Backlots

For lovers of classic Hollywood, next week is among the most anticipated of the year. The TCM Classic Film Festival, held every April since 2010, has become an annual pilgrimage for TCM devotees all over the globe. For three packed days, attendees enter a veritable wonderland of screenings, panels, and talks, geared toward the most passionate classic film fan.

For longtime festivalgoers, the “TCMFF” is a culture all its own, complete with yearly traditions, injokes, and institutional memory. As an example of this unique festival culture, one need only mention “the fire alarm in the Multiplex” to be met with a flood of stories about that night. Mention the time Illeana Douglas asked the audience “if anyone knew how many movies Myrna Loy and William Powell made together,” and the entire audience shouted in unison “FOURTEEN!” These are the stories we tell time and again, with lifelong friends we’ve made at this unique event.

Facebook groups such as “Going to the TCM Classic Film Festival” serve as communication points for attendees throughout the year. Expectations among regular attendees are so set in stone that any variation to the line policy, the opening night movie traditions, or even the date when the schedule comes out, is noticed and commented upon. The group, thousands of members strong, is comprised of yearly attendees, first time festivalgoers, and those who attended once, years ago. It has become a true community–so much, that first timers in the group often come to the festival having already made friends.

This year comes with many changes. In 2022, Turner Classic Movies was part of an acquisition by media giant Warner Bros. Discovery. While reports say that TCM is safe, many people continue to wring their hands over the future of the festival and the network alike. The TCM Classic Film Festival is not a profit-making endeavor–it began as a way for viewers to connect with each other, and this is what it remains. Following the Warner Bros. Discovery acquisition, many have noticed changes in programming and festival culture. This year, the traditional booksigning events at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel have disappeared. Some programming is oddly out of line with the TCM audience. A special unannounced Saturday night screening had fans abuzz. Could it be Julie Andrews for Mary Poppins? Barbra Streisand for The Way We Were?

The announcement was finally made a few days ago. It will be There’s Something About Mary (1998) with special guest Lin Shaye (Magda in the film).

Also concerning some passholders is a new promotion by festival sponsor Citi, in which individuals with a Citicard are able to purchase tickets, in limited quantity, to The Big Chill. Tickets cost $20, they come with preferred seating, and ticketholders will be in line with passholders. Passholders do not have access to preferred seating. A festival pass can cost upward of $2500. The least expensive pass is $400. It seems unfair, passholders tell me, that they may be cut in line by a Citi ticketholder, who may end up with a better seat.

The fear expressed by many longtime attendees is that with each passing year, the festival will become more corporate in order to raise the money desired by Warner Bros. Discovery, or it will disappear altogether. The tone of this coming week may give us a better idea of what the future holds.

Still, this promises to be an interesting festival. While booksignings at the Roosevelt have been suspended this year, I will be signing copies of my book, Captain of Her Soul: The Life of Marion Davies, at the Hollywood Heritage Museum on April 12. Joining me will be Kristen Lopez, author of the newly published But Have You Read the Book? Officially, this event is part of the Facebook group “Going to the TCM Classic Film Festival” pre-party, but anyone can come. If you haven’t gotten a book yet, this is the perfect time to do so, as proceeds benefit the museum.

I’ll be posting every festival evening, as usual, and I will make another post with my schedule as the time gets closer, with comments on individual screenings.

Until then, see you at the festival!

Day 2 of the TCM Classic Film Festival was one filled with laughter. From the first moment the schedule came out, I knew it would be–with The Sunshine Boys and Tootsie on the agenda, there is no other possible outcome. I started the day with The Sunshine Boys, a wonderful screening introduced by Randy Haberkamp of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, with Richard Benjamin as a featured guest afterward. Richard Benjamin plays Walter Matthau’s nephew in the film, an talent agent who represents (and barely tolerates) his ex-vaudeville comic uncle. He tries to reunite his uncle with his old comedy partner, played by George Burns, but there’s one problem…they hate each other.

