For four days each year, we “old movie weirdos” go to film fan heaven. It’s called the TCM Classic Film Festival.
The festival, held annually in Los Angeles since 2010 (online and on TV only during the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021), offers a huge choice of movies, with at least four theaters (the iconic Chinese among them) hosting screenings at any given time, accompanied by talks from a variety of luminaries, including Turner Classic Movies hosts; stars, writers, directors, or their descendants; film scholars; or celebrities who just happen to love the film on the screen. Then there are panel discussions, trivia quizzes, parties — oh, the parties! — and a chance to connect with others who love classic film.
This summer, many fans of the TCM channel and the festival had some anxiety about the future of both, given major staff cuts imposed by parent company Warner Bros. Discovery. Those departing included key employees — Pola Chagnon, TCM’s executive vice president and general manager; Charlie Tabesh, the channel’s longtime programmer; and Genevieve McGillicuddy, the festival director — along with many others.
The anxiety has been eased somewhat by the rehiring of Tabesh and McGillicuddy (and vocal support for TCM by Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and Paul Thomas Anderson), along with assurances that there will be a festival in 2024. In any case, this has all led me to reflect on what the festival has meant to me.
I’ve been to every festival since 2010. I have seen many longtime favorites on the big screen, discovered films I’d never seen, gleaned insights from celebrity speakers, met the hosts, and best of all, made enduring friendships and found a community of, as we half-jokingly call ourselves, “old movie weirdos.”
There are many ways to define “classic” films. I tend to favor movies from the 1930s and ’40s — what I and many others consider Hollywood’s classic era. But also, films from any era can become classics. Sometimes purists among us grouse if either the festival or the channel shows too many “recent” movies — ’80s, ’90s, etc. But again, those can become classics, and for the festival, there’s the consideration that newer films have stars or directors who are still living and can attend.
I’ve had the joy of watching many of my favorite classics during the festival. Sure, I and most festival attendees have seen Casablanca over and over, but there’s nothing like seeing it in a theater with people who love it as much as you do, with an informative introduction by TCM host Ben Mankiewicz. For instance, he noted that Warner Bros. wasn’t serious about casting Ronald Reagan in what became Humphrey Bogart’s role — it was just floating the idea to get some early publicity. In any case, we can all be thankful it was Bogie who played Rick.
And it’s great being in a theater full of fans as we anticipate iconic moments. Like when Bogie says, “Here’s looking at you, kid,” or when Paul Henreid signals the orchestra to play “La Marseillaise” in Casablanca. In All About Eve, when Bette Davis says, “Fasten your seat belts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.” When Lauren Bacall is about to deliver the “You know how to whistle” line in To Have and Have Not, her first movie and where she and Bogart fell in love. When the villain played by the great Norman Lloyd in Alfred Hitchcock’s Saboteur meets his fate or when the monstrous mother portrayed by the equally great Angela Lansbury meets hers in The Manchurian Candidate.
Seeing Lloyd, who lived to be 106, and Lansbury, who died just last year at 96, in person at the festival have been highlights for me. I first knew Lloyd from St. Elsewhere, then learned about his earlier career, when he worked with some of the giants — Hitchcock, Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles. At the festival, he talked about, among other things, how Hitchcock filmed that scene at the end of Saboteur (no spoilers, but fans will know what I mean) and being Chaplin’s tennis partner. I spoke to him a couple times, and he was always gracious; I once told him he was a national treasure. I didn’t manage to speak to Lansbury, but I thoroughly enjoyed hearing about how she went from department store clerk to movie star with her first film, Gaslight.
Many other great moments with guests: Ann Blyth saying she actually liked Joan Crawford when they made Mildred Pierce together. Ted Donaldson, a child star of the 1940s, telling about his crush on Joan Blondell during the filming of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Shirley MacLaine calling Fred MacMurray, her costar in The Apartment, a cheapskate, and spoiling the ending of The Children’s Hour — not everyone knew how it came out! And one of my favorites: As Robert Morse was leaving after introducing The Loved One, someone in the audience asked what would happen on the next season of MadMen — his character had just been killed off. He shouted, “I come back and kill Jon Hamm!”
I’ve gotten to see many great directors at the fest as well. I saw comic genius Mel Brooks introduce Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, and High Anxiety, and his fellow comic genius and longtime friend Carl Reiner talk about Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid. Scorsese, a passionate advocate for film preservation, spoke before a screening of Hitchcock’s 1934 version of The Man Who Knew Too Much. And descendants of stars — Jennifer Grant, daughter of Cary; Rory Flynn, daughter of Errol; Wyatt McCrea, grandson of Joel; and Keith Carradine, son of John and a star in his own right.
The festival has also expanded my experience of silent and foreign films. I’ve seen the silents Sunrise, Seventh Heaven, and A Woman of Affairs, the latter two with live orchestral accompaniment. I’ve enjoyed French exports such as Jean-Luc Godard’s Band of Outsiders and François Truffaut’s Day for Night. TCM host Eddie Muller, interviewing the still-gorgeous Jacqueline Bisset before the latter, said it was the movie that made him fall in love with movies.
