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Turnabout, the 1940 Body-Swapping film from the original novel by Thorne Smith, is scheduled on Turner Classic Movies (TCM) at 5:00am Pacific Time tomorrow morning, if anyone is interested and has Cable or Satellite access to the channel. People who live in other timezones will have to apply the appropriate timezone arithmetic.
It’s not the greatest film, but it’s not terrible either, and (like most of his other works) is fairly droll.
If one lives in Europe, the book is out of copyright (published in 1931) and is available at the Forgotten Futures website, along with many of his other works.
A precís of the plot follows:
Tim and Sally Willows are vaguely dissatisfied with their lives, and are bickering about whose rôle in life is easier when they annoy a pagan idol from Egypt, one Mr. Ram, who swaps their bodies out of a certain malicious sense of humour. Tim is forced to cope with the complications of his wife’s life, including the amourous attentions of the local cad, whilst Sally has to manage Tim’s job as an advertising executive. Complications ensue, including the completely unplanned pregnancy of Tim (as Sally) who winds up giving birth to their child.
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Youtube
For those unable to get it on Cable, it is available on youtube.
Gwen
I just noticed that in Chapter 18...
of the novel, there’s an explicit reference to The Well of Loneliness, the then-scandalous 1928 lesbian novel by Radclyffe Hall, so it would seem that Thorne Smith was perfectly aware of the wider social implications*, even though he was ostensibly playing it for laughs.
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* The novel’s protagonist, Stephen Gordon, is what’s called at the time a "sexual invert," what we might now call a transsexual, a woman who preferred dressing in male attire and, in fact, did her best to live her life as a man. In those times, the distinction between homosexuality and transgenderism was imperfect at best, and in the opinions of many experts non-existent. Stephen Gordon is "narrow-hipped" (and) "wide-shouldered" from birth, a classical "invert."
Note: There’s a typo in Chapter 19 of every electronic edition which I have ready access to. My physical copies are in a box somewhere, so I don’t know if the error is universal.**
should read:
Because it’s clearly the surgeon speaking, not Tim, in the second sentence.
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** The error is evidently, a reading error on the part of the electronic publisher, since the first sentence continues to the last line of one page in the printed book and the second is the very first sentence of the next page. Summat careless and haphazard is all.
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Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
8 AM EST Sunday on Watch TCM app or website East Coast Feed
Turnabout is also on 8 AM EST Sunday on Watch TCM app or website US East Coast Feed.
Here is the TCM website link for the movie description which includes a place to vote for TCM to release the film on DVD which they do a very good job of doing. They say that it is not in current release on DVD.
Also the link for the TCM online Eastern and Pacific live feed which I'm not sure if it works outside the US.
That gives you on 1/18/15 either the 8 AM PST Pacific feed or 8 AM EST Eastern Feed to watch Turnabout. TCM has a number of their movies on Demand via Watch TCM but Turnabout is not available that way currently
All my hopes
Ariel Montine Strickland