SteveA

Just saw this a few minutes ago. I will really miss him. http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/robe...st-1202002748/

dex14

mphtrilogy

Very sad news, he was excellent...

PhantomStranger

Rest in peace. He was one of those calm and steady presences on television I don't think we'll be getting much more of in the future. He exuded class hosting TCM. His replacements have generally been terrible in the past few years.

All the elderly, grandfatherly type hosts on television are now replaced with millennial hipsters.

Mondo Kane

RIP

I think Freaks was my introduction to him in a showing back in '99. TCM did a good documentary about him (With Alec Baldwin as interviewer) It'll likely air on the channel soon.

Trevor

Loved his intros,

Looking forward to that documentary.

Mikael79

He could get me excited to watch just about any movie. Very sad news to hear that we've all lost him.

tommyp007

Sad to see this. TCM is one of my most watched channels, and I loved his intros.

I like Ben M. but Robert was such a smooth guy.

DJariya

Really sad to hear about Mr. Osborne's passing. When I did watch TCM, I did enjoy his interviews and on camera intros to the documentaries and movies they showed. He seemed like a nice and very knowledgeable film expert.

Geddlo

That's sad.
I got to meet him briefly when I saw him do an interview with Gene Wilder in nyc a few years ago.
Nice guy, seemed surprised I wanted to talk to him while everyone else was on line to meet Gene.

Norm de Plume

I agree. I liked his avuncular persona as well. I can't believe he was 83. He seemed a couple of decades younger.

Sonny

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/06/entert...rne/index.html

GoldenJCJ

Damn. I always enjoyed his intros on TCM.

He had such a calming voice.

RIP Robert.

Jason

He seemed so enthusiastic about these movies, it always made me watch, if only for a few minutes. He was never pretentious either. Seemed like a really interesting and above all nice person. I wonder how they will ever replace him.

Sonny

I've watched so many movies on Turner over the years and listened to his wonderful introductions. Whenever I sit down to watch an old movie on dvd I instinctively pause before the beginning thinking his introduction will automatically start. Probably will always be that way.

Mabuse

Town Crier: The King is dead. Long live.....Ben Mankowitz??
Villagers: Booooooooo!

GoldenJCJ

I like Ben Mankiewicz but he ain't no Robert Osborne.

Mondo Kane

Ben does a perfect job, imo. But I can't say the same for the gal who does the weekend afternoon shows. She's so stiff and soulless.

DaveyJoe

Loved staying up late and watching movies on TCM. I thought Osborne's introductions were classy and informative.

Ash Ketchum

He was a great interviewer, too. One time he interviewed Betty Hutton, who was kind of all over the place. She was about to say that after the bad experience of making ANNIE GET YOUR GUN, she never made another movie, but Osborne leaped in to stop her from finishing her thought to remind her of her next movie after that, THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH (1952 Best Picture winner--how could she forget that?!), and she went into a warm remembrance of that film. Whew! What a save.

astrochimp

I thought TCM = Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Brian T

With Osborne and so many others from the "old guard" of scholars/authors/historians/experts/documentarians/hosts that we've come to know through decades of excellent books, articles, documentaries, commentaries and plentiful disc-based supplements, you felt like you were in the hands of someone with a direct connection to the living history of cinema, people who did the leg work back when the internet couldn't do it for them, and when journalistic standards were de rigueur rather than just running your rambling shit through a spell checker or having a podcast with a listenership in the dozens. People like Ben Mankiewicz, for all their good work -- and I don't mind him, because he at least skews a bit older -- often feel like little more than 40- and 50-something former video shop nerds or bloggers in hipster couture suffused with easily-obtained book knowledge (from books written by the old guard, no doubt) and all the benefits of simply growing up in the era of home video and watching lots of stuff, who just happened to luck out and make a career of it (or in his case have a storied family name to trade on). But obviously somebody has to do it as the Robert Osbornes of the world retire or pass on, and there's certainly decades worth of scholarship out there from which you can enrich your own.

But just imagine the next generation of fans-turned-experts who might (but hopefully won't) come on the scene in the next ten to twenty years, with even less connection to the industry itself, its oral history, or even the era of home video like many of us here, with subsequently little to no relevance in an age when new Hollywood (and global) cinema are continuously disseminated, debated and discussed into oblivion via the web. I'm kind of glad that the DVD/Blu-ray business started contracting before we had to suffer millennials and post-millenials (or whatever they're called) becoming the go-to commentators and "gate-keepers" of cinema history.

PhantomStranger

I don't have much of a problem with Ben Mankiewicz as host but Osborne offered a different persona which added gravitas.

Norm de Plume

Osborne was good, but he was no Elwy Yost, the late, enthusiastic, immensely charming lover of all-things-vintage-Hollywood, who hosted "Saturday Night at the Movies" on TVOntario for decades (spoilerized so as not to detract too much from Osborne):

Mondo Kane

48-Hour tribute to him on TCM is on right now.