Muller is TCM’s film noir expert, but he’s full of insightful and witty comments on all genres. At festivals, he’s described The Big Sleep, a classic but confusing mystery, as not film noir but screwball comedy, and the comic revenge film Unfaithfully Yours as both screwball comedy and film noir. And he dubbed The Pajama Game, a musical set amid union contract negotiations, a left-wing social justice operetta.
Then there are the discoveries. This year I saw The Jackie Robinson Story (no, 42 wasn’t the first time his story was dramatized), which screened on the anniversary of his major league baseball debut. Robinson played himself, actually rather well, and the movie was amazingly blunt about the racism he faced — it was assuredly much worse in real life, but I didn’t expect to see how intensely it was portrayed in a film released in 1950.
And the festival is never short of LGBTQ+ content. It has shown such LGBTQ-focused or -inclusive fare as Maurice, Desert Hearts, Best in Show, A Mighty Wind, and Play It as It Lays, plus camp classics like Xanadu and The Opposite Sex. It has likewise spotlighted the work of many artists from our community — Montgomery Clift, Rock Hudson, John Waters, Stephen Sondheim, Jerome Robbins, and more — and enlightened audiences about the de-gaying of certain films, like the aforementioned A Woman of Affairs, which did just that with a character from the movie’s source material, Michael Arlen’s novel The Green Hat.
So in some ways, the festival is like a course in film history. It’s also fabulous fun. There are official opening night and closing night parties at the historic Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel (site of the first Academy Awards ceremony). Club TCM, set up in a ballroom at the Roosevelt, hosts the parties, panel discussions, and trivia quizzes, and in between it’s open to passholders who want to drop in to meet kindred spirits. There are many chances to make friends; during one of the trivia quizzes a few years ago, I reunited with a friend who’d been a coworker long ago, and we’ve kept in touch ever since.
Other friends have come through a Facebook group I belong to, Going to TCM Classic Film Festival. I have made too many friends to count — or name, because I’d inevitably leave someone out — because of this group, from all over the U.S. and abroad as well, and we look forward to seeing each other every year. Some of us travel to meet up outside the festival too. This group gathers for a party (it’s not an official TCM event) the night before the festival, and thanks to certain members’ connections, we’ve had several celebrity guests, including Donaldson, Barbara Rush, and Cora Sue Collins; the latter played the titular Queen Christina as a child in the 1933 film (Greta Garbo was the adult queen), among many other roles. And one year I got a special thrill by holding the Oscar won by Mary Astor in The Great Lie, courtesy of her great-grandson.
I’ll make an exception to the “no names” by saluting Kelly Kitchens Wickersham, a film publicist from Dallas who founded our Facebook group. To find the group, search Facebook for “Going to TCM Classic Film Festival.” Also: Kimberly Truhler, who gives fabulous talks on fashion in classic film; she usually has one the week of the festival (again, not an official TCM event), and she offers them at various Los Angeles venues the rest of the year. Plus, if you can fit more activity in, there are the many film sites, studios, specialty theaters, cemetery tours, and museums, including the fairly new Academy Museum, available around L.A. And don’t miss the Larry Edmunds Bookshop, which specializes in movie-related books and memorabilia. It often holds events during the festival.
Before I close, a shout-out to the great TCM staff and on-air hosts. In the early years of the fest, I got to meet the beloved original TCM host, Robert Osborne; he died in 2017 and is still sorely missed. But Mankiewicz, Muller, Dave Karger, Alicia Malone, and Jacqueline Stewart are wonderful too, and McGillicuddy and her people do a fantastic job of organizing the festival. Yes, there are some complaints every year — this theater’s too small, the lines are too long, this worker didn’t know what he was doing — but on the whole, it’s amazing that they bring it off.
There’s a TCM Classic Cruise too. I’ve never gone on it (I get seasick), but friends have recommended it highly. This year’s will be held November 6-11 on the Disney Magic, sailing from San Diego to Cabo San Lucas and Ensenada, Mexico. Announced guests include stars Kim Novak, Elliott Gould, George Chakiris, and Lorna Luft; filmmaker Ernest Dickerson; production designer Wynn Thomas; author Andy Marx (grandson of Groucho); Bruce Goldstein, programmer for New York’s Film Forum and all-around movie expert; and all the TCM hosts. The cruise is sold out, but you can try your luck on the waiting list.
But if you want to attend the festival next year, there’s plenty of time to plan. It’s usually held in April, and the dates are usually announced in November. Passes are available at various price levels, and you should order well in advance because they sell out. Tickets to individual films are sold only on a standby basis — after all passholders are admitted — and that doesn’t give you access to Club TCM events, although you’re welcome at our Facebook group party and other nonofficial events, such as Kimberly Truhler’s fashion presentations.
Overall, attending the festival isn’t cheap, but the experience is priceless. There’s nothing closer to film fan heaven than being one of those wonderful people out there in the dark.
Scroll on for highlights from past festivals.
Pictured, from left: Robert Osborne and Angela Lansbury; Shirley MacLaine; Carl and Rob Reiner
This content was originally published here.
