- “31 Days of Oscar” on TCM – Day 6: On Feb. 18, Turner Classic Movies’ Oscar-winning and -nominated lineup consists of eight titles with a theatrical setting (daytime) and six about “British subjects” (primetime/late night). Included are Morning Glory, Stage Door, and My Fair Lady.
‘31 Days of Oscar’ on TCM – Day 6: Morning Glory and My Fair Lady among 16 movies about the Stage, British Subjects
Turner Classic Movies’ 2026 edition of “31 Days of Oscar” continues on Wednesday, Feb. 18, with the presentation of eight Oscar-winning or -nominated movies focused on the Stage (daytime) and six about “British subjects” (primetime/late night and into early Thursday morning). (See TCM’s “31 Days of Oscar 2026 – Day 6” schedule further below. Most entries should remain available for a while on the Watch TCM app.)
Here are the 14 titles, in chronological order:
- On Stage: Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933), Morning Glory (1933), The Great Ziegfeld (1936), Stage Door (1937), To Be or Not to Be (1942), Kiss Me Kate (1953), The Entertainer (1960), The Boy Friend (1971).
- British Subjects: David Copperfield (1935), Pride and Prejudice (1940), Young Bess (1953), My Fair Lady (1964), Anne of the Thousand Days (1969), The Remains of the Day (1993).
Curiously missing from the lineup is The Band Wagon, MGM’s Vincente Minnelli-directed 1953 musical in which the grand finale features Fred Astaire, Cyd Charisse, Nanette Fabray, et al. singing about the stage being “the world of entertainment.” But shed no tears: British subject Ken Russell is in with the amazeballs The Boy Friend.
Below is a brief overview of each “31 Days of Oscar 2026 – Day 6” title, all listed in chronological order.
Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933)
Deftly directed by Mervyn LeRoy and choreographed by Busby Berkeley, and featuring songs by Harry Warren and Al Dubin, Warner Bros.’ Gold Diggers of 1933 is probably the most entertaining musical of the 1930s.
Based on Avery Hopwood’s 1919 play The Gold Diggers, Gold Diggers of 1933 was written by Erwin S. Gelsey and James Seymour, in addition to some cackling dialogue by Ben Markson and David Boehm.
Delivering the witty lines is an all but flawless ensemble that includes Warren William, Guy Kibbee, Aline MacMahon, a pre-stardom Ginger Rogers, and Joan Blondell*, who also gets to remember her Forgotten Man in one of cinema’s most elaborate, most remarkable, and most socially conscious musical numbers.
Gold Diggers of 1933 was nominated for one single Academy Award (for the 18-month period 1932–1933): Best Sound Recording (Nathan Levinson).†
* According to some sources, Joan Blondell was partly dubbed by contralto vocalist Etta Moten, who is also featured in the “Remember My Forgotten Man” number.
As found in Jeanine Basinger’s The Movie Musical! (Knopf, 2019), “Blondell’s final chorus was recorded by a Los Angeles-based vocalist named Jean Cowan, known for her bluesy style. Berkeley explained that he chose Blondell for the number even though ‘Joan Blondell can’t sing, but I knew she could act it. I knew she could “talk it” and put over the drama for me.'”
† There were fewer Academy Award categories back then, though 42nd Street did get shortlisted for Best Picture.
Morning Glory (1933)
The story of an ambitious aspiring Broadway actress – vibrantly brought to life by eventual Best Actress Academy Award winner Katharine Hepburn – Morning Glory is probably actor-turned-filmmaker Lowell Sherman’s best directorial effort. Note: Mary Duncan should be better remembered for her portrayal of stage diva Rita Vernon.
David Copperfield (1935)
Featuring an extensive name cast (Edna May Oliver, Lionel Barrymore, Madge Evans, W.C. Fields, etc.) and the top-notch production values Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was famous for, George Cukor’s Best Picture Academy Award nominee David Copperfield features Freddie Bartholomew (boy) and Frank Lawton (man) as the title character.
Although W.C. Fields’ Micawber remains its best-remembered figure, David Copperfield boasts several memorable performances, including those of leads Bartholomew and Lawton. Lawton, in fact, deserved a far more rewarding Hollywood career; his very lack of dashingness is an essential part of his lowkey “British” appeal.
