Vintage

Robert Osborne is well-known as the knowledgeable host on Turner Classic Movies, a position he's held since 1994. His thorough introductions to the classics are the result of his own career as an actor and film historian. Osborne started out as an actor with the famed Desilu Studios, formed by Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. He worked his way through the television industry, appearing in "The Californians" and in the pilot episode of "The Beverly Hillbillies". Also a journalist, Osborne was advised by Lucille Ball to combine his writing abilities with his admiration for film. He took her advice. Since 1982, he's also written a column in The Hollywood Reporter. Aside from that, Osborne once had the honor of accompanying Bette Davis to the Oscars. His relationships with those golden age personalities has made him one of the most revered historians in the business. We would like to extend a special thank you to Cassie and Julie at TCM for their help in setting up this interview. You can read the transcription and listen to the audio below. If your browser is not equipped with Flash, you can download it right here.

MP: I’m talking with Robert Osborne, who everyone is certainly familiar with as the host of Turner Classic Movies. He’s given us some of the best introductions to TCM’s never-ending stream of timeless films and he’s also become a legendary figure in the world of cinema. Mr. Osborne, thank you so much for your time today, it is greatly appreciated.

Robert: Well, I’m happy to be here, but you have to call me Robert.

MP: I'm sorry, Robert!

Robert: Okay.

MP: Well first, congratulations to TCM on the sixth year of their Summer under the Stars festival!

Robert: It is great. What I love about this, Gary, is the fact that because we have this big library, you can really show the whole star, the whole arc of their career. The other night we had Greta Garbo on and we had the first film she made in America, silent film, right up until the very end of her career. So you get to see this whole spectrum of somebody’s work, how they grow, how they change and all that. Because we are talking about legendary stars here it’s all good stuff. But it’s just fascinating to see entire careers played out in a twenty-four hour period.

MP: Exactly. Sort of like a time line. How are the individual stars chosen? Is there any specific criteria? Is it by demand or vote?

Robert: Well, what we try to do is actually every year, we’ve never had anybody on every year. But we have some like, Humphrey Bogart and Jimmy Stewart, that’s been on almost every year. So we do have some of the legendary ones that are just kind of firmly in there. But we try to otherwise have people that we haven’t had before. Like, we’ve never had Greer Garson before, we’ve never had Peter Lorre before, we’ve never had Trevor Howard before, we’ve never had Michael Caine before. And so we try to intersperse those with some of the other legendary ones, like the Fred Astaires and the Barbara Stanwycks, etc. So you’re kind of getting a mix of some of the newer people, not new new, but you know, Michael Caine as opposed to, say Bogart, and all of that. So you are getting all spectrums. Also, one year we might have Ginger Rogers, which will incorporate some of the Fred Astaire movies. This year, we have Fred Astaire which incorporates some of the Ginger Rogers. So there is cross-pollenization there as well.

MP: Right, and I believe this year you have people like Chaplin and Marie Dressler, but you also have Janet Leigh and James Garner a little bit later.

Robert: Right and we’ve never had them before. Another thing that is kind of required somewhat is you do have to have like at least one or two of their more definitive films to do a salute. Janet Leigh, there was a long time that we wanted to have Janet Leigh involved, back when she was alive actually. But we couldn’t get the rights to "Psycho" for a long time, but now we have that. You couldn’t really do a Janet Leigh retrospective, although she has made a lot of good films, great films like "Manchurian Candidate" and others, but you really do have to have "Psycho" in there somewhere.

MP: Exactly. That’s to draw people in who might be more familiar with them through their well-known work.

Robert: Right. So, Richard Widmark, we have one we’ve never shown before coming up called “Pickup on South Street”, which is one of the great film noir movies.

MP: It is.

Robert: And so we’ve never had that before. So that’s kind of important in there too. One star that we’re very fond of that we’ve always done a lot of things with is Leslie Caron, but she didn’t make enough movies to really do a 24 hour salute. Or at least enough movies that we have access to.

MP: Are there any stars that haven’t been honored that you would personally like to see included?

Robert: Well, there’s some, yeah, there’s some in there like Robert Taylor, we’ve never done anything on him yet. I’ve got a list somewhere that I kind of keep pushing every year towards it. But again, you know, it’s that thing of where there are so many goodies that sometimes it takes a little while to get around to them. We’ve always had great respect for Greer Garson and the films that she’s made and they hold up wonderfully, but we’ve never had a slot for her up until this point.

MP: I guess it’s better to have more selection than less.

