    Along Came Youth: Steeple-chaste 

    “Oh, I’m living a lie.”

    My New Years Resolution in the year 2026 was to write more reviews on my blog. Were the masses demanding it? No. Was I excited to dive into the newly public domain films of 1930? Long time readers will know that that answer is also no.

    Is it because last year I co-wrote a book called Pre-Code Essentials and, deep down, despite seeing hundreds of movies released in this era, I’m worried that maybe I missed an essential somewhere along the way? Yes. (No points on guessing that the most emotionally insecure answer would be the correct one.) Thankfully, our first outing this year, Along Came Youth, isn’t essential or interesting or really much of anything, but I guess it’s better than nothing, though I can’t be too sure of that either. 

    Larry Brooks (Charlie ‘Buddy’ Rogers) is a destitute American whose life has spun out of control since arriving in England and losing his fortune sponsoring a racehorse named “Gangster.” He is eager to make money so he can romance Elinor (Frances Dee), a scion facing ruin who is being pressured to make a society match. But, most importantly, Ambrose (Erwin) is Buddy’s sidekick, a schleppy dweeb who keeps losing his glasses and can’t see anything without them. At one point, he’s told to place a clock on the mantel; he instead places a bucket of coal. When asked what time it is, he stares into the reflective metal and answers “half past.” 

    So it goes. Along Came Youth seems haphazard at best, a mishmash of incidents and scenes that feel improvised as if to exclusively avoid making jokes that connect to anyone with a pulse. Brooks starts off as a menswear model before taking a job as a chef to a wealthy Spaniard. He can’t cook, so he arranges various schemes, from getting the food from a local restaurant to hiring a house staff who can pieces together a meal. As part of this deal, he ends up escorting a large Spanish señora around (lots of humor coming from her girth here) plus some assorted mischief from having to deal with Dee’s quintet of identically dressed mischievous little brothers. 

    Comic props and situations pile up on one another until the finale, a ten-minute non-comedic steeple chase, finally puts the whole film out to pasture. There’s a certain desperation to the proceedings, as if in the process of filming both directors realized that their lead wasn’t charming or sly enough to properly entertain and that the movie needed more and more and more until they forgot everything they had. One plot point revolves around the horse loathing Erwin’s character and wanting to chase him down and murder him; if the film ends in a chase, surely you think that would come up? But, no, it’s so completely forgotten, Erwin ends the film wanting to give the horse a big congratulations. Whoever wrote one of those gags clearly wasn’t speaking with whoever wrote the other.  

    Charles ‘Buddy’ Rogers, at the peak of his time as “American’s Boyfriend” in the early 1930s, looks like he’s stepped out of an Arrow collar advertisement. His voice does kind of resemble that of a chipmunk, though. He’s pleasing and sweet and can take a nice tumble, but he’s very much of the eager-go-getter type that feels much more connected to the 1920s than the 30s; Cagney could eat this guy for dinner. 

    The available print for Along Came Youth looks good and is certainly missing a lot of pitfalls of its 1930s brethren, though, script-wise, it feels like its been assembled from scraps. There were a couple of jokes that got a smile from me– “What are you men doing here, breathing?!“– but it’s a pretty tidy slog overall, and I was genuinely surprised by the sheer number of fat jokes this movie contained. But I guess it could be worse.

    Man, that ‘Indifference’ rating at the top is really doing all the hard work for this review, isn’t it? 

    Trivia, Links, Etc.

    • I appreciate the art of using your imagination and giving into the fiction of film, but England here looks so much like Southern California that it’s downright distracting.
    • I don’t always re-read my reviews before publishing (as I’m sure some of you know), but I did a double check on this one and at various points listed this movie’s title as Youth Comes Along, Youth Came Along, and Along Youth Came. I don’t think I improved upon the real title of the film, but I don’t think that title holds any particularly appealing qualities either.
    • A fairly typical contemporaneous review here from Motion Picture, mostly interested in praising Stuart Erwin’s comedic chops while trying not to bag on the picture outright.

  • Pre-Code Movies on TCM in January 2026

    Pre-Code Movies on TCM in January 2026

    I have an exciting announcement! In just a few days, it will be January 2026, which means the films of 1930 will be in the public domain in the United States. There are some exceptions (due to the goofy way American copyright laws work), but for the most part the first year of the pre-Code era will now be available for streaming, downloading, reworking, remixing, or what have you for anyone with any interest in it. I have a special post dropping on the 1st to commemorate it, I hope you guys will check it out then (when I can’t be legally in trouble for what I’m going to post…).

    As for TCM’s scheduling for the month, I have three books I like to shill here, and, good news, they’re all relevant in January!

    On January 1st, the channel is doing a Thin Man marathon; check out Thoughts on the Thin Man for more.

    On the 22nd, they’re showing all six of the RKO Hildegarde Withers movies, which you can learn more about in Murder on Celluloid.

    Finally, the channel is showing none of the movies featured in my latest book with Kim Luperi, pre-Code Essentials, which is kind of impressive. I will say the network is showing The Lost Patrol (1934) which was included in the earlier drafts of the book, before we had to take it down to 50 entries. So maybe consider watching that as a kind of bonus track!

    Pre-Codes on TCM in January 2026

    Times listed are EST. All times subject to change. See the full January schedule here.

    Have a wonderful January! Hope you watch something good!

  • Pre-Code Movies on TCM in December 2025

    Pre-Code Movies on TCM in December 2025

    Well, I’m back! Back in my house, at least, in gorgeous, cold Germany. And this year my furnace actually works, which is a splendid change of pace from the prior two years. What does this mean for you? Nothing, except that I can actually feel my fingers as they type.

