Walter Matthau
The story of the gold-plated statuette that became the film industry's most coveted prize, AND THE OSCAR GOES TO... traces the history of the Academy itself, which began in 1927 when Louis B. Mayer, then head of MGM, led other prominent members of the industry in forming this professional honorary organization. Two years later the Academy began bestowing awards, which were nicknamed "Oscar," and quickly came to represent the pinnacle of cinematic achievement.
Recut of the miniseries "Billy, How Did You Do It?": In 1988, Oscar-winning German filmmaker Volker Schlondorff ("The Tin Drum") sat down with legendary director Billy Wilder at his office in Beverly Hills, California and turned on his camera for a series of filmed interviews. The conversation went on for two weeks. The results were aired on German TV in 1992 and debuted on U.S. television when it was shown on Turner Classic Movies in 2006. We are presented with a generous smattering of film clips, rare photographs and artwork, but mostly Wilder just sits in his office and talks with the off screen Schlondorff, moving easily between English and German.
A trio of sisters bond over their ambivalence toward the approaching death of their curmudgeonly father, to whom none of them was particularly close.
Robert Osborne hosts this TCM original featuring an exclusive interview with the original Odd Couple.
A widower becomes re-charged when he meets an outgoing widow, but his son tries to block the romance.
30 years after the first film, Oscar and Felix embark on a road trip together, to attend the wedding of Oscar's son to Felix's daughter.
Care-free Charlie (Walter Matthau) cons his widower brother-in-law Herb (Jack Lemmon) into an expenses-paid luxury cruise in search of rich, lonely ladies. The catch is that they are required to be dance hosts! With a tyrannical cruise director, and the luscious Liz and lovely Vivian, our heroes have lots of mis-adventures before they finally return to port.
Old Nat Moyer is a talker, a philosopher, and a troublemaker with a fanciful imagination. His companion is Midge Carter, who is half-blind, but still the super of an apartment house. When he is threatened with retirement, Nat battles on his behalf. Nat also takes on his daughter, a drug dealer, and a mugger in this appealing version of a really 'odd couple'.
Jack Lemmon made over sixty films and received numerous awards, including eight Academy Award Nominations and two Oscars. Later in life, his achievement was enriched by new challenges in which he exposed the vulnerability and emotion of the later years as few had dared. He reveled in his ongoing screen partnerships with directors like Billy Wilder and stars like Walter Matthau. Narrated on-camera by Jack Lemmon, this documentary includes interviews with Lemmon's son, the actor Chris Lemmon. Also appearing are such legends as Jack's life-long friend, the writer and director Billy Wilder, writer-director Garson Kanin, drama teacher Uta Hagen, and actor Gregory Peck. Actors Charles Durning, Maureen Stapleton, Betty Garrett, and Kevin Spacey, writer Neil Simon, director Delbert Mann, and other Hollywood luminaries help complete the profile. Clips from some of Lemmon's major films as well as archival footage add to this portrait of one of our most illustrious and productive stars
Based on the novel by Truman Capote, this often-witty coming-of-age drama looks at a young man growing up with an unusual family in the Deep South in the 1940s.
A family wedding reignites the ancient feud between next-door neighbors and fishing buddies John and Max. Meanwhile, a sultry Italian divorcée opens a restaurant at the local bait shop, alarming the locals who worry she'll scare the fish away. But she's less interested in seafood than she is in cooking up a hot time with Max.
Lily and her son John live alone in a small town as her husband has been killed fighting the war in France. Or at least that is what she told John, but the arrival of Frank back in the town leads him to find out that she not only has been lying about that but also about the fact that she never married him. When Frank tussles with Lily in her yard she applies for a restraining order, calling on the help of her father (the esteemed judge Stoddard Bell) and his partner (lawyer Harmon Cobb). The case fails and when Frank is found murdered later that night Stoddard is arrested and Cobb has a defence case on his hands.
For decades, next-door neighbors and former friends John and Max have feuded, trading insults and wicked pranks. When an attractive widow moves in nearby, their bad blood erupts into a high-stakes rivalry full of naughty jokes and adolescent hijinks. Will this love triangle destroy the two old grumps? Or will the geriatric odd couple overcome their differences and rediscover their friendship?
Mr. Wilson's ever-present annoyance comes in the form of one mischievous kid named Dennis. But he'll need Dennis's tricks to uncover a collection of gold coins that go missing when a shady drifter named Switchblade Sam comes to town.
