- TCM schedule – Feb. 28: The series “31 Days of Oscar” continues with five Best Costume Design Academy Award contenders and five titles featuring Oscar-nominated/-winning movie fathers, including Life with Father, Life Is Beautiful, and On Golden Pond.
TCM schedule – ‘31 Days of Oscar’ Day 28: 5 Best Costume Design contenders and five titles featuring nominated fathers
Turner Classic Movies’ 2025 edition of “31 Days of Oscar” continues on Friday, Feb. 28, with the airing of five Best Costume Design contenders/winners, in addition to five titles revolving around Oscar-nominated/-winning movie fathers. (See further below the TCM schedule on Feb. 28. Most titles will remain available for a while on the Watch TCM app.)
Below are brief comments about each TCM presentation.
The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1962)
Henry Levin’s The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm lacks the appeal of the director’s earlier Journey to the Center of the Earth, but it is an unquestionable handsome production. The TCM print is fantastic. George Pal handled the fairy-tale sequences.
Mary Wills won the Best Costume Design – Color Academy Award.
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)
Mostly a director of male-oriented action fare, Robert Aldrich (The Flight of the Phoenix, The Dirty Dozen) ably handled two of cinema’s biggest female stars – Bette Davis and Joan Crawford* – in the black comedy/psychological drama What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?.
Davis lost what would have have been her third Best Actress Oscar (following Dangerous, 1935; Jezebel, 1938) to Anne Bancroft for The Miracle Worker. Just another one of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ countless misfires. Crawford, for her part, wasn’t even nominated. But she did go up on stage to accept Bancroft’s statuette.
Norma Koch won the Best Costume Design – Black-and-White Academy Award.
* Robert Aldrich had previously directed Joan Crawford in the moderately compelling psychological romantic melodrama Autumn Leaves.
Raintree County (1957)
Edward Dmytryk’s Raintree County was to have been the Gone with the Wind of the 1950s. It wasn’t, though it was a solid box office performer. Unfortunately, due to its sizable budget Raintree County was also a money-loser for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Best Actress nominee Elizabeth Taylor plays an unbalanced Southern belle, while Montgomery Clift, whose face was badly injured in an auto accident during filming, plays her husband. Neither one is at their best, though Eva Marie Saint looks lovely as Clift’s high-school sweetheart.
Veteran Walter Plunkett, whose credits included Gone with the Wind and numerous MGM titles of the 1940s and 1950s (e.g., Madame Bovary, Annie Get Your Gun), was nominated for the Best Costume Design – Color Academy Award.
Tess (1979)
Esthetically flawless, Roman Polanski’s Best Picture Academy Award-nominated* period drama Tess has one central flaw: Angelic-looking Nastassja Kinski,† who can’t quite bring the title character to life.
Tess won three Academy Awards: Best Cinematography (Geoffrey Unsworth and Ghislain Cloquet), Best Art Direction (Pierre Guffroy and Jack Stephens), and Best Costume Design (Anthony Powell).
* For the year 1980, when it was released in the Los Angeles area.
† Tess’ Nastassja Kinski bears an uncanny resemblance to the very young Ingrid Bergman.
Life Is Beautiful (1997)
Roberto Benigni directed, co-wrote (with Vincenzo Cerami), and stars in Life Is Beautiful, which then proceeds to show us that existence on Planet Earth is anything but. Whether you’ll appreciate or despise Benigni’s Oscar-winning performance in this Holocaust-themed father-son comedy-drama depends on what you find moving/funny vs. cloying/self-serving.
Nominated for Best Picture (for the year 1998), Life Is Beautiful topped the Best Foreign Language Film category.
On Golden Pond (1981)
The only movie to feature Henry Fonda and Jane Fonda, Mark Rydell’s On Golden Pond drips with sentiment mixed with a soupçon of real-life nervous energy. The elderly Henry Fonda* is fine as a grouchy old man and so is fellow veteran Katharine Hepburn as his wife.
Strangely, Best Supporting Actress nominee Jane Fonda isn’t up to par in this one – though, at age 42, she does look incredible in a bikini.
Of note, On Golden Pond earned Hepburn a record-setting fourth Best Actress win. To date, no other performer has been given that many Oscar statuettes. Her previous ones were for Morning Glory (1932–1933), Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967), and The Lion in Winter (1968).
* Henry Fonda won the Best Actor Oscar, which daughter Jane Fonda accepted in his stead. His previous nomination had been for The Grapes of Wrath back in early 1941.
Fiddler on the Roof (1971)
Norman Jewison (who came from a Methodist family) directed the Imperial Russia-set Fiddler on the Roof, a mammoth box office hit in the United States that was eventually nominated for eight Academy Awards*, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor for Topol,† cast in the role of the Jewish milkman Tevye, determined to find husbands for his five daughters.
