- “31 Days of Oscar” on TCM – Day 4: On Feb. 16, Turner Classic Movies’ Oscar-pedigreed lineup consists of seven titles about families (daytime) and five about students and teachers (primetime/late night), among them The Magnificent Ambersons, Auntie Mame, and Good News.
‘31 Days of Oscar’ on TCM – Day 4: The Magnificent Ambersons among 12 movies about families, students, and teachers
Turner Classic Movies’ 2026 edition of “31 Days of Oscar” continues on Monday, Feb. 16, with the presentation of seven Oscar-winning or -nominated movies about families (daytime) and five about students and teachers (primetime/late night). (See TCM’s “31 Days of Oscar 2026 – Day 4” schedule further below. Most entries should remain available for a while on the Watch TCM app.)
Here are the 12 titles, in chronological order:
- Families: Our Dancing Daughters (1928), The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), I Remember Mama (1948), Edward, My Son (1949), Auntie Mame (1958), The Brothers Karamazov (1958), I Never Sang for My Father (1970).
- Students and Teachers: The Corn Is Green (1945), Good News (1947), Blackboard Jungle (1955), The Children’s Hour (1961), Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969).
Below is a brief overview of each “31 Days of Oscar 2026 – Day 4” title, all listed in chronological order.
Our Dancing Daughters (1928)
In his 1878 novel Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy famously affirms, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” That’s, of course, nonsense, but it’s the exact sort of generic nonsense that morons everywhere like to a) believe b) repeat.
Anna Karenina (the 2012 Keira Knightley version*) and its uniquely miserable family are not to be found in TCM’s “31 Days of Oscar 2026” lineup, but no worries. Joan Crawford as one of Our Dancing Daughters is here.
Despite the unbecoming hairdo, it’s easy to see why Crawford, until then a minor-to-mid-level Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer contract player – was catapulted to international stardom by way of her electrifying performance as Dangerous Diana, naughty on the outside, nice on the inside.
As DD’s romantic interest, former football player Johnny Mack Brown is the hunk of all hunks (this is a silent, so you can’t hear his appealingly amateurish Alabama drawl), while, long before Meryl Streep in Death Becomes Her, Anita Page learns that tall staircases can be dangerous to your health.
Also starring Joan Crawford and featuring Anita Page, Our Modern Maidens (1929) and Our Blushing Brides (1930) are not Our Dancing Daughters sequels.
* The Greta Garbo (1935), Vivien Leigh (1948), and Sophie Marceau (1997) versions weren’t shortlisted for any Academy Awards.
The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)
What’s left of Orson Welles’ truncated The Magnificent Ambersons is enough to earn it a place among the 1940s’ most notable releases. A box office dud surprisingly shortlisted for the Best Picture Academy Award, this psychological family drama based on Booth Tarkington’s 1918 novel also earned Agnes Moorehead a well-deserved nomination – her hysterical scene is one for the ages – in the Best Supporting Actress category. (The New York Film Critics selected her as the year’s Best Actress.)
Top-billed Welles collaborator Joseph Cotten is no more than acceptable in what amounts to a subordinate role, as The Magnificent Ambersons truly belongs to the filmmaker’s balletic camera (Max Ophüls would have approved), editor Robert Wise (later of West Side Story and The Sound of Music fame), and, in addition to Moorehead, cast members Tim Holt (the B cowboy star delivers a flawless performance as the arrogant George Amberson Minafer), and Anne Baxter (what may well be her most unaffected characterization).
The Corn Is Green (1945)
Directed by Irving Rapper, who had previously handled the 1942 Bette Davis hit Now, Voyager, The Corn Is Green is a decent big-screen adaptation of Emlyn Williams’ semi-autobiographical 1938 play about an English schoolteacher, Miss Moffat (New Englander Davis), who changes the life of young, illiterate coal miner Morgan Evans (a badly miscast, Best Supporting Actor Oscar-nominated John Dall) in a Welsh mining village.
The Corn Is Green’s highlight, however, is not two-time Oscar winner Bette Davis (Dangerous, 1935; Jezebel, 1938), but Best Supporting Actress nominee Joan Lorring – who should have won that year – as the coyly conniving village girl Bessie Watty (played by Thelma Schnee in the 1942 Broadway production), who almost destroys the young miner’s prospects.
