[{"__typename":"Article","title":{"short":"Star of the Month: Merle Oberon","full":"Star of the Month: Merle Oberon","__typename":"Title"},"summary":{"short":"Tuesday evenings in December, we regale the star power of the unsung Academy Award-nominated leading lady of British and Hollywood screens. ","full":"Tuesday evenings in December, we regale the star power of the unsung Academy Award-nominated leading lady of British and Hollywood screens. ","__typename":"Summary"},"type":"article","featuredVideo":{"videoUrl":null,"name":null,"__typename":"VideoTC"},"editorialPromoLabel":null,"editorialContentLabel":null,"externalUrl":null,"destination":"Internal","featuredImage":{"alt":"SOTM Merle Oberon","imageUrl":"https://static.tcm.com/2025-11/SOTM%20Merle%20Oberon%201200x800.png","cuts":[{"url":"https://static.tcm.com/2025-11/SOTM%20Merle%20Oberon%201200x800.png","size":"16:9","__typename":"ImageCut"}],"__typename":"ImageTC"},"body":"

Tuesdays in December at 8pm ET | 17 Movies

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Oscar-nominated actress Merle Oberon hid a secret from the public for her entire life. While it was common for screen actors of the early and mid-20th century to fashion new identities and backstories to go with their makeovers, there was more to Oberon than simply a romantic origin story. As far as the public knew, she was born in Tasmania to British parents who died while she was young and raised by relatives in India before moving to England. There were suspicions about her real identity, to be sure, but it was only after her death in 1979 that the truth came out: she was born Estelle Merle Thompson in Bombay, India, of a Welsh father and a mother who was of Burgher ancestry from Sri Lanka.

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Estelle, who went by the nickname Queenie, was raised by a single mother in poverty. She was considered a great beauty, but she suffered discrimination from both white and Indian society due to her mixed race. So, she moved to England and reinvented herself, obscuring her Asian ancestry and passing herself off as white with the help of London Films impresario Alexander Korda. He groomed the young beauty for stardom, complete with a new, fictionalized origin story. While today, Oberon's ancestry would be readily accepted by 21st-century audiences, anti-Asian discrimination was rampant in the 1930s and even codified into law. Mixed-race couples were taboo on American screens and Asian immigrants were prevented from becoming citizens in the United States until 1952. Her reinvention was more than public relations; it was necessary to become a leading lady in England and in Hollywood.

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TCM salutes her shining talent and impressive career every Tuesday in December.

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\nTuesday, December 2

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The series opens with Oberon's Hollywood breakout. The young Queenie had been entranced by the 1925 silent film The Dark Angel. When Oberon, newly arrived from England, discovered that Samuel Goldwyn was developing a remake, she lobbied aggressively for the role of Kitty Vane, the English rose loved by two young men who were like brothers. Director Sidney Franklin thought she was too \"Oriental\" to play a virginal British girl, but Goldwyn saw star potential in Oberon. When the California sun brought out her naturally darker complexion, she endured skin bleaching. All her efforts paid off. The Dark Angel (1935), costarring Fredric March and Herbert Marshall, was a hit. Critics raved over Oberon's performance, which earned the actress her sole Academy Award nomination. Though only a handful of people were aware of it at the time, she was the first actor of Asian ancestry ever nominated for an Oscar. The second came decades later with Ben Kingsley for Gandhi (1982).

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The night continues with three films from producer Alexander Korda that made her career in England. The romantic adventure The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934) gave Oberon her first major leading role, playing the neglected wife of a foppish British aristocrat (played by Leslie Howard) who is secretly a dashing hero rescuing French nobles from the guillotine. Oberon fell in love with the charismatic Howard while shooting the film and (despite the fact that he was already married) the mutual attraction fueled their performance. Silent movie superstar Douglas Fairbanks bid farewell to the big screen with The Private Life of Don Juan (1934), in many ways satirizing his own screen persona as the aging lothario. Oberon appears in the supporting role of a fiery Spanish dancer who catches the great lover's eye, and she received her first screen kiss in her big scene with Fairbanks. She was, however, frustrated playing an \"exotic\" character and yearned to play leading romantic roles.

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The evening concludes with the role that launched her career. The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933) was a lavish production for the British film industry, and Oberon was cast in the small but memorable role of Anne Boleyn, the second wife of the notorious king (played by Charles Laughton). The actress studied Boleyn's life and death in preparation for the role and earns the audience's sympathy immediately as she awaits her execution, hinting at her vulnerability behind a mask of poise, dark gravity and royal dignity. The film was a massive hit in both England and the U.S., where it became the first British film to win an Academy Award (for actor Charles Laughton) and earn a nomination for Best Picture.

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\nTuesday, December 9

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After the success of The Dark Angel, producer Sam Goldwyn was quick to capitalize on Oberon's star potential in These Three (1936), based on Lillian Hellman's hit Broadway play \"The Children's Hour.\" The play centers on the damage wrought by the cruel lie of a vindictive student that two female teachers are lovers. The film significantly sanitized the details of it source material, as even a hint of homosexuality was outlawed by the Production Code, but the corrosive power of the lie to destroy the lives and careers of those it maligned still retains its power in Hellman's screenplay. Despite her recent success, Oberon was insecure as an actress playing opposite Miriam Hopkins, already a major star, and young Bonita Granville in the showy role of the scheming student, but William Wyler brought out new depths in Oberon’s nuanced performance.

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Far more frivolous is the bubbly Over the Moon (1939), a British romantic comedy featuring Oberon as a young woman who inherits a fortune and goes on a wild spree, much to the dismay of her disapproving fiancé (Rex Harrison). It's a trifle that Oberon carries with effervescent charm, playing a confident young woman who basks in the sudden attention without for a second believing in any of it. Even more lightweight is Affectionately Yours (1941), a Warner Bros. confection that plunged Oberon into slapstick. The project took its toll with punishing physical gags and a mishap with a runaway taxi that came close to seriously injuring her.

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Lydia (1941), however, gave Oberon another role worthy of her talents. Produced in Hollywood by Korda (who had married Oberon in 1939), it's a romantic drama starring Oberon as an unmarried woman who, in old age, looks back over the four men she loved in her life. She underwent three hours of make-up to play the elderly Lydia, which she plays with a wistful quality, while being playful and coquettish as the fiery young society beauty in flashbacks. \"I never really acted until now,\" she reflected decades later to film historian James Robert Parish.

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\nTuesday, December 16

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The third evening opens with two films pairing Oberon with the great Laurence Olivier. Wuthering Heights (1939), produced by Goldwyn, reunited Oberon with her These Three director William Wyler. Olivier made his Hollywood starring debut as Heathcliff opposite Oberon's Cathy. While his stage experience was extensive, he was still relatively inexperienced in screen acting and focused his attentions on the actor. It was a difficult shoot for Oberon. Olivier was cruel and condescending to Oberon, at one point berating her until she broke down in tears, and Wyler demanded numerous retakes in scene after scene. She sprained her ankle on location and became so ill after repeated takes of a drenching storm sequence shot in the chill of December that the production shut down. Her performance was praised in The New York Times, but she was ignored at awards time, and the film was upstaged at the Oscars by Gone With the Wind (1939), taking home a single award for cinematography (Gregg Toland).