Also of note, Basil Rathbone plays, who else, the villainous Edward Murdstone (think of Mordred, Lord Valdemort, the Murdochs) – a role made to order as a showcase for the actor’s sinister superciliousness.
Howard Estabrook was credited for the David Copperfield screenplay, from Hugh Walpole’s adaptation of Charles Dickens’ 1850 novel.
The Great Ziegfeld (1936)
One of the two highlights in Robert Z. Leonard’s Best Picture Academy Award winner The Great Ziegfeld is the now classic telephone scene: As Broadway star Anna Held, Best Actress winner Luise Rainer wishes impresario and former lover Florenz Ziegfeld happiness – he is about to marry actress Billie Burke – while her own heart is imploding.
Usually dismissed (if remembered at all) these days, Rainer was a first-rate actress. Only an immense talent could have made such a scene work: Thick-accented voice breaking, smiling through tears, etc. Nearly nine decades later, Anna Held speaking on the phone remains just as moving.
The Great Ziegfeld’s other highlight: Seymour Felix’s majestic Oscar-winning number* “A Pretty Girl Is Like a Melody,” featuring future Warner Bros. star Dennis Morgan singing (with Allan Jones’ voice) Irving Berlin’s 1919 hit, alongside an elaborately costumed cast of seemingly thousands, among them Virginia Bruce as, (almost) literally, the cherry on a giant wedding cake.
If only the rest of The Great Ziegfeld, starring William Powell as “Flo” and Myrna Loy as a Fantasyland version of Billie Burke, had been as impressive.
* In the short-lived Best Dance Direction category.
Stage Door (1937)
Both Stage Door and director Gregory La Cava were nominated for Academy Awards. Of the extensive, mostly female cast – among them fast-talkers Katharine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers – only Andrea Leeds ended up shortlisted, in the Best Supporting Actress category. She lost to an unusually dramatic Alice Brady in In Old Chicago.
Pride and Prejudice (1940)
Robert Z. Leonard’s Pride and Prejudice doesn’t quite capture the tightly corseted spirit of Jane Austen. But no matter. This glossy MGM release is not only one of the best titles to come out in 1940 but also one of the best titles to come out during the studio era.
The extensive, nearly flawless cast includes future Oscar winners Greer Garson (Mrs. Miniver, 1942), Laurence Olivier (Hamlet, 1948) and Edmund Gwenn (Miracle on 34th Street, 1947), in addition to inveterate scene-stealers Mary Boland and Edna May Oliver, plus Maureen O’Sullivan, Marsha Hunt, and Frieda Inescort – not one of whom received as much as an Oscar nod. (Olivier was nominated that year for Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca.)
Pride and Prejudice deservedly won the Oscar for Best Art Direction – Black and White (Cedric Gibbons and Paul Groesse). That was its only nomination.
To Be or Not to Be (1942)
Should you laugh at the goings-on in director Ernst Lubitsch and screenwriter Edwin Justus Mayer’s political comedy To Be or Not to Be while being aware of the real-life atrocities the Nazis were committing in Poland at the time the Warsaw-set movie was made? In case you do laugh, should you feel guilty afterwards?*
Some criticized To Be or Not to Be for being both insensitive and tasteless. Jack Benny and Carole Lombard – in her final film role before her death at age 33 – star as a husband-and-wife acting team in Nazi-occupied Warsaw. The stage here is not only the world of entertainment but also the one of subtle resistance. Or perhaps not all that subtle: The satirical play they’re rehearsing is called Gestapo.
One of the great classics of the 1940s, To Be or Not to Be was nominated in one single Oscar category: Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture (Werner Heymann).
Also of note, To Be or Not to Be is evidence that members of that particular Nazi police force – unlike those of at least one 21st-century version – weren’t afraid of showing their faces.
A less well-regarded, less humorous 1983 remake was directed by Alan Johnson, and starred Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft, who, in all fairness, has several good moments.
* One sample line, by Warsaw-based Gestapo commander Col. Ehrhardt (Sig Ruman): “Oh, yes, I saw him [Jack Benny’s hammy actor] in Hamlet once. What he did to Shakespeare we are now doing to Poland.”
