Annual Summer Showcase to Launch Sunday, June 2, with Bringing Up Baby (1938)

Actor and writer Bill Hader (Saturday Night Live) is set to return to Turner Classic Movies (TCM) this summer as host the network’s popular TCM Essentials Jr. Hader will introduce 14 feature films during the 2014 edition of Essentials Jr., which showcases movies that are ideal for parents to share with their kids as a way of introducing them to classic films. This year’s lineup will also feature a night of comedy shorts. TCM Essentials Jr. is scheduled to premiere Sunday, June 1, at 8 p.m. (ET) with Bringing Up Baby (1938), the ultimate screwball comedy starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant.

This year marks Hader’s fourth outing as host of TCM Essentials Jr. Hader starred for eight years on NBC’s venerable comedy institution Saturday Night Live, for which he earned two Emmy® nominations. He also serves as a producer on South Park, winning a 2009 Emmy for Outstanding Animated Program. Hader’s film credits include Tropic Thunder, Night at the Museum 2, Superbad, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, The To Do List and both Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs movies, as well as the upcoming breakout hit from the Sundance Film Festival, The Skeleton Twins.

The 2014 edition of TCM Essentials Jr. will run Sunday evenings throughout the summer. In addition to Bringing Up Baby, Hader will host June presentations of The Incredible Mr. Limpet (1964), starring Don Knotts as a nerd who becomes a fish; The Yearling (1947), the family classic starring Gregory Peck; Godzilla, King of the Monsters (1956), the American-release version of the classic creature feature starring Raymond Burr; and A Kid for Two Farthings (1955), the story of an imaginative London boy searching for a unicorn.

In July, TCM Essentials Jr. will feature the exciting fantasy-adventure Jason and the Argonauts (1963), with masterful stop-motion animation by Ray Harryhausen; The Little Princess (1939), with Shirley Temple as a little Victorian girl who makes good; a night of silent comedy shorts featuring Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Fatty Arbuckle and Laurel & Hardy; and a double-feature with producer Val Lewton’s classic chiller Cat People (1942) and its surprisingly sentimental sequel, The Curse of the Cat People (1944).

TCM Essentials Jr. will feature five movies in August, including John Ford’s moving Best Picture Oscar® winner How Green Was My Valley (1941), starring Walter Pidgeon and Maureen O’Hara; Ernst Lubitsch’s satirical comedy To Be or Not to Be (1942), with Jack Benny and Carole Lombard; Alfred Hitchock’s suspenseful shipwreck drama Lifeboat (1944), with Tallulah Bankhead leading a great ensemble cast; and John Huston’s terrific adaptation of The Maltese Falcon (1941), starring Humphrey Bogart and Mary Astor. This year’s TCM Essentials Jr. will then close out on Aug. 31 with George Stevens’ classic western Shane (1953), with Alan Ladd, Jean Arthur and Van Heflin.

The following is the complete summer 2014 schedule of TCM Essentials Jr., hosted by Bill Hader. Each Sunday’s installment will begin at 8 p.m. (ET).

June 1: Bringing Up Baby (1938)

June 8: The Incredible Mr. Limpet (1964)

June 15: The Yearling (1947)

June 22: Godzilla, King of the Monsters (1956, American version)

June 29: A Kid for Two Farthings (1955)

July 6: Jason and the Argonauts (1963)

July 13: The Little Princess (1939)

July 20: Silent Comedy Shorts - Laurel & Hardy in "Two Tars" (1928); Harold Lloyd in "Never Weaken" (1921); Fatty Arbuckle and Buster Keaton in "Coney Island" (1917); and Charlie Chaplin in "The Immigrant" (1917)

July 27: Cat People (1942)/The Curse of the Cat People (1944)

Aug. 3: How Green Was My Valley (1941)

Aug. 10: To Be or Not to Be (1942)

Aug. 17: Lifeboat (1944)

Aug. 24: The Maltese Falcon (1941)

Aug. 31: Shane (1953)