Randy Haberkamp indicated in his introduction that Richard Benjamin’s performance is often overlooked in favor of the two stars. I find that to be very easy on the small screen, but viewing a film on the big screen can make all the difference. Richard Benjamin’s performance lit up the screen, as did his charisma with Walter Matthau. In his interview afterward, Richard Benjamin discussed how close he came with Walter Matthau in real life, which was very touching to hear.

The George Burns role was originally supposed to go to Jack Benny. Jack, however, had recently been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and was too sick to take on the strain of a new film. To replace him, he recommended his longtime best friend George Burns, who had not been in films since 1939. Jack died in late 1974, and George played the role to perfection, earning an Academy Award for his performance and revitalizing his career. A beautiful end to one of show business’ great friendships.

A wonderful crowd showed up for Tootsie, which is always an exceptionally fun movie to see on the big screen. I have always adored Tootsie, finding it to be unexpectedly deep in its social commentary and the acting is superb. There is hardly a single line that isn’t laugh-out-loud funny. Elaine May was an uncredited screenwriter on the film, and I can hear her influence clearly throughout the script.

It was especially fun for me to watch Tootsie with my friend Sara, a Jessica Lange superfan who was seeing it on the big screen for the first time. Jessica Lange won a much-deserved Oscar for her performance, which is so beautifully nuanced. She conveys complex emotions so clearly in her face–in the scene where she tells Dorothy she can’t see her anymore, you feel her pain viscerally.

Following Tootsie, I had an appointment with my friend Priscilla. Months before the fest began, we had discussed getting together to watch The Jack Benny Show sometime during the festival. We’re both ardent fans of Jack and we had bonded over that over Twitter. So we met poolside at the Roosevelt and watched the Peter, Paul, and Mary episode, laughing until our sides hurt. We then proceeded to watch Jack Benny for a good hour and a half together, and Priscilla showed me this sketch, which sent us into even more hysterical fits of laughter:

While some people come to the festival for the movies, many of us consider these kinds of moments an integral part of the experience. There certainly isn’t anyone in my non-classic film life with whom I can watch Jack Benny for hours on end, and I’m grateful to the festival for providing a place where we can be ourselves with like-minded people. It’s hard to overstate how much this part of the festival means to me, and to all of us who often feel that our interests don’t align with our peers in everyday life.

After our Jack Benny marathon, I went to the Doris Day centennial celebration panel at Club TCM. It was a lovely and loving discussion with several of Doris Day’s friends, discussing their personal histories with Doris Day and what she was like offscreen. In my view, Doris Day is one of the most misinterpreted personalities of classic Hollywood. When people think of her, they often think of a virginal girl-next-door, representative of a wholesome mirage of 1950s culture. In contrast, the real Doris Day was a passionate and vibrant woman who devoted her life to the wellbeing of animals. She had a frequently difficult life, surviving an abusive marriage, the death of a child, and a second husband who squandered all her earnings. In regard to her music, people know “Que Sera Sera” and other light songs (though I could write a treatise on why “Que Sera Sera” is not at all the light song it seems), but her career with Les Brown in the early 1940s established her as one of the top female vocalists of her era, a fact that is often overlooked when we remember Doris Day today. Her friends on the panel described a down-to-earth, loving, and generous woman who lived for animals and adored her fans. It was a moving and gentle tribute.

The next movie on the agenda was The Gay Divorcee, the first star pairing of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. The movie also features a 17-year-old Betty Grable, who performs a delightful number called “Let’s K-nock K-nees” with Edward Everett Horton, which nearly steals the film out from under Fred and Ginger. It’s been stuck in my head for a full day and I don’t have any particular interest in getting it out.

As I mentioned in a previous post, watching Fred and Ginger on the big screen is one of life’s great treats. One of the interstitials playing before movies throughout the festival this year is a clip of Fred Astaire preparing to jump on a couch in a scene from The Gay Divorcee. It fascinates me, and over the course of the festival I’ve been watching it closely to see what it is that he’s doing that I find so interesting. I think it’s the combination of grace and intense strength, especially in his upper body, a seemingly incongruous combination that Fred has in perfect proportion.