Oswald Morris (Moulin Rouge, Beat the Devil) deservedly won the Best Cinematography Oscar. Fiddler on the Roof topped two other categories: Best Scoring Adaptation or Original Song Score (John Williams) and Best Sound (Gordon K. McCallum and David Hildyard).
* But not Best Adapted Screenplay, written by Joseph Stein, from the hugely successful 1964 Broadway musical (book by Stein; music by Jerry Bock; lyrics by Sheldon Harnick), itself based on Sholem Aleichem’s short story collection Tevye and His Daughters.
† Topol played Tevye in the London production of Fiddler on the Roof; Zero Mostel starred in the Broadway original.
Something similar had taken place two decades earlier, when Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire was transferred to the big screen: Broadway’s Jessica Tandy lost the role of Blanche DuBois to London’s Vivien Leigh.
The Great Santini (1979)
As usual, Robert Duvall gives his all in his portrayal of the titular – and really, psychopathic – military husband and dad in Lewis John Carlino’s family drama The Great Santini. Now, whether the role required all of Duvall is something else. Less bombastic but more effective is Best Supporting Actor nominee Michael O’Keefe as the son who takes a stand against his father’s overbearingness.
Now, beware: The dramatic finale is a disaster in every way you can think of.
Note: The Great Santini was released in the Los Angeles area in 1980. Its two nods came out early the following year.
Life with Father (1947)
New York Film Critics Circle Best Actor winner* and Oscar nominee William Powell shows how to play an irascible read-headed dad in Michael Curtiz’s period family comedy and box office hit Life with Father. As the wife/mother, Irene Dunne is equally memorable and should have been shortlisted as well. (She would receive her fifth and final Best Actress nomination for I Remember Mama the following year.)
Now, why isn’t there a pristine print available of this great-looking classic? Public domain black hole or no, there’s no excuse.
* Also for The Senator Was Indiscreet.
Immediately below is TCM’s “31 Days of Oscar” movie schedule on Feb. 28.
‘31 Days of Oscar’: TCM schedule (EST) – Feb. 28
9:00 AM The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1962)
Directors: Henry Levin & George Pal.
Cast: Laurence Harvey, Karlheinz Böhm, Claire Bloom, Barbara Eden, Walter Slezak, Oskar Homolka, Martita Hunt, Betty Garde, Yvette Mimieux, Russ Tamblyn, Jim Backus, Beulah Bondi, Terry-Thomas, Buddy Hackett, Otto Kruger.
140m11:30 AM What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)
Director: Robert Aldrich.
Cast: Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Victor Buono, Wesley Addy, Julie Allred, Marjorie Bennett, Bert Freed, Anna Lee, Maidie Norman, Russ Conway.
132m2:00 PM Raintree County (1957)
Director: Edward Dmytryk.
Cast: Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor, Eva Marie Saint, Nigel Patrick, Lee Marvin, Rod Taylor, Agnes Moorehead, Tom Drake, Walter Abel, Jarma Lewis, Rhys Williams, DeForest Kelley, Myrna Hansen.
167m5:00 PM Tess (1979)
Director: Roman Polanski.
Cast: John Collin, Tony Church, Nastassja Kinski, John Collin, Rosemary Martin, Carolyn Pickles, Richard Pearson, David Markham, Arielle Dombasle.
172m8:00 PM Life Is Beautiful (1997)
Director: Roberto Benigni.
Cast: Roberto Benigni, Nicoletta Braschi, Giorgio Cantarini.
116m min.10:15 PM On Golden Pond (1981)
Director: Mark Rydell.
Cast: Henry Fonda, Katharine Hepburn, Jane Fonda, Doug McKeon, Dabney Coleman, William Lanteau, Christopher Rydell.
109m12:15 AM Fiddler on the Roof (1971)
Director: Norman Jewison.
Cast: Topol, Norma Crane, Leonard Frey, Rosalind Harris, Michele Marsh, Neva Small, Molly Picon, Paul Michael Glaser, Raymond Lovelock.
180m3:30 AM The Great Santini (1979)
Director: Lewis John Carlino.
Cast: Robert Duvall, Blythe Danner, Michael O’Keefe, Stan Shaw, Brian Andrews, Paul Gleason, David Keith, Paul Mantee, Michael Strong.
115m5:30 AM Life with Father (1947)
Director: Michael Curtiz.
Cast: William Powell, Irene Dunne, Edmund Gwenn, Elizabeth Taylor, Jimmy Lydon, ZaSu Pitts, Martin Milner, Emma Dunn, Elisabeth Risdon, Queenie Leonard.
118m
“TCM Schedule: Best Costume Design, Fathers” notes
“31 Days of Oscar” movie schedule via the TCM website.
Henry Fonda On Golden Pond image: Universal Pictures.
“TCM Schedule: Best Costume Design, Fathers” last modified in April 2026.