Turner Classic Movies Celebrates the 60th Anniversary of the U.S. Air Force July 24 as Part of the Month-Long Aviation in the Movies Film Festival

ATLANTA, June 28 /PRNewswire/ -- To commemorate the 60th anniversary of the United States Air Force, which has a long record of cooperating with Hollywood in portrayals of America's flying force, Turner Classic Movies (TCM) will air a collection of some of Hollywood's most memorable military aviation films Tuesday, July 24, beginning at 8 p.m. (ET). The day devoted to the Air Force comes as part of TCM's month-long Aviation in the Movies film festival, which takes place each Tuesday in July.

Kicking off TCM's tribute to military aviation is a first-hand look at the United States Air Force with Strategic Air Command (1955), starring James Stewart as an Air Force officer recalled to duty. The film boasts spectacular aerial photography of then-state-of-the-art bombers. The evening continues with such high-flying military films as Flying Tigers (1941), Air Force (1943) and Captains of the Clouds (1942).

TCM's Aviation in the Movies festival begins July 3 at 10:30 p.m. (ET) with a look at real-life aviators, including John J. Montgomery, the unheralded 19th-century innovator of glider design played by Glenn Ford in the biopic Gallant Journey (1946). Setting the standard for portraying potential air disasters is William Wellman's The High and the Mighty (1954), airing Tuesday, July 10, at 8 p.m. (ET). The classic is based on Ernest K. Gann's bestseller and stars John Wayne as the copilot of a passenger plane that loses an engine during a flight over the Pacific Ocean.

The Aviation in the Movies festival also features several fetching flight attendants, with Dolores Hart, Lois Nettleton and Pamela Tiffin starring as a perky trio offering coffee or tea (and looking for love) on a flight from New York to Paris in Come Fly with Me (1963), airing Tuesday, July 17, at 10 p.m. (ET). And Spencer Tracy stars in the high-flying WWII romance A Guy Named Joe (1943), set to air Tuesday, July 31, at 8 p.m. (ET).

Turner Classic Movies, currently seen in more than 75 million homes, is a 24-hour cable network from Turner Broadcasting System, Inc., a Time Warner company. TCM presents the greatest motion pictures of all time from the largest film library in the world, the combined Time Warner and Turner film libraries, from the '20s through the '90s, commercial-free and without interruption. The network also offers critically acclaimed original documentaries and specials, including the recent Emmy-winning Stardust: The Bette Davis Story, as well as the critically-acclaimed Brando, and Steve McQueen: The Essence of Cool. For more information, visit www.tcm.com.

Turner Broadcasting System, Inc., a Time Warner company, is a major producer of news and entertainment product around the world and the leading provider of programming for the basic cable industry.