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Before that acclaimed classic, however, Oberon took top billing in The Divorce of Lady X (1938), playing a flighty socialite who charms her way into the hotel room of the flinty barrister played by Olivier. It's a romantic comedy of mistaken identity, a change for Oberon after the melodramas of her Hollywood sojourn, and Oberon brings a sprightly, sweet quality to the performance. It also marked her Technicolor debut and she was delighted with the result, telling one journalist that \"color is like finding unsuspected facets in an old friend.\"

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‘Til We Meet Again (1940), a remake of the 1932 romantic drama One Way Passage, cast Oberon as a dying woman who finds love on an ocean liner. It was a troubled production for the actress, who contracted a virus that cost weeks of shooting. The cure, however, proved worse than the illness. An injection of sulfa drugs caused an allergic reaction, causing her face to break out in sores that scarred her skin. Her smooth, exotic beauty was an essential part of her screen identity, and, afraid that the blemishes would end her career, she underwent painful chemical peels to reverse the damage. It was years before her face fully recovered. Yet she was back in front of the cameras in That Uncertain Feeling (1941), a romantic comedy directed by Ernst Lubitsch starring Oberon as a socialite whose unhappiness in her marriage manifests in a case of incurable hiccups. Heavy make-up was required to hide the scars, and she feared another reaction, but her anxiety is undetectable in her deft comic performance.

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\nTuesday, December 30

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In 1945, Oberon divorced Korda and married Lucien Ballard, a handsome and talented Hollywood cinematographer. They met while filming The Lodger (1944), where Ballard, sensitive to the self-conscious actress, developed a special light mounted on the camera that \"washed out\" the scars on her face during close-ups. Ballard christened the new light the Obie, after the actress, and Oberon was determined to have him behind the camera of her subsequent films. The final evening opens with two of those collaborations. Berlin Express (1948), a thriller set in post-World War II Europe, was the first Hollywood film to shoot in the ruins of Frankfurt and Berlin. Oberon plays the French secretary to a German peace activist who goes missing and becomes part of a multinational effort to find him. She's a socialite who feigns blindness to romance an embittered blind composer played by Dana Andrews in Night Song (1947), a film that features piano virtuoso Artur Rubinstein performing the character's concerto at Carnegie Hall.

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The Lion Has Wings (1939), a celebration of the Royal Air Force, was rushed into production after Great Britain entered the war in Europe. Both Oberon and producer Korda had adopted England as their home and were eager to show their patriotism. Oberon plays a Red Cross nurse married to RAF officer Ralph Richardson in a slim, dramatic story built around documentary footage of the war machine in action, from the factories producing planes and the first mission across the channel.

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Our Star of the Month series concludes with a pair of films from Oberon’s late career. The 1940s and 1950s saw a series of (often highly fictionalized) films built around the lives and careers of popular music composers: a musical with a built-in songbook. Deep in My Heart (1954) stars José Ferrer as Sigmund Romberg, who composed such hit stage musicals as \"Maytime,\" \"The Student Prince\" and \"New Moon.\" Oberon plays Broadway actress and lyricist Dorothy Donnelly in the glossy MGM production, complete with a grand send-off in an elegant death scene. Hotel (1967) marked her final appearance in a major Hollywood film. Based on Arthur Hailey's best-selling novel about the guests and staff of a luxury New Orleans hotel, it's an ensemble piece in the tradition of the classic Grand Hotel (1932) but updated for the 1960s. Oberon brings her grace and gravitas as a duchess being blackmailed by the hotel detective. She made suggestions to enhance the character, many of which director Richard Quine incorporated, and she gave the production its added glamour by wearing expensive jewelry from her personal collection. Though well reviewed, it was not the comeback that Oberon had hoped for and–but for a subsequent, single self-financed picture, Interval (1973)–she retired to the life of a socialite, hostess and philanthropist. She kept the truth of her Asian identity a secret until the end of her life.

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Thursdays in December at 8pm ET | 24 Movies

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We all feel like we could use a little divine help sometimes. Whether you’re spiritual, religious or simply believe in some kind of higher power, there are times when we want to look beyond the mortal realm and see if an angel or even the Lord might come into our humble lives and give us a little assistance. That’s the theme of this month’s TCM Spotlight airing every Thursday at 8pm ET, where angels, devils and even the Big Guy come down to Earth to steer the lives of ordinary people. Although these can take the form of grand morality plays, other times, the stakes can be far more intimate and quirkier.

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Look no further than some of the films from our first night of programming on December 4th, which highlight “Angelic Relationships.” In Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941), up-and-coming boxer Joe Pendleton (Robert Montgomery) dies in a plane crash only to ascend to Heaven and learn it wasn’t his time yet. A manager in the afterlife, Mr. Jordan (Claude Rains), seeks to rectify the situation only for both Joe and Jordan to discover that Joe’s body was quickly cremated after the crash. Seeking a new body, Jordan places him inside wealthy playboy Bruce Farnsworth, who has his own set of problems as his wife (Rita Johnson) and her lover (John Emery) want to knock him off for the inheritance. Making matters worse, Joe (now in Farnsworth’s body), falls for Bette Logan (Evelyn Keyes), a young woman whose father was framed for fraud by Farnsworth before Joe came along.

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What makes the film work so well—aside from depicting Heaven as a comical bureaucracy where even angels make mistakes—is the fun banter between the working-stiff Joe and the quiet grace exuded by Jordan. It makes them a unique comic duo as Joe, rightfully annoyed as if he’s being bounced around by customer service, just wants his shot at the title (“I was in the pink!” he exclaims on numerous occasions), with Jordan calmly talking him down.

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A similar grace appears in The Bishop’s Wife (1947), a unique holiday romance featuring Cary Grant as Dudley, an angel trying to bring misguided Episcopal Bishop Henry Brougham (David Niven) back around to what’s important in life. Like many of the movies in this spotlight, there’s a lot of comedy to be found between the mortal and the divine, as in this case, Brougham, who knows Dudley is a divine presence, sees a rival usurping his place in the community. And yet this jealousy (and to be fair, who wouldn’t be jealous of the charming Grant?) only leads to a surprising reconciliation as it is the angel who envies the man.

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On December 11th, “Divine Intervention” gets a little zanier in a post-Code world that didn’t have to worry as much about poking a little fun at the presence of the Almighty. Look no further than the sweet, wry Oh, God! (1977) that has the Lord (George Burns) call on Jerry Landers (John Denver), the assistant manager of a supermarket, to serve as his messenger. Carl Reiner’s movie would never have made it past the censors 30 years prior with a God that doesn’t adhere to any single religious faith and admits that he made mistakes like the avocado (“I made the pit too big”). But in 1977, audiences could not only take those perspectives in stride, but also agree with the movie’s secular, humanist approach, where God wants people to work together to make the world better rather than rely on miracles.

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However, if you want to get more irreverent, stay up later (or set your DVR) for Monty Python’s take on the Almighty. There’s a bit of God in Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975). When the Lord tasks King Arthur (Graham Chapman) and his knights with finding the grail, Arthur replies, “Good idea, O Lord!” and God roars back, “’Course it’s a good idea!” But if you want to get really silly with the divine presence, watch Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979), where Brian Cohen (Chapman) keeps getting mistaken for the Messiah. For a sense of the irreverent, consider how some would see a scene of mass crucifixion as cause for lament. For the Python crew, it’s cause for a musical number.

