The 17th annual TCM Classic Film Festival will open with a screening of Barefoot in the Park, with two-time Oscar winner Jane Fonda there to introduce the 1967 romantic comedy and honor friend and co-star Robert Redford.
The festival returns to Hollywood on April 30-May 3 with the theme “The World Comes to Hollywood,” which is meant to celebrate “the fusion of global artistry and entrepreneurial vision that established the West Coast as the filmmaking capital of the world.”
Actress Barbara Hershey and composer, performer and Oscar-winning songwriter Paul Williams will receive career tributes. Hershey will appear for showings of Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) and A World Apart (1988), while Williams will be on hand for screenings of The Muppet Movie (1979), featuring his Oscar-nominated song “Rainbow Connection,” and Elaine May’s Ishtar (1987).
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Plus, Bruce Goldstein, founding repertory artistic director of the Film Forum in New York and founder of Rialto Pictures, the distributor of classic films, will be presented with the seventh annual Robert Osborne Award, given to an individual whose work has helped preserve the cultural heritage of classic film.
The presentation of Barefoot in the Park, directed by Gene Saks in an adaptation of Neil Simon’s Broadway hit, will recognize the Paramount movie’s lasting charm and Redford’s indelible career as an actor, filmmaker and cultural force. (Redford, who died on Sept. 16 at age 89, also starred in the Broadway original directed by Mike Nichols.)
“Opening night sets the tone for the entire festival, and having Jane Fonda with us to honor her friend and co-star Robert Redford makes this year especially meaningful,” TCM host Ben Mankiewicz said in a statement. “Barefoot in the Park represents a pivotal moment in Hollywood history, and it’s a fitting way to begin our celebration.”
Goldstein will be honored at a ceremony before a screening of his selected feature, Federico Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria (1957), winner of the Oscar for best foreign language film.
Through decades of repertory programming, including more than 500 film series and retrospectives, restoration advocacy and the revitalization of international masterworks for American theaters, Goldstein “has ensured that landmark films from around the world continue to inspire new audiences,” TCM notes.
Previous receipts of the Osborne honor, named for the late Hollywood Reporter columnist and TCM host, were Martin Scorsese, Kevin Brownlow, Leonard Maltin, Donald Bogle, Jeanine Basinger and George Stevens Jr.
Other classics to be showcased at the festival include 75th anniversary screenings of the 1951 films Alice in Wonderland, A Place in the Sun and The Day the Earth Stood Still and showings of Modern Times (1936), Stranger on the Third Floor (1940), Phantom Lady (1944), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), Gaslight (1944), Out of the Past (1947), Anastasia (1956), The Magnificent Seven (1960), Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), Vanishing Point (1971) and The Towering Inferno (1974).
Additional programming, guests and events will be announced. Passes for the festival — the Hollywood Roosevelt, site of the first Academy Awards ceremony in 1929, serves once again as the official hotel and central gathering point — are on sale.
