Turner Classic Movies (TCM) today announced that the fourth annual Robert Osborne Award, recognizing an individual who has helped keep the cultural heritage of classic film alive for future generations, will be presented to one of the foremost authorities on African Americans in Hollywood, Donald Bogle. He will receive the award at the 2023 TCM Classic Film Festival prior to a screening of Carmen Jones (1954), the film that ignited his fascination and analysis of Black artists in the movies. The first three Robert Osborne Awards were given to iconic filmmaker Martin Scorsese, film preservationist Kevin Brownlow, and film author and historian Leonard Maltin, and will continue to be presented annually at the TCM Classic Film Festival.
Bogle pioneered the study of Black artists working in cinema and is the award-winning author of nine books, including the groundbreaking Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films, celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2023. He also wrote Hollywood Black: The Stars, The Films, The Filmmakers for TCM as well as the definitive biography of Dorothy Dandridge, the mesmerizing and tragic star of Carmen Jones and the first African American to be nominated for an Oscar in the lead acting category. Bogle first appeared on TCM in 2006 as Robert Osborne’s co-host for TCM’s award-winning 38-film series Race and Hollywood, which traced the depictions of African Americans in Hollywood from the silent period up to the 1980s.
“For more than five decades, Donald Bogle has been shining a light on the influence Black artists have had on cinema since the dawn of the medium. There has been no more important historian for the contributions of African Americans in Hollywood, making him the perfect candidate for the Robert Osborne Award,” said Ben Mankiewicz, TCM Primetime Anchor and Official Host of the TCM Classic Film Festival. “We have relied on his extensive film knowledge on air and at the Festival for nearly 20 years, and I can confidently say that Bogle is the only writer I’ve worked with to have had a book optioned by Whitney Houston.”
For more than 22 years, Robert Osborne served as the primetime host and anchor of TCM, helping millions of viewers discover and enter the world of classic movies and dedicating his life to preserving and sharing the movies he loved. Embraced by fans around the globe as both a fellow movie lover and an unparalleled film historian, his legacy of devotion to classic films and their ability to inspire will live on through the Robert Osborne Award.
For more information, please visit http://tcm.com/festival.