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On December 18th, TCM takes us to the Bad Place with “Devilish Struggles,” and perhaps no struggle as devilish as the confusion of titles for “Heaven Can Wait.” Let’s clear it up right now: Here Comes Mr. Jordan was based on Harry Segall’s 1938 play “Heaven Can Wait.” Here Comes Mr. Jordan was later remade as Heaven Can Wait in 1978 (and which you can see at 8pm ET on December 11th). However, the Heaven Can Wait from 1943 that kicks off tonight’s lineup is based on the Ladislaus Bus-Fekete play “Birthday” and has no connection with the Segall story. Instead, the 1943 movie follows the cad Henry Van Cleve (Don Ameche), who believes he deserves to go to Hell for all his misdeeds and shares his life story as proof. It’s a slight, silly affair courtesy of director Ernst Lubitsch that pokes fun at what society considers moral in the grand scheme of things.

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To really see the devil at work, stay tuned for Angel on My Shoulder (1946), which has Harry Segall taking his Here Comes Mr. Jordan idea and twisting it for Beelzebub. The mortal this time around is Eddie Kagle (Paul Muni), a gangster just released from prison and eager to get back to a life of crime only to be quickly murdered by his supposed partner, Smiley Williams (Hardie Albright). When Eddie gets sent to Hell, the devil (Rains in an inspired bit of casting), sees an opportunity to put Eddie’s soul in the body of an upstanding judge who looks just like the deceased criminal. Eddie agrees because it will provide the opportunity to get revenge on Smiley, but the more time Eddie spends walking in the judge’s shoes and spending time around his good-hearted fiancée Barbara (Anne Baxter), the more he starts turning away from evil, much to Satan’s chagrin. If you like Here Comes Mr. Jordan, you owe it to yourself to see Angel on My Shoulder, which feels both like a companion piece as well as a sharper take on a similar narrative.

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Our spotlight wraps up on Christmas Day with “Angels Are Everywhere” and the evening begins with one of Powell and Pressburger’s best movies, A Matter of Life and Death (1947). A stirring post-war feature, the story follows Peter Carter (Niven), a Royal Air Force pilot shot down during combat. As his plane plummets to Earth, he has a deep, meaningful conversation with June (Kim Hunter), an American radio operator. However, due to the fog, the angels can’t pick him and take him to the afterlife. When they do discover him, he makes the case that he can’t go now that he and June have fallen in love.

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The Archers’ dazzling use of color is on full display here as the scenes on Earth are depicted in rich, vibrant Technicolor while the afterlife is rendered in a clean, sterile monochrome. It’s a movie that not only celebrates life and does so within an unapologetically romantic framework, but also feels respectfully mournful, a film not only concerned with death, but particularly all the soldiers who died in World War II. For the movie to bounce between playful (like the scenes with Conductor 71, which has Marius Goring playing the role as comically French) and the melancholy without missing a beat makes it one of Powell and Pressburger’s most indelible accomplishments.

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The stakes get somewhat lighter afterwards with the original Angels in the Outfield (1951). Long before the Los Angeles Angels existed, another baseball team needed some help in Clarence Brown’s comedy. Guffy McGovern (Paul Douglas) is a foul-mouthed manager for the woeful Pittsburgh Pirates, but while looking through Forbes Field for his good luck charm, he learns that a team of deceased baseball players will help the team out if Guffy can change his ways. For every fan who has ever prayed for a little help for their beloved team, Angels in the Outfield is an evergreen movie.

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If there is a throughline through these stories of divine intervention, it is not that we must give ourselves entirely over to larger powers, but that such power tends to reside in us. We have the free will and choices that make us far more compelling protagonists than angels or demons could ever be. As we head towards a new year, it’s nice to fantasize about a little help from above, but these movies remind us that we can already help each other.

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December 5 at 8pm ET | 3 Movies

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Bill Condon knows a bit about movie musicals. That’s an understatement, of course. He is the acclaimed director of Dreamgirls (2006), which he also co-wrote, and the live-action Beauty and the Beast (2017). His screenplay adaptation of Chicago (2002) was nominated for both an Academy Award and a Golden Globe, and he also adapted the stage musical The Greatest Showman (2017). And, most recently, he has taken on triple duties as executive producer, writer and director of Kiss of the Spider Woman (2025), adapted from the 1992 stage musical, itself an adaptation of the 1985 film based on the 1976 novel by Argentinian writer Manuel Puig.

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Condon shares his wealth of experience and insight for three musicals airing on TCM on December 5. Talking with host Dave Karger, Condon speaks about the influence classic Hollywood musicals have had on his work, particularly his most recent project, directing Jennifer Lopez in the role made famous by Broadway legend Chita Rivera. The lavish design and high style of those old musicals had much to do with his approach to Kiss of the Spider Woman, but it was another essential element of how those movies were made that he wanted to tap into for his production.

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“It was mostly the way they shot the musical numbers that we really, really wanted to honor,” Condon says. “It was the Fred Astaire idea that you watch people full figure, as few cuts as possible, and you’re really giving the audience the sense that these dancers are doing it in real time.”

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Case in point: watch the number “Make Way for Tomorrow” in the evening’s first spotlighted movie, Cover Girl (1944), a musical starring Rita Hayworth, Gene Kelly and Phil Silvers. The trio begins the song in a restaurant, then takes it outside for an extended dance along a Brooklyn street for more than three minutes. The routine is shot almost entirely in full figure with only ten cuts, mostly in the service of emphasizing comic vignettes on the stoops of buildings passed by the three stars. This was once the standard method of filming musical numbers, almost as though you were watching the performers live, but it has largely been abandoned in recent years in favor of multiple quick cuts and shortened attention spans ushered in by the music videos of the 1980s.

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That street set appears again later in the film in one of the innovative dance numbers Kelly became famous for, a duet with his own reflection. A fast-rising Broadway dancer-choreographer-actor, he had only been in films for two years and not yet a full-fledged star when his home studio, MGM, lent him out to Columbia Pictures for a project primarily meant to showcase Hayworth, their newest star. Recognizing Kelly’s talent and ambition, the studio allowed him, for the first time in his career, to choreograph (with frequent collaborator Stanley Donen) his own routines. He was even able to persuade Columbia to let him create the extended street set and basically take charge of all the dance numbers, much to the chagrin of director Charles Vidor, who was not known for musicals. Condon notes that many of the elements that would appear again in later Gene Kelly movies were first glimpsed in the two sequences staged on the street set.

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Kelly’s “alter-ego” dance with himself introduced a note of darkness into what is little more than a featherweight story of show business success and glamour. (Hayworth wants to be a magazine model and Broadway star; boyfriend Kelly wants her to keep working at his Brooklyn nightclub — guess who wins?) Throughout his career, Kelly would strive to bring more complexity and shading to his characters and choreography, even at the risk of making his roles appear less sympathetic. He achieved it to its greatest degree in one of his last major musicals, It’s Always Fair Weather (1955), which has him dancing once again on vast urban street sets, as in On the Town (1949), An American in Paris (1951) and, most famously, Singin’ in the Rain (1952).

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The darkness, tension and complexity Condon sees in Kelly’s work is cranked to the max, not always successfully but no less compellingly, in the second film in his guest programmer segment, another important influence on Kiss of the Spider Woman.

