TCM Highlights: December 1-7 & Full December Calendar
What To Know
- Turner Classic Movies honors Merle Oberon as December’s Star of the Month with a retrospective of her films every Tuesday night, highlighting her unique background and Hollywood career.
- This week features a Richard Pryor marathon on December 1 to celebrate what would have been his 85th birthday, showcasing his influential comedy and film work.
- Additional highlights include a Hanna-Barbera feature film retrospective and a tribute to actress Agnes Moorehead, recognizing her contributions to film and television.
In December, Turner Classic Movies celebrates Golden Age actress Merle Oberon as their star of the month, with Tuesday night programming highlighting her extraordinary career all through the month. Other highlights this week include a Richard Pryor marathon in honor of what would have been the groundbreaking comedian’s 85th birthday, and a look back at Bewitched star Agnes Moorehead and her cinematic legacy, plus a Hanna-Barbera retrospective focused on the animation studio’s feature-length films that includes a special showing of A Christmas Story (no, not that one).
Just looking for the full December calendar for the month? Scroll to the bottom to download.
TCM Star of the Month – Merle Oberon
Tuesday nights all month long
Everett Collection
Glamorous actor Merle Oberon is celebrated with a retrospective of her films Tuesday nights this month. Born Estelle Merle O’Brien Thompson on Feb. 19, 1911, Oberon took great pains to conceal her biracial heritage. She claimed to have been born and raised in Tasmania, Australia, but she was really born in Mumbai (then Bombay), India, to a teenage Eurasian girl and a British engineer. Oberon was raised by her grandmother, posing as her mother, and later as her maid, when the two traveled to England for the actor’s first film roles. Some of these early costume dramas, produced and directed by Alexander Korda, are showcased in tonight’s lineup and include The Private Life of Don Juan (1934), The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933) and The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934).
Monday, December 1
TCM Celebrates Richard Pryor’s 85th Birthday
Beginning at 8pm
Columbia Pictures/Courtesy: Everett Collection
We would not have comedy as it is today without the talents of Richard Pryor. Pryor’s career and material drew from his difficult past (he was raised in his grandmother’s brothel and expelled from school at age 14), but he found the absurdity in life and rose above it. In honor of what would’ve been his 85th birthday, TCM presents a primetime lineup that showcases Pryor’s genius in both movies and comedy performances.
The evening begins with one of his frequent and funny collaborations with actor Gene Wilder in Silver Streak (1976). Most of tonight’s films, however, were made during Pryor’s career resurgence following a 1980 substance abuse incident that resulted in third-degree burns that nearly claimed his life. These include Brewster’s Millions (1985), the box-office blockbuster Richard Pryor: Live on the Sunset Strip (1982) and Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling (1986), a semiautobiographical movie that opens with a fictional retelling of the efforts to save Pryor’s life following his near-fatal accident, then flashes back to his childhood and forward to his recovery.
Tuesday, December 2
TCM Celebrates Julie Harris’ 100th Birthday
Beginning at 6:45am
Everett Collection
A star of the stage and screen who became a soap opera regular with Knots Landing, Julie Harris, who would’ve turned 100 today, was one of America’s most remarkable and noteworthy actors. She was an inaugural member of the influential Actors Studio and attained early fame playing the cabaret singer Sally Bowles in I Am a Camera on Broadway and film. Her appearance of childlike frailty, even when cast in older roles, suited her pairings with younger acting partners like James Dean, whom she mentored and starred with in his first credited film, 1955’s East of Eden (part of today’s tribute of seven films). Harris also excelled in playing characters with touches of (or overt) mental instability or other impairments. These are on display today in The Haunting (1963), Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967), Harper (1966) and 1962’s Requiem for a Heavyweight (perhaps a plain-Jane model for Talia Shire‘s Adrian in Rocky?).
Wednesday, December 3
TCM Spotlight: Hanna-Barbera — Part 1
Beginning at 8pm
You might have thought that Hanna-Barbera only made short-attention-span cartoons, but the animation team also plied their talents in creating and producing feature-length animated and live-action films.
