BOB FOSSE QUADRUPLE FEATURE
TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET
Four films directed by Bob Fosse are televised tonight on TCM. They’re not presented chronologically – but if you record all four and wait to watch them until tomorrow or after, you can watch them in the order Fosse directed them, and watch how his artistry, confidence and originality increases over the years. Sweet Charity, the earliest of the four Fosse movies shown here (it was his cinematic debut as a director), does indeed start the evening at 8 p.m. ET, starring Shirley MacLaine as a so-called “taxi dancer” in Fosse’s 1969 big-screen version of the musical. Fosse not only serves double duty as choreographer, but choreographs his camera placements and editing pace as well. He displayed those gifts with even more dynamism three years later in 1972’s Cabaret, starring Liza Minnelli and Joel Grey, a movie which TCM withholds until 1 a.m. ET. In between, it shows another of his remaining three directorial film efforts (the only one missing is 1974’s Lenny, starring Dustin Hoffman as Lenny Bruce). At 10:45 p.m. ET, TCM presents the rarely shown, not-available-for-streaming 1979 semibiography All That Jazz, a brilliant film starring Roy Scheider as his alter ego, and Jessica Lange as a spectral observer (pictured). And at 3:15 a.m. ET, after tonight’s late-night showing of Cabaret, TCM presents an even later-night showing of Fosse’s final film, his biography of ill-fated actress Dorothy Stratten (played touchingly by Mariel Hemingway), in 1983’s Star 80.