Wesleyan’s Janine Basinger receives the TCM Festival Robert Osborne Honor Award

Janine Basinger will be one of the special guests in attendance – along with director Matthew Wells – at the TCM Classic Film Festival screening of Frank Capra: Mr. America on April 19 at the TCL Chinese Theater in Hollywood.

Courtesy of the Venice Film Festival

Jeanine Basinger, a veteran film professor, historian, and author, helped build Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, into a film powerhouse during her 60 years at the institution. On April 20, the distinguished academic will receive the TCM Classic Film Festival’s Robert Osborne Award, which recognizes an individual who has helped keep the cultural heritage of classic film alive for future generations. The four previous winners were Martin Scorsese and film historians/authors Kevin Brownlow, Leonard Maltin and Donald Bogle. Basinger, a young man of 88, spoke up THR About her life and career.

How did you fall in love with movies?

I grew up in South Dakota, and at the age of 11 I got a job as an usher at a local movie theater. My film school would watch films – and how audiences react to them – over and over again. I began visiting film archives and interviewing film figures who responded to my outreach. I was hooked.

How did you end up at Wesleyan? What was the film studies scene like at that time?

She arrived on campus in 1960 as marketing director for American Education Publications, which was owned by the university at the time. One of my art professors, impressed by my knowledge of and passion for film, asked me to join him in developing a “serious” course in film, which I began teaching in 1969. At that time, no other American liberal arts college offered more than one course. Training in the field of cinema. Film “appreciation” course, and universities offering film production courses did not initially teach students how to think about films. I sought to correct this and was able to develop film studies into its own major, and then into a department. I am also proud of the film archive I created at Wesleyan, which includes the papers of Frank Capra, Elia Kazan, Clint Eastwood, Martin Scorsese, John Waters, Federico Fellini, Ingrid Bergman and others.

There is a “Wesleyan mafia” of your former students who are doing big things in Hollywood today and credit you with much of their success.

It is a source of great pride and joy for me that so many of my former students have followed their dreams, achieved so much and have remained close friends – from someone who was in one of the first classes I taught, Larry Mark, to Michael Bay, Paul Weitz, Dana Delaney, Alex Kurtzman, Jos. Whedon, Matthew Greenfield and Sammy Wasson, co-authors of my latest book, Hollywood: An Oral History. My husband and I have one child together, but I feel like I have many children – e.g Goodbye, Mr. Chips“Thousands of them!”

What does receiving the Osborne Award mean to you?

It is a great honor to be associated in any way with TCM and the late Bob Osborne and to be in Marty’s company; Leonard, whom I’ve known since he was a teenager; And Kevin and Donald. We all share a desire to view and study classic films forever.

This story first appeared in the April 10 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.