Robert Osborne

Published Apr 23, 2012, 4:00 AM

This week on Here’s The Thing, Alec talks with Robert Osborne, host of Turner Classic Movies. Today Osborne plays the role of ambassador to a bygone era. We hear the journey he took to get there -- which could have been a classic movie itself.

Osborne tells Alec about meeting Lucille Ball: “If it had been Lana Turner I met or somebody I wouldn't have been able to talk, but it was Lucille Ball.” Nonetheless, Ball ended up playing an influential role in Osborne’s life, encouraging him to pursue writing over acting. Later Osborne explains some of the challenges he faced at The Hollywood Reporter, when he found himself writing what was really supposed to be a gossip column: “I never felt comfortable intruding upon people that wanted to keep a secret. Because I think secrets are important to have.”

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This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing. Can you hear me? If I call you Drew by mistake, you'll cut that out if you call me Drew by mistake. Robert Osborne has been hosting Turner Classic Movies for the past eighteen years. Drew Barrymore is his co pilot. This year, I had joined him for three years and I'm still waiting to be asked back. At Turner Classic Movies, Bob Osborne plays the role of ambassador to a bygone era that he's helped make more popular now than ever. The journey he took to get there could have made a classic movie itself. Small town kid falls in love with the movies, and with nothing but instincts and charm, finds himself thrust into an incredible adventure and osborne story. The players are legendary, the backdrop is epic, and the plot twists will make you say that could only happen in the movies and Robert Osborne's odyssey. The detours are numerous, but hardly incidental. You'll be glad he leaves nothing on the editing room floor. I grew up in a small town where I went to the movies a lot and fell in love with all these people also fell in love with the movie business. So all I saw were actors on the screen. So I thought, well, that's what I have to be if I want to be a part of the movie business. Nobody then was talking about film editors. There were no film schools talking about directing, you know, any of that kind of stuff. I decidedn't want to be an actor, and so I was doing Did your parents say about that that was fine as long as I got an education, Yeah, they were. They were. They were ti people that said, you know, be practical, get an education and something you can make a living at. But do what you want to do, at least try it and then if it doesn't work out and move to something else. So I started doing a little theater work in Seattle, and one of the plays I did was a play called Knight mus Fall with Jane Darwell. Jane Darwell and is the lady you would know this who played Henry Fond his mother in the Grapes of and won the Oscar for it. And she's the one that said, you know, when you get finished with this, what are you gonna do when you finish your She came up to Washington to a regional theater. Yes, and so I said, well, I'm going to go to New York and she said, no, you have more of a California. Look, you should come to California. And she said you can stay at my house. She had a staff and all of that kind of stuff. They lived down in the valley, and she said, you can at least get your feet on the ground there. I'll introduce you to an agent. She said, I think you do very well. So I did. Dave was Jane Darwell and her family at her house on Ethel Avenue in the San Fernando Valley. Yes, introduced me to an agent with m c A. In those days, if you could really walk and talk at the same time, you could get a contract of the studio. That first one. He took me to his Fox and they said, we want you to be under contract. So I was there for like six months. And during that period of time, I did a television show which was a western. That of all, I was doing a little theater group. This is a convoluted story, but I'm going to get to where I'm going. And it was a theater group run by an actor named Frank this letter. So I was doing some impros in the class and one of his friends came to it and I was Paul Henrid, you know with the two cigarettes with names. So Paul Henriid was saying, well, I'm directing a western, got a part coming up. I think you'd be right for I want you to come over and read for it next week. So, you know, I was kind of new to all of this, and I thought, you know, I went to California and I got a contract right away and got a part in a TV thing right away. I thought this is kind of easy. So anyway, I did the TV show and I had the lead in it for this one episode. The stage that we shot an outdoor sequence for this western on was where Paul Henry made the Spanish main, which meant there was also the sound stage where Fred and g injured at all their big dance numbers. So that was kind of thrilling to me. Didn't mean anything to anybody else in the day, Fred who So anyway, I went back the next day to thank the casting man and the people that had put me in this thing. For the Californians. There was this wonderful man Milt Lewis, who had used to be a talent scout of Paramount Studios. He was in the office and I thanked him, and he said, well, do you have an appointment for the Lucy Ball auditions? And I said, no, I don't know about any Lucier Ball auditions. And he