Saturdays in July | 8 Movies
TCM’s Two for One series continues this July with four more inspired double-features curated by an A-list roster of creative artists. Each twin bill is like Mama Gump’s box of chocolates—you never know what you’re gonna get. Who would have thought, for example, that brilliant comic actor Nathan Lane would share with host Ben Mankiewicz two classic noirs? Or that Saturday Night Live legend Bill Hader would pair an international award-winning film about the Polish resistance during World War II with a neo-realist portrait of Sicilian bandit Salvatore Giuliano? But that is the great fun of Two for One!
Diane Warren kicks things off on July 4, with two classics that showcase the power of a memorable song to help tell a story. The New York Times recently ranked Warren among the 30 greatest living songwriters. If a jukebox musical were built around all her hits, it might run longer than the legendary 8.5-hour Broadway production of “The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickelby.” Warren has written chart-topping songs for Aerosmith, Cher, Chicago, Celine Dion, Heart, Faith Hill, Taylor Swift and Toni Braxton, to name only a few. She has received a staggering 17 Academy Award nominations, and in 2022 received an Honorary Oscar at the Governors Awards. Warren has a keen ear for a good song, which is my point, and viewers will hear plenty of them in her Two for One picks.
If Warren could turn back time, she would undoubtedly want to revisit the 1960s, which she has called the golden age of pop songwriting. Her two films are classics of that era. Up first is James Hill’s Born Free (1966), based on naturalist Joy Adamson’s bestselling memoir of how she (Virginia McKenna) and her African game warden husband (Bill Travers) rescued a lion cub from the wild, raised her in captivity and re-educated her so that she could return to the wild. But Born Free is best remembered for John Barry’s Oscar-winning score and the anthemic theme song that also won an Academy Award. For readers of a certain age, Don Black’s lyrics are indelible (“Born free /As free as the wind blows/As free as the grass grows / Born free to follow your heart….”). On the flipside, Warren has chosen Richard Lester’s A Hard Day’s Night (1964). Not surprisingly, Warren has a big, big love for the Beatles. In an interview with the Alliance of Women Film Journalists, she called the Fab Four her biggest influence. Beginning with A Hard Day’s Night’s classic title tune, the hits just keep on coming, song after song. By the time the night is over, you’ll be singing along. So, be sure to tune in. You won’t want to miss a thing.
It would be a crime to miss Two for One on July 11, when Colson Whitehead presents two masterworks: John Huston’s The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) and Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing (1956). Whitehead is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner for his novels, The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys, both superbly adapted for the screen. Whitehead’s fiction is celebrated for its authentic, gritty settings and memorable dialogue. The Treasure of Sierra Madre delivers on both fronts. Humphrey Bogart stars in one of his signature roles as Fred C. Dobbs, an American down on his luck in Mexico, who teams up with another drifter (Tim Holt) and a grizzled old prospector (Walter Huston in his Oscar-winning role) to go prospecting in the mountains. The dangers come from outside (the punishing landscape, the murderous desperados) and within (Dobbs’ greed unhinges him). The quotable dialogue has been referenced in everything from a Bugs Bunny cartoon (“8 Ball Bunny”) to Blazing Saddles (1974).
The Killing is an inspired choice by the author of the masterful heist trilogy that comprises “Harlem Shuffle,” “Crook Manifesto” and “Cool Machine,” the third in the "Harlem Trilogy," which is scheduled to be published in July. Whitehead has cited Kubrick’s seminal crime drama as a primary hard-boiled inspiration with its time-jumping portrayal of a gang whose meticulous planning for a racetrack robbery goes all kinds of wrong. “I’ve always had an affection for those kinds of stories where very flawed people try to outwit fate,” he told The Guardian. In an interview with The New Yorker, which ran a pre-publication excerpt from “Harlem Shuffle,” Whitehead elaborated that the novel’s “tick-tock” structure was an homage to The Killing, “which features a dispassionate, omniscient narrator who counts down the heist and the robbers’ doomed fates.”
Viewers can expect—wait for it—even Better Things when Pamela Adlon brings two musical offerings to the Two for One party on July 18. Adlon, the creator-writer-director-and star of the Peabody Award-winning ensemble series, Better Things is also a prolific voice artist. She is perhaps best known for her iconic Emmy-winning role as Bobby Hill on King of the Hill. If you grew up in the 1990s, she was probably embodying characters on your favorite animated series, including Phineas and Ferb, Jungle Cubs, Pepper Ann and Recess. So it’s not surprising she would choose an animated feature, Ralph Bakshi’s American Pop (1981), to start the evening. It is also not surprising that his work would resonate with her. Bakshi’s groundbreaking films defy convention, upend expectations and are fiercely uncompromising. American Pop, noted The New York Times, “is a dazzling display of talent, nerve, ideas (old and new), passion and a marvelously free sensibility” in its century-in-the-life epic spanning four generations of aspiring musicians.
Adlon’s second film is Alan Parker’s Fame (1980). Its title song will live forever as an Academy Award-winner for Best Original Song. It was also nominated in four other categories including Best Original Screenplay. Set at New York’s High School of Performing Arts, Fame, like Adlon herself, explodes with talent by its cast of newcomers—including Irene Cara and Barry Miller—who pursue their dreams of achieving show business’ exalted perch.
This month’s edition of Two for One wraps on July 25 when screen icon Lorraine Bracco shares two Oscar-winning turns by Anna Magnani and Marion Cotillard. Bracco, an Oscar and Emmy-nominated actor, is indelibly associated with two crime classics. She portrayed Karen Hill, wife to gangster Henry Hill, in Martin Scorsese’s GoodFellas (1990) and Dr. Jennifer Melfi, psychiatrist to crime family boss Tony Soprano in The Sopranos. She is a valued member of any ensemble, from Riding in Cars with Boys (2001) to the heartwarming No. 1 Netflix hit Nonnas (2025).
For her Two for One, Bracco salutes two towering lead performances. First on the double bill is The Rose Tattoo (1955), Daniel Mann’s electric adaptation of Tennessee Williams’s play, which Williams wrote with Magnani in mind to play on the stage. The Italian actress declined but did consent to star in the film version. It was her first Hollywood film and her first in the English language. The New York Times praised, “She has a triumphant field day” as a reclusive widowed Sicilian seamstress who is brought out of her shell by a truck driver (Burt Lancaster). Bracco shares an Italian heritage with the magnificent Magnani. HGTV viewers will recall her series My Big Italian Adventure, in which she restored a 200-year-old Sicilian hilltop villa. The second film Bracco chose to share is Oliver Dahan’s La Vie En Rose (2007), which Roger Ebert called in his four-star review, “one of the best bio-pics I’ve seen.” Starring Marion Cotillard, La Vie En Rose takes its cue from French singer Edith Piaf’s unconventional story with a non-linear narrative that time shifts to pivotal moments in her life. Cotillard, Ebert wrote, is “extraordinary” as “the little Sparrow,” who overcame a miserable childhood, temporary blindness and a tumultuous private life to become the most famous and beloved French singer of her time.
Two for One is one of TCM’s most popular features. Not only does it offer the pleasures of thoughtfully curated double features, but it also provides insights into how creative artists approach their own art and how select films have inspired them. As with this month’s co-hosts, the films they’ve chosen are delightfully diverse with surprising connections waiting to be discovered.
