Briefs for April 6, 2016

Screenwriter Barbara Turner has died at the age of 79. Turner wrote the screenplays for a couple of movies and TV miniseries, but might be better remembered for being the mother of actress Jennifer Jason Leigh, from her marriage to Vic Morrow. (Leigh was born Jennifer Leigh Morrow, and took a professional name when she started acting, taking the Jason from family friend Jason Robards.)

I mentioned on Saturday that I didn't know whether Robert Osborne and Sally Field would be back for The Essentials. It turned out that they werent, with Ben Mankiewicz presenting the movies. Ben, irritatingly, got the name of the author of The Virginian wrong; it's Owen Wister, not Owen Whistler. Supposedly, Robert Osborne is going to be back in May, at least according to somebody who posts on the TCM boards and claims to know somebody at TCM.

As for the April spotlight on the Barrymores, it was presented as an interview between Ben Mankiewicz and author Carol Stein Hoffman, who wrote the book on the Barrymores. Literally, as she is the author of The Barrymores, Hollywood's First Family.

Tonight's TCM lineup looks at lesser-known actor Arturo de Cordova. I haven't seen New Orleans (10:00 PM) before; supposedly it's got some of the greats of New Orleans jazz who perform mixed in with the plot, and they're supposedly worth seeing. (Certainly, the jazz greats in Cabin in the Sky were worth seeing, so I can't see why they wouldn't be worth seeing here.) That's followed at 11:45 PM by Incendiary Blonde, in which Betty Hutton plays the real-life entertainer Texas Guinan.