The LGBTQ+ movie fan's guide to the 2024 TCM Classic Film Festival

2024 TCM Classic Film Festival

It’s time for the event that is the highlight of many a classic movie fan’s year — the TCM Classic Film Festival.

The festival, which opens Thursday and goes through Sunday, takes over several theaters in Los Angeles to show films ranging from the silent era to the 21^st century, primarily American and British. This year’s theme is “Most Wanted: Crime and Justice in Film,” so there are plenty of noirs and thrillers, but as in any year, not all the offerings conform to the theme; you’ll find comedies, musicals, romances, and science fiction as well. And there’s much of special interest to LGBTQ+ viewers — Jodie Foster, Rock Hudson, Truman Capote, and more.

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Each screening features a TCM host, actor, director, writer, or scholar to offer context. In addition to the films, there are panel discussions, trivia contests, awards presentations, and other events to entertain and inform film lovers. This is the 15^th edition of the festival; two of them, in the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021, were virtual, with special programming on the channel and online. This year is also the 30^th anniversary of the cable channel and the 100^th anniversary of Columbia Pictures and MGM, so several of those studios’ releases will be shown at the festival.

Read on for our recommendations for LGBTQ+ fans — and anyone who loves movies — with some insights from TCM programmer Charlie Tabesh. For even more films and events, check the full online listing.

Note that the screenings are open to festival passholders first, and if the theater isn’t full, single tickets will be sold to those in a standby line (the opening night gala and poolside screenings at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel don’t do standby). So if you’re in L.A. and don’t have a pass, you have a chance to see these great films — and if you’re not in L.A., make your plans for next year!

From left: Al Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon; Rock Hudson and Tony Randall in Send Me No Flowers; Jodie Foster in The Silence of the Lambs

The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

The Silence of the Lambs is acclaimed but controversial. It has FBI trainee Clarice Starling, played by Jodie Foster, tracking a serial killer who sometimes wears his victims’ skins and their clothes. The killer, Jame Gumb a.k.a. Buffalo Bill, has been read as transgender — and as such, a slur on the transgender community. The film’s late director, Jonathan Demme, often protested that the character was not trans. The movie proved very popular, however, and it was only the third to win all of the big five Oscars — Best Picture, Director, Screenplay (Ted Tally, adapting Thomas Harris’s novel), Actress (Foster), and Actor (Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter, the cannibalistic serial killer helping Clarice get inside Buffalo Bill’s head).

Foster, who’s been out for a decade now, will be a guest at the screening, so it’s sure to be of interest to queer fans. She also will put her handprints and footprints in cement at the TCL Chinese Theatre (Grauman’s to those of us who are old-school) Friday at 10:30 a.m., a few hours before the screening. This is a chance for those who aren’t festival passholders to see a star, and for free, but be forewarned, there will be a crowd!

Tabesh attended elementary school with Foster in Los Angeles, and he doesn’t think she remembers him, but he’s followed her career closely. “I loved her as a child actress and then as an adult actress and then as a filmmaker. … I have so much respect and admiration for her,” he says. Silence gives her one of her greatest roles and is “one of the quintessential crime movies,” he notes. Regarding Buffalo Bill, he says, “With classic movies, and this certainly is a classic, you’re dealing with a different time and different cultural considerations. … I think we’re mostly smart and sophisticated enough to understand that some people might some of this problematic but still appreciate the films for what they are.”

Friday, 2:15 p.m., TCL Chinese Theatre

Dog Day Afternoon (1975)

Based on a true story, Dog Day Afternoon stars Al Pacino as Sonny Wortzik, who’s trying to rob a Brooklyn bank to fund his lover’s gender-confirmation surgery. Much goes wrong, but Sonny emerges as a sympathetic character, even bonding with the people he’s holding hostage in the bank. The film was Oscar-nominated, as were Pacino, director Sidney Lumet, and Chris Sarandon as Sonny’s lover, Leon. Frank Pierson won the award for Best Original Screenplay. The fine actor Jeff Daniels will introduce the film, of which he’s a major fan.

