Robert Osborne, genial face of TCM, dead at 84

By Jake Coyle

Associated Press

NEW YORK — Robert Osborne, the genial face of Turner Classic Movies and a walking encyclopedia of classic Hollywood, has died. He was 84.

Jennifer Dorian, general manager of TCM, announced Osborne’s death Monday. A publicist for the network said he passed away Monday in New York.

“His calming presence, gentlemanly style, encyclopedic knowledge of film history, fervent support for film preservation and highly personal interviewing style all combined to make him a truly world-class host,” said Dorian. “Robert’s contributions were fundamental in shaping TCM into what it is today and we owe him a debt of gratitude that can never be repaid.”

A cause of death was not announced, though Osborne’s waning health had forced him to miss the previous two TCM Film Festivals, which he hosted annually in Los Angeles.

Osborne was there from the inception of Ted Turner’s commercial-free classic movie network. To open its first broadcast on April 14, 1994, he introduced “Gone With the Wind.” In the decades after, he remained Turner Classic’s primary — and often sole — host.

For TCM viewers, Osborne was a constant and comforting presence. He presented nightly films and movies packaged in series like “The Essentials” with bits of history and trivia. He also conducted interviews with stars for the network’s guest programmer evenings. His intros — always beginning “Hi, I’m Robert Osborne” — were the warm appetizers to countless feasts of Hollywood classics.

In a 2014 interview with The Associated Press, Osborne — who previously worked as a Hollywood Reporter columnist and as host of the Movie Channel — recalled his long-standing obsession with Hollywood. Even in college, he maintained a black book, nicknamed “Blackie,” of his research into films and the details of their making.

“I was ready with all that information when a job was created. I prepared for something that didn’t exist,” said Osborne.

Born in Colfax, Washington, Osborne studied journalism at the University of Washington and spent two years in the Air Force in Seattle. He then moved to Los Angeles to make it as an actor, and was signed by Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz’s Desilu Studios. Ball, who remained a mentor to him up until her death in 1989, encouraged Osborne to pursue writing — “especially after she saw me act,” Osborne would recall.

He joined the Hollywood Reporter in 1977 and for years wrote its “Rambling Reporter” column. But he found his home at TCM. To tape his segments, Osborne flew once a month from his New York home to TCM’s Atlanta studio.

With Osborne as its ambassador, the cultishly adored TCM developed into a wider-reaching mainstay of movie love, including not just the popular film festival but an annual cruise.

“I get stopped on the street all the time,” Osborne once told The New York Times. “People say: ‘You got me through cancer last year. You got me past unemployment. You take me away from my troubles.’ Exactly what movies did in the ’30s and ’40s.”

Osborne was an Academy Awards historian, too. He wrote his first history of the Oscars in 1965 (“Academy Awards Illustrated”) and later became its official red-carpet greeter. He wrote several official histories of the Academy Awards, including 2008’s “80 Years of the Oscar.”

He was unabashed about his proclivity for ’30s-’50s-era Hollywood. Turner Classic has somewhat expanded beyond that heyday, and in 2003 brought in Ben Mankiewicz as a second host. Mankiewicz on Monday praised Osborne for forging “a profound link to movie lovers, a visceral sense of connection to our history, to our parents and grandparents.”

For Osborne, that connection was forged early on, and his affection for Golden Age Hollywood remained forever undimmed.

“We don’t seem to want people bigger than life. We want people who look ordinary,” Osborne lamented in 2014. Growing up in a small Washington state town, he said, “there was never anybody who looked like Audrey Hepburn or Lana Turner or Hedy Lamarr …. actresses who were bigger than life.”

But Osborne’s genuine passion for a dapper kind of film connoisseurship was unquestioned by the TCM viewers who happily watched him stride into their living room, again and again.

“If I wasn’t doing it (on TV) I’d be doing it as a hobby,” Osborne said, “so I might as well get paid for it.”