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New York, New York (1977), Martin Scorsese’s unlikely follow-up to the violent, gritty Taxi Driver (1976), is a musical about the relationship between an ambitious young singer (Liza Minnelli) and a self-centered, callous jazz musician (Robert De Niro) in the years following World War II. Scorsese’s attempt to wed the glitzy, artificial look of classic musicals to an improvisatory psychodrama was a box office and critical failure upon its release. Even he hasn’t expressed much praise for it, but it has been seen in a more positive light in recent years, especially since a re-issue that restored sequences originally cut for time.

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“All the darker stuff left out of musicals of this period, [Scorsese]’s putting in there,” Condon notes with admiration. The juxtaposition in New York, New York of downbeat naturalistic drama with glitzy theatricality tracks closely with Kiss of the Spider Woman, which combines a tense drama of “subversives” imprisoned by an oppressive political regime with a fantasy woven by a movie-obsessed gay man. But Condon says it was the production design of Scorsese's film, by Boris Leven (Anatomy of a Murder, 1959; West Side Story, 1961; The King of Comedy, 1982), that was foremost in his mind, particularly the verticality of the sets, creating an elevated space above the action.

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Scorsese has said he hired Leven to design his musical after seeing The Silver Chalice (1954), a sword-and-sandal epic generally conceded to be a wretched movie, partially because of its inauthenticity. “It’s purely theatrical, and this is mainly due to the sets,” Scorsese said. “They’re clean and clear; it’s almost like another life, another world.”

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Leven’s design is spectacularly showcased in the lengthy musical sequence, “Happy Endings,” which was cut from the initial release but restored in 1981. Designed as a lavish, kitschy Hollywood musical picture within the film, it makes rather obvious references to the similar “Born in a Trunk” musical sequence in A Star Is Born (1954), starring Minnelli’s mother, Judy Garland. According to Scorsese, however, the film that was his primary inspiration for New York, New York was My Dream Is Yours (1949), a Warner Bros. musical with some surprisingly dark undertones starring Doris Day as a struggling singer who falls for an egotistical, self-destructive radio crooner. That earlier movie has subtle traces of the ruthless ambition, infidelity and betrayal, addiction and fraught romance foregrounded in Scorsese’s film.

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“Musicals often had more on their minds than they’re given credit for,” Condon tells Karger. He could be talking about New York, New York or even My Dream Is Yours, but what he’s specifically referring to is the third film in the evening’s showcase. Like Kiss of the Spider Woman, Silk Stockings (1957) is a musical version of an earlier film (Ernst Lubitsch’s offbeat romantic comedy Ninotchka, 1939) that was made into a stage musical and then brought to the screen again. The story of a Soviet bureaucrat who at first resists, then falls for both an American film producer and the pampered lifestyle of Western culture, the plot takes digs at both Soviet austerity and the more frivolous aspects of capitalism before, of course, coming down firmly on the side of the mainstream attitudes of the Eisenhower Era.

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Rouben Mamoulian, who started his film career with one of the earliest American musical pictures, Applause (1929), aimed to tell the story through dance — a no-brainer considering his stars were Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse. \"I had two of the best dancers in the world, and what interested me was to give greater importance to the dancing than to the action proper, which was merely a repeat of Ninotchka,” he told biographer Tom Milne in 1970. “The psychological and dramatic development existed only in the dances.\"

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Working with choreographers Hermes Pan and Eugene Loring, Mamoulian developed the personal and ideological changes experienced by Ninotchka, the stern communist functionary, through her movements — at first hard and rigid, then slowly exhibiting little physical flair as she reacts to new situations and feelings. The character finally breaks free in Charisse’s justifiably famous dance around her hotel room as she revels in her newly achieved soft, romantic nature and appreciation for the finer luxuries she once rejected. That sequence has been compared to the scene in Queen Christina (1933) in which Greta Garbo wanders around the room she shared with her lover, committing every object to memory. It’s no surprise that Mamoulian directed that film as well, telling Garbo, “This has to be sheer poetry and feeling. The moment must be like a dance. Treat it as you would do it to music.”

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Silk Stockings was one of Mamoulian’s last films. It was also the final full-fledged musical Charisse would make. Fred Astaire made only one other musical in his career, Finian’s Rainbow (1968).

\n","pageAlias":{"pagePath":"/articles/now-playing-newsletter/59802/guest-programmer-bill-condon","__typename":"PageAlias"}},{"__typename":"Article","title":{"short":"Art Deco","full":"Art Deco","__typename":"Title"},"summary":{"short":"December 8, 15, and 29th features three nights of programming dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the visual style that shaped the early 20th century.","full":"December 8, 15, and 29th features three nights of programming dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the visual style that shaped the early 20th century.","__typename":"Summary"},"type":"article","featuredVideo":{"videoUrl":null,"name":null,"__typename":"VideoTC"},"editorialPromoLabel":null,"editorialContentLabel":null,"externalUrl":null,"destination":"Internal","featuredImage":{"alt":"our dancing daughters ","imageUrl":"https://static.tcm.com/2025-11/our%20dancing%20daughters%201200x800.png","cuts":[{"url":"https://static.tcm.com/2025-11/our%20dancing%20daughters%201200x800.png","size":"16:9","__typename":"ImageCut"}],"__typename":"ImageTC"},"body":"

December 8, 15 and 29 at 8pm ET | 16 Movies

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Art is a reflection of its time. One hundred years ago, the April 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris officially introduced the world to a new style, born out of the wreckage of World War I. Termed Style Moderne or Art Moderne–later becoming known as Art Deco–it was a drastic departure from the flowery, soft designs of Art Nouveau. Think of the Jazz Age and you think of Art Deco, whether it’s the American streamlined, modernist machine-esque look of the 1920s and 1930s, or the colorful and geometric designs of the French. Over three nights in December, TCM host Dave Karger will discuss the history and significance of Art Deco in Hollywood in our special programming co-curated by Art Deco historian, author, lecturer and former president of the Art Deco Society of Los Angeles, John Thomas.

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World War I had destroyed lives, countries and a way of life, leaving many frightened, confused and wanting to create a better future. In Germany, whose post-war economic collapse would eventually lead to the rise of Adolf Hitler, the zeitgeist of anxiety was reflected in a new cinematic look that came to be called German Expressionism. The sets were bizarre, with shadows, sharp lines and angles that had no place in reality but reflected the psychology of its characters. Costumes, lighting–even makeup tried to move far away from real life. The look quickly evolved from the cruder style of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) to the ultra-modern and still extraordinary art design by Otto Hunte, Erich Kettelhut and Karl Vollbrecht for Fritz Lang’s masterpiece about the Mechanical Age enslaving humanity, Metropolis (1927). The film utilized many Art Deco elements, like stainless steel, glass, chrome and bakelite plastic, even turning a main character into a metal, Art Deco creature. While Metropolis may be the gold standard for European Art Deco on film, it was not the first to feature the style in architecture. According to author Philip French, Art Deco buildings appeared on film even before the Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes exhibition, like designer Robert Mallet-Stevens’ work in Marcel L'Herbier's L’Inhumaine (1924).