Lorring reportedly got along well with Davis, who is supposed to have personally handpicked the young actress after watching several tests. (Apparently, including those of Betty Field, Angela Lansbury, and Andrea King.)
Good News (1947)
An enjoyable version of the 1927 Broadway musical, MGM’s Charles Walters-directed Good News features good songs, lively dance numbers, color cinematography by Charles Schoenbaum, and pleasant lovebirds June Allyson and Peter Lawford. The classic “Varsity Drag” finale deserves its reputation.
I Remember Mama (1948)
Back at her old alma mater RKO for the first time since Garson Kanin’s 1940 comedy My Favorite Wife, Irene Dunne stars as the second titular character* in George Stevens’ nostalgia-filled immigrant family drama I Remember Mama, based on John Van Druten’s 1944 hit Broadway play,† itself an adaptation of Kathryn Forbes’ 1934 semi-autobiographical novel Mama’s Bank Account.
As Marta Hanson, the stern but warmhearted Norwegian matriarch in 1910s San Francisco, Dunne creates one of the finest characterizations of her distinguished career, going on to receive her fifth (and, alas, final) Best Actress Oscar nomination.
Although Jane Wyman reached the apex of her career in Johnny Belinda, either Dunne or fellow veteran Barbara Stanwyck (Sorry, Wrong Number) should have won that year.
* Best Supporting Actress nominee Barbara Bel Geddes plays the titular “I,” Mama’s eldest daughter Katrin, a sensitive young woman gifted with a superhuman episodic memory. Also in contention that year were fellow players Ellen Corby (later of The Waltons fame) and Oskar Homolka (in the Best Supporting Actor category).
† Produced by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II.
Edward, My Son (1949)
One of George Cukor’s lesser-known efforts, the British-set, post-World War I family drama Edward, My Son revolves around an anal retentive husband and father who ruins the lives of both the title character (who is never seen in the film) and his wife.
Actually filmed in England, Edward, My Son is a showcase for MGM contract star and two-time Best Actor Oscar winner Spencer Tracy (Captains Courageous, 1937; Boys Town, 1938), who dominates the action while also hindering the drama. Commercial considerations aside, Tracy’s role should have gone instead to someone like Cedric Hardwicke, Michael Redgrave, or Robert Morley (who played the role on stage) – or even Robert Donat.
But Tracy it was – his recent hits included Cass Timberlane and State of the Union. As a result, the acting honors in Edward, My Son go to Best Actress Oscar nominee Deborah Kerr in what amounts to an extended supporting role.
Ultimately, Spencer Tracy or no, Edward, My Son turned out to be a box office dud ($1.16 million in the red). On the plus side, the narrative is now ripe for a more honest, more appropriately cast version.
Blackboard Jungle (1955)
Richard Brooks’ Blackboard Jungle stars Glenn Ford as a New York City high-school teacher at odds with rowdy inner-city youths, among them future Oscar winner Sidney Poitier (Lilies of the Field, 1963), then in his late 20s, and future filmmaker Paul Mazursky (Harry and Tonto, An Unmarried Woman), then in his mid-20s. In all fairness, Blackboard Jungle isn’t nearly as bad as it sounds.
Auntie Mame (1958)
Stage director Morton DaCosta fully embraces the theatrical roots of his Oscar-nominated big-screen version of Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee’s 1956 Broadway hit Auntie Mame.* And yet, it all comes together largely thanks to Best Actress Oscar nominee Rosalind Russell, well supported by the likes of Coral Browne and veteran Lee Patrick.
Note: Although Auntie Mame was a Best Picture contender, DaCosta was bypassed.
Note II: In 1974, Lucille Ball starred in the flop musical Mame opposite Robert Preston. Gene Saks directed.
* From Patrick Dennis’ 1955 semi-autobiographical novel.
The Brothers Karamazov (1958)
Richard Brooks’ “prestigious” yet tedious The Brothers Karamazov is notable for its name cast: Oscar winner Yul Brynner (The King and I, 1956), Maria Schell, Claire Bloom, Richard Basehart, a pre-Star Trek William Shatner in his big-screen debut, and eventual Best Supporting Actor nominee Lee J. Cobb, delivering another excessively larger-than-life performance.
The messy adaptation of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s 1880 novel is credited to Julius and Philip Epstein (Casablanca).
