Holiday Spectaculars and Specials
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The small screen will be lit up by big-scale Fourth of July specials today.
For starters, there’s the “National Independence Day Parade,” a PBS telecast arriving at 1 p.m. on Channel 58 and at 3:30 p.m. on Channel 24. Originating from Washington, this two-hour celebration will mark the Constitution’s 200th anniversary.
In prime time, the partying will shift to Florida for “Walt Disney World’s Fourth of July Spectacular” (8-10 p.m. on Channel 5). A fireworks display will highlight the broadcast, along with formation flying by the Navy’s Blue Angels and a 60th birthday salute to Mickey Mouse.
Then it’s back to Washington and PBS for “A Capitol Fourth” (8 p.m. on Channels 50 and 24; 9 p.m. on Channels 28 and 15). The site for music and more fireworks is the U.S. Capitol, where Mstislav Rostropovich will conduct the National Symphony Orchestra and Tony Bennett will perform a tribute to Irving Berlin.
On the movie front, two patriotic standards are screened by local stations at 8 p.m. Clifton Webb portrays John Philip Sousa in “Stars and Stripes Forever” on Channel 11. Meanwhile, on Channel 13, James Cagney stars as song-and-dance-man George M. Cohan in a colorized version of the 1942 classic “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” (It also airs at 8 p.m. on Channels 51 and 63.)
And for Rod Serling fans, Channel 5 steps into another dimension for its annual “Twilight Zone” marathon. Eleven consecutive hours of the series will be shown from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m.
On-the-field pyrotechnics can be found on ABC as the Los Angeles Dodgers and St. Louis Cardinals meet at 5 p.m. (Channels 7, 3 and 42).
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