(Ran originally in the May 12, 2019 Sunday editions of The Times and The News-Star.)

I have just finished watching the fifth installment of the Fosse/Verdon series on FX that “explores the singular romantic and creative partnership between Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon,” the dynamic duo of a once-upon-a-time Broadway, collaborators on Damn Yankees!, Redhead, Chicago and more.

The publicity words I’ve read line up with what I just saw: “Bob is a visionary filmmaker and one of the theater’s most influential choreographers and directors, and Gwen is the greatest Broadway dancer of all time.”

You’ll like it if you’re into that sort of thing, how art is created and the uncomfortable tradeoffs sometimes made to get it done. Backstage says it might be the “TV’s first realistic picture of New York Theatre.”

The art is great—the 1970’s sets and wardrobes make you understand that era’s addictions a little better. (We wore that?) But you won’t be in so much of a romantic mood after you watch it. Whole lot of you-scratch-my-back, I’ll-scratch-yours going on. But you will want to watch a Fosse/Verdon musical. Or two or three. For sure Chicago.

Catch the replays on your DVR.

And notify your recorder of this too: Because I like to keep reminding myself that we almost certainly did win World War II but you can’t be too careful when it comes to Hitler, I keep reading WWII books and am now entrenched in one of the greatest things — speaking of television — Turner Classic Movies (TCM) has ever done or could ever do.

It began May 2, continued May 9, and will run each Thursday through June 27 as TCM commemorates the 75^th anniversary of D-Day over the nine Thursdays in May and June. Our gift from TCM is 75 movies set during WWII.

It’s called “Never Surrender: WWII in the Movies.”

I surrender.

The themes are “home front” and “combat,” which explains why we won’t see aired the greatest WWII movie of them all, Casablanca. It’s tough to leave out a movie in which Humphrey Bogart looks at Ingrid Bergman and says, Humphrey Bogart-like, “I remember every detail. The Germans wore gray, you wore blue.”

Like some of you, I missed the first couple of weeks and need to catch up, sort of like Poland needed to do in ’39. But like Poland did, we will survive.

The intros and outros to the series are nicely done from the National WWII Museum in New Orleans. TCM has filmed a lot of historical segments to air with the movies.

Hurts me that Saving Private Ryan is not on the list, although like Casablanca—aired a record 150 times during TCM’s quarter-century on air, according to my friend and Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame inductee Ted Lewis, who early this week alerted me to TCM’s gift—it airs plenty.

TCM will “play it again,” just not in the next two months.

And it hurts me that Command Decision will not be shown. I think it was first a play and then turned into a movie, like A Few Good Men, a play in 1989 that became a movie in 1992. In Command Decision, Clark Gable says, “Right now they’re on oxygen 25,000 feet over Germany. Some of them will be dancing at the Savoy tonight. Some of them will still be in Germany.”

Risky business.

You’d think they’d show Midway, but they usually do show it every Memorial Day weekend, and I have to see Charlton Heston die again. Every year. I should be happy they’re giving me the year off.

For the record, here are my Top 10 WWII movies, offered with the full knowledge that I need to go back and watch many from the early 1040s—victory was still very much in the balance—that I’ve missed.

10-6: (Ones they aren’t showing, in no particular order: Saving Private Ryan, Patton, Kelly’s Heroes (not great, but to break up everything with some laughs), Where Eagles Dare (Richard Burton’s acting style vs. Clint Eastwood’s plus Ingrid Pitt? I mean, come on!) And almost making the cut, The Guns of Navarone and They Were Expendable. I have taken some liberty with math here, but all is fair in love and WWII.

FIVE B: The Bridge Over The River Kwai: Saw it around 1967 in my hometown theatre in South Carolina. Thought it had just come out; it came out in 1957. That’s how the world worked in my hometown’s sometimes-we’re-open, sometimes-we’re-not theatre.

FIVE A: Sands of Iwo Jima (1950): John Wayne and all. And a little of Adele Mara, which is better than no Adele Mara at all. If Adele is not in the movie then I don’t watch this. It was brought to my attention that this was just sort of a John Wayne in a WWII movie deal; the scales have been lifted.

FOUR: A Bridge Too Far: (1977): Love the book too. Based on the ill-fated Market-Garden operation. It’s always that one last bridge…

THREE: Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970): Saw it three times in two days when it came out. Or when it got to our town.

TWO: The Longest Day (1962): Based on Cornelius Ryan’s book, the movie’s cast includes Robert Mitchum, John Wayne, Eddie Albert, Richard Burton, Sean Connery, Henry Fonda, Roddy McDowell, George Segal, Robert Wagner…The Longest Cast.

ONE: The Great Escape (1963): James Garner, Richard Attenborough, Charles Bronson, James Coburn. Plus Steve McQueen on a motorcycle. Yessir, may I have another?

To view the full list go to tcm.com/wwii. You’re welcome. Let freedom ring.

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