I’ve long been a huge fan of Turner Classic Movies. The two primary hosts since the channel’s inception about 30 years ago have been the late film historian Robert Osborne and his successor, Ben Mankiewicz. Both have been perfect choices. In recent years, the channel has added secondary hosts, including the splendid Alicia Malone and Dave Karger, both consummate professionals.
I appreciate TCM’s fairness and largely commendable job of not cowering to political correctness, wokeism, and cancel culture, and generally resisting the winds of the zeitgeist. Though I suspect the managers are largely liberal, and I know that Mankiewicz hails from a Democrat family (his father Frank was the excellent press secretary to Robert F. Kennedy), they’ve remained impressively non-partisan and have avoided the culture war. Exceptions include their series for the fall 2024 political season, which they slanted with left-wingers, even absurdly bringing in Stacey Abrams. They showed their cards there. I must also note that my family blocks the channel during Pride Month. On one occasion, my youngest clicked on TCM and witnessed something sexually graphic and very inappropriate. (I guess porn isn’t considered porn if it celebrates the “L” in LGBTQ.)
For most of the year, TCM is superb.
But overall, the work done by TCM is rather remarkable and, best of all, commercial-free. For most of the year, TCM is superb.
Among the examples of that is a touching compilation done annually by TCM at year’s end, which I catch while watching the wonderful offering of Christmas films. It’s called “TCM Remembers.” It typically runs about five minutes long, packing in names and faces of actors/actresses who died over the previous year, showing them at their best, oftentimes in iconic images (think of, say, Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s). More recently, the network started including not just those known for acting but editors, producers, composers, cinematographers, costume designers, even cartoonists and stuntmen and makeup artists. (RELATED: Bruce Bawer, “A Neglected Art Gets Its Due.”)
These compilations are done so movingly that they choke me up. You watch and say, “Oh, I didn’t know he passed away this year.” Or: “Wow, I had forgotten about her. She was lovely. What a role.” You also find yourself waiting for the face of that noted celebrity, who you recall had died recently. This time, it was Rob Reiner. “TCM Remembers” tends to fade out with the biggest face and his/her most memorable image. This year it was Reiner and Robert Redford, and also Diane Keaton, a fine actress who had so many memorable roles — my favorite being “Kay,” the WASP girlfriend-fiancé-wife of Michael Corleone in The Godfather. (RELATED: Lou Aguilar, “Bardot and Other Screen Legends We Lost in 2025.”)
In this year’s rendition, TCM highlighted the likes of Val Kilmer, June Lockhart, George Wendt (“Norm!” of Cheers), and Gene Hackman, another great performer of so many memorable roles — my favorite being the coach in Hoosiers, the 1986 basketball movie done by Angelo Pizzo, a fellow Indiana University alum of our own Bob Tyrrell and Wlady Pleszczynski. TCM also showed the shiny face of one of my all-time favorites, Connie Francis, whom I wrote about in July. (RELATED: Paul Kengor, “Bobby and Connie: A 1950s Romeo and Juliet.”)
Among TCM’s list, I was particularly struck by two lovely faces. I had no idea that they had passed over the previous 365 days: Olivia Hussey and Claudia Cardinale.
Olivia Hussey will always be engraved in my memory as the best (I’ll never say “perfect” when it comes to the Blessed Mother) representation of the Virgin Mary I’ve seen on film. That was done by the renowned Franco Zeffirelli in his superb 1977 TV mini-series, Jesus of Nazareth, which included an all-star cast ranging from Laurence Olivier to Rod Steiger, Christopher Plummer, James Mason, and (among many others) Robert Powell as Jesus.
Hussey, as a young Mary in that film, really looked the picture of purity one might expect from the teenage mother of the Christ child.
Hussey made many films, of course, including Zeffirelli’s 1968 version of Romeo and Juliet. I remember a much less-known performance as the female lead in the 1988 film adaptation of Karol Wojtyla’s (the later Pope John Paul II) fictional play, The Jeweler’s Shop. It’s not a great movie, but it’s good, as is the message, which is classic Wojtyla/John Paul II on the meaning of marriage and family.
One of the many stars in Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth, albeit with only brief screen time, was Claudia Cardinale, who appeared as the woman caught in adultery and about to be stoned. Cardinale was a singular choice for that role, given that (as the Italian Zeffirelli knew) she was a major sex symbol in Italy over the course of decades, often known for her provocative, racy roles.
Personally, I had first heard of Cardinale from my Italian grandmother and her sisters. I once asked them if they had a favorite actress. Naturally, given that Italians tend to favor Italians (one of many funny traits among Italians), they named Sophia Loren. But they also named Claudia Cardinale. When I responded with a blank stare, asking who Cardinale was, my grandmother snapped, “Oh, she’s the most beautiful woman in the world!”
In those days, you couldn’t pull out a phone to Google an actress’s face. So, I had no idea what she looked like. When I got my first extended glimpse of Cardinale, I instantly understood what my grandmother and her sisters said. It was Federico Fellini’s classic, Otto e Mezzo (8 and 1/2), starring the legendary Italian actor Marcello Mastroianni.
If you haven’t seen that movie, do so. Yes, it’s very odd at times, with strange dream sequences and impressionistic style. And within those visions, the Mastroianni character envisions his dream girl, the ideal woman, a true beauty named “Claudia,” appropriately played by Claudia Cardinale. Her face — as much as Mastroianni’s face — becomes the emblem of the movie, the promotional image.
It’s a neat role. And yes, she was strikingly beautiful.
Cardinale went on to make many movies, mostly in Italian, and most not known to Americans. One possible exception is an odd 1968 film she made with American leading man, Rock Hudson, titled A Fine Pair. It isn’t very good. She was also in Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West.
But Cardinale’s best movies were Italian. (Speaking of Italian actors not known to American audiences, “TCM Remembers” also flagged Lea Massari, whose films included the 1960 L’Avventura, with Monica Vitti, as well as Enzo Staiola, who was the boy in the superb 1948 movie, Bicycle Thieves, a film included on the celebrated Vatican film list.)
Alas, which is to say that I was saddened and surprised to learn only a few days ago (courtesy of TCM) of Claudia Cardinale’s death at age 87 this past year. It was not big news in America, or at least not something you heard about on CNN or Fox, though the New York Times didn’t miss it, nicely dubbing Cardinale “Italy’s Girlfriend.” The glamour girl genuinely was Italy’s darling. In Italy, her death was huge news, a headline that saddened many, perhaps not unlike the deaths of Zeffirelli and Fellini and Mastroianni.
So, here’s to remembering Claudia Cardinale — and also Olivia Hussey and the other notable names in film that Turner Classic Movies beautifully helps us remember each year.
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