13 Must-See Films for LGBTQ+ Audiences at the TCM Film Festival

The Best of the TCM Film Fest for LGBTQ+ Fans

Fasten your seat belts. It’s going to be a bumpy night in Xanadu — I mean, Hollywood.

Actually, there will be four not-so-bumpy but very enjoyable days and nights during the TCM Classic Film Festival, the annual gathering that draws thousands of film fans — or, as some affectionately dub themselves, “old movie weirdos” — to Los Angeles every spring. As usual, there will be plenty to interest LGBTQ+ movie buffs, from All About Eve to Hairspray to, yes, Xanadu.

The festival has been going on since 2010, although it was held virtually, with special TV and online programming in 2020 and 2021 because of the global pandemic. It became an in-person event once again last year, and 20,000 people attended.

Turner Classic Movies takes over several theaters in Hollywood for the fest, so there are usually four films running at once, meaning attendees have choices to make. The definition of what makes a film “classic” varies from person to person, and the festival programmers recognize this — this year’s offerings include movies from the 1920s through the 2000s.

TCM hosts or other luminaries generally introduce each film, and several screenings will feature interviews with actors, directors, scholars, and more. There are also presentations by at the historic Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel by film artists and experts. Plus there are plenty of parties and chances to meet people who share your interests.

This year’s theme is “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet: Celebrating Film Legacies,” and TCM honors Warner Bros., observing its 100^th anniversary this year, by screening several of that studio’s films, including Casablanca, East of Eden, Footlight Parade, A Mighty Wind, The Music Man, Rio Bravo, and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

But there’s much, much more as well, with films in such categories as “Discoveries,” “Essentials,” and “Hollywood Dynasties,” and guests that include Russ Tamblyn, Steven Spielberg, Paul Thomas Anderson, Ricki Lake, Tom Berenger, JoBeth Williams, Candy Clark, Steven Soderbergh, Shirley Jones, Michael McKean, Peter Riegert, Amy Irving, and too many others to list. Donald Bogle, a scholar who has shined a light on African American contributions to film, will receive the Robert Osborne Award, named for the late, beloved original host of TCM. The award is given annually to someone who has helped preserve the legacy of classic film.

Most festival attendees buy a pass in advance, but those who don’t have a pass can buy tickets to individual films on standby after passholders are accommodated. So if you’re in L.A. this week, it’s worth a shot. If you’re not, start making plans for next year — you won’t regret it.

From left: Bette Davis in All About Eve; Olivia Newton-John and Michael Beck in Xanadu; Anthony Perkins and Tuesday Weld in Play It as It Lays; Will Smith in Six Degrees of Separation

All About Eve

All About Eve, which won the Best Picture Oscar for 1950, was a gay film before there could really be gay films. Generations of LGBTQ+ people (and others) have quoted the marvelously bitchy dialogue penned by writer-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz, great-uncle of TCM host Ben Mankiewicz. The film also drops subtle hints that scheming actress Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter), rival to aging star Margo Channing (Bette Davis), is a lesbian, and that acerbic theater critic Addison DeWitt (Oscar-winner George Sanders) is gay. Another highlight of the movie is Thelma Ritter as Channing’s maid, Birdie; she gets almost as many good lines as Sanders — “What a story! Everything but the bloodhounds snappin’ at her rear end.” Plus there’s a very young Marilyn Monroe as DeWitt’s protégée. If you’ve never seen All About Eve, you owe it to yourself to view it; if you have seen it, you will certainly enjoy watching it again. Noted film composer David Newman, the son of Alfred Newman, who wrote the music for All About Eve, will speak at the screening. 3 p.m. Sunday, Chinese Multiplex House 1.

Hairspray

In 1988, the Pope of Trash, John Waters, released his most mainstream film yet, and it was a PG-rated hit. The comedy, set in the early 1960s in Waters’s hometown of Baltimore, has teen Tracy Turnblad (Ricki Lake) campaigning for integration of a TV dance show and speaking out for body positivity before that was a term. The divine Divine, Waters’s most iconic star, plays Tracy’s mother, Edna. Hairspray has fewer gross-out moments than Waters’s earlier films, but it definitely has the Waters touch. In the new millennium, the movie was adapted into a Broadway musical, and that later became a film, but there’s nothing quite like the original. Lake will discuss Hairspray with reliably witty gay actor Mario Cantone before the screening. 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Poolside at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.