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While Grand Hotel (1932) was made at MGM in Los Angeles, it was set in Berlin. Art designer Cedric Gibbons created a circular-shaped hotel with open space that looked straight down into the lobby, where sharply geometric floor tiles and glass are a masterclass on the style. Gibbons had attended and been influenced by the 1925 Paris exhibition. That influence can also be seen in his work in the Joan Crawford-starrer Our Dancing Daughters (1928), which opens with a shot of an Erté-esque statuette, followed by Crawford dancing in front of several mirrors, while she dresses in her ultra-Art Deco bedroom, complete with shiny black floor. Gibbons would continue along similar lines in Crawford’s films, Our Modern Maidens (1929) and Our Blushing Brides (1930). Although Clara Bow created an iconic personification of the flapper in It (1927), Crawford, who was famous for winning the Charleston dance contests at Los Angeles’ Coconut Grove nightclub, gave her a run for her money.

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Art Deco was the style of the flapper because of its inclusion of the changing role of women, who had experienced a degree of social freedom outside of the home during WWI and were reluctant to give it up. After decades of struggle, the 19th Amendment finally passed in August 1920, giving women the right to vote in the United States. Although Prohibition was the law of the land, films existed in an alternate dimension where liquor was still served. The flapper drank cocktails, drove automobiles and worked in department stores or offices, and her modern look was a complete departure from the pre-War era. Long, luxuriant hair for women had been the beauty standard for centuries. Now, the flapper announced her freedom by cutting her hair into bobs made famous by Louise Brooks, Colleen Moore and Irene Castle. The absurdly large hats of the early 1900s were replaced with cloche hats that hugged the head, and the ankle-length skirts of the past rose to unprecedented heights.

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Nightclubs never looked so good as they did in the films of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, especially in Top Hat (1935), with its stylized version of Venice, and in Swing Time (1936), which features the sparkling, shining black-and-white stairs for the “last dance” scene. The art direction for these and all the RKO Astaire-Rogers films was done by Van Nest Polglase and his crew.

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Art Deco buildings began popping up all over the world, and Hollywood was no exception. Offscreen, movie theaters that were owned by the studios were built in various Deco styles. Sid Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre capitalized on the craze for Egyptian art in the 1920s, influenced by the discovery of King Tutankhamen’s tomb in 1922. Los Angeles haberdasher-to-the-stars, James Oviatt, had attended the 1925 exhibition and fell in love with the style, instructing his architects and designers to use it for his new building, commonly referred to as the Oviatt Building, completed in 1928. Onscreen, the sharp style of the new skyscrapers appeared in many New York-based films like Skyscraper Souls (1932), another Cedric Gibbons creation. The Art Deco aspects are overwhelming in this film, as almost every shot has horizontal lines running through the sets. Both it, and another Gibbons-designed film, Five and Ten (1931), open with shots of New York skyscrapers.

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The most unrealistic and over-the-top Art Deco decor subsided as the Great Depression trudged on, and the world went through the biggest hangover in history. Outlandish and wasteful aesthetics began to wear thin on people who had their financial rug pulled out from under them. By the end of the decade, home and film design returned to a more traditional, realistic and comfortable look. The Women (1939) showcases fashion in a Technicolor sequence, and the villainous Crystal’s (Joan Crawford) bathroom, the health spa and the nightclub ladies’ lounge all have Art Deco elements. By contrast, Mary’s (Norma Shearer) home, while expensive, looks lived in and comfortable, reflecting the fact that she is the most relatable, likable and down-to-earth of all the society women.

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The heyday of Art Deco lasted until the end of World War II, then disappeared until a brief revival in the 1980s with the Memphis Design, led by Italian designer Ettore Sottsass. Recently, there has been a renewed interest in Art Deco elements, rather than a strict adherence to the style. And while Art Deco gave way to Mid-Century Modern (a style that returned with a vengeance 20 years ago and is still with us), the architecture of the 1920s and 1930s lives on in nearly every major city in the United States. The Los Angeles Conservancy offers walking tours of some of the best Art Deco buildings in downtown Los Angeles, including James Oviatt’s former haberdashery.

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SOURCES:
\nThe AFI Catalog of Feature Films. “Grand Hotel.” https://catalog.afi.com/Film/7720-GRAND-HOTEL?sid=67497a43-e69b-4633-a587-1da7ba52c3e3&sr=10.965615&cp=1&pos=0
\nThe AFI Catalog of Feature Films. “Our Dancing Daughters.” https://catalog.afi.com/Film/11184-OUR-DANCINGDAUGHTERS?sid=ee0c3bca-4b24-4afa-8579-cf646759af9e&sr=12.98125&cp=1&pos=0
\nArt Deco Society of Los Angeles. “Art Deco Centennial Celebration at the Oviatt Penthouse.” https://artdecola.org/events-calendar/centennial-celebration-oviatt
\n“100 years of Art Deco” CBS Sunday. YouTube. 2025. https://www.youtube.com/v=-PcjhQhA86.
\nFrench, Phillip. “For Fred and Ginger, art deco was the magic movement.” The Guardian. 29 Mar 2003. https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2003/mar/30/features.review77
\nThe Los Angeles Conservancy. “The Oviatt Building.” https://www.laconservancy.org/learn/historic-places/oviatt-building/
\n“The Rise, Fall and Revival of Art Deco. A Style is Born.” YouTube. 2023. https://www.youtube.com/v=usdi-LL-aG4

\n","pageAlias":{"pagePath":"/articles/now-playing-newsletter/59803/art-deco","__typename":"PageAlias"}},{"__typename":"Article","title":{"short":"In Memoriam","full":"In Memoriam","__typename":"Title"},"summary":{"short":"On December 26th, we honor five filmmakers and artists who have passed this year with a night dedicated to their legacy and talents. ","full":"On December 26th, we honor five filmmakers and artists who have passed this year with a night dedicated to their legacy and talents. ","__typename":"Summary"},"type":"article","featuredVideo":{"videoUrl":null,"name":null,"__typename":"VideoTC"},"editorialPromoLabel":null,"editorialContentLabel":null,"externalUrl":null,"destination":"Internal","featuredImage":{"alt":"val kilmer top secret","imageUrl":"https://static.tcm.com/2025-11/val%20kilmer%20top%20secret%202%201200x800.png","cuts":[{"url":"https://static.tcm.com/2025-11/val%20kilmer%20top%20secret%202%201200x800.png","size":"16:9","__typename":"ImageCut"}],"__typename":"ImageTC"},"body":"

December 26 at 8pm ET | 6 Movies

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TCM once again concludes its programming year by honoring the actors and film artisans who passed away in 2025. It isn’t accurate to say we lost them, because as long as their work endures, their memory is preserved to captivate and inspire generations to come.

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\nRobert Benton (Kramer vs. Kramer, 1979)

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Robert Benton, an Oscar-winning screenwriter and director, once modestly told The Los Angeles Times, “I don’t leave a trace in the mirror.” His scripts and feature films have left a much more indelible impression. He and David Newman co-wrote the script for Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde (1967), which helped to usher in the New Hollywood era in the 1970s. Pauline Kael called it the most important and influential movie of the 1960s. Places in the Heart (1984) earned an Academy Award for its screenplay. As a screenwriter, he was nominated five times, as a director, twice. Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), TCM’s featured film and the highest-grossing film of 1979, earned Oscars for Benton’s direction and screenplay, as well as acting honors for Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep.

