Special Theme: Big Country: ‘Country Stars as Actors, Part Two’
TCM, beginning at 7 p.m.
Enjoy more country-music stars who have shown they can act as well as sing in five films airing tonight on Turner Classic Movies. First up is Pure Country (1992), a dramatic musical Western starring George Strait in his acting debut. The charttopping, platinum-selling soundtrack to the film was Strait’s 13th studio album and is his most commercially successful one
to date, with the artist singing most of the songs on it in his persona as his fictional country-singer character from the movie, Dusty Chandler. Then, Dolly Parton leads the cast and sings the title tune of the 1980 comedy Nine to Five (pictured). Both the film and the song remain among Parton’s biggest hits, and they made the singer — who had already been an established country star — into even more of a pop-culture icon among fans of many genres. Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin and Dabney Coleman also star. Tonight’s next film, making its network premiere, is also from 1980, a made-for-television Western that originally premiered on CBS — Kenny Rogers as The Gambler. The first of several TV movies that Rogers made based on his iconic song “The Gambler,” the Emmy-nominated production finds the singer portraying the titular gambler, Brady Hawkes, who tries to reunite with the young son he has never known. Next, enjoy Roy Orbison in his only acting performance, in the 1967 musical-comedy Western The Fastest Guitar Alive, in which Orbison also performs seven original songs that he cowrote with frequent collaborator Bill Dees. Finally, the short (about 10 minutes) 1944 film Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys captures the early king of Western swing music and his band in action as they
perform several numbers. —