TCM goes to Oscar University
TV festival groups films like college courses
How often do the Academy Awards get it right?
“I basically think the Oscars always get it right for the time,” says TCM host Robert Osborne, who has written the official history, “80 Years of the Oscar.” “It’s not fair to critique an Oscar-winner if you weren’t there at the time. You don’t know what people were going through.”
He cites “Around the World in 80 Days,” the 1956 winner for best picture, as an example.
“It was originally shown on a huge screen with a terrific music score,” Osborne says. “It was an overwhelming experience. Famous people were bit players. Now when you see it, if you don’t know who the people are, that inside amusement is not an element of the film anymore.”
Osborne is sharing Oscar lore for TCM’s “31 Days of Oscar,” airing through March 3. Only Oscar winners and nominees are presented during the marathon. Through the years, TCM has arranged the movies by Oscar categories or alphabetically. This year, the movies are grouped like college courses by topics.
“This is a college where you don’t take tests,” Osborne says.
Programming today is built around the Music Department, with such films as “Night & Day” airing at 8 p. m. and “Rhapsody in Blue” at 10:30 p. m., Thursday is the biology, Friday, physics and Saturday, world history.
The night of Feb. 15 salutes fashion photography in film. The films range from the frothy “Funny Face” to the serious “Darling” to the murder-mystery “Blowup.”
Earlier that same day, TCM pays tribute to painting and art history with “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” “An American in Paris, “Moulin Rouge” and “Lust for Life.”
“You’re not seeing the same type of movie over and over,” Osborne says. “If you’re feeling ill that day and you’re home, it’s not all terribly serious.”
The Oscar holds more sway than other showbiz prizes because it’s the granddaddy of them all, Osborne says.
“Anyone who wins an Oscar realizes they’re on the high plateau,” he says. “It’s the Oscar that’s the final endorsement. The academy is made of the cream of the crop working in the business. They know what you’ve done.”
In his TCM intros, Osborne tries to put into context why certain people won. He notes that Ginger Rogers was named best actress for “Kitty Foyle” — over Katharine Hepburn in “The Philadelphia Story” — because Rogers had a second movie in 1940, “Primrose Path.”
Gloria Grahame was dubbed best supporting actress of 1952 because she had four films that year. “She was so awfully good in all of them, and it’s a cumulative effect,” Osborne says. But he notes that she has little to do in the movie she won for, “The Bad and the Beautiful.”
“Singin’ in the Rain” was largely ignored in 1952 because “An American in Paris,” another MGM musical with Gene Kelly, had won the best picture the year before. Those oversights are less likely these days, Osborne says, because voters have screeners and the media offer more Oscar coverage.
Osborne predicts this will be a good year for the Academy Awards, which ABC will televise Feb. 22.
“Last year, the movies were so tough, so serious, and audiences didn’t want to go see them,” Osborne says. “This year, they were all movies I wanted to see. The people involved are people the general public knows: Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Sean Penn. It’s hard to get people interested when they’re not interested in the people.”
Osborne will have no talk that “Slumdog Millionaire” is a sure thing for best picture.
“I don’t think there’s such a thing as a slam dunk,” he says. “ ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ and ‘A Place in the Sun’ were both so brilliant in 1951. That’s when ‘An American in Paris’ won.”
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