The Children’s Hour (1961)
Oscar winner Audrey Hepburn (Roman Holiday, 1953) proves herself a sensitive dramatic actress in William Wyler’s The Children’s Hour, which, notwithstanding its reputation, is just as effective as These Three (1936), Wyler’s previous – and heavily bowdlerized – film version of Lillian Hellman’s 1934 play about lies, stupidity (even in those pre-social-media-hashtag days, people unquestioningly believe the accusing girls), and lesbianism.
Now, although Hepburn is thoroughly believable as a girls boarding-school co-owner/teacher, the most memorable performances in The Children’s Hour are those of (then) two-time Oscar nominee Shirley MacLaine (Some Came Running, 1958; The Apartment, 1960) as her professional partner suffering the pangs of “unusual” feelings, eventual Best Supporting Actress nominee Fay Bainter* as one of the accuser’s grandmother, and veteran Miriam Hopkins as MacLaine’s meddling, mentally unstable aunt.
Note: In These Three, Miriam Hopkins had MacLaine’s role. She and Merle Oberon are accused [by Oscar-nominated finger-pointing demon Bonita Granville] of being part of a three-way with Joel McCrea.
* Fay Bainter was the 1938 Academy Awards’ Best Supporting Actress for Jezebel. That same year, she was also shortlisted in the Best Actress category for White Banners; the winner her fellow Jezebel player Bette Davis.
Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969)
Herbert Ross’ Goodbye, Mr. Chips is a bloated – but, admittedly, good-looking* – musicalized remake** of Sam Wood’s 1939 tearjerker that earned Robert Donat the year’s Best Actor Academy Award.
By then a three-time Oscar nominee, Peter O’Toole† delivers one of his most believable performances as the teacher who loves and loses “Downtown” singer Petula Clark (Greer Garson in the original). Even so, that year’s Best Actor winner was sentimental favorite John Wayne for a far lesser characterization, the eye-patch-wearing aging cowboy Rooster Cogburn in Henry Hathaway’s True Grit.
Note: Next Nov. 15, Petula Clark will be turning 93.
* Cinematography by Oswald Morris, production design by Ken Adam, costumes by Julie Harris (not the East of Eden actress).
** Officially, Terence Rattigan adapted not the 1939 movie but James Hilton’s 1934 novella of the same name.
† Peter O’Toole’s previous Oscar nods: Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Becket (1964), and The Lion in Winter (1968). Four more would follow Goodbye, Mr. Chips, but no wins. O’Toole would, however, take home an Honorary Oscar in 2003.
I Never Sang for My Father (1970)
Directed by future Oscar telecast producer Gilbert Cates, the family drama I Never Sang for My Father is a phenomenal showcase for veteran Melvyn Douglas, who, in a previous incarnation, had played suave leading men romancing the likes of Marlene Dietrich (the vastly underrated Angel), Greta Garbo (Ninotchka), Jean Arthur (Too Many Husbands), Myrna Loy (Third Finger, Left Hand), et al.
It’s a capital crime that Douglas didn’t win 1970’s Best Actor Academy Award, which went instead to George C. Scott for his showier portrayal of the title character in Franklin J. Schaffner’s box office hit Patton. Well, as karma would have it, Scott turned down the statuette.
Also in I Never Sang for My Father: Gene Hackman as the emotionally stunted son (and absurdly shortlisted in the Best Supporting Actor category when his role is as central to the narrative as Douglas’*); veteran Dorothy Stickney (Broadway’s Life with Father) as the ailing matriarch; and Oscar winner Estelle Parsons (Bonnie and Clyde, 1967) as the daughter.
Melvyn Douglas had previously won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Martin Ritt’s 1963 dysfunctional family drama Hud, in which his role is, as it happens, as important as that of leading man Paul Newman. His second win in that category – for an actual supporting performance – would be for Hal Ashby’s 1979 satirical sociopolitical fantasy Being There.
Note: Gene Hackman would win Best Actor for William Friedkin’s 1971 thriller The French Connection. In 1992, Hackman would top the Best Supporting Actor category for Clint Eastwood’s Western Unforgiven.
* The winner that year was veteran John Mills for David Lean’s Ryan’s Daughter.
Immediately below is TCM’s “31 Days of Oscar – Day 4” movie schedule.
