There have been quite a few passings worth mentioning over the past week or so that I haven't gotten around to talking about. I had been planning on doing a "briefs" post today anyway, so I figure now's the time to mention all of those obituaries.
George Segal, who died on Tuesday at the age of 87, is the actor likeliest to get a TCM programming tribute. He got an Oscar nomination for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, a movie that I really don't like but a lot of people give high praise to. He was in a bunch of other well-known 1960s movies in supporting roles, such as Act One, King Rat, or Ship of Fools. He got starring roles in films like Where's Poppa? that I blogged about recently, The Quiller Memorandum, and The Owl and the Pussycat. He worked right up to the end of his life, playing the grandfather in the ABC sitcom The Goldbergs.
On Wednesday, it was the turn of Jessica Walter to die. She seems to have done a lot more TV than movies, but I've got her role in Play Misty for Me on Blu-ray in the same box set that has Two Mules for Sister Sara, which I blogged about recently. (Had I known Walter was going to die, I would have watched something else and saved Play Misty for Me for now. Walter was 80.
French director Bertrand Tavernier, who died on Thursday at 79, is one of those names that always sounded familiar, although I wouldn't have been able to name many of his movies. Looking through his filmography, I see he did Round Midnight, one of those movies that I've always known about by title but have never actually seen. I'll have to see if I can hunt down a copy; it's not available at the TCM Shop.
Finally, there's author Larry McMurtry, who also died Thursday, aged 84. Among his books to be turned into movies were Horseman, Pass By (as Hud); The Last Picture Show; and Terms of Endearment. He also won an Oscar for adapting Annie Proulx's short story Brokeback Mountain into the movie of the same name.
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