said, well, yeah, she's putting a contract group together and so she's going to have these auditions and I think there next week, but I'm not sure. But let me call up to her office and find out. Instead of a secretary answering Lucy answer and he said, I got this guy down here, and I thought he might be a good bet for your contract people. So she obviously said, well I'm not doing anything, send him up right now. So I went up to this office. There she was. Now I have to tell you I was impressed by her, but I didn't see a lot of I Love Lucy because when that was really hitting its peak, I was in college and I was studying. I had a study hall, I wasn't didn't watch TV, and I loved the movies. If it had been a Lana Turner had met or somebody, I wouldn't have been able to talk. But it was Lucia Ball, and she was impressed that I'm into college because she hadn't any finished high school. This I got to know about her later. But also she was impressed by the fact I was living at Jane Darwell's house because I had asked her in our conversation who some of her favorite leading men were, and she said, leading me in didn't mean that much to me. I like working with talented people, but it was the character actors I love, she said. I loved like Edward Evert Horton, and I loved Harpo Marx, and I love Donald meek Well. I knew all those people were. And she was impressed by that because at that time, nobody knew who those people were. There was no nostalgia, nobody cared. So it's interesting how at that point in your life, the passion you had, curiosity you had that you've turned into a career. The roots of it were you were just impressing a smaller circle of people with that knowledge. When you're there and Lucia Ball is going God, I loved Jane Darnwerd. Yes. So she had said, is there any film on you? And I said, well, I just did this thing with Paul Henry, and I've also done a test with Diane Baker, and so she called over to Fox. Can I see the Diane Baker test? Lucille Ball, how soon can you send it over? Lucy was somebody that the minute she wanted something, she did it. She hung up the phone. She said, they're going to send it over. It'll be here in about half an hour. So we kept talking. The test was made for Diane, not for me, so there was a lot of the back of me. So when it was over, Lucy didn't really say anything. She's just thanked me for coming by, and I thought, well, she wasn't that impressed, but at least I got to spend some time with Lucille Ball. Like a week later, a message comes on my voice, Uh, you're an absolutely answering service. Called Lucille Ball's office right away. Here's the number. Hello Ray nine calling answer phone. Yes, I called the number and the second he said, well, Lucille Ball wants you to come to dinner on Friday night if you're available and meet DESI. I thought, well that's interesting. So I go to Lucy's house at Friday night. There's no Desi, but there's Lucy there's Janet Gayner, There's Joseph Cotton, there's Kay Thompson, Chuck Walters, Charles Walters, the director Roger Eden's, and a couple of other people, and her sister Cleo who was actually her cousin but raised as her sister, and me after the dinner, and they were all chatting and laughing, and all of the drinking drinking, not Lucy. Lucy wasn't no drinker at that point. She she learned how to drink a little bit later on, but not at that point. So we went in the living room and where on Roxbury, right next door to Jack Benny exactly, and just down the street from Ira Gershwin and around the corner front. So anyway, after dinner we went in the living room. She pushes the button and the painting goes up, puts another button, the screen comes down, and I'm thinking, did you ever believe that you would ever be And then I thought, no, wait a minute, I always knew I was going to be here. I remember that thought. I first started to say automatically, did you ever think God and that was the beginning for you? Yeah? And I thought, no, I always knew I was going to be with people like this, and I relaxed. Then I really relaxed as I thought, no, this is where you're supposed to be. Yeah, and when you love this is where I'm supposed to be. Where. What do you remember Funny Face, which was which was about three years old? That what? No, But what was great about it was there's a part in Funny Face when Kate Thompson and Andrew Hepburn get up and do a number called on how to Be Lovely Together. Kay Thompson got up by the screen and did the number. So and it was, you know, fun watch the movie. The movie was over, everybody starts to go, so I think, well, I'm supposed to go to I still don't know quite why I'm here, And it certainly wasn't Lucy was saying, you know, stay around a little boy or anything like that. Wasn't that. So we got to the front door. Thank you Lucy for the evening. She said, well, have you signed the papers yet? And I said what papers? I want you another contract? And I said, well, nobody, we're doing business, you idiot. Nobody's ever mentioned anything about a contract or anything. And she said give them an address tomorrow and signed the papers. Anyone. So I was under contract then to Desilu, and so that was for two years. That The great thing about it was is that someone television. It didn't pay us much money at all, but it was like a master class for me because there were about twelve of us under contract, but there were three of us who