BONUS VIDEO TRIBUTE:
CLICK HERE to watch Diane Baker’'s original video tribute to her friend, TCM’'s founding host, Robert Osborne, with friends Carole Cook, Tom Troupe and Jane Powell.


TCM celebrates the birthday of Robert Osborne, our beloved host for more than 20 years beginning with the channel's inception in 1994. Appearing on this special night to offer tribute to Robert is his close friend, actress Diane Baker, and his cousin Susan Wright. We are screening Robert Osborne's 25th Anniversary Tribute (2015), a TCM special event in which Baker and Wright also appeared; along with Private Screenings: Robert Osborne (2014), a special edition of our series in which Robert had the tables turned on him by Alec Baldwin, who revealed that Robert himself was the subject of that night's interview.

Born on May 3, 1932 in the small town of Colfax, Washington, Robert Jolin Osborne fell in love with movies at an early age. He graduated from the University of Washington's School of Journalism and served two years in the Air Force in Seattle. During his free time, he performed in local theater productions. An ambition to become a professional actor eventually led him to Los Angeles, where he secured a spot as a contract actor at Dezi Arnaz and Lucille Ball's Desilu Studios.

After a few small roles on television, Robert was advised by Ball to focus his energies on becoming an entertainment writer - as he liked to kid, "especially after she saw me act." In 1977, he started his long tenure as the "Rambling Reporter" for The Hollywood Reporter. Beginning with Academy Awards Illustrated in 1965, he published a number of authoritative books on film history and the Oscars. He began hosting for The Movie Channel in 1984 and 10 years later he was selected by Ted Turner to host TCM. For over 20 years at TCM, he connected with audiences before passing away in 2017.

Robert developed a rapport with his TCM audience, who not only valued his knowledge and perceptions regarding classic film but looked upon him as an old friend. In celebrating his birthday, we are screening two of his favorite films, William Wyler's Dodsworth (1936), starring Walter Huston; and Otto Preminger's Laura (1944), starring Gene Tierney.

I visited Robert a few years back in his apartment in New York City, located on 57th Street in Manhattan and named, not so coincidentally, The Osborne. (He chose the building because of its name.) Bette Davis, no less, originally helped him settle into his living quarters.

Robert told me that, since his youth, Gene Tierney had been his all-time favorite classic-film actress. He proudly showed off one of his most prized pieces of movie memorabilia, the original portrait of Tierney that played such an important role in Laura. In the film, a detective (Dana Andrews) investigating the supposed death of Tierney's character, Laura, becomes obsessed with her picture. This portrait took a spot of honor on a wall of Robert's apartment, which featured other framed mementoes from the movies, including a painting of Lana Turner and a photograph of Marlene Dietrich.

The Laura portrait came with an interesting story as told by Robert. The film's original director, Rouben Mamoulian, planned to use an oil painting done by his wife-to-be, Azadia Newman. When Otto Preminger stepped in at the last minute as director, he wanted a different look in the portrait. Since time was running short, Preminger had an actual studio photograph of Tierney glossed over with oils and varnishes to make it look like a painting. The effect was perfect, creating just the right aura of glamour and mystery. It's the knowledge of these film history details that made Robert Osborne such a joy to his viewers on TCM.

by Roger Fristoe