NATALIE WOOD SALUTE
TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET
Tonight’s “Starring Natalie Wood” salute on TCM presents four very watchable, very different movies in prime time. The genres are as varied as the performances: 1961’s Splendor in the Grass kicks things off at 8 p.m. ET, co-starring Warren Beatty in a dour character study about a young woman depressed by her Depression-era life. Then, at 10:15 p.m. ET, comes 1956’s The Searchers, a raw John Ford Western in which Wood plays a girl abducted and “adopted” by Indians. At 12:30 a.m. ET, 1962’s movie musical Gypsy stars Wood as a child vaudeville performer turned striptease artist. And finally, at 3 a.m. ET, the salute ends with a generational flash point dramatizing teen angst: 1955’s Rebel without a Cause, opposite James Dean. And as a bonus, today at 9 a.m. ET, TCM also presents the rarely televised 1966 comedy Penelope, in which she plays a chameleonic kleptomaniac who disguises herself – as a stylish redhead (pictured), a French blonde and an old woman – to rob banks owned by her own husband.