“It’s such a great, tense, fascinating, and innovative film,” Tabesh says. “And the characters are outstanding. … It captures the ’70s in a really interesting way too.”

Saturday, 9:45 p.m., Egyptian Theatre

In Cold Blood (1967)

Truman Capote’s 1966 book, on which the film is based, is often called a “nonfiction novel” — chronicling real-life events in novelistic form — or credited as one of the first true-crime books. The book is as compelling and chilling as ever, and so is the movie. Robert Blake and Scott Wilson star as Perry Smith and Dick Hickock, would-be robbers who end up as murderers of a Kansas farm family. Richard Brooks wrote the screenplay and directed. The black-and-white cinematography of Conrad Hall is stunning, and Quincy Jones’s score is excellent. Michael Uslan, executive producer of the Batman franchise, will speak.

If Capote didn’t invent the true-crime genre, “he certainly perfected it,” Tabesh says. “It’s such an outstanding representation of his writing.” The film was among the TCM staff’s first choices for the fest.

Thursday, 9:30 p.m., Chinese Multiplex House 1

A Little Romance (1979)

Diane Lane made her film debut at age 13 in this charming comedy. She’s an American girl living in Paris, finding her first love with a French teenager (Thelonious Bernard). An aging boulevardier, played by Laurence Olivier, encourages the young people’s romance. Able support comes from Sally Kellerman as Lane’s self-centered mother and Arthur Hill as her sympathetic stepfather, and classic film fans will enjoy the presence of Broderick Crawford, essentially playing himself as an actor in the film Kellerman is working on. Lane will speak at the screening.

“It’s literally one of my favorite films of all time. … It’s one of the movies that made me love movies,” says Tabesh, who saw the film as a teen.

Speaking of Truman Capote: Lane recently appeared as Slim Keith, one of the socialites surrounding Capote in the miniseries Feud: Capote vs. the Swans. There’s a movie connection — before marrying British aristocrat Kenneth Keith, Slim was the wife of the esteemed film director Howard Hawks. A dedicated follower of fashion, Slim spotted Lauren Bacall on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar and suggested that Hawks bring her to Hollywood; the rest is movie history. Then, between Hawks and Keith, Slim was married to Leland Hayward, a superagent and producer of films and Broadway plays. Hayward’s previous wife was the great actress Margaret Sullavan. More about her next.

Saturday, noon, Chinese Multiplex House 1

Margaret Sullavan Films

Sullavan — yes, that’s the correct spelling — was a major movie star of the 1930s, worked mostly onstage after that, and deserves to be better known today. Happily, this year’s festival offers three of her films. Only Yesterday (1933), her debut, has her as a young single mother as the result of a dalliance with a soldier about to leave for World War I. The Good Fairy (1935) is a whimsical romantic comedy, scripted by Preston Sturges and directed by William Wyler, who became Sullavan’s second husband. The Shop Around the Corner (pictured, 1940) is a delightful comedy directed by Ernst Lubitsch, with Sullavan and James Stewart as coworkers who can’t stand each other but are falling in love through their anonymous correspondence — a forerunner of personal ads and dating sites.

Sullavan had a fascinating, if troubled, personal life, as detailed by her daughter Brooke Hayward in Haywire, one of the best Hollywood memoirs. She was conflicted about being an actress, idealized being a mother (Brooke was one of her three children with Leland Hayward), and spent time in a mental hospital. Her first husband was Henry Fonda, who remained a lifelong friend; after Wyler and Hayward, she was married to British businessman Kenneth Wagg until her death on New Year’s Day of 1960, when she was only 50.