‘31 Days of Oscar – Day 4′: TCM schedule (EST) – Feb. 16
6:00 AM Our Dancing Daughters (1928)
Director: Harry Beaumont.
Cast: Joan Crawford, Johnny Mack Brown, Nils Asther, Dorothy Sebastian, Anita Page, Kathlyn Williams, Eddie Nugent, Dorothy Cumming, Huntley Gordon.
85m7:30 AM Edward, My Son (1949)
Director: George Cukor.
Cast: Spencer Tracy, Deborah Kerr, Ian Hunter, Mervyn Johns, Leueen MacGrath, Felix Aylmer, Walter Fitzgerald, Colin Gordon.
112m9:30 AM The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)
Director: Orson Welles.
Cast: Tim Holt, Joseph Cotten, Dolores Costello, Anne Baxter, Agnes Moorehead, Ray Collins, Erskine Sanford, Richard Bennett, Don Dillaway.
Narrator: Orson Welles.
88m11:00 AM The Brothers Karamazov (1958)
Director: Richard Brooks.
Cast: Yul Brynner, Maria Schell, Claire Bloom, Lee J. Cobb, Richard Basehart, William Shatner, Albert Salmi, Judith Evelyn, Harry Townes, David Opatoshu, Simon Oakland.
146m1:30 PM I Remember Mama (1948)
Director: George Stevens.
Cast: Irene Dunne, Barbara Bel Geddes, Oscar Homolka, Philip Dorn, Cedric Hardwicke, Ellen Corby, Edgar Bergen, Rudy Vallee, Steve Brown, Hope Landin, Edith Evanson, Florence Bates, Barbara O’Neil, Tommy Ivo.
134m3:45 PM I Never Sang for My Father (1970)
Director: Gilbert Cates.
Cast: Melvyn Douglas, Gene Hackman, Estelle Parsons, Dorothy Stickney, Elizabeth Hubbard, Lovelady Powell, Daniel Keyes, Conrad Bain.
90m5:20 PM High Note (1960)
Director: Chuck Jones.
Voice Cast: Mel Blanc.
6m5:30 PM Auntie Mame (1958)
Director: Morton DaCosta.
Cast: Rosalind Russell, Forrest Tucker, Coral Browne, Fred Clark, Roger Smith, Patric Knowles, Peggy Cass, Jan Handzlik, Joanna Barnes, Lee Patrick, Pippa Scott, Connie Gilchrist.
143m8:00 PM The Children’s Hour (1961)
Director: William Wyler.
Cast: Audrey Hepburn, Shirley MacLaine, James Garner, Miriam Hopkins, Fay Bainter, Karen Balkin, Veronica Cartwright, Mimi Gibson, Hope Summers.
107m10:00 PM The Corn Is Green (1945)
Director: Irving Rapper.
Cast: Bette Davis, John Dall, Joan Lorring, Nigel Bruce, Rhys Williams, Rosalind Ivan, Mildred Dunnock, Arthur Shields, Gwyneth Hughes, Rhoda Williams.
114m12:00 AM Blackboard Jungle (1955)
Director: Richard Brooks.
Cast: Glenn Ford, Anne Francis, Louis Calhern, Margaret Hayes, John Hoyt, Richard Kiley, Basil Ruysdael, Warner Anderson, Sidney Poitier, Vic Morrow, Paul Mazursky, Jamie Farr.
101m1:45 AM Canary Row (1950)
Director: Friz Freleng.
Voice Cast: Mel Blanc, Bea Benaderet.
7m2:00 AM Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969)
Director: Herbert Ross.
Cast: Peter O’Toole, Petula Clark, Michael Redgrave, George Baker, Siân Phillips, Michael Bryant, Jack Hedley, Alison Leggatt.
151m4:45 AM Good News (1947)
Director: Charles Walters.
Cast: June Allyson, Peter Lawford, Patricia Marshall, Joan McCracken, Ray McDonald, Mel Tormé, Robert Strickland, Donald MacBride.
95m
“Families, Students & Teachers: Oscar Movies on TCM” notes
“31 Days of Oscar on TCM: Families, Students & Teachers” schedule via the TCM website.
Joseph Cotten and Agnes Moorehead The Magnificent Ambersons image: RKO Pictures.
“Families, Students & Teachers: Oscar Movies on TCM” last modified in February 2026.