Robert Osborne, film historian, Turner Classic Movies host . By Adam
Bernstein Washington Post . WASHINGTON - Robert Osborne, the urbane,
silver-haired film historian who had been the principal host of the
Turner Classic Movies cable channel since its founding in 1994 and was
a genial ambassador for an otherwise vanished era in filmmaking, died
Monday at his home in New York. He was 84. The network confirmed the
death but did not cite a cause. Former Washington Post TV critic Tom
Shales once praised TCM - where stars such as Clark Gable, Fred
Astaire, and Rita Hayworth still reign as celluloid kings and queens -
as "the most reliable source of pure enchantment in the cable universe.
TCM, available in more than 85 million homes, has drawn an intensely
loyal following in an era of seeming indifference to the fate of movies
and stars from yesteryear. Film revival theaters have all but
disappeared. And TCM's onetime cable rival, American Movie Classics,
has ceased trying to live up to its name, instead venturing into
programming territory from Will Smith action movies to series such as
"Mad Men. Besides its magnificent film trove, TCM owed a sizable
portion of its growth as a brand to Mr. Osborne, an unalloyed cinephile
and former acting protege of Lucille Ball's who once was actress Bette
Davis's date to the Academy Awards. He wrote official histories of the
Oscars and was a longtime columnist for the Hollywood Reporter, a
show-business trade publication, but his gift was never about going for
the journalistic jugular. "I would be told secrets, and I would keep
the secrets," he once said, adding that he learned actor Rock Hudson
had AIDS long before it was publicly known. Mr. Osborne was endowed
with a talent for befriending stars, many of them marquee movie names
of his youth. They were relegated to the shadows by the time he got to
know them in the 1960s, forgotten by an industry that had
unsentimentally moved on. "Somebody like Dorothy Lamour," he told The
New York Times, "she adored me. I knew she had sold more war bonds
during the Second World War than almost anybody in Hollywood. His
ingratiating personality and insider knowledge led to work as a host on
The Movie Channel from 1986 to 1993. American Movie Classics tried to
recruit him as a daytime host, but he accepted an offer from the
upstart TCM because it featured more of the fare he treasured, from
Marx Brothers comedies of the 1930s to later works by directors such as
Akira Kurosawa and Mel Brooks. And it was a chance to work in prime
time. As the suave, soothing public face of TCM, Mr. Osborne delivered
revelatory tidbits before and after each screening, and he gently
coaxed stars well past their prime (Patricia Neal, Tony Curtis, Betty
Hutton) to speak tantalizingly of their career highs and lows. Erudite
without being snobbish, Mr. Osborne conveyed a seemingly limitless
ardor for the job. He could enthuse about the 1940 Ann Sothern vehicle
"Congo Maisie" as much as the Oscar-winning epic "Gone With the Wind"
(1939). Robert Jolin Osborne was born on May 3, 1932, in Colfax, Wash.,
a farming community. He was bewitched not just by movies, but also by
the boldly illustrated movie posters and fan magazines that featured
impossibly alluring actresses such as Lana Turner and Ann Sheridan. His
fascination with movie promotion led him to study advertising and then
journalism at the University of Washington. He took acting roles in
Seattle and his dashing good looks - he resembled actor Robert Wagner -
led to a contract with a television production company run by Ball, the
TV comedienne, and her husband, Desi Arnaz. Mr. Osborne became a
regular part of Ball's entourage, and she was greatly impressed with
his knowledge of 1930s character actors such as Edward Everett Horton
and Donald Meek. Mr. Osborne's social life, although not his acting
career, was bubbling. His biggest role was a brief appearance in the
1962 pilot episode of "The Beverly Hillbillies. Ball told him he lacked
the survival skills for the cutthroat profession. "We have enough
actors," he recalled her saying. "We don't have enough writers. Because
of his interest in filmmaking of the past, he published an official
history of the Academy Awards in 1965. He updated the book every few
years and joined the Hollywood Reporter in 1977, eventually settling in
at its New York office. He became the publication's "Rambling Reporter"
columnist, covering film, theater, and TV. He also moonlighted as an
entertainment correspondent for various TV shows, including the CBS
"Morning Program," before the TCM job. TCM began with a modest
viewership, but its reputation grew rapidly under Mr. Osborne. The
network now hosts an annual, frequently sold-out movie festival in
Hollywood, as well as a yearly cruise that draws thousands of
passengers and has featured guest stars such as Eva Marie Saint and
Shirley Jones. Over the years, TCM added other hosts, including Ben
Mankiewicz, a scion of Hollywood royalty, and brought in actors such as
Alec Baldwin, Drew Barrymore, and Rose McGowan to appear with Mr.
Osborne and add contemporary cachet. But Mr. Osborne remained the
network's clear star, a matinee idol in his own right when he sat down
to interview celebrities. "You look into those beautiful blue eyes and
you know that nothing can go wrong," Saint, an Oscar-winner who starred
in "On the Waterfront" and "North by Northwest," told the New York
Times in 2014. "He's one of us, but he also knows a lot more than any
of us.
