CATCH A CLASSIC
Ned Beatty Memorial Tribute
TCM, beginning at 7 p.m.
Acclaimed and beloved actor Ned Beatty achieved a long and distinguished career across movies and television before he passed away June 13 at age 83. Tonight, Turner Classic Movies remembers Beatty’s film work with a number of titles that represent his wide range of performances. The evening begins with Network (pictured) (1976), screenwriter Paddy Chayefsky’s Oscar-winning, prescient and very dark satire about the TV industry. Beatty portrays network Chairman Arthur Jensen, and though he only appears in one scene for a few minutes, the incredible speech about the “primal forces” of corporations and the economy that he delivers to Peter Finch’s Howard Beale in the scene — a speech that took up about four pages of the screenplay — is delivered by Beatty with such brilliant intensity and almost religious fervor that it comes across simultaneously frightening and humorous, even if the chuckles it elicits might be nervous laughter. As brief as that scene was, it was impactful enough to earn Beatty his first and only Oscar nomination, for Best Supporting Actor. Following that are the 1979 drama Promises in the Dark, starring Marsha Mason and featuring Beatty as the father of a dying cancer patient; the TCM premiere of Hear My Song, a 1991 comedy with Beatty in a Golden Globe-nominated performance as legendary Irish tenor Josef Locke (but with someone else providing the singing voice); Silver Streak, the 1976 Gene Wilder/Richard Pryor-led buddy comedy with Beatty as an undercover FBI agent posing as a vitamin salesman aboard the titular train; and Chattahoochee, a 1989 drama also making its TCM debut, led by Gary Oldman and with Beatty as a doctor in a story inspired by true events in the 1950s that led to reforms in Florida’s mentalhealth system.