Photo: Getty Images, Everett Collection; Photo Illustration: Dillen Phelps

Over twenty years ago, Robert Goldberg and Gerald Jay Goldberg published a biography of Ted Turner called Citizen Turner: The Wild Ride of an American Tycoon. It wasn’t the first time that the Southern-born media mogul got compared to the fictional newsprint colossus co-created and incarnated by Orson Welles. Welles and Citizen Kane screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz based their 1941 film character on real-life magnate William Randolph Hearst, who was arguably a more venal character than his fictionalized analog or his real-life inheritor Turner. 

In certain ways Turner, whose death was announced yesterday, lapped both Hearst and Kane in not just overall achievement but by succeeding in fields neither of those personages ever dreamed of. Hearst owned a bunch of yachts but never personally raced them and won the America’s Cup doing so; nor was Charles Foster Kane much of a sportsman. On the other hand, one Kane activity that Turner avoided was running for public office. Kane’s extracurricular love life torpedoed his own bid for New York Governor; it’s possible that Turner’s roving eye might have sidelined whatever run he might have made. But he didn’t run at all; news accounts state that he considered going for the presidency, but that his then-wife Jane Fonda balked at the notion of taking the role of First Lady. That may well be true. But I also think, and it’s just a gut feeling on my part, that Turner may have learned something from Citizen Kane. 

The reason Ted Turner matter to movie lovers has to do with how he once made himself absolutely loathed by movie lovers. Running a bunch of TV stations out of Atlanta, he increased his holdings more than tenfold; in addition to grabbing and remaking a baseball team, he also got a studio. And once in possession of a studio, he got ideas of making the studio library attractive to contemporary market sensibilities. Hence, he hit upon colorization as a tool to make old movies look “new.”  

And the film world went justifiably bananas. Exalted American directors like John Huston and Billy Wilder, both virtuosos of both black and white AND intentional color, protested vociferously. Turner was condemned as a philistine, the butt of late-night talk host jokes (and this memorable Jim Carrey bit from In Living Color). His response was a middle finger, more or less. Colorization works, he insisted. But once the market was over the initial hocus-pocus, it was discovered that colorization didn’t work; viewers preferred black and white movies in their original forms.  While Turner over the years proved himself capable of admitting when he was wrong, that wasn’t exactly his default mode. But once he got it through his head that colorization wasn’t going to fly, what he did next made him the movie buff’s best friend. 

What he did next was the cable channel Turner Classic Movies, which airs a genuinely spectacular array of not just old Hollywood but international pictures, most of a certain vintage or pedigree. As I write this, the channel is airing the spectacular 1935 Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers musical Top Hat; following that, the delightful  1985 compilation of classic clips That’s Dancing; after that, James Cagney, costarring with Dorothy Malone and Jane Greer in the 1957 biopic of Lon Chaney, Man of a Thousand Faces; and finally, 1977’s Valentino, crazed director Ken Russell’s meditation on the silent screen lover with ballet superstar Ruudolf Nureyev in the title role. The channel’s programming is buttressed by amiable and knowledgeable intro, outro, and interstitial segments featuring amiable Ben Mankiewicz (a grandson of Kane co-screenwriter Herman!), author Alicia Malone, awards maven Dave Karger, historian Jacqueline Stewart, and noir expert Eddie Muller. Director Paul Thomas Anderson has stated that in his house, TCM is always on, in one room or another. “I think that sense of nostalgia that comes with watching old movies gives people a lot of joy, myself included; and I don’t see that changing anytime soon,” Turner said in a 2019 interview. But I don’t think that’s the whole lure, for people like myself or Anderson. What one can glean about the development of movie language, about breakthrough and breakdowns with respect to censorship — a lot of TCM’s most popular programming is of “pre-code” Hollywood films, early thirties pictures that had more sexual sizzle and violent unpunished amorality than what was produced when a self-imposed “Production Code” went into effect — is both illuminating and extremely entertaining. 

Turner’s legacy for movie lovers continued with two other stations, TBS and TNT. I remember interviewing the director Kevin Smith when he was shooting his ultimately ill-fated Bruce-Willis/Tracy Morgan comedy Cop Out, and Smith telling me, “I hope that it’s well-received enough that it becomes one of those TBS ‘New Classic;’ something you’d happen upon channel surfing on a Saturday afternoon and enjoy.” Well, that didn’t quite work out. As of now, TBS mostly specializes in Big Bang Theory and Young Sheldon reruns. Right now TNT is screening 2023’s Plane, an okay Gerard Butler action vehicle that in the context of the present day seems a dress rehearsal for Deep Water but never mind. After which there will be a lot of hockey. So it’s mostly with TCM that Turner’s legacy shines brightest. May his wish to run these movies “until the end of time” be granted. 

Veteran critic Glenn Kenny reviews‎ new releases at RogerEbert.com, the New York Times, and, as befits someone of his advanced age, the AARP magazine. He blogs, very occasionally, at Some Came Running and tweets, mostly in jest, at @glenn__kenny. He is the author of the The World Is Yours: The Story of Scarface, published by Hanover Square Press, and now available for at a bookstore near you.