![]() Sometimes picking a memorial scene can be difficult, but when I saw that William Smith had died I knew instantly what scene of his I would use. Streaming? Streaming my fanny!) The wives heave a sigh of relief as we repair to the back of the house to immerse ourselves in our yearly bout of cinematic reminiscence and nostalgia. (Bob and I both have shamefully large DVD and Blu-ray collections. ![]() Every December 31 st for the last twenty-five years we meet to pay tribute to the folks we’ve lost by showing clips of them from television shows and movies that we own. One of the reasons I watch TCM Remembers is to get ready for my annual New Year’s Eve get together with one of my oldest friends, a degenerate movie buff like myself. Big and beefy, his rugged looks and demeanor in the Clint Eastwood/Jack Palance mold gained him steady work in action films, usually as a heavy, and you would never guess that he spoke four languages and loved to read Dostoevsky in the original Russian. He has two hundred and seventy-five movie and television credits listed on IMDB, the first a miniscule part in 1942’s The Ghost of Frankenstein when he was nine years old and the last in 2020, in the Steve Carell comedy Irresistible.īetween those widely separated dates William Smith was in damn near everything you would be hard pressed to name a police or detective or western television series of the 60’s, 70’s or 80’s that he didn’t appear in. To say that he was a prolific actor is to greatly understate the case. William Smith? Who was William Smith? Oh, you know him - I guarantee it. This year one of the people that I didn’t know was gone was William Smith, who died July 5 th at the age of eighty-eight. There will always be many people, though, that I only find out about when I watch the video, late in December. Some of its subjects - the more famous ones - come as no surprise, as I heard about their deaths when they occurred during the year. It’s always beautifully done, and it always makes me tear up, usually no more the thirty seconds in. For me, one of the most important is watching the current TCM Remembers, the annual short film with which Turner Classic Movies bids farewell to the film people that we’ve lost throughout the year. ![]() We all have our end-of-year rituals, those small ceremonies that prepare us to ring out the old year and ring in the new.
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