were really interested in the business, and she kind of recognized that right away and took us under her wing. That's when I first met Bettie Davis. Bettie Davis came to l A in a play called The World of Carl Sandberg. So she took us to the play and then took us backstage afterwards to meet Betty Davis and Vivian Lee. Came a duel of Angels, and so she went backstage and set a little vivianly. It took us with her anytime there was somebody like that, Noel Coward or Marlene Dietrich, she would take us there pick up the tabs because again she knew she wasn't paying enough money to keep for us to be able to do that. So we got this terrific education. And she also now DESI at this point was womanizing. He wasn't around much, so she would get movies that we wanted to see or hadn't seen because they weren't that accessible in those days, and run them at her house. Or she would show us I Love Lucy's show. She'd done bad ones and show us why they didn't work, then show us a good one and why it did work. She also the first day any of us were in a contract there and we first met, she arrived. She'd just gone to a bank which was right around the corner from Desilu, and she got twelve savings accounts that she opened, put like fifty dollars in, and she gave us in each of our names, gave us the books, and she said, every week you have to put something away. And we were, as I say, making very little money, and say, Lucy, you know we don't barely enough to to live on. She said, it can be only five dollars, but every week put something away. You won't miss it. It'll add up. Very maternal, and she said, no matter what the thing you must do is have enough money that you don't have to make decisions based on money. For a kid from Colfax, Washington, this was just invaluable. I've been to college, but I never had these kind of life lessons. In the course of it, she meant, my folks, and she got to know me. She said to me early on, you can do this as an actor, but she said, and I think you could do well, but it's not gonna make you happy. This is not the right line of work for you. And she said, you love old films, you love history, you love everything about the business. And you're a journalist and major in college. We have enough actors. You should write about movies. And the first thing you should do is write a book. Who said this to you, Lucy? She said, it doesn't even have to be a good book. But find a subject about the movies that nobody's done and write a book about it. And I said why, She said, if you write a book, it shows you have to discipline to sit down and do that. Yes, I did. What book? It was a book about the Oscars? Is this the book right here? Oh my god? Yeah, academy. I want our listeners to know that stunned expression. I show a copy of the book that he and yes, there he was. No wonder you were getting in an animal of these parties back then, that kind of picture in this book. Let me just mention to our listeners. There's a picture in this book. It's on page seven, by the way of Academy Awards Illustrated written by Robert Osbourne, with the forward by Betty Davis, Hollywood and the Oscars thirty seven years of film History and didn't it is a picture of Robert Osbourne circa six or so. Who is it you look like? Here? Well? I always got tagged that I looked like Robert Wagner. Yeah, and there's somebody else you looked like will come to me. So now you're a writer. So now it's an early sixties. Still you're a writer. And so I would do anything I could to pay my rent. The Desilue days were over, Lucy had gone to New York to do Wildcat on stage. I was also realizing that I've done all that I can wanted to do. I did a you know, a couple of years of summerstock touring in a play with Robert Cummings. Do you think you clearly make a choice at this point in your life where the choice made for you? Well, the choice was kind of made for me because I was not getting parts like night mus Fall that I love doing. I did a soap opera for a couple of years called The Young Married's. I was always in a suit with the tie and with a briefcase, helping the plot along. But it wasn't interesting, and I wasn't interesting. Did a lot of commercials. I thought, you know, if this is the best I can do at this point, I gotta get out of this altogether, because I would look at a part and at George Bopard could do this so much better than I can, or Tony Perkins would be great in this, better than I would be. Yeah, and it was on stage struck. So then the next phase came with Olivi to Havelin. I did an interview with her for an in flight magazine. They were not paying me anything, but it was a way to get free tickets to screening. It seems to be the rule in your life. I wasn't getting paid enough, so I'm gonna moonlight as go ahead. I got a set so I could get free tickets to see movies. So I wrote reviews for this magazine and they would ask me occasionally to write a interview or something, so LEVI to have one was doing a movie called Airport seventy seven. I did an interview with her. We got along very well. At the interview. I had a lot of champagne courtesy of Universal Pictures. When it was over, I felt very comfortable with her, and she said we must stay in touch. So she sent me a note. She said, I'm gonna be coming to Los Angeles in March. At that time, I will take you out for champagne. Okay, time goes by. Betty Davis was being honored by the a f I. I'd