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Yvette Mimieux Memorial Tribute TCM, Beginning at 7 p.m.
Famed actress Yvette Mimieux passed away Jan. 17 at the age of 80, and Turner Classic Movies will be remembering her tonight with a lineup of five of her most notable films. The evening begins with Light in the Piazza (pictured) (1962), a romantic comedy/drama featuring Mimieux in one of her more acclaimed roles, as a mentally disabled young American woman who, while on summer holiday in Italy with her mother (Olivia de Havilland), finds love with a local man (George Hamilton) who mistakes her impairment for simple naivete. Up next is 1960’s Where the Boys Are, with Mimieux portraying one of a group of college women traveling to Fort Lauderdale for spring break. One of the earliest teen films to explore changing sexual mores among adolescents, it is mostly a comedy, though Mimieux’s character features in a serious sub-plot addressing date rape. Dolores Hart, Paula Prentiss, Connie Francis and Hamilton co-star. Following that is Dark of the Sun, a 1968 adventure film about commandos and mercenaries on a steam-train mission across the Congo to recover uncut diamonds and rescue a band of refugees. Featuring scenes that were pretty harrowing and graphic for its time (and still can be hard to watch), the film was initially panned but has developed a cult following, including filmmakers Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino. Rod Taylor and Jim Brown costar. Taylor also appears with Mimieux in the evening’s next film, which marked a breakthrough for the actress: The Time Machine, the classic 1960 adaptation of H.G. Wells’ famous sci-fi tale. Concluding tonight’s Mimieux celebration is Toys in the Attic (1963), a drama based on Lillian Hellman’s Tony-winning play and led by Dean Martin and Geraldine Page.