What's On: Those Upsetting Oscars

Statistically or numerically, not that many people care about the Oscars. Only about 26 million people – worldwide – viewed this year’s award “ceremony,” which aired last Sunday night, March 4. And why should anyone watch it? People in the heartland have too many serious things to think about, plan, and do each day. If they even bother to see a movie, the motivating forces must override the hardships of getting real work done. People in the cities, too, are really only tangentially aware of cinema, what with the alternative distractions of games, TV shows, streaming, and whatever else people do with spare time. And anyway, this year’s embarrassing display of self-invention and mutual backscratching was ultimately no different from any other. Seen one, seen them all.

But there is one element of the evening’s broadcast that captivates most viewers, and serves as a real telltale index of how the “industry” views itself or wants to be viewed by others. I’m speaking of course of the annual In Memoriam - a montage of stills and clips of Hollywood-landers who died in the previous year.

Sometimes they get the list of dead just right, but usually they get them wrong. Really wrong. This week’s broadcast got them really wrong.

Usually these short films are created by a fine filmmaker named Chuck Workman, who also does the TCM Remembers annual montage and also did the incredibly powerful short film 100 Years at the Movies also for TCM in 1994. I don’t know who did the work this year, but I hope it wasn’t done by Mr. Workman. Because this year’s entry was most notable for its snubs than its celebrations.

As my friend Quilty notes, the In Memorium section is the “list of people who died during the previous year (not the calendar year, but the last 365 days leading up to the show),” and that it has become “a major part of the broadcast. It didn’t used to be. But now people watch and wonder: Who will be the last person named? Who will be left out?”

Quilty is a pal who spent years in the striped shirt world and has lived and worked in the nation’s major cities. He’s also a deep-rooted film specialist who knew such luminaries as Andrew Sarris and other writers in the good days of movie-mad Manhattan.

Here are some of the people whom the filmmakers left off of the list, as noted by Quilty and “the Internet.” Adam West, who played Batman on television; Della Reese, the singer; Glenn Campbell, David Cassidy, Jim Nabors, John Hillerman, Robert Guillaume, and John Mahoney. Yes, these are mostly TV people, but as Quilty points out, “John Hillerman, for quite a while, early in his career, worked primarily in the movies. He had small roles in a dozen major titles in the 1970s, including Chinatown, The Last Picture Show, Blazing Saddles, The Nickel Ride, The Day of the Locust, and more. These were the biggest films of the decade, and Hillerman was a recognizable character actor. Of course he should have been included.”

If the Oscars can’t rightly arrange the tributes to its great contributors how can you trust the show as a whole? Who selects the honored? The final list reeks of committee work, blockaded by political correctness. For example, Glenn Campbell is more famous for being a graduate of the Wrecking Crew, that floating card game of studio musicians that defined ’60s popular music, but as Quilty notes, “He did have a major role in [the first] True Grit (1969) and he was nominated for Best Original Song a few years back. That’s more than Chuck Berry ever did in the movies.“ Yet, Campbell didn’t make the final cut, but Berry did, for the obvious reason that they needed more African American faces, in the face of criticism and backlash. Oh, and by the way, Berry was also a multiply-convicted criminal and an abuser of women, like a certain basketball player who not only won an Oscar that night, but received some of the biggest standing ovations. So, what did happen to the #MeToo movement?

Also left out were Frank Vincent, an obscure but distinctive looking character actor from the world of crime films, mostly Scorsese titles such as Raging Bull, and the TV show The Sopranos. Another obscurity was Peggy Cummins, best known as the femme fatale in the beautiful B movie Gun Crazy, one of the first “killer couple on the run” offerings.

Personally, I’m offended by the absence of Tobe Hooper. He directed one of the most important, decade-defining horror films ever made, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974). For sins apparently committed in a past life, he is also credited as the director of Spielberg’s Poltergeist, though it doesn’t look much like a Hooper movie. As Quilty adds, “In any intelligent history of the cinema, Hooper is going to be more important than most of the people who were honored last night.”

And then there was the biggest snub of the evening – Dorothy Malone. As Quilty reminded me in his email, the beautiful Malone was “one of the biggest stars in America for a long time, and her consequential appearances stretch all the way from The Big Sleep (1946) [the girl with glasses I the bookstore] to Basic Instinct (1992). Those two small roles – which bookend her career – are unforgettable. Malone was a major star, and a huge screen presence, for decades, but in particular she was a force in the best decade for the movies, the 1950s. And … she’s also an Oscar winner! How do you ignore her? You do it only if you’re blindingly stupid.”

And apparently, they are. The producers of the show and the organizers of the In Memorium clips might plead that they only have so much time – yet the show still stretches on and on with unnecessary jokes, skits, dance numbers, presenter banter, songs, and more. And they couldn’t spare 17 seconds for Dorothy Malone. Shame.

Maybe I won’t even bother next year. As crime writer Patricia Highsmith said (in another context), “Why would you want to be upset all the time”?