only met her briefly when she did the forward from my book, so I didn't really know her. But I also knew the industry that I loved was coming to an end. Jimmy Cagney would be there, Fredis Stare would be there, Barish Nakoff. I mean, all these different people, the old and the new. So I thought, I gotta go to that. But I really can't afford to go to that. So John Springer's pr company was handling it. I knew a guy, an actor named Ray Strickland who now worked for John Springer. So I called him and I said, look, I gotta go to this thing. Is there any way you could sneak me in? And he said, well, I can't get you a place at the dinner, but go out and rent a tuxedo and I will sneak you in through the kitchen. Great, that's all I want. One day I went out and I rented a tuxedo, and when I got back there was a phone message from Oliver to Havelin. So I thought, ah, she's come to go to the Betty Davis thing. She's calling to ask when we could add bottle champagne or something. So I called her back and she's the first thing she said was I have a proposition for you, and it's not an indecent one. There's an event for Betty Davis on Tuesday night. Would you escort me to it? So I was so stunned because here I just gone out to rent a tuxedo to sneak into the kitchen. She took my non response for hesitation doubts, and so she said, well, we'll be sitting with Betty at the head table, and I think you'll have a good time. So I thought, oh my god. So I called Tom Jones quickly and said, look, Olivia has asked me to this thing. I've got to get a car. I can't take her my Volkswagen. Is there any way Disney through Disney, you can get me a car, and he said absolutely, so I went in style. We went to this event they introduced Betty Davis. She walks in there playing the theme from Now Voyager and she's waving to everybody. She comes up on the stage and write at the first people she runs into, there's Paul Henry and his wife. So of course she goes over and says alone. The next one to her is Joseph Manquitz and his wife. And I'm thinking, oh my god. Now I'm sitting just two steps to her. Left. Next to her is Olivia and then me. She knows everybody else on the diet. She's not somebody that's gonna kiss this strange person. What do I do? So she comes and there's Bob Wagner and Natalie, so she kisses all of that and she and she's about ready to sit, but Olivia, in a great flurry of theatricality, goes Betty and throws her arms out, so it pulls Betty to this side of the table. So I think, what the hell can I do? All I can think I have to do is I quickly took her hand and kissed her hands when they cut it and edited it. They show her entering, and they show her up on the stage greeted by Olivia and then this gallant man kissing her hand. And for years after, whenever they would do recaps at the beginning of the f I trade, the always showed Betty Davis and this guy the beer can amongst the cut crystal in his own mind. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing more in a minute. This is Alec Baldwin and I'm talking with Robert Osborne, host of Turner Classic Movies. We pick up our story after Osborne has been discovered if you will at a tribute to Betty Davis, Olivia to havelland is still in town and has been asked to appear on the Dinah Shore Show to Haviland. Is excited, yet hesitant. Turns out Osborne had hit it off with Dinah Shore's producer Fred Tatters Shore, as he always seemed to be back then, Robert Osborne is once again in the right place at the right time. So I'm thinking this is where my all about the aspect comes in. Is I'm thinking, yes, my invac was coming through Fred Tad a short said, you're a really interesting guy. I'd love to have you come on the show sometime if we get ever find a police to fit you in. So I'm thinking Olivia's won an Oscar. I wrote a book about the Oscars, so I called I didn't see anything that. I called Ray Strickland and I said, who else do you have in your office has won Oscars? And he said, well, we have Shelly Winners, we have Shirley Jones, we have a Maori sat And I explained this to him. I said, Fred tad as Shore is looking for a subject that Olivia could be on, and I'm just going to throw out that, you know, maybe an Oscar show. And you could also mention me, because he did mention if he ever found a place I could fit in. So it was done and we did the show. I'm with some very heavy hitters, all these ladies, and they had a lot to talk about, so I didn't say much, but I had one great moment. Shelly Winners was sitting next to me and I said, and Dinah, being a consummate hostess, start talking about in my book and I said, you know the reason I wrote that book. One reason, It's because of Shelley Winters and Shelly really, I said yes, because I've seen you on so many talk shows talking about your Oscar nomination for the movie A Double Life with Ronald Coleman was her big breakthrough part. I said, you always talk about the year nomination and I said, it's very easy to find out who won Oscars, but there's no list anywhere of people who were nominated. And when I started doing the research, I found out you weren't nominated for that movie. And she said what well, and she she just had a fit. I said no, and I listed the ones who were nominated. It made a really wonderful television moment. Dina liked that and fed DAT like that. So they said, why don't you come back and do some entertainment things