    The pre-Code Essentials book tour was a great success. Great turnouts at showings of movies like Okay, America!, Female, Madam Satan and Night Nurse meant we had fantastic crowds and signed a lot of books. It was actually pretty nice to be back in the States for a little bit– I was buying socks and the man behind the counter at Men’s Warehouse started make small talk with me and I became completely flabbergasted. Not used to anything besides the German frosty glare!

    Here are some pics from mine and Kim’s adventures, courtesy of her and her awesome brother Chris.

    Thank you again for anyone attending and thank you to anyone who has picked up Pre-Code Essentials so far. It was a labor of love, and all of the kind words have really meant a lot to me throughout the process. And it’s not too late to buy it for holiday gift giving! I mean, I don’t think my six-year-old would like it, but who knows! You might know a different kind of six-year-old!

    Once (and forever more), you can order pre-Code Essentials at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org and Larry Edmunds.

    TCM is usually pretty light on pre-Codes in December thanks to general holiday spirit not being so much in tune with the not-so-genteel early 1930s, but I will say their line-up is a bit of a surprise this go around. Besides no Lady for a Day (1933) which usually gets play around this time of the year, there’s also a day of Douglas Fairbanks Jr. pre-Codes on December 17th, which is a good little lull to sneak them into. Also Turner Classic Movies have opted for a Marx Brothers New Years Marathon over the more traditional Thin Man one. Shocking! Scandalous! And perhaps just what the doctor ordered to help send out the monstrous year of 2025, though don’t be surprised if that doctor’s name is Quackenbush…

    Happy holidays, with plenty of pre-Code merriment and vice!
    The only true thing about this advertisement are the names of the people starring in the film.

    Pre-Codes on TCM in December 2025

    All times are EST. Schedule subject to change. See the full TCM schedule for the month here. Movies featured in Pre-Code Essentials have an asterisk next to them.

    From me and mine, a happy holiday season to you and yours!

  • Pre-Code Movies on TCM and Criterion Channel in November 2025

    Pre-Code Movies on TCM and Criterion Channel in November 2025

    Pre-Code Essentials is here! You can now order the book at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, or Larry Edmunds, and have it arrive in a timely manner.

    If you have picked up the book and liked it (or at least not hated it), reviews at Goodreads, Storygraph and/or Amazon do help get the book in front of more eyes in the varying algorithms.

    I leave on Tuesday for my book tour to Washington DC and New York. I’ve attached the flyer here again below. I apologize for the handful of dates; I’m traveling from Germany and these were just the ones that worked out the best in a time period such that my wife won’t go completely insane without me in the meantime.

    In terms of promotion, I recently appeared on the Forgotten Hollywood Podcast to talk about it. Kim appeared on the Film Week with Larry Mantle on LAist to talk about the book as well.

    Pre-Code Movies on Criterion Channel in November 2025

    Criterion Channel has two interesting showcases this month. The first is a tribute to Howard Hawks, with his 1932 Scarface recently entering the collection. The full edition of that movie with its bonus features will be up on the channel, plus two of his other pre-Codes, The Criminal Code (31) and Twentieth Century (34) on the channel. I think this may finally be the month I have my daughter watch Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, so wish me luck.

    Their other notable addition this month is their Pioneers of African American Cinema collection, which features a lot of independent titles from the early 1930s that I have not seen. These include Hell-Bound Train (1930), The Darktown Revue (1931), The Exile (1931), Hot Biskits (1931), The Girl from Chicago (1932), Ten Minutes to Live (1932), Veiled Aristocrats (1932), and Verdict: Not Guilty (1933). I’m looking forward to checking these out!

    Click here for the complete Criterion Channel updates for November.

    Pre-Code Movies on TCM in November 2025

    November is actually pretty solid for pre-Codes on Turner Classic Movies, a nice step up before December just becomes Lady for a Day and Little Women. November 9th the network will have a Zita Johann night and the 25th they have a full day honoring Lionel Barrymore, both of which are absolutely bangers of line-ups. I’d also recommend the double feature of Svengali and The Mad Genius if you have the time for it. Hope you catch something good!

    All times listed below are EST and subject to change. Click here for the full TCM Schedule for November 2025. Films marked with an asterisk are detailed in-depth in Pre-Code Essentials.

    Did you find something good to watch? Did you pick up my book? Sound off below! Happy November!

  • The Pre-Code Essentials Book Tour

    The Pre-Code Essentials Book Tour

    Happy publication month to my newest book, Pre-Code Essentials, with Kim Luperi and coming from TCM and Running Press. As part of the book’s release, Kim and I will be doing several screenings and shows around the country to promote it. Kim, living in the United States, is doing a few more than I am, and she has other presentations lined up in LA and Philadelphia coming up, too. Stay tuned for more info on that.

    Meanwhile, come check out our travels so far!

    Pre-Code Essentials Book Tour Appearances

    November 2ndBook Launch at Book Soup – West Hollywood, California – Kim will be talking and signing copies of our book as part of its official launch. More info and pre-order the book here.

    November 7th – AFI Silver Classic Film Weekend – Silver Spring, Maryland – On Friday, November 7th, Kim and I will introduce four classic pre-Code films. I will intro The Mind Reader and Okay America, while Kim will talk about This Day and Age and Female. We will also have book signings before the last two screenings of the day. You can buy tickets to individual showings or a full weekend pass as well. Click here for more information.

    November 10th – Film Forum – New York City, New York – As part of the theater’s Screen Deco series, Kim and I will introduce a screening of 1930’s Madam Satan and sign books afterward. Get tickets here.

    November 11th – Nitehawk Cinemas – Brooklyn, New York – Join Kim and I for a special showing of Night Nurse as part of the theater’s Pre-Code Parade. Get tickets here.

    Books should be available for purchase at all of these events. I hope to see you at one of the shows! Cheers!