TCM CLASSIC FILM FESTIVAL SPECIAL HOME EDITION
TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET
Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the in-person part of this year’s scheduled TCM Classic Film Festival has been cancelled. But the show, and the movies, must go on, so strap in for several days of some absolutely fabulous filmmaking and salutes to movies, pulling from both the TCM archives and from telecasts of past Classic Film Festival events. Kicking things off tonight in prime time are two movies embracing all that and more. At 8 p.m. ET, TCM presents 1954’s A Star Is Born, which was the opening night offering at the very first TCM Classic Film Festival a decade ago, presented then by Alec Baldwin and founding TCM host Robert Osborne. Then, at 11 p.m. ET, comes the closing night film at that same 2010 festival: a newly restored version of 1927’s Metropolis. And when that’s over, there’s still more from that inaugural festival, including a 1:45 a.m. ET repeat of a 2011 interview with Luise Rainer, the first consecutive Best Actress Oscar winner, and a 2:30 a.m. ET showing of the second of her winning performances, in 1937’s The Good Earth, pictured. (She had also won the previous year for her starring role in 1936’s The Great Ziegfeld.) Rainer was 100 years old when interviewed and saluted at that festival. She lived another four years.