Richard Todd Gets the Snub at the 82nd Annual Academy Awards

Every year, Hollywood reaches out to America with a program with which they award their most talented and promising actors, directors, and producers: the Academy Awards. Likewise, at each Oscar Awards show, there is a memorium section where actors from yesteryear who passed away the same year the awards are presented to, are remembered. But for some reason, the Academy Awards goofed up big time for 2009: James Taylor did a touching tribute that remembered Dom Deluise, Jean Simmons, and David Carradine, among a few others who dies in 2009. They also managed to remember to do a John Hughes tribute, who arguably made a significant contribution to the film industry in the 1980's with films like "The Breakfast Club" and "Uncle Buck", but managed to forget Richard Todd.

Who?

Richard Todd, you know, the actor who was nominated for an Oscar in 1950 for his role as MacLachlan in "The Hasty Heart." This handsome British actor was well-known for his appearances in "Doctor Who", "Boy Dominic", and a number of Disney movies, not to forget his outstanding performance as the famous minister Peter Marshall in "A Man Called Peter", another movie nominated for an Oscar back in 1956. So it is not as if Richard Todd is completely unknown in the world of the Academy Awards, though it certainly is questionable if anyone of the younger Hollywood generation has an inkling as to who he is. So why would he go unnoticed by this awards show when he died last December at the age of 90?

For many people, especially the American public, awards shows like the Academy Awards have become too political in nature: that only actors, directors, and producers who have the proper contacts ever receive an award. When you consider that a film like "Avatar" receives an award for cinematography (considering the cinematography for this film is largely computerized through a method called CGI, or computer-generated imagery), one has to wonder just how much the film viewers are really impressed by the effects. Anyone who is a whiz at computer graphics can create something like this. We are not talking Harryhausen here, or real animations that appear in fantasy films like the 1962 "'Jack the Giant Killer" film. Yet "Avatar", in addition to "The Hurt Locker," a controversial war film, received more notice than the late, great Richard Todd.

While it is true that films and actors are not nominated for their popularity, much less for significant talent (although there are exceptions such as Hughes), that would help explain why standards have become all but non-existent in Hollywood. Both acting and film making as art forms have deteriorated over the decades, and even here, "Avatar" still doesn't count. It's not because "Avatar" is not creative in its own way but it is hardly original (Cameron has been accused of plagiarizing the story from "The World of Noon" by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky). Americans have their own ways of remembering favorite actors they grew up with, actors who took their craft seriously. Richard Todd may have been forgotten at the 82^nd Academy Awards, but he is remembered by those who know who have made truly significant contributions to the world of film making.

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1970458_1970459,00.html?xid=rss-topstories

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0865262/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/jan/13/james-cameron-avatar-plagarism-claim