A hermit, known as the Grinch hates Christmas and is tired of the Whos of Who-ville celebrating it. This year, he plans to steal it from them. Features the illustrations from the book accompanied by narration from Walter Matthau
In the second dramatic case for lawyer Harmon Cobb, he defends an incarcerated woman who is refused release from a mental institution.
This acclaimed Oliver Stone drama presents the investigation into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy led by New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison. When Garrison begins to doubt conventional thinking on the murder, he faces government resistance, and, after the killing of suspected assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, he closes the case. Later, however, Garrison reopens the investigation, finding evidence of an extensive conspiracy behind Kennedy's death.
Small town lawyer, Harmon Cobb, defends a Nazi prisoner of war against murder charges. Set during World War II, Cobb has to contend with the difficulties of defending the devil when the town's only doctor (Barnard Hughes) dies while at "Camp Bremen" in the fictitious town of Bremen, Colorado.
Father Maurice, a priest living in a residential college for priests in Rome, is called out one day to "exorcise" the devil from someone. The devil turns out to be in the form of a fun-loving man called Giuditta. What Father Maurice doesn't know is that this type of devil will turn his life around.
Joe Mulholland, Head of Production at a Hollywood studio, makes a rather fool-hardy promise to a dying friend. He undertakes to make a major movie using the title - if not the content - of a best-selling sex manual "Love in Sex". Enlisting the help of depressed screenwriter Herb Derman and rather off-centre director Sid Spokane to try and come up with an idea or two, Joe soon wishes he was not one of those people who always try to keep their promises.
Jack Lemmon is honored by the AFI with a Life Achievement Award hosted by Julie Andrews featuring clips from his films and reminiscences from co-workers.
Documentary about James Stewart's long career as an actor and positive personal life.
The escaped delinquent John W. Burns, Jr. replaces Dr. Maitlin on a radio show, saying he's the psychiatrist Lawrence Baird.
Barbara Stanwyck receives the 15th AFI Life Achievement Award.
Legendary filmmaker Billy Wilder becomes the 14th recipient of The American Film Institute Life Achievement Award as clips from a number of his classic films are unreeled: "The Major and the Minor," "Double Indemnity," "The Lost Weekend," "Sunset Blvd.," "Ace in the Hole," "Stalag 17," "Sabrina," "Love in the Afternoon," "Some Like it Hot," "The Apartment," "Irma La Douce," "The Fortune Cookie," and "The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes."
Captain Red runs a hardy pirate ship with the able assistance of Frog, a dashing young French sailor. One day Capt. Red is captured and taken aboard a Spanish galleon, but thanks to his inventiveness, he raises the crew to mutiny, takes over the ship, and kidnaps the niece of the governor of Maracaibo. The question is, can he keep this pace up?
Having both lost their jobs, two strangers become unlikely friends after a run in with a would be robber, who is actually a hitman with a grudge against the two.
French film critic Michel Ciment interviews Billy Wilder about his life and filmmaking.
Grandmother has nothing to say when Libby tells her that she is off to LA to look up Dad, a Hollywood screenwriter. Grandmother has been in a New York cemetery for six years and Dad has been out of Libby's life for 16 of her 19 years. Libby arrives in LA on a Tuesday and phones Dad the one night that Stephanie, who does Jane Fonda's hair, stays over. Stephanie is there the next morning when Libby decides she needs to tell her story face-to-face.
For the first time in history a woman is appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, where she becomes a friendly rival to a liberal associate.
During a high profile Mafia testimony case, a contract killer checks-in a hotel room near the courthouse while his next door depressed neighbor wants to commit suicide due to marital problems.
When CIA operative Miles Kendig deliberately lets KGB agent Yaskov get away, his boss threatens to retire him. Kendig beats him to it, however, destroying his own records and traveling to Austria where he begins work on a memoir that will expose all his former agency's covert practices. The CIA catches wind of the book and sends other agents after him, initiating a frenetic game of cat and mouse that spans the globe.
Sorrowful Jones is a cheap bookie in 1930's. When a gambler leaves his daughter as a marker for a bet, he gets stuck with her. His life will change a great deal with her arrival and his sudden love for a woman also involved in gambling operations.
The American Film Institute gives its eighth Lifetime Achievment Award to James (Jimmy) Stewart in a ceremony hosted by his long-time friend Henry Fonda.
Charley is a surgeon who's recently lost his wife; he embarks on a tragicomic romantic quest with one woman after another until he meets up with Ann, a singular woman, closer to his own age, who immediately and unexpectedly captures his heart.
Casey's family raises and trains race horses, and their latest undersized foal named Casey's Shadow does not seem to have a lot going for it, but may turn out to be a champion.
