Hollywood’s Great Communicator
High school was when I first developed the habit of watching Turner Classic Movies. It was summer vacation, so I had plenty of time. That night I saw Mr. Smith Goes To Washington with Jimmy Stewart. It impressed me that, despite its age, the film was able to communicate basic ideals about American integrity in a way that resonated with someone so far removed from its political context. In a sense, Robert Osborne was like Stewart, he communicated the glories of Old Hollywood, New Hollywood, and everything in-between, to people who weren’t even alive to remember it.
I owe so much to Turner Classic Movies, the best argument for a cable television subscription. It introduced me to so many films that I otherwise may not have seen. From Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon, Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca, Charles Laughton’s Night Of The Hunter, King Vidor’s Wizard Of Oz, Darrly F. Zanuck’s All About Eve, Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch, Sidney Lumet’s 12 Angry Men, and all too many more to mention. Before and after each of these films, Osborne would provide needed context or add unique tidbits of trivia. A small role, perhaps, but one which gave a human face to these movies, one who could be the connective tissue between their time and ours. Osborne did for classic movies what Carl Sagan did for science, what Gwynne Dyer did for war, what Joseph Campbell did for myth, what Wendy Beckett did for art, and what David McCullough did for history. Through his promotion of these great films during his tenure on Turner Classic Movies, he raised awareness of America’s film heritage, and helped grant them greater accessibility. Nearly half of the films in movie library were either packaged by or appeared on Turner Classic Movies.
I’ll never forget the day that I went with my father to the Turner Classic Movies screening of Casablanca. It is a film that I had seen multiple times before, but had never before viewed on the big screen. Doing so made a grandeur of difference, but what added to the pleasantry was watching Osborne on the theater screen before Bogie, reliably providing his ever needed commentary on the significance of what was about to take place. History before our eyes.
The film world may be poorer without him, but is made richer because of him.
Originally published at http://sansuthecat.blogspot.com on March 6, 2017.
