
By Nick Thomas
The 15th Turner Classic Movies Film Festival is scheduled for April 18-21, in Hollywood. Canceled for a couple of years due to the pandemic, no one was more pleased to attend the festival when it resumed in person two years ago than actress Diane Baker, a popular guest at many of the past festivals.
âI love them!â said Baker from Los Angeles, who noted that the 2020 and 2021 events had been held virtually.
The five current TCM hosts (Ben Mankiewicz, Alicia Malone, Dave Karger, Eddie Muller, and Jacqueline Stewart) will be on hand to introduce dozens of movies during the four-day event as the classic film community rallies around this yearâs âMost Wanted: Crime and Justice in Film.â festival theme (see www.filmfestival.tcm.com).
A prolific film and television actor, producer, and college teacher, Baker remembers when the TCM cable channel came into existence 30 years ago this month and its first host.
âI was there the night of the announcement at the Writerâs Guild Theater in Los Angeles,â she recalled. âRoger Mayer (the late Columbia Pictures, MGM, and Turner former executive) came on stage to announce Turner Classic Movies was going to be launched and with no commercials, and that Robert Osborne (1932-2017) would be the new full-time host.â
During his subsequent two decades with the channel, Osborne became the beloved public face of TCM due to his genial on-screen nature, mellow comforting voice, and encyclopedic knowledge of the entertainment industry.
âIâd known Robert since I was 19 years old,â said Baker. âHe studied journalism at the University of Washington but came to LA to try acting and lived in the neighborhood where I was growing up â Sherman Oaks.â
When attempting to secure her first Hollywood contract, Baker even read audition scenes with Osborne.
âI was offered a contract and he was not!â said Baker, who signed with Twentieth Century Fox and soon began filming her first feature, 1959âs emotionally charged âThe Diary of Anne Frank.â Osborne, she says, accompanied her to the premiere.
Filmed almost entirely on a cramped stage setting to reproduce the confined attic where the Frank family hid for two years during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, Baker still vividly recalls her role as Anneâs sister, Margot, seven decades earlier.
âMr. Stevens (director) wanted us to be there most of the time even if we werenât in the scene because it was claustrophobic and he wanted that feeling of being a family closed off,â she recalled. âHe was very kind and gentle with us newcomers (and) used to give me little peppermint candies so I would be confident and less nervous before a scene. Iâll never forget getting a beautiful box of yellow roses when the filming ended, from Mr. Stevens.â
She also recalls the last time she met with Osborne. âWe stayed friends until he passed away and I saw him in his apartment just two weeks before. He was in a wheelchair, and we just talked and talked. Iâve always been involved with TCM and Robert was their rockstar.â
Nick Thomas teaches at Auburn University at Montgomery in Alabama and writes features, columns, and interviews for newspapers and magazines around the country. See https://www.getnickt.org.