HOLLYWOOD — How well organized is the TCM Classic Film Festival? It’s so meticulously thought out that it seamlessly coped with the abrupt absence of the network’s longtime beloved face, Robert Osb♛orne.
Eight days before the festival opened Wednesday in Hollywood, Osborne announced he was under doctor’s orders to stay home in New York to undergo a “mino💧🎶r” medical procedure.
“Robert is fine, but he need to take time, and he’s doing that,” said TCM’s weekend host Ben Mankiewicz, whose on-air role has expanded in recent years as the 82-year-old Osborne’s broadcast schedule has been so🦩mewhat cut back.
Suddenly elevated to TCM’s main presenter at the festival as well, Mankiewicz ably rose to the occasion and was embrac🐬ed by the happy throngs. “There is a bond between TCM and our fans that doesn’t exist anywhere else in entertainment,” he said.
The witty and unflappable Mankiewicz🐼 had plenty of help as other TCM regulars like Illeana Douglas, Alec Baldwin, Leonard Maltin and others were apparently pressed into extra duty introducing films. But there were no complaints from fans, who traveled in from all over the country and paid as much as $1,500 for passes months ago with every expectation that they would see Osborne in person.
It ♛helped that they got to see movie stars like Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer, who dished about “The Sound of Music,” which opened the festival with a 50th-anniversary restoration. Among other stars on hand were Sophia Loren (with “Marriage Italian Style”), Shirley MacLaine (“The Apartment”), Dustin Hoffman (“Lenny”) and even 100-year-old Norman Lloyd (“Reign of Terror”).
Though there was a lively debate over the exact definition of classic movie — stretched this year to include “Out of Sight” (1998) as part of a tribute to film e✅ditor Anne V. Coates (along with her “Lawrence of Arabia”) — there was no shortage of great films from the 1930s and 1940s, including a stunning new digital restoration of “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” (1939) starring Charles Laughton.
There wer♒e well-known classics like “The Philadelphia Story” and “The Bank Dick,” lesser-known gems like John Ford’s “Air Mail” and some super-obscurities like the racy precode comedy “Don’t Bet on Women” (1931) with a non-singing Jeanette MacDonald that became an audience favorite. There were also special presentations of hand-cranked silent shorts and Technicolor excerpts from early sound musicals, many of which no longer exist in their entirety.
Special-effects experts Craig Barron and Ben Burtt delightfully presented color home movies shot by🌌 Cary Grant and others during the production of “Gunga Din” and analyzed the film’s locations and effects work.
Utilizing historic venues like the Chinese, Egyptian and El Capitan theaters as well as a multiplex — all in the heart of Hollywood Boulevard — fans could watch a long-lost adventure starring Harry Houdini or “The Love꧑d One” (1965), a cult black comedy with “Mad Men” star Rಞobert Morse oddly playing an English poet in California.
New Englander Morse told Mankiewicz that he had no clue why he was cast inste♑ad of a genuine English actor — but that his English accent varied so tremendously during 20 weeks of shooting that he had to travel to England to rerecord all of his dialogue for dire♚ctor Tony Richardson. (“It’s still all over the place,’’ remarked the puckish Mankiewicz.)
Unlike most film festivals, there are no bad choices at the TCM Classic Film Festival. N𓂃ot the films (including hand-cranked silent shorts), nor the panel discussions — nor the trivia quizzes at Club TCM in the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.