About Robert Osborne

Leonard Maltin remembers Robert Osborne, who passed away the other day. Sorry to say I never met Mr. Osborne in person, though I certainly watched him on Turner Classic Movies (and elsewhere) and appreciated what he brought to the world of film history.

Our one connection was one night back when he was the Entertainment Reporter on KTTV Channel 11 in Los Angeles. One night on the air, he was talking about the musical My Fair Lady and he slipped and said the original Broadway show was written by Moss Hart. I don't know why but on a whim, I grabbed up the phone, called the KTTV Newsroom and told whoever answered that I wanted to point out a mistake Mr. Osborne had just made. The person said, "One moment" and the next thing I knew, I was speaking with Mr. Osborne.

Startled, I blurted out, "Moss Hart didn't write My Fair Lady. Alan Jay Lerner and Frederic Loewe did. Moss Hart directed it." Osborne said, "Oh, God, of course. How could I have said that?" I felt a little bad because I sounded like one of those people who just lives to find things to complain about. He obviously wasn't uninformed or stupid or anything. He just said the word "written" when he meant to say "directed" — the kind of verbal typo we all make from time to time.

We had a nice three-minute conversation about the show and the movie and I apologized to him if it sounded like I thought he didn't know what I'd told him. Then I watched the rest of the newscast and just before they signed off, he came back on, corrected his wordage and thanked the "loyal viewer" who'd called in to point out his gaffe.

I was impressed that he cared enough to do that…and as I'm writing this, I just remembered another time I corrected him. It was when TCM ran The Sunshine Boys and I wrote about his mistake here. A few days later, I received a nice e-mail from Mr. Osborne saying that he had asked TCM to never run that intro again and to let him tape a new one the next time they aired that film. Again, the mistake is absolutely understandable…and forgiven because he was so conscientious about getting things right. He almost always did and the movie community was blessed to have him.