End Credits #98: Cinema's 2020 Lost Treasures Sean Connery, Olivia de Havilland, Ennio Morricone
These are some of Cinema's sad departures of 2020 taken from my personal notes soon after the events took place:
He was known first and foremost as motion picture’s earliest James Bond and for many like myself, who grew up as a boy anxiously anticipating his next return to the iconic role, he and the super spy would forever be one and the same. Scottish born Sean Connery has died at age 90.
As an actor, he appeared and often proved his supreme acting ability in films of more substance, made before (Hell Drivers, 1957), during (The Hill, 1965) (The Molly Maguires, 1970) (The Anderson Tapes, 1971) and after (The Offence, 1973) (The Man Who Would be King, 1975) (The Untouchables, 1987) his career defining performances as 007, but his charisma, smooth and infectious confidence in those early Bond movies, not to mention his unique ability to naturally animate his characters’ thought processes, radiated a persona that encompassed and even surpassed many a young person’s ultimate fantasy hero. Thus, he will always reign as legend in cinema’s history. Sean Connery (August 25, 1930 - October 31, 2020) R.I.P.
The last of Hollywood’s big name stars, Olivia de Havilland, has died at age 104.
Along with Kirk Douglas who passed away earlier this year at age 103, de Havilland was one of the longest living actors of cinema’s precious Golden Age. After graduating from high school where she fell in love with acting, Olivia enrolled in Mills College in Oakland, California. At Mills she participated in the school play "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and was spotted by Max Reinhardt. Reinhardt was so impressed, that he cast her in both his stage version and later, the Warner Bros. film version in 1935 where she made her film debut. Since then she has gone on to have a similar effect on audiences in films such as Captain Blood (1935), The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936), The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), Dodge City (1939), The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939), Gone with the Wind (1939), They Died with Their Boots On (1941), Devotion (1946), The Snake Pit (1948), The Heiress (1949), and Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964). Olivia de Havilland (July 1, 1916 - July 26, 2020) R.I.P.
One of the truly greatest film composers of all time has sadly passed away at age 91, maestro Ennio Morricone.
His awe inspiring creativity spanned from one extreme end of the musical spectrum, with some of the most bold stylistically diverse themes, rhythms and orchestrations (often heard in former classmate Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns), to the other: sweeping melodic strains so gorgeous, they defy description (both extremes which, at times, could even be heard in the same motion picture). A list of his artistic triumphs would seem endless after having composed over 500 scores for films and television in every conceivable genre, not to mention over 100 classical works. Just some of his most memorable motion picture scores include A Fistful of Dollars, The Battle of Algiers, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Once Upon a Time in the West, Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion, Maddalena, 1900, Days of Heaven, Once Upon a Time in America, The Mission, The Untouchables, The Legend of 1900, and Malena. Ennio Morricone (November 10, 1928 - July 6, 2020) R.I.P.