In partnership with The Film Foundation, Turner Classic Movies is proud to bring you this exclusive monthly column by iconic film director and classic movie lover Martin Scorsese.

Every August, TCM programs the entire month with a series of 24-hour long tributes to actors and actresses. I wanted to single out a few women whose work has affected me over the years, and whose careers tell interesting stories.

GENE TIERNEY (August 1, 6am)--I'll start with Gene Tierney. Looking back at the pictures of the '30s and '40s, the period now known as the Golden Age of Hollywood, you can feel, more and more, just how controlled many of the performances were, especially in relation to movies made after the arrival of Brando and James Dean in the '50s. There's a tension between directors and actors that I find extremely interesting now. It's there in Tierney's performances for Preminger, Lubitsch and Mankiewicz, and in John Stahl's Leave Her to Heaven (not included in this tribute). In those pictures, her beauty was a kind of mask. In Laura and Whirlpool, both directed by Preminger, and in Edmund Goulding's adaptation of Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge, exactly what's happening beneath the surface of her remarkable, perfectly symmetrical face becomes increasingly mysterious and troubling. Tierney had a great fragility as an actress (it's there in the pictures already mentioned, and in Heaven Can Wait by Lubitsch and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir by Mankiewicz), and I suppose it reflects an exceptionally tough personal life: in the latter half of the '50s she was in and out of the Menninger Clinic, enduring electro-shock therapy, and it was Preminger who brought her back to the movies after a 7-year absence as a Washington matron in Advise and Consent. You watch her on camera throughout her career, and you can see a genuine, very moving internal drama being played out.

OLIVIA DE HAVILLAND (August 2, 6am) and TERESA WRIGHT (August 4, 6am)--Each one as beautiful and as talented as Tierney, had very different types of careers. Like Tierney, they each started at a young age and had a deep devotion to their craft. And more than Tierney, I think, they shared a true understanding of cinema: they could have acted in silent films. Both stood up to the studio heads and fought for their independence and their dignity, at potentially great risk to their viability within the system. De Havilland took Warner Brothers to court for extending her contract past its original seven-year limit as a punishment for turning down so many roles, and her victory struck a real blow against the studios' dominance of contract players (California Labor Code 2855 is known as The De Havilland Law). When Wright signed with Samuel Goldwyn in 1941, she had a funny clause added to her contract in which she dictated the terms of use of her own public image: she insisted that she not be required to pose for photographs "running on the beach with her hair flying in the wind," "whipping up a meal," or "twinkling on prop snow in a skiing outfit while a fan blows her scarf." Seven years later, Goldwyn fired her for refusing to do publicity for a particular film, and Wright came right back at him. "I have worked for Mr. Goldwyn seven years because I consider him a great producer," she said to the press, "and he has paid me well, but in the future I shall gladly work for less if by doing so I can retain my hold upon the common decencies without which the most glorified job becomes intolerable." Tierney fought her battles privately, Wright and de Havilland (turning 100 next year) fought theirs publicly, and for me they're all inspiring--as actors and as human beings.

by Martin Scorsese