Oscars In Memoriam: A Look at the Segment’s History of ‘Glory and Grief’ in Its 30th Year

March 10, 2024 @ 10:00 AM

Happy birthday to you, In Memoriam. This year marks the 30th anniversary of the emotional and beloved – but often derided – Oscar segment that celebrates movie industry names who have left us since the last telecast. The montage is so popular that, since 1994, it has been adopted by practically every other awards show in the business.

At those 66th Academy Awards, on March 21, 1994, “Schindler’s List” won Best Picture. The two-minute In Memoriam montage was set to the music of “Terms of Endearment” and presented by Glenn Close, who had been onstage earlier that evening to give an Honorary Oscar to Deborah Kerr. The segment was placed late in the run of show, right before Tom Hanks won Best Actor for “Philadelphia.”

Among the 30 faces featured that year were John Candy, Audrey Hepburn, Federico Fellini, Lillian Gish and River Phoenix. While predominately loaded with actors and directors, the montage also deliberately cited lesser-known artists, such as production designer Ted Haworth (“Some Like it Hot”), in order to provide industry balance.

“We would start by picking a number of total names,” former Academy executive director Bruce Davis explained. He served in the position for 20 years until his retirement in 2011. In 2022, he published the Oscar history book, “The Academy and the Award: The Coming of Age of Oscar and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.” Davis described the input of Academy librarians, executives, producers and several Board of Governors members that would convene to whittle down the obituary list.

“The fact is that we only had room in the segment for a certain amount of people,” Davis said. “Even with 5 or 10 seconds per person, it’s difficult to get 20 or 30 people in the montage. We knew that it couldn’t just include the famous actors who died, but we were aware that the audience in the theater would respond to the great names, the great faces that they remember. And they would applaud, even though we’d asked people not to.”

The impact of the segment was understood by Davis from the beginning. “We took it very seriously,” he said. “It’s a very sensitive segment, and it’s also guaranteed to infuriate part of the audience.”

The montage has since evolved into a high point of the Oscars telecast, often introduced by a regal member of the Hollywood community – Close, George Clooney, Annette Bening and John Travolta have each done so twice – and accompanied by a famous musician performing live. Last year, that was Lenny Kravitz.