Two of my favorite not-available-on-DVD films are coming up on Turner Classic Movies in the next week. Hearts of the West (Saturday at noon ET, TCM) is 1975's warmhearted portrait of early western moviemaking, pairing naive Hollywood aspirant Jeff Bridges with delightfully mean cowboy star Andy Griffith. The Solid Gold Cadillac (Wednesday at 8 p.m. ET, TCM) is the 1956 comedy gem starring the brilliantly effervescent Judy Holliday [photo below] as a little-guy stockholder who causes big trouble for a big corporation.
Also coming up on TCM but not DVD are such vintage favorites as 1938's Nelson Eddy-Jeanette MacDonald musical Sweethearts (Tuesday at 6 p.m. ET), 1949's Betty Hutton delight Red, Hot and Blue (late Tuesday at 1:45 a.m. ET), Tom Laughlin in young director Robert Altman's 1957 social drama The Delinquents (Thursday night at midnight ET), and Jack Benny's 1942 comedy with Ann Sheridan, George Washington Slept Here (late Friday, July 2 at 12:15 a.m. ET).
Yes, I know one or two of these actually did get released on DVD at some point. But they're not in print anymore. TCM used to have a scheduled "not on DVD" showcase, but now it's catch as catch can.
One way to make sure you don't miss something you need to record is to subscribe to TCM's Now Playing magazine (it's really more of a monthly schedule pamphlet), which not only lists films chronologically by airtime and alphabetically, but also spotlights the month's festivals, tributes and showcases like Sunday night silents. I wouldn't watch TCM without it.