Xanadu

Xanadu was trashed upon its release in 1980, but it eventually gained a cult following and more. Whether you’re there to laugh at the campiness of the story about a Greek muse and a roller disco, appreciate the music, or show love for Olivia Newton-John and Gene Kelly (in his last film), you’re in for a good time. The movie and Newton-John are especially beloved by LGBTQ+ audiences, and Xanadu carries a special poignancy now, just a few months after Newton-John’s death. Midnight Saturday, Chinese Multiplex House 6.

Play It as It Lays

In the “Discoveries” category, 1972’s Play It as It Lays, based on a 1970 novel by Joan Didion, explores alienation and the general meaninglessness of modern life. Tuesday Weld stars as Maria Wyeth, an actress who’s suffered a mental breakdown, and the film details the events that led up to her crisis. Bisexual actor Anthony Perkins plays her best friend, B.Z., a closeted and unhappy gay producer. Didion and her husband, John Gregory Dunne, wrote the screenplay, and Frank Perry directed the film. Noon Saturday, Chinese Multiplex House 4.

Six Degrees of Separation

Before Will Smith delivered the slap heard round the world at the 2022 Oscars ceremony and then accepted one of the golden awards, he gave a much-praised performance as Paul, a gay con man who ingratiates himself with upper-crust families in New York City, claiming among other things to be Sidney Poitier’s son. The stellar cast of this 1993 film includes Stockard Channing, Donald Sutherland, Heather Graham, Ian McKellen, Anthony Rapp, Anthony Michael Hall, and Kitty Carlisle. John Guare adapted his play into the film, and Fred Schepisi directed. Production designer Patrizia von Brandenstein, who created the appropriately opulent look of Six Degrees of Separation, will be on hand to discuss her work. 12:15 p.m. Sunday, Hollywood Legion Theater.

The Red Shoes

One of this reporter’s former colleagues once said this film, along with All About Eve and Laura, is about a gay man trying to control a woman. That’s an accurate summation of The Red Shoes, in which a gifted ballet dancer (Moira Shearer) is under the spell of an impresario, played by Anton Walbrook, but at the same time wants to pursue love and marriage with a composer (Marius Goring). She’s also under the spell of a ballet called The Red Shoes (based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale), to the point of obsession. The visually stunning 1948 film is from the great British directing team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Director and cinematographer Ernest Dickerson will discuss the movie beforehand. 11:45 a.m. Sunday, Chinese Multiplex House 6.

A Mighty Wind

Before Schitt’s Creek, before The White Lotus, Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara were reliable members of the Christopher Guest stock company. In A Mighty Wind (2003), writer-director-actor Guest and co-writer Levy cast a satirical but affectionate eye on the folk music scene of the 1960s, with groups reuniting years later to memorialize their producer. Besides Levy, O’Hara, and Guest, the cast includes John Michael Higgins, Jane Lynch, Bob Balaban, Michael McKean, Annette O’Toole, and Harry Shearer, who at one point appears in drag. McKean and O’Toole will speak at the screening, which will also feature a book signing and wine tasting. 8 p.m. Saturday, Poolside at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel.

Strike Up the Band

Who doesn’t love seeing Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney put on a show? For this 1940 release, MGM took the title song from a 1930 George and Ira Gershwin Broadway musical and scrapped the plot (the original was an antiwar satire), substituting a story about a teenage musician (Rooney) with dreams of leading a big band. As he tries to win a contest sponsored by bandleader Paul Whiteman, he doesn’t always have time for his girlfriend (Garland), but she still dominates the musical numbers. The legendary Busby Berkeley directed. Kate Flannery, famed as the drunken Meredith on The Office, will discuss the film. 9:15 a.m. Sunday, Chinese Multiplex House 4.