This cartoon version of A Christmas Carol hails from the production house of Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass--the team that brought you just about every other Christmas special you saw as a kid (including Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer). Reinvented as a 49-minute musical ghost story, Stingiest stars the voice of Walter Matthau as the bedeviled Scrooge and Tom Bosley as the Jiminy Cricket-type narrator, B. Humbug, Esq.
A film about the life and work of the master comedy filmmaker, Charles Chaplin.
An aging, down-on-his-luck ex-minor leaguer coaches a team of misfits in an ultra-competitive California little league.
Lewis and Clark, aka The Sunshine Boys, were famous comedians during the vaudeville era, but off-stage they couldn't stand each other and haven't spoken in over 20 years of retirement. Willy Clark's nephew is the producer of a TV variety show that wants to feature a reunion of this classic duo. It is up to him to try to get the Sunshine Boys back together again.
Various interconnected people struggle to survive when an earthquake of unimaginable magnitude hits Los Angeles, California.
In New York, armed men hijack a subway car and demand a ransom for the passengers. Even if it's paid, how could they get away?
A journalist suffering from burn-out wants to finally say goodbye to his office – but his boss doesn’t like the idea one bit.
Charley Varrick robs a bank in a small town with his friends, but instead of obtaining a small amount of money, they discover they stole a very large amount of money belonging to the mob. Charley must now come up with a plan to not only evade the police but the mob as well.
When a gunman opens fire on a crowded city bus in San Francisco, Detective Dave Evans is killed, along with the man he'd been following in relation to a murder. Evans' partner, Sgt. Jake Martin, becomes obsessed with solving the case.
A fun-loving bachelor woos and weds a secretary, but the bonds of this marriage aren't strong enough to stop his philandering from continuing.
The Bergers, a blue-collar Jewish family living in an overstuffed tenement and undone by the Depression, struggle through hard times and dream of a better future in this 1972 production of Clifford Odets' pungent play. Personalities and politics clash as Odets' mélange of characters try to survive on pennies a day. Walter Matthau plays cynical World War I amputee Moe Axelrod, and Leo Fuchs portrays the family's iron-willed leftist grandfather.
Henry Graham lives the life of a playboy. When his lawyer tells him one day that his lifestyle has consumed all his funds, he needs an idea to avoid climbing down the social ladder.
Joseph Kotcher, retired salesman, walks out on his son and daughter-in-law after their attempts to put him in a retirement home. He tracks down their babysitter, sacked because she is pregnant, and rents a small house nearby. He finds a new purpose in life. Jack Lemmon's first film as director stars his old friend Walter Matthau.
Film version of the Neil Simon play has three separate acts set in the same hotel suite in New York's Plaza Hotel with Walter Matthau in a triple role. In the first, Karen Nash tries to get her inattentive husband Sam's attention to spruce up their failing marriage. In the second, brash film producer Jesse Kiplinger tries to get his former one-time flame Muriel to see him for what he stands for. In the third, Roy Hubley and his wife Norma try and try to get their uncertain-of-herself daughter out of the bathroom before her approaching wedding.
Matchmaker, Dolly Levi takes a trip to Yonkers, New York to see the "well-known unmarried half-a-millionaire," Horace Vandergelder. While there, she convinces him, his two stock clerks and his niece and her beau to go to New York City.
Distraught when her middle-aged lover breaks a date with her, 21-year-old Toni Simmons attempts suicide. Impressed by her action, her lover, dentist Julian Winston reconsiders marrying Toni, but he worries about her insistence on honesty. Having fabricated a wife and three children, Julian readily accepts when his devoted nurse, Stephanie, who has secretly loved Julian for years, offers to act as his wife and demand a divorce.
Carol Channing hosts musical variety special with guests Walter Matthau, George Burns, U.S. Air Force Academy Cadet Chorale, The Association, Eddy Arnold.
A bored housewife poses as a call girl for a movie star sex-symbol, hoping she can prove to her husband, the star's agent, that she is still desirable to other men and thereby, rekindle the spark in their marriage.
In New York, Felix, a neurotic news writer who just broke up with his wife, is urged by his chaotic friend Oscar, a sports journalist, to move in with him, but their lifestyles are as different as night and day are, so Felix's ideas about housekeeping soon begin to irritate Oscar.
A man gives his friend a series of lessons on how to cheat on one's wife without being caught.
A cameraman is knocked over during a football game. His brother in law as the king of the ambulance chasing lawyers starts a suit while he's still knocked out. The cameraman is against it until he hears that his ex-wife will be coming to see him. He pretends to be injured to get her back, but also sees what the strain is doing to the football player who injured him.