for us? And so I started doing that. Out of that, an old friend of mine who worked for the Hollywood Reporter, where I've been trying to get in as a writer the beginning of the Hollywood Yeah, called and she said, I always wonder what happened to you, And you've written a book. I said, yeah, it's not a new book. It's been out a couple of years. And she said, well, send it and we'll review it. I said, it's been reviewed by the Hollywood Reporter. Well, I'd like to see it anyway. Margie Wooster at name was probably still is. So I sent her a copy of the book and she said, well, it's a terrific book, and would you ever like to write for the Hollywood Reporter. I said, I've been trying to do that, Margie for you know ten years now. Why one of your gifts is handling obviously these powerful personalities and doing it very elegantly on TV. Why didn't you want to stay with TV? Why do you want to go right for the paper? Well, the TV was just one shot, and the Hollywood Reporter at that point was very important. That's the point when the reporter and I like a variety. Yeah, that's a steady it's a steady job. It's also the great thing, a big deal. There were two trade papers. That's where you got. Everybody got there their entertainment. There was no cable. And it was also never it never had to do like everything else in Hollywood, whether or not what you were doing was successful or not. The Hollywood Reporter was always in. You always got great tables anywhere, you always got great seats at screenings. You always got treated. Well, yeah, I said, I'd love to. So you said, well, she set me up with that point with the lady who ran the Hollywood Reporter, teach you Wokers and Miles. So this is like nineteen seventies seven. You go to work for the reporters. So no, no, I get the interview with teaching Wokerson Miles. It was obviously a courtesy call, and I could tell I hadn't made no impression at all. So I called Marchie and I thanked her, but I said, you know, I teach you didn't even see me. She said, well, I'll figure some other way. Then she called me and she said, look, what are you doing and she gave me some dates and I said, well, I'm working in the box office of the Greek Theater and she said, well, can you get off for this two week period? Thank Grant, who writes the main column Rambling Reporter, is staying in vacation and they've asked me to write the column for him. And she said, I'll tell them I will, and then at the last minute I'll tell him I can't for some reason. I'll recommend you do it. They'll have to get somebody to do it. This is your life story through the kitchen, and then Olivia calls you don't have to go through the kitchen. Well, there's a lot of struggle in there beforehand, but once it started, once it started going, it really started. But this is a great opportunity for you. Yeah. So I got called in. I had stories ready. I've been doing it for about three days. I'm a call from teaching WI Chris and Miles, and she said, do you work for us? And I said no, I don't, but I'm just coming in to help out. She said, would you like to work for us? And I said yes I would. She said, well, you've got a job. I said, well, I've got another job right now. I don't think I told her it was a Greek theater box office. She said, well, when you finish that, come here. What date would that be? So I gave her a date. She said, on that day you show up for work. So on that date I showed up for work. The editors said, well, I don't have any room for you in here, so just kind of wander around and get to know the paper. When she comes back, we'll ask her what she plans for you. To do. Just before she came back Marjorie, who wrote a column called on Location where you go visit film sets for the paper. She got in a fight at the paper and she quit. And when she was going out the door, they said, what are we gonna do your columns? Do you have to have a column for tomorrow? She said, have Osborne do it. He's not doing any anything around. And isn't it amazing how people who don't know these kinds of businesses, like the newspaper business, how it's really true? How do you become the drama critic? You're writing the gardening column and the drama critic drops dead at his typewriter, and like Osborne, get over here, and and so that's exactly what's right here. So all of a sudden, I wasn't writing for the in the editorial department. I had a column. How do you feel about that? I loved it, except I don't think I was very good at it, because I take you what it really is supposed to be a gossip column, or at least have inside dirt. And I never felt comfortable intruding upon people to want to keep a secret, because I think secrets are important to have you're very discreet. I've been around you many many hours, and you're never seen. So there's a story that so and so you never get into that, and so that was problematic for you and writing that com it's it's so. I'd worked for during one period during for a PR firm, and for a while rock Hudson was a client of ours, so I knew him well, and so I knew when he got AIDS that he had AIDS, but I would not write about that. At that time. I was also doing the evening news because all TV stations at one point had entertainment reporters. The lady who a wonderful lady, Marsha Brandwin, who was the kind of news head there, and I got in a big argument that she knew I knew about rock Hudson, and she said you