TCM's Sorta Star of the Month, February 2026

Bugs Bunny in What's Opera, Doc? (Feb. 2, 8:20 PM)

We're into the start of a new month on TCM, which normally means it's time for new programming features including a Star of the Month. However, the Academy Awards are on Sunday, March 15 this year, which means that 31 Days of Oscar is beginning on February 13 so that the final day of it will fall on the same day as the Oscars, so only the first half of February (and then the second half of March, which as far as I know has not had a schedule release yet) have the more traditional themes.

Having said that, there have been years where TCM programmed something like the Star of the Month differently, but doing prime time every night for a whole week. John Wayne and Katharine Hepburn both had their centenaries in the same month (May 2007), and TCM gave each of them a different week in that month. This month, TCM is doing something similar yet different. To celebrate getting the rights to the Looney Tunes (and I think Merrie Melodies and earlier) cartoons back, TCM is honoring Bugs Bunny as their "Star of the Month".

Of course, most of what Bugs Bunny appears in is one-reel shorts, and I don't think there are enough shorts that TCM could run entire nights of prime time with them. So, instead, TCM has picked trios of Bugs Bunny shorts that have something thematic in common, and then paired those shorts with a traditional movie that also fits the theme. Tonight's opening theme has Bugs with Elmer Fudd, and since two of the shorts are the classic opera shorts Rabbit of Seville and What's Opera, Doc?, the movie at 8:30 PM is the Marx Brothers film A Night at the Opera. It goes on like this all week.

NB: Tuesday night opens with three desert shorts, and currently the 1939 version of Beau Geste comes on at 8:30 PM. The TCM schedule lists it as 120 minutes with the next set of Bugs shorts to begin at 10:30 PM, which would obviously clash considering that there should be an intro and outro. Wikipedia and IMDb, however, both list Beau Geste as running 112 minutes. (It's been ages since I've seen it, so I don't recall the running time, or whether that might have changed due to any restoration.)