Robert: Yeah, exactly. But the main thing is to have a Marie Dressler and a Charlie Chaplin, but to also have Michael Caine and Richard Widmark. So you’re getting some of these really old timers, and what I love is the fact that people might not otherwise see Marie Dressler in a movie. For those that don’t know Marie Dressler, she was this huge star in the 30s, but she was like an old walrus. She was this big, kind of bulky, really unattractive lady with this very expressive face that could be so funny and so touching at the same time. And I love people, those that basically know her, know her from the one movie “Dinner at Eight” where she is very funny and most interesting in. But she also won an Oscar for a movie called “Min and Bill”, she was in a movie called “Tugboat Annie”, she was in a movie called “Emma” that she won an Oscar nomination for, and it is wonderful in 2008 to be able to see those films, see great prints of them, and really see this magic. And you also realize then that movie magic, which a lot of people think started the year they were first conscious of movies, that it’s an ongoing thing, that this industry has been around a long time and that some of these performances are timeless.

MP: You hold your own classic film festival with special guests and a schedule of features that runs over a few days. In addition to your work on TCM and their efforts, that's created a new market for older films. How important do you think it is that these images from the past are kept in the public consciousness?

Robert: Well, I think it’s very important. I think it is important that some of the great books that are written are available for everybody to see them. And what people have to realize…I just had a discussion not too long ago with a lady who said “You know, I don’t really watch old films too much until I watched Turner Classic Movies because I always thought old films were, you know, old, and I’m not too interested in them. I want new films.” And I said “But wait. If you haven’t seen a film it’s not an old movie.” It’s like, if you haven’t read Three Musketeers, or Huckleberry Finn or Gone with the Wind, that’s not an old book, that’s a new book when you read it. And if you don’t try some of these films that were made when we really had people that knew how to write, knew how to film, knew how to light a set, knew how to edit a film, and films that are not necessarily based on explosions, car chases, kind of raunchy slapstick comedy that we have today, it’s really wonderful to go back into that world and see some of these great performances and great movies. And if you haven’t seen it, it’s not an old film.

MP: Now this is interesting and just to bounce off that...I always ask this in the midst of any conversation about film, and I’m really interested in what you might have to say about it. We’re seeing an incredible, almost inordinate amount of remakes churned out lately and there seem to be logical arguments both for and against the idea of remaking an older film. What is your feeling on that?

Robert: Well, I say I understand why they do it. They want the title, the familiar title, to help people, and I think there are some stories that can be remade. I thought that for the most part the remake of “3:10 to Yuma” was a very good one, but I’m glad we still have the old one because I think it is even better. They’ve just remade “The Women” which was one of the great classic comedies of 1939, which had great stars like Joan Crawford and Norma Shearer, Rosalind Russell and Joan Fontaine, and they made it with Meg Ryan, Candice Bergen, Cloris Leachman, Bette Midler and others. It’ll be interesting, and I don’t object to them doing that as long as we still have the originals to look at. I think too often though, that because we still have some of these films, I don’t quite know what the purpose of remaking “Red River” or a “High Noon” is. It seems like the easy way out. I wish those people would spend their time creating some new story ideas instead of relying on something that we already have that’s already very good. And there are some that I do think “The Third Man” with Orson Welles, I think is a perfect movie. “Sunset Boulevard” with William Holden I think is a perfect movie, “Wizard of Oz” with Judy Garland, and I think it would be kind of insane for anybody to try to remake those.

MP: And how difficult would it really be to cast a modern actor in a role that has already been immortalized. Who else would play Harry Fabian but Richard Widmark or Gilda but Rita Hayworth?

Robert: Yeah, exactly. And I wouldn’t want to be the actor putting myself in that position. It was different, totally different, when movies in the old way of the movie exhibition, before television, when a movie would be made, it would be shown, it would be enjoyed, and it would disappear. They used to, in film exchanges, actually burn, or destroy, or throw away films after like a five year period because they had new movies coming up and no one really cared about old films. You might reissue occasionally a Disney film or every seven years “Gone with the Wind” but other than that, films disappeared. Well, if you’ve got a good story, I can see why people remade them because the stories were fresh to a new generation. It’s a little different now though when we’ve got TCM and many theaters have movie revivals, film festivals, and things like that. But today when you’ve got Katharine Hepburn in “The Philadelphia Story”, or you’ve got Audrey Hepburn in “Sabrina”, it’s kind of foolish to remake it, I think. Sydney Pollack remaking it with Harrison Ford and Greg Kinnear, because you’ve already got the original. And boy, it’s hard to compete with a film directed by Billy Wilder, starring Audrey Hepburn, William Holden and Humphrey Bogart.

MP: Exactly. You know, to jump back to Summer under the Stars just for a minute, would TCM consider a similar festival centered around directors and writers instead of actors and actresses?