have to go on the air with that, and I said, no, he doesn't want that. Know, this is a very sick man and he's an actor. I said, if it was the president that affects all of us in this country, he's an actor. So I wasn't that good at that. I mean, I think I wrote a lively column and an interesting one. How long did you write the column for Oh Boy forbet years, so you're doing the Reporter. It's twenty years of the Reporter. And then what okay? Then the CBS Morning program in New York asked me if I do entertainment reports at night in Los Angeles that could be put on the air on a new CBS morning program and the next day. I'd always wanted to live in New York, so I said, what if I did them live in New York. The minute I got to New York, I thought, I can't ever go back. What about New York appeal to you? More serious? To you know? Every time I was in New York, I felt alive. I saw people reading books, and I saw there was so much activity going on already leave. Yes, And it was also cars and you only you had to drive to gettywhere on the New York you're on the street, you run into somebody and you go have a drink with them. I mean, I loved all that. That's when Dorothy Lamore came to town and she said, look, they're honoring Jimmy Stewart. I'm gonna come back for two days. We were always going to have dinner in l A. We never did. Why don't you take me to the Jimmy Stewart Thing. I have the tickets and everything, and then we'll finally have that dinner the next night. So I said, where would you like to have the dinner and she said, well at one when I was a star. That's about the only place that's still in New York that was around when when I used to come to New York. So I took out the Jimmy Stewart thing and that night she said, look, I got a problem. I'm doing some promotional work for AMC, and the people at AMC want to take me to dinner. And the only night I can do with us to night we were going to go to one. Would you mind if very nice guy Brad Siegel and a publicity guy with him, Jim Wiss, if they joined us? And I said no, not at all. And we all just sat around and at her favorite table and we talked and told stories and all of that. And soon after Brad called me and he said, you know a lot about movies and I said, yeah, I guess I do. And he said, well, we're going to get rid of our afternoon guy at a MC. I'd love you to come and be the afternoon guy. This was a big deal and I thought it's perfect for me. Everything was, negotiations were underway, and then all of a sudden he called. He said, Uh, I'm I'm not going to be here. I'm leaving. I'm gonna go to work for Ted Turner in Atlanta. But you're in good hands. Everything will be fine. And I was really disappointed because I like Brad Sigal a lot. And Uh. A couple of months went by and then he called and he said, Hey, have you signed with the AMC thing yet? And I thought he was badgering me to say. I said no, no, but I got the papers all do He said, well don't. Ted's gonna start his own movie channel and I want you to be the head guy. He said, I just want to tell you. If you come with TCM, you'll start with only six million viewers. If you go with AMC, you'll have sixty million. If you come with t C M, you're gonna have to come to Atlanta at once a month. If you go with a MC, you can work in New York. But the library, he said, if you come with TCM, you're gonna have the MGM library, the archaeo library, the Warner Brothers Library and all of that, and so there was really no choice that that was what year that was like nineteen four, So we're coming up on eighteen years now. You you you've been there. They launched TCM with you as the hood ornament, so to speak of that vehicle. Now, the thing is is that in that ensuing time, AMC completely changed. They got out of the classic mom this is now they're just another movie channel. I mean, you became the impromater if you will, Classic film. How did you feel about that? Well, I felt very good about it. I was confused why they gave up on that, but but you know, any people wanted to cancel their subscriptions to the game that the problem was, you know, they didn't have their product. Turner owned the product, so they had to spend money to get their product. It was also called American Movie clas six mean you can't show European films. You know, we have a franchise in it where we show nothing but European films at certain hours of the day. Now let me say this, I'm a huge classic movie junkie, and it may not be every style in every period. You know, you when we compared our lists and everything. Because people don't realize how it works. They'd send to me, here's the films that are not preferred, but here's the ones we were likely not want to show because they've been in the rotational not the last twelve months. So they give me a list and they say, if you can choose from this list, and here's our list that we own, and if you can stick with that, great, but if you want to deviate, we'll see if we can get it. And and the main reason for that is so that we're not showing Sunset Boulevard every year. And I totally understand their methodology. So they would send me the list and they say, you know, you pick thirty and Bob picks thirty, and then you guys will call it together and come up with, you know, a list of joint list of thirty and you pick something. I'd say to myself, why don't really you know, I'm not wild about that movie, you