Differently this time, but still. How hard is it to decide on fair, respectful criteria for the annual feature memorializing film artists who have shuffled of this mortal coil without making obvious omissions and displaying clear bias? Apparently it isn’t just hard, but impossible.
Ethics Alarms had covered this annual orgy of incompetence, unfairness and disrespect for so long, it goes back to when I actually watched the whole show and hadn’t concluded that it was entirely politically biased, phony, crap. Even if I hadn’t given up on the show, the presence of ethics villain Jimmy Kimmel as host guaranteed my absence, though I did force myself to watch the “In Memoriam” segment after the fact.
I agree with the conspiracy theorists who argue that the horrible direction of the over-produced segment this year, focusing on the choreography and often defaulting to such a long view that slides of the departed could barely be read was intentional. It seemed to be designed to foil the sharp-eyed critics who have called out Oscar’s snubs of significant performers, usually because they dared to spend more time on TV than on the big screen.
I’m still annoyed by the 2012 Oscars omitting any tribute to Harry Morgan, who had supporting roles in classics like “High Noon,” “Inherit the Wind” (he was the judge!), “The Shootist,” “How the West Was Won,” (playing General Grant), and “The Ox-Bow Incident” but was deemed unworthy because he was best known for his TV roles in “Dragnet” and “MASH.”
This year’s device of including a catch-all slide with the names in fine print of those deemed not important enough for a photo and a nanosecond in the spotlight was only marginally better than not including those artists at all. It relegated career actors who had made major contributions to film to the status of extras massed together at the end of the credits of movies like “Ben Hur.”
Suzanne Somers ended up in the “and also these unimportant people” slide, and she played an iconic role as Richard Dreyfus’s “dream girl” in “American Graffiti.” David McCallum, another actor best known for his TV work, was the last surviving cast member of “The Great Escape” but rated only footnote status. Burt Young, a major character in “Rocky,” was also deemed forgettable, as was, incredibly, Treat Williams.
Meanwhile, crooner Tony Bennett, whose film appearances were limited to cameos and playing himself except for an embarrassing turn in the embarrassing bomb “The Oscar,” got his own slide, because everyone likes Tony. Tina Turner rated her own slide despite exactly one real acting role (in “Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome”) and three musical appearances that included two of the worst movies of all time, “The Last Action Hero” and “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” Richard Lewis, a stand-up comic who did little film work but who just recently died and regularly appeared in the Hollywood cult HBO show “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” was deemed more worthy than television pioneer Norman Lear, who had significant silver screen credits and ended up in the fine print at the end. But network TV… ew.
Ethics Alarms 
I happened to be awake for the segment – I don’t watch the Oscars, but Mr. Golden does (especially this year after having managed to watch every single one of the 53 nominees) – and was annoyed at how quickly the slides went, how multiple slides appeared at the same time, how they pulled away from the slides to show the weird dancing and how they gave Tina the final Honor Slide before shunting everyone else to the ”…and the rest” card.
They pile on behind-the-scenes people into these segments and then claim they don’t have time to include all the performers. Yet, they had time last night to bring five previous Oscar winners onto the stage for every acting award and spend endless minutes giving each person the opportunity to gush over one of the nominees.
I haven’t yet compared the segment to my list of celebrity deaths to see who they skipped over. Inevitably, there will be some.
Tina Turner was the “Acid Queen” in the terrible “Tommy” and she was pretty good in the role.
“Blue Bloods” gave a touching tribute to Treat Williams.
jvb
But that “role” was mainly Tina performing like Tina. Did the Oscars have Keith Moon in its death segment when the Who’s drummer died? He was GREAT in “Tommy.”
Not sure. I haven’t watched the Oscars in decades and cared very little about even then.
jvb
By the way, “Tommy” is a genuine cult film. Ken Russell was an auteur, and he certainly didn’t spare any excesses in that movie. Ann-Marget being attacked by baked beans spewing out of a TV is one of the most indelible whacked-out images in movie history.
Agreed. Daltrey was ok. Keith Moon fiddling about was a little too creepy for my tastes but I hear tell that he was quite a decent fellow when he wasn’t pie-eyed. My friend, Marty, idolized him as a drummer.
jvb
Alright, I’ve looked over my celebrity death lists for last year and the first part of this year.
They left off:
Phyllis Coates
Richard Moll
Noreen Nash
Carlin Glynn
David Soul
Anne Whitfield
Pamela Salem
Arleen Sorkin
To be fair, many of the above are better known for television, but they were all in feature films, too. And Sorkin wrote the screenplay for “Picture Perfect”.
The most significant movie star left off – and I do understand why – was Robert Blake. He died three days before last year’s ceremony so they had a plausible reason for excluding him (I watched the “In Memoriam” segment from last year to be sure) but he’s nowhere to be found on this one either. Blake, for better or for worse, was an actor and his work in the later “Our Gang” comedies, to say nothing of his riveting performance in “In Cold Blood” deserved to be recognized.
Oh, great catch. Blake’s personal life shouldn’t affect his listing in the death list one bit. And he was acquitted of murder, though everyone thinks he did it. Are the Oscars going to cancel the dozens of other criminals and assholes that clog the film arts?
One more thing I neglected to mention. The “In Memoriam” segment was introduced with a clip by the late Alexei Navalny – the Putin critic – and a card at the end “quoting” him: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
Of course, this phrase was not coined by Navalny. It is oft attributed to Edmund Burke, though he may not have originated it either.
How many ignorant people will think this was a Navalny original? It’s bad enough that Hollywood, once again, is using its telecast for platforming its favored political pet projects (the so-called occupation in Palestine got mentioned in an acceptance speech from a director who won for a film about the Holocaust, wretched host Jimmy Kimmel reading aloud one of Donald Trump’s standard Truth Social rants about the broadcast) but does it also have to make people more dumb?
Yes, thanks for mentioning that. The inability of the Oscars to avoid making political statements and various partisan grandstanding stunts is one of the main reasons I won’t watch the thing. Jerks like Susan Sarandon and Marlon Brando used to be exceptions—now they are the norm.