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Offscreen, Benton began his career as an art director for Esquire magazine. It was Benton who pitched the idea of assembling four decades of jazz musicians for a group photo in 1959, titled “A Great Day in Harlem.” (The Oscar-nominated documentary A Great Day in Harlem [1994] tells the joyous story.) Benton directed only 11 feature films in 35 years. His most successful were more intimate character studies, such as an old school private eye (Art Carney) teamed with a New Age eccentric (Lily Tomlin) in The Late Show (1977) and a small-town father (Paul Newman) who reconnects with his estranged son through his young grandson in Nobody’s Fool (1994). Roger Ebert, in his review of Nobody’s Fool, summed up Benton’s gift when he wrote, “The best moments in the film are based on relationships.” In an interview with Venice magazine, Benton self-effacingly stated, “I’m a director of small things.”

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\nVal Kilmer (Top Secret, 1984)

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Top Secret!, the Zucker-Abrahams-Zuker team’s underseen and underrated follow-up to Airplane! (1980) finds Val Kilmer in the first flush of stardom—a deft comic actor and a perfect instrument for ZAZ’s straight-faced absurdities. Kilmer, a throat cancer survivor who died in April of pneumonia at the age of 65, was a character actor with leading-man good looks. He played the Caped Crusader in Joel Schumacher’s Batman Forever (1995) and Jim Morrison in Oliver Stone’s The Doors (1991), but his most indelible performances were in iconic supporting roles: Iceman in Top Gun (1986) and its sequel Top Gun: Maverick (2022); Doc “I’m your Huckleberry” Holliday in George P. Cosmatos’ Tombstone (1993); Chris in Michael Mann’s Heat (1995); and the villain Dieter von Cunth in Jorma Taccone’s cult classic MacGruber (2010). Robert Downey Jr., who co-starred with Kilmer in Shane Black’s cult favorite Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005), told The New York Times, “I’m sure this can’t be news to you that he’s chronically eccentric.” Anthony Breznican noted in Vanity Fair that Kilmer “both embraced and shattered the expectations of a Hollywood leading man” over his four-decade career.

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One of Kilmer’s conditions for accepting the role in Heat was that he be positioned on the poster between Robert De Niro and Al Pacino. As for signing on to the Batman franchise, he said simply of the much-analyzed character, “Just don’t step on the cape and you’re away.” In 1992, Roger Ebert proclaimed, “If there is an award for the most unsung leading man of his generation, Kilmer should get it. He has shown a range of characters so convincing that it’s likely most people, even now, don’t realize they were looking at the same actor.” Kilmer took a break from Hollywood for over a decade to spend time with his children and pursue other interests, such as touring the country with a one-man play he wrote and performed about Mark Twain, “Citizen Twain.” He told The Hollywood Reporter, “I don’t have any regrets. It’s an adage, but it’s kind of true: once you’re a star, you’re always a star—it’s just what level?”

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\nJoe Don Baker (Walking Tall, 1973)

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Joe Don Baker was one of character actor-savant Quentin Tarantino’s favorites. It speaks volumes that Baker is discussed on 15 pages by Tarantino in his film-geek memoir “Cinema Speculation.” Warren Beatty is referenced on only seven. Baker, who died in May at the age of 89, was a prolific character actor on television and in film before the grassroots success of Phil Karlson’s Walking Tall made him a star. Pauline Kael called the film “a volcano of a movie—and in full eruption.” Baker starred as Sheriff Buford Pusser, a real-life figure who became a one-man bat-wielding wrecking crew who cleaned up his corruption-riddled Tennessee hometown. Made for about $500,000, Walking Tall earned more than $40 million globally. Observed Tarantino, “After Walking Tall, Baker ‘was only a little less popular than Elvis Presley.’” In a 1975 Esquire piece, L. M. Kit Carson listed Baker with Robert De Niro and Pam Grier as a new generation of actors leading the way in a new era for Hollywood. A native of Groesbeck, Texas, Baker studied at New York’s prestigious Actors Studio. In a 1986 interview with Bobbie Wygant, she asked how he gained acceptance into the elite program. “I listened,” he said. “I did a scene with a girl, and she did most of the talking, so I listened. Come to find out, that’s what you’re supposed to do when you act is listen.”

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He made his Broadway debut in 1963 and his television debut two years later in an episode of “Honey West.” Notable early credits include an unbilled role in Cool Hand Luke (1967), Blake Edwards’ Wild Rovers (1971) and as Steve McQueen’s unscrupulous younger brother in Sam Peckinpah’s Junior Bonner (1972). Baker resisted typecasting by playing a wide variety of characters on both sides of the law. He played a CIA agent in two James Bond films, GoldenEye (1995) and Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), and a villain in a third, The Living Daylights (1987). He was a Babe Ruth type in Barry Levinson’s The Natural (1984), a private detective in Martin Scorsese’s Cape Fear (1991), Sen. Joe McCarthy in the HBO production Citizen Cohn (1992), a BAFTA-nominated turn as a CIA agent in the award-winning British miniseries Edge of Darkness (1985) and father to Gen Xer Winona Ryder in Ben Stiller’s Reality Bites (1994). In a career that lasted just over five decades, few actors ever walked taller.

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\nClaude Jarman Jr. (The Yearling, 1946)

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Claude Jarman Jr. was 10 years old when he was chosen out of 19,000 candidates by director Clarence Brown to portray Jody, a lonely Florida farm boy who adopts an orphaned fawn in The Yearling (1946). This adaptation of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’ 1939 Pulitzer Prize–winning novel costarred Gregory Peck and Jane Wyman as Jody’s parents. The film was one of MGM’s biggest hits, and Jarman received a Juvenile Academy Award for his performance—one of only 12 child actors to receive the honor before it was discontinued in 1960. A star was born. Under contract to MGM, Jarman was educated in the studio’s schoolhouse alongside classmates Elizabeth Taylor, Margaret O’Brien and Jane Powell. Over the next decade, he appeared in 11 films, including The Sun Comes Up (1949), a Lassie adventure that marked Jeanette MacDonald’s final big screen role; Intruder in the Dust (1949), based on William Faulkner’s novel about a Black man falsely accused of murder; and Rio Grande (1950), in which he played the Civil War soldier son of John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara.

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In an interview with The San Francisco Chronicle, Jarman said Intruder in the Dust was his favorite because it anticipated To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) in “dealing with a subject ahead of its time.” Rio Grande, he added, was the most fun to make—he even won over notoriously stern director John Ford. Jarman was the last surviving participant from an iconic group photo of nearly 60 MGM stars, including Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Katharine Hepburn and Judy Garland, taken in honor of the studio’s 25th anniversary. He left Hollywood in the mid-1950s as the studio system declined, and he settled in the Bay Area, where he served as executive director of the San Francisco Film Society (now SFFILM) from 1965 through 1980. In 2018, he published his memoir, “My Life and the Final Days of Hollywood.” He died in January at the age of 90.

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\nJoan Plowright (The Entertainer, 1960)

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“Larry would have been so thrilled by all the fuss the Americans are making of me,” Dame Joan Plowright told The Daily Mail in 2004. “Larry” was, of course, Laurence Olivier — her husband of 28 years, who had encouraged her to pursue a Hollywood career. Together, they were a royal couple of stage and screen and among the most esteemed actors of their generation. It was only after Olivier’s death in 1989 that Plowright achieved late-career stardom, earning an Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe win for Enchanted April (1991), as well as another Golden Globe for the HBO miniseries Stalin (1992) in which she played Joseph Stalin’s mother-in-law. She went on to lend her inimitable touch of class to such films as Dennis the Menace (1993), 101 Dalmatians (1996), Avalon (1990), I Love You to Death (1990) and Tea with Mussolini (1999). She also appeared as herself — alongside Dames Judi Dench, Eileen Atkins and Maggie Smith — in the delightful documentary Tea with the Dames (2018). At one point, the others confess to Plowright that acting opposite Olivier had terrified them even more than the critics. Plowright responded that it could be a “bit of a nightmare” for her, too: “Knowing that those who don't really go for you are gonna say, ‘Well, of course, it’s her husband who put her up in it.’ That was my sort of burden.”

