The Oscar snubs weren’t limited to the awards itself.
The ceremony’s annual “In Memoriam” segment, which honored those we lost this year, likely had some of the attendees in the Dolby Theater in tears or grabbing for their tissues. Instead of using clips from the person’s film career, the Academy chose to go with a drawing of each person.
But people online are fuming about the omission of Joan Rivers, who arguably made the Red Carpet what it is today.
No Joan Rivers in the montage??? She basically created the red carpet which makes all of these bitches millions. For shame!!!
— billy eichner (@billyeichner) February 23, 2015
https://twitter.com/joshgreenman/status/569703099159449601
Joan rivers was in 31 movies you knuckleheads #Oscar2015fail
— Jann “stop live horse export” Arden (@jannarden) February 23, 2015
https://twitter.com/rachsyme/status/569704137773977600
https://twitter.com/poniewozik/status/569703937881853952
Rivers had a career in reality TV and reporting on Oscar fashion later in life, but she also appeared in The Muppets Take Manhattan, Spaceballs, and many others in her decades-long career. She also appeared in the documentary Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work.
But Rivers wasn’t the only person left out of the ceremony. Elaine Stritch had a career mostly in TV spanning decades, but she appeared in a few films during her lifetime and also was the subject of a documentary. Rivers’s and Stritch’s documentaries were not nominated for Oscars.
OMG Elaine Stritch left out of #InMemoriam? What about Who Killed Teddy Bear, Providence, and September??? #Oscars2015
— Bruce LaBruce (@BruceLaBruce) February 23, 2015
Joan Rivers? Elaine Stritch? Jan Hooks? I mean, did Gabriel Garcia Marquez do film and television? #Oscars
— Naomi Ekperigin (@Blacktress) February 23, 2015
How was Elaine Stritch not in that montage? #WTF
— Lea DeLaria (@realleadelaria) February 23, 2015
https://twitter.com/EmmaGMyers/status/569702946939789313
Jan Hooks got a tribute during Saturday Night Live’s 40th anniversary special, but she was also missing from the segment. The Academy also left out Richard Kiel, Gottfried John, Taylor Negron, and George Sluizer, among others.
The Academy’s website has a photo gallery of all 129 professionals who died this year, and Rivers and Stritch are among those immortalized on the website. If they’d been Academy members, it seems, their chances of making the tribute might have increased.
https://twitter.com/rachel/status/569704558231982082
https://twitter.com/rachel/status/569706128659128322
From the New York Times, in 2013:
Those remembered on the show itself do not have to be Academy members, Mr. Robertson said. But institutional service can help. Frank Pierson, a screenwriter and former Academy president who died in July, for instance, appears to have a strong case for inclusion this year.
H/T Salon | Photo via Underbelly Limited/Flickr (CC BY SA 2.0)