East of Eden

Probably bi actor James Dean made a huge splash during his short lifetime. East of Eden (1955) was his first film and the only one released before his fatal auto accident. He plays the tortured Cal, the “bad” son in John Steinbeck’s modern take on the biblical Cain and Abel story. The cast, under the direction of Elia Kazan, also includes Richard Davalos, Raymond Massey, Julie Harris, and Oscar-winner Jo Van Fleet; Dean was Oscar-nominated. Mario Cantone will introduce the film, and the screening marks the premiere of a newly restored print. 11:45 a.m. Friday, Chinese Multiplex House 1.

In the Heat of the Night

One of several festival films dealing with racial issues, In the Heat of the Night stars the great Sidney Poitier as a Philadelphia detective visiting a small Mississippi town, where he’s initially suspected of murdering a wealthy resident (racial profiling at work) but is then recruited to help find the real perp. Poitier’s Virgil Tibbs stands up to the racist locals and investigates the crime along with a bigoted sheriff played by Rod Steiger. The film, directed by Norman Jewison, won the Best Picture Oscar for 1967, and Steiger won Best Actor. (Poitier already had won an Oscar, for 1963’s Lilies of the Field.) Lawrence Mirisch, a talent agent and the son of the film’s producer, Walter Mirisch, will speak at the screening. 9:30 p.m. Saturday, Chinese Multiplex House 1.

Carmen Jones

Carmen Jones was revolutionary for its time — 1954 — as a musical with an all-Black cast. In this modern retelling of the Bizet opera Carmen, adapted by Oscar Hammerstein II, Dorothy Dandridge stars as a strong and independent woman whose affections are divided between a soldier (Harry Belafonte) and a boxer (Joe Adams). Dandridge’s performance made her the first Black woman nominated for a lead actress Oscar. The screening will include the presentation of the Robert Osborne Award to Donald Bogle, who will appear along with producer Debra Martin Chase and actors Louis Gossett Jr. and Khandi Alexander. 6 p.m. Saturday, Hollywood Legion Theater.

The Batwoman

No, this 1968 Mexican release has nothing to do with the recent TV series about a lesbian caped crusader, but it does feature a fierce, crime-fighting superheroine who’s also a luchador (wrestler). Gloria (Maura Monti), who wears a bat costume when wrestling, goes into superheroine mode to investigate the murders of wrestlers whose bodies are missing pineal glands. “The culprit is a mad scientist (Would a sane scientist do anything like this?) out to breed an army of super fish-men with which to conquer the oceans,” says the festival website, which calls the movie “delirious,” “often surprisingly beautiful,” and “one of the strangest entries in Mexico’s Luchador genre.” It was directed by René Cardona, who was responsible for the supremely creepy Santa Claus (1959), which was lampooned by Mystery Science Theater 3000. The Batwoman is a favorite of filmmaker Guillermo del Toro. The version being screened is a new 4K restoration, and film preservationists Viviana García Besné, Charles Horak, and Peter Conheim will be in attendance. Midnight Friday, Chinese Multiplex House 6.

Peyton Place

OK, there’s nothing really LGBTQ+ about this tale of scandals and secrets in a small New England town, but don’t you think there had to be some closeted LGBTQ+ people in the titular Peyton Place? The 1957 film, based on Grace Metalious’s best-selling novel, is a superior example of the 1950s soap opera, featuring teenage angst, sexual abuse, a murder trial, and more. It stars Lana Turner, who received her only Oscar nomination for playing single mother Constance McKenzie, Diane Varsi, Hope Lange, Lloyd Nolan, Arthur Kennedy, Russ Tamblyn, and many more. Tamblyn, best known as an athletic dancer in musicals, showed he had dramatic acting ability here. He will speak at the screening, and he’ll also be at a showing of one of his musicals, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, and will hold a conversation at the Roosevelt. The festival has previously showcased his most iconic film, West Side Story. 3 p.m. Friday, Hollywood Legion Theater.

There’s also much, much more at the festival! Check out the full lineup here.