Kiss Me Kate (1953)
Following the blockbuster Show Boat (1951) and the box office disappointment Lovely to Look At (1952), Kathryn Grayson and Howard Keel were reunited for the third and final time in George Sidney’s handsomely mounted musical comedy Kiss Me Kate.
Both Grayson and Keel received good notices for their performances as a divorced musical-theater couple who appear to spend more time fighting than singing while rehearsing Cole Porter’s (fictional) musicalized version of William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew.
In a supporting role, Ann Miller steals all her scenes while also tap-dancing a storm. Handsome Australian-born actor Ron Randell plays Cole Porter himself – as much an absurd casting choice as Cary Grant in Warners’ 1946 Porter biopic Night and Day.
Dorothy Kingsley adapted Bella and Samuel Spewack’s book for the 1948 Broadway musical Kiss Me, Kate.* Saul Chaplin and André Previn were shortlisted for the Best Scoring of a Musical Picture Oscar for their reworking of Porter’s score.
* With a comma.
Young Bess (1953)
Can a man love two women at the same time?
Stewart Granger’s dashing Thomas Seymour tries to figure that one out in George Sidney’s historical melodrama Young Bess.
Making things a tad more complicated: One of the women in question is the future Queen Elizabeth I of England, played by Granger’s real-life wife Jean Simmons. The other woman, Catherine Parr*, is played by Deborah Kerr in what amounts to a supporting role.
Charles Laughton, who won the 1932–1933 Best Actor Academy Award for his portrayal of the titular character in the British-made The Private Life of Henry VIII, returns as the English monarch. Laughton’s win, it must be pointed out, was a first in the acting categories for a non-Hollywood production.
Note: In the past, TCM has shown an appallingly mediocre Young Bess print. The movie may not be a classic or even a moderately good drama, but it – and the Oscar-nominated work of art directors Cedric Gibbons and Urie McCleary, and set decorators Edwin B. Willis and Jack D. Moore – deserve better.
* In Young Bess, Catherine Parr goes from Elizabeth’s stepmom (she was Henry VIII’s sixth and final wife) to unwitting romantic rival.
The Entertainer (1960)
Some consider Laurence Olivier’s Academy Award-nominated performance in director Tony Richardson and adapters John Osborne and Nigel Kneale’s The Entertainer – from Osborne’s 1957 play starring Olivier – one of the greatest ever committed to film.
Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. Either way, it’s unquestionably one of the hammiest. Indeed, Jack Benny’s To Be or Not to Be character would have turned a greenish purple with envy.
Also in the cast: Scene-stealer Brenda de Banzie (also from the play), Roger Livesey, and future Oscar nominees Albert Finney (Tom Jones, 1963; etc.), Alan Bates* (The Fixer, 1968), and Joan Plowright** (Enchanted April, 1992), Olivier’s soon-to-be wife† (1961 to his death in 1989) who died last year at age 95.
* The Entertainer was Alan Bates’ first film.
** According to online sources, Joan Plowright replaced Dorothy Tutin when the play reached London’s West End.
† Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh were divorced in 1960.
My Fair Lady (1964)
A smorgasbord for the eye, George Cukor’s multiple Academy Award winner My Fair Lady is also a feast for the ear, as it features some of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe’s finest compositions. Audrey Hepburn is a perfectly believable Eliza Doolittle (singing voice dubbed by Marni Nixon) and should have been nominated for that year’s Best Actress Oscar.
The eventual winner, of course, was Julie Andrews for Walt Disney Productions’ blockbuster Mary Poppins. Whether or not you see that as poetic justice – Andrews had starred as Eliza on Broadway – that Oscar should have gone to perhaps Deborah Kerr for The Night of the Iguana (or The Chalk Garden) or Bette Davis for Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte.
As it happened, neither Kerr nor Davis was as much as nominated. But Rex Harrison was and went on to win Best Actor for his stage-to-screen transfer of Professor Higgins (a role originally offered – for the screen version – to Cary Grant).
