CHURCHILL AND THE MOVIE MOGUL
TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET
U.S. PREMIERE: This 2019 documentary from BBC Four is the British equivalent of Argo – a true story, and a fascinating one, about a previously secret arrangement between the film industry and the government. In Argo, it was the way in which Hollywood producers worked with and for the CIA to secure the safe passage of Americans in hiding in Iran during the hostage crisis of the 1970s. In this new documentary, it’s the way in which Winston Churchill worked eagerly, and secretly, with British film producer Alexander Korda throughout much of the 1930s, as a script consultant and even an aspiring screenwriter. Churchill adored film and filmmaking, and the films Korda produced during that period included the futuristic Things to Come, the swashbuckling The Scarlet Pimpernel, and the unfinished yet brilliant (based on surviving footage) 1937 version of I, Claudius. But their best collaborative effort was yet to come: When war broke out in England in 1939, Churchill enlisted Korda on a secret mission to Hollywood, to influence filmmakers there into making movies urging the U.S. entry into what would become WWII – but not until the U.S. joined in, after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, two years later.