December 31st
A new year is upon us and with it comes the opportunity to embrace new habits, see the world from fresh perspectives, take on different hobbies, and open ourselves up to new possibilities. With the arrival of a new year comes the shedding of old ways, but TCM is making sure to keep some things just the same. Join us on this special night as we celebrate the coming New Year with our hosts. All five TCM hosts will be on-air together December 31 beginning at 8pm. While each host has chosen their own film featuring their favorite New Year’s Eve party scene, they will be joined by their fellow hosts to help you bring in a new year with old Hollywood. Get your sparklers and glasses ready as our hosts will cheers to a New Year at midnight east coast and pacific time!
Kicking off our celebration is Alicia Malone who presents The Apartment (1960), a movie that she’s often called her favorite film of all time. Jack Lemmon stars as C. C. Baxter, an ambitious office worker hoping to rise the ranks of his corporate job. He does so by allowing his bosses to use his upper Manhattan apartment for their extramarital affairs. His feelings around the ordeal change when he realizes that the object of his affection, the office elevator girl Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine), is one of the women involved with his boss (Fred MacMurray). Her love affair leads to dire consequences that place C.C. and Fran closer than he could have imagined. The film features a festive New Year’s Eve Party at its climax.
Directed by Billy Wilder and written by Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond, the film was nominated for 10 Oscars at the 1961 ceremony and took home five: Best Picture, Best Editing; Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White; Best Screenplay and Best Director. Wilder later stated that the film was inspired by the David Lean romance Brief Encounter (1945), in which two married individuals plan to have a romantic tryst in a friend’s apartment. Wilder wasn’t interested in the affair but rather more curious about the friend lending the apartment and then must return home alone to an empty bed. Lemmon, who received a nomination for Best Actor in a Lead Role, worked to improvise the humorous scene involving him, MacMurray and nasal spray. Wilder, who rarely allowed any variations to his scripts, loved the bit and kept it in the film. “With Wilder, like with Ford, the best way is to do it rather than talk about it," Lemmon later explained.
Jacqueline Stewart follows up that film with the comedy Trading Places (1983). Directed by John Landis, Dan Aykroyd plays Louis Winthorpe III, a managing director at a brokerage firm who becomes the target of a cruel experiment by his bosses. The two wealthy owners of the firm (played by legacy stars Don Ameche and Ralph Bellamy) debate the issue of nature vs. nurture, leading them to use their privilege to test their theory on Winthorpe and a poor street beggar named Billy Ray Valentine (Eddie Murphy). The two men have their lives swapped, with Winthorpe losing his wealth and security and having it all given to Billy Ray instead. But when the streetwise beggar discovers he’s a pawn in someone else’s game, he works with Winthorpe to seek revenge. The film’s plot is set around New Year’s Eve with a pivotal plan taking place on the day. Trading Places was a major success when released.
Jamie Lee Curtis also stars in the film as a sex worker who helps Winthorpe in exchange for a financial reward. In a publicity interview in 1983, Curtis was asked who she would like to trade places with. The daughter of Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, the actress replied by saying her mom when she was 24. “Just for a day… I would love to trade places with her and go back see what it was really like in the Golden Age.” While Murphy and Aykroyd were praised for their comic chops, the film’s overall populist theme was lauded by critics, with some viewing the film as a call back to the works of Frank Capra and Preston Sturges. Murphy saw the film differently. He felt the film offered no questions or answers but served as mere entertainment and escapism. “Motion pictures are real powerful,” he said in the same interview. “I don’t think you should say anything with it, just do it, be entertaining, be funny… I don’t want to say anything with my [work], I don’t want to preach.”
Eddie Muller follows Jacqueline and takes the night past the threshold of 2024 into 2025 with his pick, the unique time jump noir Repeat Performance (1947). Based on the novel of the same name by William O’Farrell, the story opens on New Year’s Eve of 1946 to Broadway actress Shelia Page reeling from a murder that’s certain to destroy her life. She wishes to live the year over again and is mysteriously sent back in time to the beginning of 1946 to try and live her life with a different, less deadly outcome. However, as the year slowly passes, she learns some things are out of her control.
South African actor Louis Hayward plays Sheila’s husband Barney Page and actress Joan Leslie stars as Sheila. Also featured in the cast is Tom Conway, Richard Basehart in his feature film debut and actor John Ireland, who provides the film’s narration. Alfred L. Werker directed the picture for Eagle-Lion Films, and it fell into relative obscurity until 2007. After collaboration with the Film Noir Foundation, the UCLA Film and Television Archive and the Packard Institute for the Humanities, the film was restored and brought to Blu-ray in 2019.
Dave Karger leads the charge of bringing the first Technicolor musical for the year to the air with the Norman Taurog-directed comedy Bundle of Joy (1956). Real-life newlyweds Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds star as department store co-workers with a less-than-usual meet cute. This musical remake of Bachelor Mother (1939) finds Reynolds playing a store clerk who is fired from her job and soon after discovers an abandoned baby. When she attempts to take the child to an orphanage, everyone believes it’s actually hers and that the recent turn of bad luck prevents her from fully embracing the child. They intervene, getting her rehired and putting her in acquaintance with the store owner’s son Dan, played by Fisher in his feature film debut. The baby’s presence causes chaos and confusion, and their co-workers start to suspect that Dan is the father of the child. New Year’s Eve plays a pivotal role in the lead characters’ blossoming relationship.
Fisher later admitted that the film was merely a means for producer Edmund Grainger to exploit the publicity around his marriage to Reynolds. As it would turn out, Reynolds was seven months pregnant with their daughter, actress Carrie Fisher of Star Wars fame, during production and would give birth shortly before the film’s release.
Ben Mankiewicz closes out the night with a bona fide classic and wry satire of the Hollywood movie industry. Billy Wilder is once again represented, this time in collaboration with writers Charles Brackett and D.M. Marshman, Jr. for the noir Sunset Boulevard (1950). William Holden stars as Joe Gillis, a Hollywood writer struggling to make ends meet before fate changes his course. After his car breaks down in front of a mansion, he makes the acquaintance of silent actress Norma Desmond, played by early Hollywood silent star Gloria Swanson. The actress hires Joe to write her comeback feature but the two become entangled in a sordid affair that Joe struggles to escape. Norma becomes dependent on Joe, causing her grasp over him to tighten into an obsession with dangerous consequences. New Year’s Eve is once again represented during a major plot point of the film.
Several Hollywood stars and figures make cameos throughout the film including director Cecil B. DeMille, Buster Keaton, Erich von Stroheim and gossip columnist Hedda Hopper. Sunset Boulevard has long been considered one of the best American films of all time and it’s been a staple on many “Greatest” lists. It garnered 11 Oscar nominations at the 23rd Academy Awards and won three for Best Art Direction, Best Story & Screenplay, and Best Score.
