- TCM schedule – Feb. 24: Turner Classic Movies’ series “31 Days of Oscar” continues with nine Best Documentary Academy Award contenders and five titles revolving around Oscar-nominated women in danger, including Night Must Fall, Wait Until Dark, and Gaslight.
TCM schedule – ‘31 Days of Oscar’ Day 24: 9 Best Documentary contenders and 5 nominated women in danger
Turner Classic Movies’ 2025 edition of “31 Days of Oscar” continues on Monday, Feb. 24, with the airing of nine Best Documentary (shorts and features) contenders/winners, in addition to five titles featuring Oscar-nominated/-winning women in danger: Wives, hypochondriacs, motel guests, blind doll owners. (See further below the TCM schedule on Feb. 24. Most titles will remain available for a while on the Watch TCM app.)
Below are brief comments about each TCM presentation.
The Battle of Midway (1942)
Directed by then three-time Academy Award winner John Ford*, the U.S. Navy-produced 18-minute propaganda short The Battle of Midway chronicles the titular battle on the North Pacific atoll; much of the footage was shot by Ford himself while on location. Narration by Oscar winners Donald Crisp (How Green Was Valley, 1941) and Jane Darwell (The Grapes of Wrath, 1940), and by future winner Henry Fonda (On Golden Pond, 1981).
The Battle of Midway was one of four titles that topped the Academy Awards’ inaugural Best Documentary category. The other three were: Frank Capra’s Prelude to War, Ilya Kopalin and Leonid Varlamov’s Moscow Strikes Back, and director Ken G. Hall and war photographer Damien Parer’s Kokoda Front Line!.
* John Ford ultimately received a record-setting four Best Director Oscars: The Informer, 1935; The Grapes of Wrath, 1940; How Green Was My Valley, 1941; The Quiet Man, 1952.
Resisting Enemy Interrogation (1944)
Robert B. Sinclair’s U.S. Army-produced training film Resisting Enemy Interrogation actually features a cast of actors, including future five-time Oscar nominee Arthur Kennedy (Champion, 1949; etc.), Lloyd Nolan, Carl Esmond, and Craig Stevens. And yet, it was a Best Documentary Feature Academy Award nominee.
The Sea Around Us (1952)
Based on Rachel L. Carson’s 1951 book about ocean life and its origins, Irwin Allen’s The Sea Around Us was the year’s Best Documentary Feature. Narration by Don Forbes and veteran actor Theodore von Eltz (Bardelys the Magnificent).
In later years, Irwin Allen would be known as the producer of big-budget, all-star disaster titles like The Poseidon Adventure and the Best Picture Oscar nominee The Towering Inferno.
The Times of Harvey Milk (1984)
Narrated by Harvey Fierstein, Rob Epstein’s Best Documentary Feature Academy Award winner The Times of Harvey Milk traces the political career of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and the deadly victim of a hate crime.
His assassin, former city supervisor Dan White, also murdered San Francisco Mayor George Moscone. White would be found guilty not of first- or second-degree murder but of manslaughter, ultimately serving five years of a seven-year prison sentence.
Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt (1989)
Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s Best Documentary Feature Academy Award winner Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt revolves around the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt. Narrated by Dustin Hoffman. Musical score by Bobby McFerrin.
Harlan County, U.S.A. (1976)
Barbara Kopple’s Best Documentary Feature Academy Award winner Harlan County, U.S.A. chronicles the 1973 coal miners’ strike against the Eastover Coal Company’s Brookside Mine and Prep Plant in Harlan County, Kentucky. Eastover was a subsidiary of the Duke Power Company (now Duke Energy Corporation).
Filmmaker Barbara Kopple would become the first woman to win two Oscars in the Best Documentary Feature category. Her second one would be for American Dream (1990).
Freedom on My Mind (1994)
Connie Field and Marilyn Mulford’s Best Documentary Feature Academy Award nominee Freedom on My Mind depicts the efforts of the voter registration movement in the deeply segregated U.S. state of Mississippi in the early 1960s – and the violent, at times deadly, opposition that they engendered.
When We Were Kings (1996)
Leon Gast’s long-in-the-making Best Documentary Feature Academy Award winner When We Were Kings covers the heavyweight championship boxing match – with the yucky name “Rumble in the Jungle” – held on Oct. 30, 1974, in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). The competitors were two black Americans: George Foreman and Muhammad Ali.
For All Mankind (1989)
Al Reinert’s Best Documentary Feature Academy Award nominee For All Mankind consists of original footage from NASA’s Apollo program. Music by Brian Eno.
Suspicion (1941)
For her portrayal of a woman who believes ne’er-do-well husband Cary Grant has poisoned her glass of milk, Suspicion star Joan Fontaine became a) the first and last individual to win an Academy Award for a performance in a movie directed by Alfred Hitchcock b) the first individual to defeat a competing sibling at the Oscars (and, according to common lore, to make said sibling really mad).
The sibling in question: Older sister Olivia de Havilland, in the running for Mitchell Leisen’s Hold Back the Dawn. De Havilland should have taken a few deep breaths, as by the end of the decade she would have two Oscar statuettes on her mantelpiece. The movies: To Each His Own (1946), The Heiress (1949).
As for Suspicion, it’s seriously marred by its phony, abrupt ending. Fontaine, who was also the choice of the New York Film Critics Circle, is fine as the wife, but that year belonged to Bette Davis in The Little Foxes.