Robert: Well actually, we’re going to do a month. It’s interesting you’re bringing that up. I think it’s next year we’re doing a month of directors, and I think that’s the concept,  twenty-four hours of a director.

MP: Right. I mean, because you mentioned Billy Wilder and you’ve got “Sunset Boulevard” and “Double Indemnity”…

Robert: Well, yeah, and you know, there’s some great directors that basically most people don’t know like Clarence Brown, who directed “National Velvet” and “The Yearling” and most of the Garbo films. And besides the ones we do know, like the Hitchcocks to the more modern ones, like the Syndey Pollacks, etc. And certainly Billy Wilder and William Wyler and John Ford and Howard Hawks and you know, those great guys, William Wellman. So I think that is actually in the hopper, so, great minds are thinking along the same lines.

MP: You know, TCM shows so many films that it is almost impossible to see them all. How many films are we not able to see because of copyright issues or bans? I know right off the bat “Letty Lynton” was banned shortly after because of an infringement, and I can’t imagine that it stops there.

Robert: Right. There are a few, and they are constantly working on it. You know, for years, until TCM came along, the movie “Saratoga Trunk” with Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman hadn’t been seen, that had been out of circulation. And there have been others that they have gotten the rights to. I know one is the 1943 Warner Bros. version of “The Desert Song” which is in Technicolor with Dennis Morgan, that can’t be shown, yet a ’52 version of “The Desert Song” with Kathryn Grayson can be shown. So it doesn’t make a lot of sense. There is also a movie called “Night Flight” by the author of “The Little Prince” and it’s got an incredible cast: Clark Gable, Helen Hayes, John Barrymore, Myrna Loy, Robert Montgomery, and the list goes on, and that has a rights problem that can’t be shown. “Porgy and Bess” with Sidney Poitier, Dorothy Dandridge and Sammy Davis Jr. can’t be shown at the present time because of the fact that Sam Goldwyn Jr. owns the rights to the actual prints, but the Gershwin estate owns the rights to the music, and now no one owns all the rights. So, there are some out there, but I think they are trying to work on most of those. And I really do think that eventually everything that exists will be seen. The problem is there are a lot of films, I think, that have fallen into disrepair, maybe they were made independently, or the rights reverted to the estate of the filmmaker, and his kids or nephews or nieces, whoever owns the rights, don’t really know the value of them, or because they don’t have a famous star in them, they don’t have a value, or they aren’t in color, and they’re allowed to deteriorate. Whereas, films that belong to a major studio, like Warner Bros, Fox, MGM, etc., usually those studios have taken good care of the negatives. Not always, but pretty much. So, the danger are those that are disappearing or disintegrating before anybody can restore them or save them.

MP: Is there one film that stands out to you as the definitive representation of Classic Hollywood?

Robert: No, there wouldn’t be, but there would be handful and for various reasons, because each one has an interesting story. I think that “Gone with the Wind” is one of the miracles because it was made in 1939, it’s about to have its 70th birthday, and yet people today see that movie. Everything about the world has changed in those 70 years, everything, and yet people today can see that movie and react the same way people did in 1939. There’s a timelessness about it. “The Wizard of Oz”, which interestingly enough was not a huge success when it was first released to theaters, but because of television, and I think that’s one of the few films that’s better on television than in a theater, because when you see it on a big screen you can actually, quite, quite clearly, see wires and things like that with the flying monkeys and everything that you don’t really see on TV. But, just the life span of that is fascinating. I think the whole story behind “Citizen Kane” makes that a particularly fascinating movie. So, I don’t think there is one that I can point to, but there would certainly be a handful.

MP: We definitely want to make sure that all of our site visitors continue to support TCM, as they do…

Robert: Thank you.

MP: It is the only place to find such a wide, vast array.

Robert: Well it is right now, and you know I think we need it so badly because of the reality television we’re getting so much, and the movies we are getting that are all kind of a similar nature. And I just think to just be able have the choice of that…I also think it is essential to have it the way it is because we don’t interrupt the movies or cut them. You know, those movies were all made by really bright people, most of them, with a rhythm to them, and breaking them up by having commercials totally destroys the rhythm. If you see “Rebecca”, the Hitchcock film, on Turner with no interruptions, or “Rear Window”, it’s a totally different film than if you see that same thing with commercials inserted throughout, because it grabs you and takes you on this ride, this fast kind of ride, and you’re breathless when it’s over. But if you’re allowed to catch your breath, you know, it’s not the way the filmmaker intended.

MP: Exactly. Once again, I’ve been speaking with Robert Osborne, the host of Turner Classic Movies, with an encyclopedic knowledge. Robert, I’d like to thank you again for your time and the great people at TCM for helping us set this up.

Robert: My pleasure! I really enjoyed it. Thanks a lot, Gary!