PRESS UPDATE : ALBANY HERALD .. JULY 19TH 2015

                                                                                                           

Joan Collins make picks on Turner Classic Movies

TV diva is newest guest programmer for TCM By Jay Bobbin

.Featured lately on the E! series “The Royals,” the former “Dynasty” diva becomes Turner Classic Movies’ latest “Guest Programmer” as she joins channel staple Robert Osborne all night Wednesday. On her list: Rita Hayworth in “Gilda” (1946); Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy and Claudette Colbert in “Boom Town” (1940); a powerhouse female cast including Joan Crawford and Rosalind Russell in the 1939 classic “The Women;” and “The Opposite Sex,” Collins’ own 1956 remake of “The Women,” “Early on, we had this idea” to feature guest co-hosts, Osborne explains. “The first one was Stephen Sondheim, but we couldn’t get him on camera. Then we had Bill Cosby, and he did it on camera and was great, so we’ve had everybody on camera since then.”

#However, Osborne admits, “It took us a little while to find a format. We started asking people to come on, and most were delighted and came up with really good suggestions.

#We asked them to pick their favorite movies, but also to pick a couple they had discovered that maybe most people didn’t know. By their coming on, it would introduce people to those movies, and that worked out particularly well.”

#That is, until a couple of “very famous guests who shall go nameless” clearly hadn’t seen movies they picked, notes Osborne. “We realized we really couldn’t do this unless people let us know they wanted to. I was in a movie theater one time and Whoopi Goldberg came over and said, ‘I love that channel! I watch it all the time.’ We invited her on, and she was great. And that was how we first got to know Sally Field (Osborne’s current Saturday co-host on TCM’s ‘The Essentials’).”

#The same applies to Collins, a longtime personal friend of Osborne, though her husband made the pitch to him.

#“I find it fascinating that someone with such beauty and charisma would be so enamored of

Rita Hayworth and (‘Boom Town’ co-star) Hedy Lamarr,” Osborne reflects.

#“And it threw me that she picked both ‘The Women’ and her version of it. I just think it’s terribly interesting to hear why they like, or don’t like, a movie and why it’s worth seeing.”