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Both Olivier and Plowright were married to others when they met — she to actor Roger Gage, he to Vivien Leigh. Olivier first visited her backstage to congratulate her on her star-making turn in “The Country Wife.” Two years later, they co-starred in Tony Richardson’s The Entertainer, with Plowright as the loving daughter of a washed-up song-and-dance man — roles they later reprised in the film version that TCM is airing in tribute. They married in 1961 after both had divorced, and that same year Plowright triumphed on Broadway in “A Taste of Honey,” earning the Tony Award for Best Actress. She later scaled back her own career to focus on raising their family, allowing Olivier to continue his stage and film work. Plowright retired from acting in 2014 after gradually losing her eyesight. In a 1993 interview, Charlie Rose remarked that life seemed to be going beautifully for her — a flourishing screen career, plans to return to the stage and all her children involved in the theater. “It’s a kind of bonus time,” she reflected. “I keep my fingers crossed that it will last a bit.” Plowright died at 95 years old in January.

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\nLalo Schifrin (Cool Hand Luke, 1967)

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Selecting just one film to represent composer Lalo Schifrin may seem like—wait for it—an impossible mission, but as The New York Times noted in its review, Schifrin’s score for Cool Hand Luke “is perhaps the best he has done for films.” Schifrin himself called it his favorite. The score, which combined country and roots music with symphonic elements, was nominated for an Academy Award—one of six nominations he received. He received an honorary Oscar in 2018. In a career that spanned seven decades and hundreds of film and television scores, the Argentinian-born Schifrin composed for nearly every genre: horror (The Amityville Horror, 1979), action (Dirty Harry, 1971), comedy (Bringing Down the House, 2003), family (Sparky’s Magic Piano, 1987), martial arts (Enter the Dragon, 1973), Western (Joe Kidd 1972) and sci-fi (THX-1138, 1971). As The Washington Post observed, he provided the jazz-infused music of “rebellious cool” for Paul Newman, Steve McQueen and Clint Eastwood. “I like to work like a painter,” Schifrin told the National Jazz Archive, “mixing colors and different kinds of sounds.”

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Schifrin was equally prolific in television. “Let’s say you have to send a message to your family,” he told SoundTrackFest. “Film music would be an extensive letter where you can say many things, and the equivalent of television would be a telegram, where you have to say the most important things but with fewer words.” He is perhaps best known for his iconic theme for the TV series “Mission: Impossible.” In an episode of “Fun for All Ages,” a podcast for pop culture obsessives, Oscar-winning composer Michael Giacchino recalled reaching out to Schifrin when he signed on to score Mission: Impossible III (2006). He invited Schifrin to lunch and asked if there was anything he should or should not do when adapting his theme. Schifrin’s response: “Just have fun with it.”

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December on TCM is chock-full of must-see programming, so much so that we couldn’t fit it all into one email. So, we’re presenting you with our December round-up to provide more insight into this month’s programming and notable films to tune into all month long.

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\nHanna Barbera: December 3 and 10

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A celebration of Hanna-Barbera kicks off the month, beginning December 3 at 8pm ET, hosted by Jacqueline Stewart and two-time Grammy Award nominee Greg Ehrbar, author of “Hanna-Barbera, the Recorded History: From Modern Stone Age to Meddling Kids.” Named after its creators, animator and voice actor William Hanna and animator and cartoonist Joseph Barbera, Hanna-Barbera operated from 1957 to 2001. In their 50-plus years as an animation studio, the duo’s cartoons all but raised a generation, cornering the market of Saturday Morning cartoon blocks, which aired weekend mornings on ABC, CBS, and NBC. These shows—including “The Flintstones,” “The Jetsons,” “Scooby Doo, Where Are You!,” “Jonny Quest”—became staples of American culture and spawned numerous spinoffs, movies and remakes. Hanna-Barbera found continued success through syndication on cable networks as the years progressed, allowing their shows to be discovered by and shared with newer generations.

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Night one features the TCM premieres of Hey There, It’s Yogi Bear (1964); The Man Called Flintstone (1966); and A Christmas Story (1972), followed by MGM’s wartime musical Anchors Aweigh (1945). Directed by George Sidney and written by Isobel Lennart, Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra star as sailors on temporary leave in Hollywood, who meet a young boy and his singer aunt, for whom they try to get an audition with MGM conductor José Iturbi. The film is best remembered for its dance sequence with Kelly and Hanna-Barbera creation Jerry the Mouse of “Tom and Jerry” fame, using rotoscope animation to place live dancing into animated form. Tom the Cat has a cameo as a butler. Tom and Jerry reappear in the Esther Williams musical Dangerous When Wet (1953) as underwater dancers alongside the aquatic star. Kelly and Hanna-Barbera returned as collaborators in the 1956 dance film Invitation to Dance, directed by Kelly. Featuring three separate stories and no dialogue, the film’s third sequence is entirely live-action mixed with animation from the duo.

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Our second night is made up mostly of all TCM premieres, including another Gene Kelly collaboration, Jack and the Beanstalk (1967). The made-for-TV film won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Children's Program. Charlotte’s Web (1973) follows. Based on the popular children’s book by E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web became the first in a two-picture theatrical deal for Hanna-Barbera. The film became one of only four made by Hanna-Barbera that did not originate from their animated cartoons. One of those other films was C.H.O.M.P.S. (1979), the pair’s first live-action feature film. Joseph Barbera penned the story and led the production with American International Pictures, bringing his story of a mechanical watchdog to life. Other films in the night include The Gathering (1977), Baxter! (1973) and Holiday in Mexico (1946).

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\nKid Fans: Sundays at 8pm ET

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We bridge the gap between generations of classic movie lovers every Sunday evening with our Kid Fans programming, where films are chosen by our young guests ranging from 8 years old to 15. Starting the month-long showcase is Ben Mankiewicz’s own daughter, Josie. The 12-year-old picked Christmas in Connecticut (1945), a film she’s watched with her parents every year since she was born. Findlay is 13 years old from Tennessee and chose A Night to Remember (1958), the dramatic retelling of the 1912 Titanic tragedy, which he first watched on FilmStruck. Eight-year-old Mansa from California is a big fan of Charlie Chaplin and monster movies and chose The Gold Rush (1925), the first classic film he thinks he ever watched. Sisters Rosemary and Elizabeta, 13 and 11 years old respectively, were discovered on the 2025 TCM cruise and chose Chaplin’s The Great Dictator (1940) for their night.

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Henry is 13 years old from Georgia and the son of a film professor, and he chose the pre-Code musical Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933). Simone is a 15-year-old California native who published a book on classic Hollywood from a teenage perspective, and she chose the Clara Bow talkie Call Her Savage (1932). Georgia native Rosemary is 8 years old and enjoys flamenco dancing and ballet, so it’s no wonder that she chose Singin’ in the Rain (1952). Ella from Minnesota is 14 years old and attended the 2024 TCM Classic Cruise. She’s a big Elvis fan, which is why she chose Blue Hawaii (1961).

