More retro rewinds
“Gone With the Wind” (Turner Classic Movies, Sunday, March 10): A highlight of the last day of TCM’S annual “31 Days of Oscar” festival, this 1939 epic was the first film ever shown on the channel. Novelist Margaret Mitchell’s saga uses the Civil War, its prelude and its aftermath as backdrops for one of the most famous love stories in the history of fiction … that of celebrated rogue Rhett Butler and willful belle Scsrlett O’hara, iconically played by Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh. The film’s 10 Academy Award wins included those for best picture, actress (Leigh) and supporting actress (Hattie Mcdaniel). Leslie Howard and Olivia de Havilland also star.
“Pretty Woman” (Hulu, streaming): Julia Roberts cemented her stardom in director Garry Marshall’s enduring 1990 comedy, casting her as a spirited prostitute hired by a no-nonsense businessman (Richard Gere) to be his companion while he’s on a work mission. Each is surprised to fall for the other genuinely, forcing them to ponder whether they can make the relationship work over the long haul. Jason Alexander, Laura San Giacomo, Ralph Bellamy and Marshall-movie regular Hector Elizondo co-star. Gere and Roberts reunited in Marshall’s “Runaway Bride” (1999).
“All in the Family” (METV, Sunday, March 10): Viewers already had a very good sense of the often contentious relationship between two of the show’s main characters by the time the second-season episode “Flashback: Mike Meets Archie” aired. The story goes back to the time Gloria (Sally Struthers) introduced Mike (Rob Reiner, who also co-wrote the story) to her parents, and it didn’t take long for him to engage in a shouting match with Archie (Carroll O’connor) over their views on the Vietnam War.
“Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer” (get TV, Monday, March 11, through Friday, March 15): One of literature’s most famous detective characters has been depicted on film a number of ways, and a particularly memorable one is Stacy Keach’s portrayal of Hammer in this series – now repeating on weeknights – that originally ran on CBS in the mid-1980s. Keach ideally captured the private eye’s rugged nature, with Don Stroud and Lindsay Bloom providing good support as police captain Pat Chambers and Hammer’s secretary Velda.