Anne of the Thousand Days (1969)
One of the many big-budget productions to receive multiple Academy Award nominations in the 1960s, including Best Picture, Charles Jarrott’s historical pageant Anne of the Thousand Days is actually better than its reputation. Richard Burton stars as Henry VIII; Geneviève Bujold is Anne Boleyn. Both were also shortlisted for Oscars.
Yet Anne of the Thousand Days’ real stars are a quartet of Oscar nominees – cinematographer Arthur Ibbetson, production designer Maurice Carter, art director Lionel Couch, and set decorator Patrick McLoughlin – and Oscar-winning costume designer Margaret Furse.
* But in this case not Best Director.
The Boy Friend (1971)
Ken Russell’s grandiose, twisted homage to the Warner Bros. musicals of the 1930s – from Sandy Wilson’s 1953 West End mega-hit – the fabulous (it’s the right adjective here) The Boy Friend has some ardent admirers and some equally ardent detractors. We’re among the former.
The Boy Friend both looks and sounds fantastic, and besides it’s more enjoyable than most of the Busby Berkeley-choreographed titles it both spoofs and emulates.
In the cast: Top model Twiggy (last-minute replacement Anne Rogers in the West End; Julie Andrews in the 1954 Broadway production), Christopher Gable, and soon-to-be two-time Oscar winner Glenda Jackson (Women in Love, 1970; A Touch of Class, 1973) in a small but memorable role reminiscent to that of Bebe Daniels in 42nd Street.† (Admittedly, Daniels’ character is nicer to Ruby Keeler.)
Peter Maxwell Davies and Peter Greenwell were shortlisted in the Oscars’ Best Scoring Adaptation and Original Song Score.
† In London, Anne Rogers replaced the originally cast Diana Maddox, who fell ill shortly before opening night. (Now a largely forgotten name, Maddox was featured in several Broadway productions of the 1940s and 1950s.)
The Remains of the Day (1993)
Based on Kazuo Ishiguro’s 1989 novel, James Ivory’s mostly 1930s England-set The Remains of the Day stars eventual Oscar nominees Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson* – both in top form – as, respectively, a subservient butler and a level-headed housekeeper employed at the estate of a reactionary lord, the (fictional) Earl of Darlington (veteran James Fox), whose ideal leaders are “strong men” like Adolf Hitler.
We (and the media hacks around us) may pretend not to, but we all know the identities of the fascist/Nazi leaders the Earl would be wholeheartedly supporting if he were around in the first quarter of our century. (The same goes for those of his ilk, whether titled or not, whether in the fourth decade of the 20th century or in the third decade of the 21st century.)
The Remains of the Day was adapted by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. (Harold Pinter had been connected with the project, at the time in different hands.) Ismail Merchant, Mike Nichols, and John Calley were the credited producers.
* Emma Thompson was the Best Actress Oscar winner for the previous year’s Howards End, also directed by James Ivory and produced by Ismail Merchant. Anthony Hopkins won Best Actor for Jonathan Demme’s 1991 horror thriller The Silence of the Lambs.
Immediately below is TCM’s “31 Days of Oscar – Day 6” movie schedule.
‘31 Days of Oscar – Day 6′: TCM schedule (EST) – Feb. 18
4:15 AM The Great Ziegfeld (1936)
Director: Robert Z. Leonard.
Cast: William Powell, Myrna Loy, Luise Rainer, Frank Morgan, Reginald Owen, Fanny Brice, Ray Bolger, Virginia Bruce, Nat Pendleton, Ernest Cossart, Joseph Cawthorn, Harriet Hoctor, Dennis Morgan.
Singing Voice: Allan Jones.
176m7:15 AM Morning Glory (1933)
Director: Lowell Sherman.
Cast: Katharine Hepburn, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Adolphe Menjou, Mary Duncan, C. Aubrey Smith, Don Alvarado, Richard Carle.
74m8:30 AM Stage Door (1937)
Director: Gregory La Cava.
Cast: Katharine Hepburn, Ginger Rogers, Adolphe Menjou, Lucille Ball, Gail Patrick, Constance Collier, Andrea Leeds, Eve Arden, Ann Miller, Franklin Pangborn, Jack Carson.
92m10:15 AM Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933)
Director: Mervyn LeRoy.