1945, on an old cargo ship somewhere deep in the Pacific ocean: Captain Morton strives to become commander, so he demands the maximum quality of work from his crew, without granting them any freedom or favors - ignoring that they're thousand of miles away from the front. In one word: he drives his crew crazy. They are near mutiny, but no-one dares to do the first step. Until Ensign Pulver plays a prank on the captain that triggers fatal consequences...
Shot by a jealous husband, Charley falls out a porthole and is lost at sea only to find himself returned as an attractive blond woman. His best friend is staying at his house as he puts Charlie's affairs in order and after being convinced, finds himself an unwilling helper in Charlie's new plan to marry into money
After Regina Lampert falls for the dashing Peter Joshua on a skiing holiday in the French Alps, she discovers upon her return to Paris that her husband has been murdered. Soon, she and Peter are giving chase to three of her late husband's World War II cronies, Tex, Scobie and Gideon, who are after a quarter of a million dollars the quartet stole while behind enemy lines. But why does Peter keep changing his name?
Con artist Steve Blair persuades Tony Dallas, a Manhattan gangster, to finance a movie about Adam and Eve by offering the female lead to Tony's stripper girl friend, Cha Cha Miller. The film is such a disaster, however, that Steve and his writer, Paul Ferris, decide to escape on a freighter to Greece. En route, Steve learns that the island of Paradeisos has lost its tourist trade because it has no apparent historical or mythological heritage. Intrigued, he hits upon the scheme of turning Paradeisos into a legendary island of love and taking a cut from all commercial enterprises. After planting Greek antiquities in the waters surrounding the island, Steve induces Paul to "recover" them, thus causing the tourist trade to increase.
A fiercely independent cowboy arranges to have himself locked up in jail in order to then escape with an old friend who has been sentenced to the penitentiary.
A timid man with money problems gets into a big card game with some high-rollers.
A lawyer begins to win after his wife secretly becomes his bookie to save their money.
The DuPont Show of the Week is an American anthology drama series which aired for three seasons on NBC from September 17, 1961 to August 30, 1964.
A suburban architect loves his wife but is bored with his marriage and with his work, so he takes up with the neglected, married beauty who lives down the street.
Actor Walter Matthau directed his first and only feature film with the black-and-white crime drama Gangster Story. In an unusual noncomedic role, Matthau plays Jack Martin, a local gangster who wants to run his own crime syndicate in the neighborhood run by Earl Dawson (Bruce McFarlan). They eventually team up and plan a heist. Carol Grace plays the reform-minded girlfriend.
Danny Fisher, young delinquent, flunks out of high school. He quits his job as a busboy in a nightclub, and one night he gets the chance to perform. Success is imminent and the local crime boss Maxie Fields wants to hire him to perform at his night club The Blue Shade. Danny refuses, but Fields won't take no for an answer.
Jim Burton, chronic alcoholic, is cared for by Ellen, his incredibly patient, sexy, hard-working wife. A doctor's warning that Jim could become mentally ill strikes enough fear into him that he really wants to cure himself...but can't. One night, he meets William Tobin, a fellow drunk, and finds that he helps himself by trying to help Tobin. Thus is born, amid setbacks, a group resembling Alcoholics Anonymous.
After robbing a bank Murphy assumes the identity of his pursuer, a famous US Marshal, when he stumbles into a town and is confronted by the local judge, Matthau. Murphy is forced to remain as the new Marshal; an old flame, Scala, nearly unmasks him by accident, only to be forced to assume the ruse of being Murphy's wife. The "couple" given a house and respectability, which neither has had before. They maintain the charade to avoid hurting a young orphan boy, Matthau's ward. Scala is torn by her loyalty to boyfriend planning to rob the bank and growing feelings for Murphy
A rookie assistant DA is assigned to investigate the murder of a longshoreman, killed for exposing gangster involvement on the piers, and meets up with a "code of silence" amongst all potential witnesses.
The rise of a raucous hayseed named Lonesome Rhodes from itinerant Ozark guitar picker to local media rabble-rouser to TV superstar and political king-maker. Marcia Jeffries is the innocent Sarah Lawrence girl who discovers the great man in a back-country jail and is the first to fall under his spell.
A seriously ill schoolteacher becomes dependent on a "miracle" drug that begins to affect his sanity.
A scout leading a wagon train through hostile Indian country unwittingly gets involved with a Sioux chief's daughter
A family living 50 miles away try to flee from the fallout of an atomic bomb that fell on New York City.
