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You know those brief little clipreels of one minute or less when someone dies? I went looking for one for Gene Wilder tonight and someone told me TCM had stopped making them. Is this true?

The actress shown in a few frames watching TCM Remembers 2015 looks familiar, but I haven't been able to place her. Does anyone know who she is?

The actress shown in a few frames watching TCM Remembers 2015 looks familiar, but I haven't been able to place her. Does anyone know who she is?

Whenever a film actor passes away I wonder if I will be seeing their film clips against the TCM windshield wipers accompanied by mournful music. It’s not surprising when a Lauren Bacall is remembered. She certainly deserves to be. But sometimes an actor dies who is not afforded the tribute that I think deserved it. Peter Graves died a few years ago. He was unforgettable in “Stalag 17” and hilarious in “Airplane”. I noticed at the time he was not remembered by TCM. Other recently departed actors who didn’t get the treatment (as I recall) included Jack Klugman, Jonathan Winters, Eileen Brennan, Ben Gazzara, Michael Ansara, Steve Forrest and RG Armstrong. Admittedly some of them were not major screen stars. But that makes them even more deserving. Their faces are familiar to fans of old movies. To me it’s like recognizing a photo of somebody in a small town newspaper’s obituary section. It may not be a person you know extremely well or even by name, but it’s a person you’ve seen around town and exchanged pleasantries with. They are people whose passing is worth a poignant pause of reflection. The very famous people like Lauren Bacall or James Garner will be memorialized everywhere else. For the character actors and the lesser luminaries, TCM is the one place that should mark their passing.