Cast: Warren William, Joan Blondell, Dick Powell, Ruby Keeler, Aline MacMahon, Guy Kibbee, Ned Sparks, Ginger Rogers.
96m12:00 PM To Be or Not to Be (1942)
Director: Ernst Lubitsch.
Cast: Carole Lombard, Jack Benny, Robert Stack, Felix Bressart, Lionel Atwill, Sig Ruman, Stanley Ridges, Tom Dugan, Charles Halton, Maude Eburne.
99m1:45 PM Kiss Me Kate (1953)
Director: George Sidney.
Cast: Kathryn Grayson, Howard Keel, Ann Miller, Keenan Wynn, Tommy Rall, James Whitmore, Ron Randell, Kurt Kasznar, Bobby Van, Bob Fosse, Willard Parker.
111m3:45 PM The Entertainer (1960)
Director: Tony Richardson.
Cast: Laurence Olivier, Brenda de Banzie, Roger Livesey, Joan Plowright, Alan Bates, Daniel Massey, Shirley Anne Field, Thora Hird, Albert Finney.
104m5:30 PM The Boy Friend (1971)
Director: Ken Russell.
Cast: Twiggy, Christopher Gable, Glenda Jackson, Max Adrian, Bryan Pringle, Murray Melvin, Moyra Fraser, Georgina Hale, Tommy Tune, Antonia Ellis, Barbara Windsor.
137m7:50 PM Nelly’s Folly (1961)
Directors: Chuck Jones, Abe Levitow & Maurice Noble.
Voice Cast: Mel Blanc, Gloria Wood, John A. Ford.
7m8:00 PM My Fair Lady (1964)
Director: George Cukor.
Cast: Audrey Hepburn, Rex Harrison, Stanley Holloway, Wilfrid Hyde-White, Gladys Cooper, Jeremy Brett, Theodore Bikel, Mona Washbourne, Isobel Elsom, Henry Daniell, Lillian Kemble-Cooper.
170m11:00 PM The Remains of the Day (1993)
Director: James Ivory.
Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Emma Thompson, Christopher Reeve, Peter Vaughan, Hugh Grant, Tim Pigott-Smith, John Haycraft, Michael Lonsdale, Ben Chaplin, Pip Torrens, Lena Headey.
134m1:30 AM Anne of the Thousand Days (1969)
Director: Charles Jarrott.
Cast: Richard Burton, Geneviève Bujold, Irene Papas, Anthony Quayle, John Colicos, Michael Hordern, Katherine Blake, Valerie Gearon, William Squire, Esmond Knight, Nora Swinburne.
146m4:00 AM Knighty Knight Bugs (1958)
Director: Friz Freleng.
Voice Cast: Mel Blanc
6m4:15 AM Young Bess (1953)
Director: George Sidney.
Cast: Jean Simmons, Deborah Kerr, Stewart Granger, Charles Laughton, Kay Walsh, Guy Rolfe, Kathleen Byron, Cecil Kellaway, Rex Thompson, Robert Arthur, Leo G. Carroll, Norma Varden.
112m6:15 AM Pride and Prejudice (1940)
Director: Robert Z. Leonard.
Cast: Greer Garson, Laurence Olivier, Mary Boland, Edmund Gwenn, Maureen O’Sullivan, Edna May Oliver, Melville Cooper, Frieda Inescort, Marsha Hunt, Ann Rutherford, Heather Angel, Edward Ashley.
117m8:15 AM David Copperfield (1935)
Director: George Cukor.
Cast: Freddie Bartholomew, Frank Lawton, Maureen O’Sullivan, W.C. Fields, Lionel Barrymore, Edna May Oliver, Elizabeth Allan, Madge Evans, Lewis Stone, Roland Young, Basil Rathbone, Jessie Ralph, Hugh Williams, Elsa Lanchester, Marilyn Knowlden, Una O’Connor.
133m
“Oscar Movies on TCM: On Stage, British Subjects” notes
“31 Days of Oscar on TCM: On Stage, British Subjects” schedule via the TCM website.
Audrey Hepburn and Jeremy Brett My Fair Lady image: Warner Bros.
“Oscar Movies on TCM: On Stage, British Subjects” last modified in February 2026.