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\nDick Van Dyke 100th Birthday: December 13 at 12pm

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One of December’s greatest gifts to the 20th century was the birth of Dick Van Dyke on December 13, 1925. This month, we celebrate the comedy legend and entertainer on his 100th birthday with three of his most iconic movies at midday at 12pm ET, starting with Bye Bye Birdie (1963). Having starred in the original Broadway production in 1960, Van Dyke plays Albert Peterson, a struggling songwriter whose career plans are deterred when teen idol Conrad Birdie (Jesse Pearson) is drafted into the Army. Albert plots with his long-suffering girlfriend to have Conrad sing a song of his own on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” which leads to a series of shenanigans. The Broadway role shot Van Dyke, who at the time performed as an entertainer and comedian, into stardom and earned him a Best Actor Tony Award. The success of the stage play landed him the starring role on the 1961 Carl Reiner sitcom, “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” which ran for 5 seasons, won 15 Emmy Awards and launched the career of co-star Mary Tyler Moore.

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Van Dyke followed up his success with the Disney film Mary Poppins (1964), premiering on TCM. Co-starring with Julie Andrews, Van Dyke plays a kindly chimney sweeper, street painter and friend to the whimsical and magical nanny Mary Poppins, who is quite literally blown into the household of an Edwardian family in London with two scrappy children. The film was a major success for Disney and further cemented Van Dyke’s popularity and legacy. Van Dyke returned to the Edwardian era a few years later in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968), where he plays an inventor who turns an old, wrecked racecar into a magical flying machine that allows him to take his children on a fantastical, otherworldly adventure.

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\nClassic Christmas Marathon: December 19 at 8pm ET

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Jolliness and merriment abound during our annual Classic Christmas Marathon beginning December 19th at 8pm ET and continuing through Christmas Day. Cozy up with the classics and enjoy the gift of cinema through our lineup, featuring 75 films from a variety of genres, decades and countries. The Hollywood staples are here: Jimmy Stewart and Margaret Sullavan find love in The Shop Around the Corner (1940), while Love Finds Andy Hardy (1938). Meanwhile, Ginger Rogers finds a bundle of joy that makes her an unexpected Bachelor Mother (1939). Barbara Stanwyck steals her way into a Christmas romance with Fred MacMurray in Remember the Night (1940).

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The tale of the three wisemen is revisited as a Technicolor Western starring John Wayne, Pedro Armendáriz and Harry Carey Jr. in 3 Godfathers (1948), and again in We’re No Angels (1955) with Humphrey Bogart, Aldo Ray and Peter Ustinov playing dastardly escaped convicts whose presence blesses a struggling family at Christmas. Little Women get their time to shine in both the 1933 version and its 1949 remake. In its TCM premiere, Prancer (1989) finds a small-town Midwestern family experiencing a Christmas miracle when the young child of a grieving widower pledges to care for a wounded reindeer.

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Silent Sunday Nights fans need not fret this season. Silent comedian and director Charley Chase stars in another TCM premiere Sunday at midnight, There Ain’t No Santa Claus (1926). Chase plays an unfortunate tenant whose landlord’s greed impedes his holiday cheer. TCM Imports lovers will be happy to know that among our lineup is the French-Canadian Mon oncle Antoine (1971), directed by Claude Jutra, and follows the coming-of-age of a 15-year-old boy in Quebec during the Christmas season. And no Christmas lineup on TCM would be complete without a bit of noir. In Backfire (1950), Virginia Mayo is a military hospital nurse who helps care for Edmond O’Brien, a former GI recently discharged from the hospital and on the hunt to clear the name of his former army buddy, now on the lam after being charged with murder.

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\nNew Beginnings: December 31 at 8pm ET

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On December 31st, we end the year with a TCM tradition. Our hosts will once again gather on air to introduce a night of films to ring in the New Year, with the special day playing a key part in each film. Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001) will start the festivities, airing for the first time ever on TCM. Renée Zellweger stars as the titular character, a 30-something-year-old woman whose visit to a New Year’s Eve party sparks the desire to make changes in her personal and professional life, which she chronicles in her diary. Based on the novel by Helen Fielding, the film, also starring Colin Firth and Hugh Grant, spawned three sequels and a musical adaptation. In Only You (1994), also airing in its TCM premiere, Marisa Tomei is a schoolteacher who has believed since childhood that she’s destined to marry a man named Damon Bradley, whom she doesn’t meet until a few days before her marriage to another man. Robert Downey Jr., Bonnie Hunt and Billy Zane also star.

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Fate playing a part in a cross-country romance is also the theme of Nora Ephron’s romantic comedy, Sleepless in Seattle (1993), an inspired remake of Leo McCarey’s 1957 romance, An Affair to Remember. When a young Seattle-based boy calls a radio show to wish for a new wife for his widowed father (Tom Hanks), a reporter in Baltimore (Meg Ryan) becomes convinced they’re destined to be together and hopes for a chance meeting at the top of the Empire State Building. Barry Levinson’s Diner (1982) finds a group of friends reunited in 1959 Baltimore for a friend’s New Year’s Eve wedding as they transition into adulthood. Closing out the night is Whit Stillman’s Academy Award-nominated independent feature Metropolitan (1990), which follows a group of upper-class New York socialites whose typical day-to-day is shaken up by an outsider.

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At midnight, East Coast time, our hosts will ring in the new year and again at midnight Pacific time. For a full listing of films, check the TCM website schedule.

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A reairing of the Two for One series Saturday evenings beginning October 4th at 8pm ET.
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\nJoin TCM host Ben Mankiewicz each Saturday evening as he sits down with a different filmmaker who has carefully curated a double bill of films to share. From comforting combinations to surprising and thought-provoking duos, we will showcase how these films connect, entertain, and speak to each other and the viewer.
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FEATURED FILMS & SPECIAL GUESTS

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10/4	Lin-Manuel Miranda	The Bandwagon (1953) \n\t\t\tAll That Jazz (1979)
10/11	Jamie Lee Curtis	The Manchurian Candidate (1962) \n\t\t\tSweet Smell of Success (1957)
10/18	John Carpenter	Frankenstein (1931) \n\t\t\tThe Curse of Frankenstein (1957)
10/25	Paul Giamatti	Carnival of Souls (1962) \n\t\t\tRosemary’s Baby (1968)
11/1	Kathy Bates	Bringing Up Baby (1938) \n\t\t\tStage Door (1937)
11/8	Brian Tyree Henry	Imitation of Life (1959) \n\t\t\tThe Learning Tree (1969)
11/15	Steve Buscemi	Scarecrow (1973) \n\t\t\tDog Day Afternoon (1975)
11/22	Nathan Lane	Double Indemnity (1944) \n\t\t\tChinatown (1974)
11/29	Joe Dante	The Night of the Hunter (1955) \n\t\t\tThe Fool Killer (1965)
12/6	Debra Winger	People Will Talk (1951) \n\t\t\tThe Scarlet Empress (1934)
12/13	Rosie Perez	Killer’s Kiss (1955) \n\t\t\tThe Harder They Fall (1956)
12/27	Robert Townsend	Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941) \n\t\t\tNetwork (1976)

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