Only Yesterday: Thursday, 6:15 p.m., Chinese Multiplex House 4; film journalist Tara McNamara will speak

The Good Fairy: Friday, 9 a.m., Egyptian Theatre; David Wyler, son of William Wyler and a producer in his own right, will speak

The Shop Around the Corner: Saturday, 6:45 p.m., Chinese Multiplex House 1

Send Me No Flowers (1964)

If you need some laughs and a little Rock Hudson and Doris Day, here you go. Send Me No Flowers was their third and last film together, and in this one they’re actually married, so she doesn’t have to resist his sexual advances. But the problem for New York suburbanites George and Judy Kimball is that George is a hypochondriac and is convinced he’s dying. He’s not, but he goes so far as to make funeral arrangements and try to find a second husband for Judy. Tony Randall, who also appeared in Hudson and Day’s previous pairings, is back here as a comic second lead, and gay actor Paul Lynde is hilarious as a funeral director.

Amid crime films, melodramas, and other genres featured the same night, “we needed a good comedy to mix in,” Tabesh says.

Thursday, 7 p.m., Chinese Multiplex House 1

Pre-Code Goodies

The festival offers several “pre-Code” films — released between 1930, when the major studios adopted their self-censorship guidelines known as the Production Code, and 1934, when the code began to be strictly enforced. Pre-Code movies are deliciously racy, and often the characters don’t get punished for their misdeeds, as the code demanded. In The Sin of Nora Moran (pictured), from 1933, Nora does pay for her sins, which are legion, but also for those of some other people. Told in flashback, the story is very racy and a wild ride. Zita Johann, best known for The Mummy, stars as Nora; Cora Sue Collins, who appears in the film as Nora in childhood and will celebrate her 97^th birthday during the festival, will be a guest at the screening. Film scholar K.J. Relth-Miller will appear as well. Other pre-Code offerings at the fest include She Done Him Wrong (1933), starring Mae West and a very young Cary Grant, with commentary by the always-hilarious Mario Cantone; and the prison picture The Big House (1930). Consult the full schedule for even more.

The Sin of Nora Moran: Sunday, noon, Chinese Multiplex House 4

She Done Him Wrong: Saturday, 11:30 a.m.,Chinese Multiplex House 4

The Big House: Friday, 3 p.m., Chinese Multiplex House 4; Jake Flynn, son of the late film historian Cari Beauchamp, will speak

Double Indemnity (1944) and More Classic Crime Films

A recommendation simply because this writer loves it, Double Indemnity is one of the best crime films ever, a quintessential film noir. The great Barbara Stanwyck is the femme fatale who seduces insurance agent Fred MacMurray into killing her husband; Edward G. Robinson is the insurance investigator whose suspicions are aroused. Directed by the estimable Billy Wilder, who wrote the script with Raymond Chandler, adapting James M. Cain’s novel. Other excellent crime films and thrillers at the fest: White Heat, with James Cagney as a mother-obsessed criminal; Fritz Lang’s The Big Heat, a noir starring Gloria Grahame, Glenn Ford, and Lee Marvin; John Huston’s ensemble heist film The Asphalt Jungle; and two of Alfred Hitchcock’s best: the Cold War-set North by Northwest, with Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint generating plenty of steam, James Mason as the epitome of suave villainy, and Martin Landau as his obviously gay henchman; and Rear Window, with James Stewart spying on a neighbor he suspects of murder — and also generating some steam with Grace Kelly. Oh, and the opening night gala film, open to the highest-level passholders only, is Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. Many of the cast members will be there.

Double Indemnity is “another key, essential crime film,” and you can’t go wrong with Wilder, Tabesh says. It’s always good to program a major classic for an early-morning slot, which is when it will screen, as that motivates festivalgoers to get out of bed and line up at the theater, he adds.

Double Indemnity: Sunday, 9 a.m., TCL Chinese Theatre

White Heat: Thursday, 7 p.m., Egyptian Theatre

The Big Heat: Saturday, 12:15 p.m., Chinese Multiplex House 6; Dana Delany will speak

The Asphalt Jungle: Sunday, 7:45 p.m., Chinese Multiplex House 6

North by Northwest: Saturday, 2:45 p.m., TCL Chinese Theatre; Nancy Meyers will speak

Rear Window: Friday, 6:15 p.m., Egyptian Theatre

Pulp Fiction: Thursday, 6:30 p.m., TCL Chinese Theatre; John Travolta, Uma Thurman, Samuel L. Jackson, and Harvey Keitel will speak