ATLANTA — Ted Turner built a media empire in Atlanta that included Turner Classic Movies.
Turner’s favorite classic movie was “Gone with the Wind.”
He loved the movie so much that he bought the entire catalogue of movies from MGM Studios and pre-1948 Warner Brothers so he could air them and preserve them.
“My favorite ex-husband created Turner Classic Movies,” ex-wife and close friend Jane Fonda said last week at the 2026 TCM Film Festival in Los Angeles.
Fonda talked about Turner’s love of classic movies and how he wanted to preserve them for future generations.
“On our very first date, he talked to me about Turner Classic Movies,” Fonda said. “And I think it’s one of the great things that he did.”
“He was the quintessential American,” said Charlie Tabesh, TCM’s senior vice president of programming & content strategy.
The TCM executive has worked for Turner for nearly 30 years. He told Channel 2’s Richard Elliot that the network is planning to honor Turner with a tribute and will show his favorite movie, “Gone with the Wind.”
“He’s a true hero in terms of film preservation. And then, after starting these businesses, he hired the right people, and he let them go, and he left them to run with it,” Tabesh said.
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Channel 2 Action News has heard from countless others who praised Turner for showing the path to success.
Current Dodgers owners and former Atlanta Braves and Hawks President Stan Kasten attributed all his success to a chance meeting with Turner 50 years ago.
“I mean, my entire career started with a meeting with Ted,” Kasten said.
He said Turner created an environment to let people succeed. Much of that culminated in the 1995 World Series.
Kasten said Ted Turner was larger than life.
“It’s a very sad day for me, but I’m enjoying retelling some of the great Ted Turner stories. Even the ones I can tell publicly are great. The ones that I cannot tell are much better,” Kasten said.
Turner died on Wednesday at the age of 87.