By Steve Gorman
LOS ANGELES, March 15 (Reuters) – Hollywood royalty took its customary memorial pause at the Oscars on Sunday to remember fallen stars of the past year, with special tributes paid to two luminaries remembered for their work on both sides of the camera – Rob Reiner and Robert Redford.
The remembrances for Reiner and Redford, whose careers overlapped in time but largely occupied separate corners of the motion picture industry, formed an emotional centerpiece of the 98th Academy Awards.
The salute to Reiner was almost without precedent given the grim circumstances of his death at age 78 – he and his wife, Michelle, 70, found fatally stabbed together in their West Los Angeles home on December 14. Their younger son, Nick Reiner, stands charged with their murders; he has pleaded not guilty.
FILMS TO ‘LAST A LIFETIME’
Reiner, who gained fame on television before launching a prolific filmmaking career, was honored in a tribute delivered from the Dolby Theatre stage by Billy Crystal, a nine-time Oscar host who co-starred in one of Reiner’s most beloved films, the romantic comedy “When Harry Met Sally.”
“My friend Rob’s movies will last a lifetime because they were about what makes us laugh and cry and what we aspire to be — far better in his eyes, far kinder, far funnier and far more human,” Crystal said.
He was then joined on-stage by his “Harry Met Sally” co-star, Meg Ryan, and at least a dozen other performers from the casts of various Reiner films, including “The Princess Bride,” “The Sure Thing” and “A Few Good Men.”
“I want you to know how many times Rob told me that it meant everything to him that his work meant something to you,” said Crystal.
The Reiner salute opened the Oscars’ annual In Memoriam video montage honoring a number of recently departed movie greats, from Diane Keaton, Diane Ladd and Catherine O’Hara, to Val Kilmer, Graham Greene and Robert Duvall.
The segment concluded with Barbra Streisand, 83, taking the stage to pay homage to Redford, her co-star in the 1973 romantic drama “The Way We Were,” who died in September at age 89, remembering him as “an intellectual cowboy who blazed his own trail.”
THE WAY THEY WERE
Then, in her first live Academy Award performance in 13 years, Streisand sang a brief stanza from the “The Way We Were” theme song.
“The Way We Were” marked one of the most memorable motion pictures for Streisand as well as Redford, the preternaturally handsome Hollywood leading man turned Oscar-winning director and a champion of independent film who founded the Sundance Film Festival.
Streisand last performed at the Oscars in 2013 when she sang “The Way We Were” in honor of the song’s Oscar-winning late composer, Marvin Hamlisch, who had died the previous August.
Redford, one of the industry’s most bankable leading men of his era, became best known for the two early movies he made with Paul Newman, the 1969 western “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and the 1973 tale of Depression-era grifters “The Sting.”
He made hearts race as the male romantic lead in “Barefoot in the Park,” “The Way We Were,” and “Out of Africa,” and went political in such dramas as “All the President’s Men” and “The Candidate.” He never won the Oscar as best actor, but his first outing as a filmmaker – the 1980 family crisis drama “Ordinary People” – won Academy Awards for best picture and best director.
He used the millions he earned to launch the Sundance Institute and Festival in the 1970s, promoting independent filmmaking long before small, quirky movies produced outside of the studio system were fashionable.
FROM ‘MEATHEAD’ TO MARRIAGE EQUALITY
As an actor, Reiner was best known for his role on the 1970s television comedy hit “All in the Family,” playing Mike “Meathead” Stivic, the live-in son-in-law and liberal foil of the bigoted blue-collar lead character, Archie Bunker.
Reiner went on to a celebrated Hollywood career as a director, starting with “This is Spinal Tap,” a 1984 mockumentary about a fictional hard-rock band. The film became a cult favorite, known for its mostly improvised script, with Reiner playing the faux documentary filmmaker Marty DiBergi.
Reiner directed nearly two dozen films in all, including such classics as the 1986 coming-of-age drama “Stand by Me,” the 1987 fairy-tale adventure “The Princess Bride,” the 1990 psychological thriller “Misery” and the 1992 court-martial drama “A Few Good Men.”
Apart from his show business career, Reiner, the son of the late comedy writer and actor Carl Reiner, was also a prominent Democratic Party activist and donor.
Crystal credited Reiner and his wife, a photographer and producer who were married nearly 37 years, as the “driving force” behind the political campaign that ultimately led to the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage nationwide.
Crystal recalled first meeting Reiner when he was cast to play Meathead’s best friend in a 1975 “All in the Family” episode, “and I was thrilled to see him evolve from a great comic actor to a master story teller.”
(Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los AngelesEditing by Nick Zieminski)