While watching The Gay Divorcee, I paid special attention to how Fred and Ginger moved, together and separately. One thing I noticed is that both “Night and Day” and “The Continental” are danced on a floor with white lines running down it. When Fred and Ginger dance together, their feet never land on lines. They dance over them, jump over them, but their dance routines are orchestrated around those lines and it’s a beautiful detail to watch.

I’ll be back tomorrow with more details from day 3!

“This California dew is a little heavier than usual tonight,” as Debbie Reynolds said in Singin’ in the Rain, and she might have been talking about this evening in Hollywood, where an unexpected downpour punctuates a full first festival day.

The fun kicked off this afternoon with “So You Think You Know Movies?” Bruce Goldstein’s exceptionally difficult TCM trivia game hosted in the Blossom Room of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. It was a crowded and excited audience, filled with many veteran festival attendees. I ran into my friend Karen Hannsberry of The Dark Pages, and we formed a trivia team that consisted of several very knowledgeable people. Thanks to some great deduction skills on the part of Stephan Reginald in particular…we won the game! It was the first time I’ve ever come close to winning “So You Think You Know Movies?” We each received a nice TCM tote bag with a book, a DVD, and some magnets, and the thrill of having succeeded in some of the hardest movie trivia there is.

Following the trivia, several friends and I went to dinner at California Pizza Kitchen. Passover is still observed until Saturday evening and I’ve had a bit of a hard time finding good food options. Fortunately, California Pizza Kitchen had a few Passover-friendly options and my friends and I had a delicious meal as we caught up after many long years apart. It is an interesting phenomenon to be back at a festival like this, after 3 years where we’ve lacked mass socialization. I am very conscious of being “out of practice” with socializing, and it’s a strange feeling to want to talk to people without really being sure of what to say. I’ve expressed this to some of my friends, who admit to the same feelings. I’m glad I’m not alone.

My friends from dinner were all going to Jewel Robbery, so we got in line together and sat together in Multiplex 4. The introduction was by Cari Beauchamp, always one of the most popular presenters of the festival. She gave a detailed and engaging talk about the pre-Code era, and its implications for portrayals of women and their sexual freedom. At several points during the introduction, audience members clapped and cheered for her statements about women’s rights, and reacted with enthusiastic laughter at some of the letters from the Hays Office. It was a marvelous introduction fit for an audience that knows movies. A friend who was sitting near me remarked: “Every presenter at the festival should learn from Cari Beauchamp. Her introductions should be the high standard everyone tries to reach.”

The movie itself is pure joy. It tells the story of a woman who falls for a jewel thief after witnessing a robbery, and it is full of double entendre, innuendo, and all the glorious dialogue we expect from pre-Codes. In addition, there are several scenes featuring “drugged cigarettes,” clearly marijuana. In true pre-Code fashion, it’s not at all discreet–characters who smoke these cigarettes are seen laughing at nothing, on a ridiculous high that William Powell says will culminate in “a good appetite.” Something not able to be seen just a few years later, and rare even for this time period.

Afterward, I went up to the Hollywood Legion, a beautiful 1940s theater that was renovated in time for the 2019 TCM Festival. I saw Indiscreet there in 2019, and marveled at the uniqueness of this venue that radiates the 1940s. This evening, I saw A Star is Born, the original 1937 version of the story. I wondered what I would notice when I watched it on the big screen, and I found that my eyes were particularly drawn to the color blue. The 1937 A Star is Born is an early example of the 3-strip Technicolor process. Prior to the development of 3-strip technology, the 2-strip Technicolor process had a pastel quality to it, with limitations for blues and reds. Blues appeared green, reds appeared pink. In A Star is Born, we see a scene next to a sparkling clear blue swimming pool, one of the early times an audience could see a color like that on the screen. A dark blue umbrella and the dark blues of Janet Gaynor’s outfit accentuate the brightness of the pool. Putting myself in the place of a 1930s audience member, I can only begin to imagine what a thrill it must have been to see that brilliant color onscreen.

Now I’m back in the room, ready to prepare for another big festival day tomorrow. See you then!