Enjoy some chuckles when Yogi Bear and Fred Flintstone leave their comfort zones of Jellystone Park and Bedrock, respectively, in Hey There, It’s Yogi Bear (1964) and The Man Called Flintstone (1966). Then, just in time for the holidays, take a break from another viewing of 1983’s classic A Christmas Story and enjoy H-B’s 1972 special of the same name, in which a dog and a mouse set off on an adventure to deliver a boy’s letter to Santa (voice of Hal Smith from The Adventures of Gumby and Davey and Goliath).
Thursday, December 4
TCM Spotlight: American Sports Heroes
Beginning at 6am
Everett Collection
Enjoy a day of movies devoted to some icons of the sporting world. There’s an Olympic contender in The Bob Mathias Story (1954); collegiate (and professional) stars in 1940’s Knute Rockne All American and 1951’s Jim Thorpe — All American; baseball greats in The Babe Ruth Story (1948) and The Jackie Robinson Story (1950); a tale of football star Elroy Hirsch in Crazylegs (1953); and two boxing features, 1956’s Somebody Up There Likes Me, starring Paul Newman, and 1996’s documentary When We Were Kings, chronicling George Foreman and Muhammad Ali‘s infamous “Rumble in the Jungle.”
Friday, December 5
TCM Spotlight: Agnes Moorehead
Beginning at 6:45am
Everett Collection
A day before what would have been her 125th birthday, TCM honors actor Agnes Moorehead. While many remember her as Endora, the wisecracking witch mother on TV’s Bewitched, Moorehead’s roles as steely, tough-minded older women were first honed in a stellar film career that earned her four Academy Award nominations. Beginning in radio, she acted in Orson Welles‘ War of the Worlds broadcast and then collaborated with him on a number of his movies. They both had their feature film debuts in 1941’s groundbreaking Citizen Kane (he as director, she as actor) and continued their work together in 1942’s The Magnificent Ambersons, for which Moorehead received her first Oscar nomination.
Both of those movies are featured in today’s tribute, as is Johnny Belinda (1948), where Moorehead delivers another cruel performance that snagged her a third Oscar nomination. The day’s celebration rounds out with somewhat lighter (but still serious) fare in Our Vines Have Tender Grapes (1945), The Swan (1956), The Woman in White (1948) and, in perhaps a prelude to her later fame as an occult character, The Bat (1959).
Saturday, December 6
Two for One: Debra Winger
Beginning at 8pm
20th Century Fox Film Corp./courtesy Everett Collection
In case you missed actress Debra Winger‘s double-feature programming picks earlier this year, here’s your chance to see an encore presentation of two very unconventional films. The evening begins with 1951’s People Will Talk, starring Cary Grant as the unorthodox and persecuted Dr. Noah Praetorius, who defies societal norms by falling in love with a pregnant single woman (Jeanne Crain). Next is 1934’s The Scarlet Empress, starring Marlene Dietrich as a German princess who eventually becomes Russia’s Catherine the Great. Sam Jaffe‘s turn as her highness’ eccentric husband the grand duke will ingrain some truly bizarre sequences in your memory. More impressive is Dietrich’s remarkable transformation (under frequent collaborator Josef von Sternberg’s direction) from timid bride to ruthless power-seeking empress in this beautifully shot black-and-white masterpiece.
Sunday, December 7
Secrets!
Beginning at 4pm
20th Century-Fox Film Corp./Everett Collection
Spend Sunday evening with three comedies about people keeping secrets (with predictably hilarious results). First up, in 1937’s Shall We Dance, a ballet dancer (Fred Astaire) and a tap hoofer (Ginger Rogers) fake a relationship for publicity, only to find themselves falling for each other for real. Then, in the 1953 classic How to Marry Millionaire, Marilyn Monroe, Betty Grable, and Lauren Bacall star as a trio of scheming models who aren’t above a little subterfuge if it helps them land a wealthy spouse. Finally, in 1945’s Christmas in Connecticut, Barbara Stanwyck plays Elizabeth, a writer renowned for her heart-warming tales about her husband, child, and family farm … none of which exist. But when a fan insists on meeting her, Elizabeth recruits a friend to marry her and make her phony life real — but, of course, nothing goes according to plan.
Click here to download the printable December 2025 TCM schedule.
Toys & Games
November/December 2025
Fire up the Easy-Bake Oven, dust off that pogo stick, tickle that Elmo and get ready to blast back to a time when batteries were not included
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