Every year, the Academy Awards telecast offers up a montage set to music featuring the top stars who died during the previous year. This year's effort was tragically lacking recognition for two stars fondly remembered by genre fans -- Patrick McGoohan and Eartha Kitt.
While they weren't the only Oscar obit omissions, McGoohan and Kitt were the most glaring for speculative fiction supporters.
Some might say McGoohan (pictured) was ignored because his most groundbreaking work was on television with The Prisoner, Secret Agent (Danger Man) and Columbo (two Emmy Award-winning performances). But even the most insufferable movie snob must recognize the actor's essential contribution to Braveheart, Ice Station Zebra, the original Scanners, A Time to Kill, Silverstreak and Escape From Alcatraz.
Kitt, an accomplished vocal stylist, is warmly remembered as the most feline version of Catwoman from 1960s TV show Batman. But Orson Welles called her "the most exciting woman in the world," and she starred opposite Sidney Poitier in The Mark of the Hawk on the big screen.
It's baffling how producers of the Oscar telecast failed to include even a few seconds of these actors in that montage.
Image courtesy ITC
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