THE AFFAIRS OF DOBIE GILLIS
TCM, 9:00 a.m. ET
Debbie Reynolds is the star being saluted today by TCM – and while the must-see film, by far, is 1952’s Singin’ in the Rain, which is shown tonight at 8 ET, and is one of the best movie musicals ever made, there’s another movie from the same era, shown much earlier in that day, that I can’t wait to see. Made the year after Singin’ in the Rain, in 1953, and shown at 9 a.m. ET, it stars Reynolds and Bob Van in a teenage romantic comedy called The Affairs of Dobie Gillis (pictured). It inspired the 1959-63 TV sitcom The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, which many people may not know was a TV spinoff – and which, I guess, was titled that way because it was too risqué, in the late Fifties, to have a TV show about teens with the word Affairs in the title.