Stars take their
final curtain calls

For many viewers, the most genuinely touching moment of the Academy Awards each year is the “In Memoriam” segment, which honors the movie stars, minor lights, heroes and villains of the screen who have passed away in the last year.  And every year, the reel prompts the same reactions on couches around the world — rueful “awww”s for some, surprised “oh”s for others.

The honor roll for 2004, as in most years, featured a mix of legends and friends, institutions and inspirations, quiet passings and unexpected ones. We remember some of them here.

Spalding Gray
Gray had roles in more than 30 films in addition to his own monologue-based pieces, “Swimming to Cambodia” and “Gray’s Anatomy.” Sitting behind a microphone, telling stories, Gray piqued the imagination in a unique way, and with his lonely death at age 63, both cinema and literature lost an innovator.

Jack Paar
The original host of “The Tonight Show,” Paar inaugurated not just the phrase “I kid you not” into the American lexicon, but also a longstanding late-night-television tradition of testing boundaries — when the network censored one of his jokes, he quit the show mid-broadcast in protest and returned only when NBC executives apologized. Paar began his career in radio, but made his most important contributions in television, turning the spotlight on the likes of Carol Burnett and Woody Allen (and Zsa Zsa Gabor … but we’ll forgive him) and making late-night talk format the cultural force it is today.

Mary-Ellis Bunim

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Whether or not it’s a positive, reality TV has fundamentally altered television and the nature of celebrity — and Bunim’s groundbreaking “Real World” series, which premiered on MTV in 1992, has played a major role in that. Partnered with Jonathan Murray, Bunim also produced reality perennials “Road Rules” and “Making the Band”; perhaps her background as a soap opera producer inspired her to see what happened when people stopped being polite and started getting real.

Alistair Cooke
Probably best known to Americans as the quintessentially British host of PBS staple “Masterpiece Theater,” Cooke turned his “Letter from America” for the BBC into the longest-running radio program in history. A naturalized American citizen, Cooke often broadcast from his New York apartment, and brought high culture into a generation of living rooms on both sides of the Atlantic.

Tony Randall
The neat half of “The Odd Couple,” Randall won an Emmy for his portrayal of Felix Unger, studied voice for decades, appeared in a number of hilariously bad films like “My Little Pony: The Movie” (and one Woody Allen feature), served as a guest panelist on “What’s My Line?,” and graced the guest chair on Letterman 70 times. A combination of elegance and comic timing, Randall made fussiness lovable.

Ronald Reagan
Master thespian Reagan’s film career ground to a mysterious halt after such crowd-pleasers as “Bedtime for Bonzo” and “Hellcats of the Navy.” What ever happened to that guy?

Ray Charles

Jeff Kowalsky / AP Ray Charles played jazz festivals, covered country-western standards and made soul and R&B his own.

Over the course of his career, he played jazz festivals, covered country-western standards, and made soul and R&B his own, but by the time of his death, Ray Charles belonged to one genre above all others: icon. (Happily, he lived long enough to see biopic “Ray,” starring critically praised Jamie Foxx, cast and in production — and apparently Charles approved.) How many other musicians could score seven Grammy nominations — posthumously? Charles overcame childhood glaucoma and heroin addiction to become, and remain, a musical innovator, reeling off countless hits and constantly redefining “pop.” And his classic songs still sound fresh. As a child, I had an annoying habit of playing my favorite songs on our living-room record player over and over and over again; the only one my mother didn’t tell me to knock it off with was Charles’s “What’d I Say (Parts I & II)” — possibly because I looked so ridiculous imagining myself as a Rayette, but more likely because the song is just that good.

Marlon Brando
Brando, like Elvis, seemed to have two stages to his career and his life as a public man — the thin, talented era and the fatter, more cynical era — and different generations may remember Brando differently. The firebrand of “On the Waterfront” and “A Streetcar Named Desire,” stripped to an undershirt and actively smoldering, or the “I’m just here for a paycheck” marble-mouthing of “Superman”? The mesmerizing Method acting of “Julius Caesar,” or the scenery-chewing of “The Island of Dr. Moreau”? The two Brandos seemed to meet in “The Godfather,” perhaps his signature role (and certainly, with the possible exception of the “I coulda been a contender” line, his most often quoted). Heavy, his mouth stuffed with Kleenex, Brando imbued Vito Corleone with menace and honor at once. And neither Brando ever had a dull moment, shocking audiences with “Last Tango in Paris” and prompting eye-rolls by sending a “Native American” to accept his 1972 Oscar. Brando was curious in both senses of that word, and his willingness to be difficult and ridiculous is a seldom-seen quality in present-day Hollywood.

Julia Child

Nancy Palmieri / AP file Julia Child's high-pitched chortles at her own culinary screw-ups put audiences at ease.

Viewers intimidated by French cooking found their sensei in Julia Child, a portly chef whose high-pitched chortles at her own culinary screw-ups put audiences at ease — and made Child the godmother not only of haute cuisine’s foothold in the States, but also of the cooking show as a viable genre. We have her warmth and accessibility to thank for our familiarity with cooking terms — a staple of '70s TV humor was befuddlement at escargot, which seems quaint today — and for kitchen-culture doyennes like Martha Stewart. (Even Madonna vehicle “Desperately Seeking Susan” thanked her in the credits.) She made her kitchen, now a permanent exhibit at the National Museum of American History in Washington DC, our kitchens.

Russ Meyer
Russ Meyer made “Baywatch” possible — and if you’d told him that, he’d have taken it as a compliment. Director of jigglefest cult faves like “Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens” and “Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!,” Meyer loved the female form — and collaborating with critic Roger Ebert, who co-wrote a number of Meyer films, including the hilarious “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.”

Janet Leigh
Leigh appeared in dozens of films after “Psycho,” including “Harper” and the original “Manchurian Candidate,” but she’ll go down as the most famous murder victim in movie history (a performance for which she garnered an Oscar nom, despite getting killed off halfway through the movie) and one of the most convincing terrified screamers.

Rodney Dangerfield
Dangerfield’s famous “no respect” shtick didn’t reflect the reality — fellow comedians, and audiences, held his humor and his work ethic in high regard. Star of comedy classics like “Caddyshack” and “Back to School,” Dangerfield also made countless appearances on Johnny Carson — and took a riskier role as an abusive father in Oliver Stone’s “Natural Born Killers.”  Dangerfield’s last role? God. He’d appreciate the irony.

Christopher Reeve

Jez Coulson/redux / Redux Pictures Christopher Reeve stumped tirelessly for spinal-cord injury research after being paralyzed after a horse-riding accident.

He anchored the “Superman” franchise, took beefcake roles in campy dramas, showed off his slapstick chops in “Noises Off” — and nearly died in an equestrian accident that left him paralyzed. It was then that Reeve truly became a star, stumping tirelessly for spinal-cord injury research, appearing on talk shows to raise awareness (and crack black jokes about his condition with flawless timing), filming hopeful commercials in which he walked again thanks to the magic of CGI, and continuing to act and direct despite physical limitations. Gracious, funny, and determined, Reeve turned his personal setback into an opportunity and earned that superhero cape for real.

Sarah D. Bunting is the co-creator and co-editor-in-chief of Television Without Pity.com.  She lives in Brooklyn.

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