Psycho (1960)
It’s unclear whether the moral of the story told in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho is Don’t Steal or Don’t Stay at Motels. Whatever your take, Best Supporting Actress nominee Janet Leigh delivers a competent performance as the embezzler who fatefully chooses to take a shower at the wrong place at the wrong time.
Keep in mind that Anthony Perkins, who creates one of the most iconic characterizations in cinema history, wasn’t as much as nominated in the Best Actor category.
Gaslight (1944)
As good-looking – but not quite as good – as Thorold Dickinson’s original* big-screen version of Patrick Hamilton’s 1938 play†, George Cukor’s Gaslight has grown in importance in recent years because of the increasingly widespread use of the term “gaslighting,” generally in a political context and meaning “don’t believe your lying eyes and ears.”
The key difference, of course, between what greedy husband and Best Actor nominee Charles Boyer attempts to do to naive wife and eventual Best Actress Oscar winner Ingrid Bergman and what modern-day fascist leaders succeed in doing with (not to) their supporters is that Bergman’s character is unaware of the truth whereas the fascist masses are complicit in their (self-)gaslighting.
Anyhow, the best performances in the 1944 Gaslight are found in the periphery: Dame May Whitty, Barbara Everest, and Best Supporting Actress nominee Angela Lansbury (in her film debut).
The Best Actress Oscar that year belonged to nominationless Tallulah Bankhead for Alfred Hitchcock’s Lifeboat. But at least Bankhead was the choice of the New York Film Critics Circle.
* Academy Award nominee Diana Wynyard (Cavalcade, 1932–1933) delivers a superlative performance as the heroine. Anton Walbrook is less effective as her psycho husband.
† Spelled Gas Light, the original play starred Dennis Arundell and Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies. Renamed Angel Street, the Broadway production starred Vincent Price and Judith Evelyn.
Wait Until Dark (1967)
Best Actress Oscar nominee Audrey Hepburn is convincing enough as a blind woman who accidentally becomes the terrified owner of a heroin-stuffed doll in Terence Young’s part-intriguing, part-irritating thriller Wait Until Dark. One major downside: Alan Arkin’s villainous overacting all but capsizes the proceedings.
Hepburn should have been shortlisted instead for another 1967 release: Two for the Road, director Stanley Donen and screenwriter Frederic Raphael’s clever dissection of a married couple’s life through the years.
Night Must Fall (1937)
Whether or not Best Actor Oscar nominee Robert Montgomery’s Irish accent is convincing, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s generally debonair leading man is creepy as a psychopath hired to care for hypochondriacal complainer and Best Supporting Actress nominee Dame May Whitty in Richard Thorpe’s quality thriller Night Must Fall, costarring Rosalind Russell.
For more on Night Must Fall, click on the Rosalind Russell link above.
Immediately below is TCM’s “31 Days of Oscar” movie schedule on Feb. 24.
‘31 Days of Oscar’: TCM schedule (EST) – Feb. 24
6:45 AM The Battle of Midway (1942)
Director: John Ford.
Narrators: Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell, Donald Crisp.
18m7:15 AM Resisting Enemy Interrogation (1944)
Director: Bernard Vorhaus.
Cast: Arthur Kennedy, Carl Esmond, Rand Brooks, Lloyd Nolan, Kent Smith, Craig Stevens, Peter Van Eyck, Don Dillaway, Don Porter, Richard Martin.
66m8:30 AM The Sea Around Us (1952)
Director: Irwin Allen.
Narrators: Don Forbes, Theodor Von Eltz.
61m9:45 AM The Times of Harvey Milk (1984)
Director: Rob Epstein.
Narrator: Harvey Fierstein.
88m11:30 AM Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt (1989)
Director: Robert Epstein.
Narrator: Dustin Hoffman.
80m1:00 PM Harlan County, U.S.A. (1976)
Director: Barbara Kopple.
103m3:00 PM Freedom on My Mind (1994)
Director: Connie Field.
105m5:00 PM When We Were Kings (1996)
Director: Leon Gast.
90m6:30 PM For All Mankind (1989)
Director: Al Reinert.
86m8:00 PM Suspicion (1941)
Director: Alfred Hitchcock.
Cast: Cary Grant, Joan Fontaine, Cedric Hardwicke, Nigel Bruce, Dame May Whitty, Isabel Jeans, Heather Angel, Leo G. Carroll, Gavin Gordon.
99m10:00 PM Psycho (1960)
Director: Alfred Hitchcock.
Cast: Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles, John Gavin, John McIntire, Martin Balsam, Simon Oakland, Frank Albertson, Patricia Hitchcock.
109m12:00 AM Gaslight (1944)
Director: George Cukor.
Cast: Charles Boyer, Ingrid Bergman, Joseph Cotten, Dame May Whitty, Angela Lansbury, Barbara Everest, Edmund Breon, Terry Moore.
114m2:00 AM Wait Until Dark (1967)
Director: Terence Young.
Cast: Audrey Hepburn, Alan Arkin, Richard Crenna, Efrem Zimbalist Jr., Jack Weston, Samantha Jones, Julie Herrod.
108m4:00 AM Night Must Fall (1937)
Director: Richard Thorpe.
Cast: Robert Montgomery, Rosalind Russell, Dame May Whitty, Alan Marshal, Merle Tottenham, Kathleen Harrison, Eily Malyon, Beryl Mercer.
117m
“TCM Schedule: Best Documentary, Women in Danger” notes
“31 Days of Oscar” movie schedule via the TCM website.
Ingrid Bergman Gaslight image: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
“TCM Schedule: Best Documentary, Women in Danger” last modified in July 2026.