Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg in Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless (top); Ginger Rogers, Fred Astaire in Mark Sandrich's Top Hat (upper middle); Steve Sekely's Day of the Triffids (lower middle); Jack La Rue (right) in No Orchids for Miss Blandish (bottom)
Screened last night at the TCM Classic Film Festival, currently taking place at Mann's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, was a new restoration of the George Cukor-directed, Judy Garland-James Mason version of A Star Is Born (1954), among other features. Present at the A Star Is Born screening was Lorna Luft, Garland's daughter with Sid Luft.
Among the other film personalities attending the various screenings were Betty Garrett, one of the stars of the Gene Kelly-Stanley Donen musical On the Town (1949); MGM's swimming sensation Esther Williams; and Gone with the Wind's Ann Rutherford.
Also, 1955 Best Actor Oscar winner Ernest Borgnine; veteran Eli Wallach; 30 Rock's Alec Baldwin; North by Northwest's Eva Marie Saint and Martin Landau; L.A. Confidential's Curtis Hanson; and, inevitably, TCM's Robert Osborne.
In about half an hour, the TCM festival will show Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless (1959), starring Jean-Paul Belmondo (who is expected to attend the screening) and Jean Seberg.
Later this evening, the festival will offer an eclectic mix: John Schlesinger's Academy Award-winning Midnight Cowboy (1969), with Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman; Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers' Top Hat (1935), directed by Mark Sandrich; Steve Sekely's The Day of the Triffids (1962), starring a post-MGM Howard Keel, Nicole Maurey, and Janette Scott; and what sounds like a must-see: (the now very much forgotten) St. John Legh Clowes' British crime drama No Orchids for Miss Blandish (1948), mentioned on the TCM site for its "its brutality and overt sexuality," and featuring Jack La Rue and Linden Travers.
The TCM Classic Film Festival comes to a close on Sunday, April 25.
Photos: TCM Classic Film Festival