R.I.P. Immortals 2018: Screen Lives

Another path to immortality is the freezing of living moments on film.  Usually they are youthful moments, so that sort of beauty lives on for future generations to see.  But sometimes they are moments from youth to age, and so much of a life is recorded, however artificial the images are in some respects.

Some of the movie and television actors who died in 2018 remain well-known, such as Margot Kidder (Lois Lane in Christopher Reeves' Superman series), Burt Reynolds, David Ogden Steirs (TV's M*A*S*H) Harry Anderson (TV's Night Court series.)  Penny Marshall was famous as an actor, and even more important as a director (Big, A League of Her Own, etc.)

Others were familiar for awhile, and we remember their names with a smile but only when we hear them.  Sondra Locke, Barbara Harris (who also co-founded Second City), Joseph Campanella and John Gavin might be among these.

Then there are others we might recognize but whose names are unfamiliar, unless we were fans of their movie or show, like Elmarie Wendel in 3rd Rock From the Sun, or Dudley Sutton in the British comedy, Lovejoy.

Then there are the many who we do not know as individuals, who may have appeared in something we loved, or who we saw in dozens of TV shows and a few movies without taking much note of them, or those whose screen moments were before or after our time.

But that doesn't matter, because these, too, have achieved this kind of immortality. Perhaps it will be only aficionados of their performances, or only their friends, their children and grandchildren who will delight to see them as they were in those moments captured on film.  But they live on for these relative few, and potentially for anyone, in those moments.

Some of the actors who passed from the world in 2018 but not from the screen are Charles Asnavour, Donald Moffat, Philip Bosco, Ken Swofford, Anne Carroll, Gilles Pelletier, Sheila White, Scott Bloch, Ken Berry, Peter Donat, Wright King, Roger Robinson.

Olivia Cole, John Mahoney, Georgeann Johnson, Mary Carlisle (at age 104), Glen Chin, Jean Porter, Celeste Yarnall, Peter Miles.

Jane Wenham, Charles Weldon, Carole Shelley, Mary Randall, Helen Burns (at age 101), Bette Henritze, Colin Campbell, Yvonne Gilan, Derrick O'Connor.

Special mention of Bernard Bragg, co-founder of the National Theatre of the Deaf.

And Douglas Rain, who took time off from Shakespeare on the Canadian stage to give immortal voice to HAL in Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.

More to come.