This summer, Turner Classic Movies has aired “Funday Night At The Movies,” a series of Sunday-night classic movies selected to be family-friendly and hosted by Tom Kenny, the voice of Spongebob, with a studio full of kids.
Well, tonight’s movie was one of my favorites: the Errol Flynn “Adventures of Robin Hood.”
But what I wanted to mention was a cute moment at the end of the telecast. In the intro to the movie, there had been a somewhat silly gag where Kenny claimed to have various props, such as a belt which he said was Robin Hood’s “swashbuckle.” After the movie had ended, the little wrap-up segment continued that premise, with Kenny producing a bow and arrow and one of the kids trying it out. Cut to TCM’s normal prime-time host, Robert Osborne, rehearsing his lines on his living-room set. The arrow whooshes past him and strikes a painting on the wall. He shakes his fist and yells something back at “you kids.” Cut back to Kenny’s playroom set, where Kenny yelps something like “It’s the boss — let’s get out of here!” and he and the kids make a break for the exit.
Then, after the various promos and filler segments, we come to the next movie on the schedule — it’s another Errol Flynn movie, because of TCM’s “Summer Under The Stars” event. When Robert Osborne appears to introduce it, he’s holding an arrow, presumably the one which he just removed from his painting. It was a nice hand-off between the two segments, and once again shows that Osborne doesn’t take himself too seriously.
I also love the promo they run occasionally with Osborne and TCM’s weekend host Ben Mankiewicz parodying the opening credits of TV’s “The Odd Couple.”
“Funday Night At The Movies” will continue next Sunday with another great movie, the Disney version of “20,000 Leagues Under The Sea.”