know, Random Harvest. I liked, but it wasn't crazy about it. But I learned from you what makes that a classic film because of how it fits into that whole line of Hollywood filmmaking. But I want to go back to something you said, which is that you saw that film business had changed, and you were in those rooms with those people and you were their friend, and then realism came. What was a movie you saw at that period that you said to myself, my god, the movies have changed. Well, Easy Rider. I happened to be in London, a place I never went to very often, but I happened to be at the Royal Court Theater one night seeing a play. Alan Bates was in a play, and in the row in front of me was Dennis Hopper, who had just come back from I believe the can Film Festival where they showed Easy Rider and it won some awards, or maybe it was the Venice Film Fest whatever, and they were talking about it, and I thought, the way the papers were writing about that, I thought, this is something very strange that that movie about a couple of motorcycle guys on cycles and no smoking, a lot out of grass and stories and no plot. And then as that thing came out and became so popular, I thought, you know, this is this is really a seminal change. Seminal change. But you know that was kind of on its way from back in the late forties when Ingrid Bergmann. The reasons she wanted to go do that something with Roberto Rossellini. She had seen Open City and Python and they were real. These were real people and real on the street. So that was starting to come. But then when Easy Rider came out and was so embraced by this country, not just by foreign film attics or something like that, I think that was a big turning. Did you think that the Vietnam War was responsible for that change? I think I think Kennedy being assassinated changed has changed the world. That shot changed everything about America and made a cynical and made people discontent angry. You know, for me, when I was young, there was a man who when you saw this man on TV, he was the movie business. There's a man that would sit at a desk and you get up from that desk and he talked to the camera the movie was in. This man became the emblem and that was Walt Disney. And to me, you are the Walt Disney of your generation. You come on TV and right away people because you have become so synonymous. I mean, people just love you, they love your show, and you mean the movie Businessant do you sense that when you're out of the street with people. I get a sense of that, but I honestly don't see it. Who do you think you're talking to when you talk to the camera, when you do the rat three people. I talked to my aunt who lives on a farm, who loves old movies, but doesn't know much about him. But I also know that if I mentioned bell be Mayor, I have to say, identify who he was. I can't say Berta Lucci without explaining that he's a director, can't be shorthand for my aunt. I also talked to a guy that is now a young man, but he was in his early twenties, worked for the Hollywood Reporter that called me one time and said, you know, I just saw this great movie the other night. I was wondering if the lady in it made any of the movies. I'd like to see some of those movies. And I said, well, what's the was the movie that I didn't get the name of it? Well, who's the actors? I don't know what her name was? Will describe the movie to me? He described, and it was guilded with three to Hayworth. And so I'm also talking to him. He's interested in movies. He wants to learn about movies and all of that. And I'm also talking to a friend of mine who died recently, called Robert Rosterman in Chicago, who knows as much about movies as any of us know, and profession he worked for years as a booker for twenty century Fox. Kind of yeah, but he was a dedicated movie fan. But I want to say something in each introduction that's also going to be news to him. So I tried to gear it for those three people, my aunt and my friend John and Robert Rosterman, to cover all basses. Robert Osborne, he turns eighty next month. Last year, I went to a book party for Keith Richards. I found myself seated directly opposite Richards and his wife Patty Hanson. And long story short, as Patty Hanson says, we just so love you, Alec, we love you on that TV show, and I thought, oh good God. I go, Patty Hanson to Keith Richard, don't watch the thirty Rock. This is preposterous. She's just being so polite, and she says, what's that show? She says, Keith, that show we watch every week? We watch and Keith Richards looks at me and goes, we watch you on Turn A Classic Movies Man every weekend. It was so fantastic. We love that show, and I thought, God damn it, Osborne has upstaged me again. You're one of these guests that we're going to have back because I want to talk about the movies themselves. Did you have to promise me one thing? What is that? Did you come back? Let me and do the essential because I know you're trying to start a rumor that you got fired or something I got fired, did not get I'm like a weak sparring part of the year, not for a second. God bless you for doing what you do. You we'll see you soon. This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the thing

Here's The Thing with Alec Baldwin

Award-winning actor Alec Baldwin takes listeners into the lives of artists, policy makers and perfor 
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