Two weeks ago the Motion
Picture Academy presented the 89th annual Academy Awards and for a
few minutes, on national television, they honored four individuals by bestowing
them with Honorary Awards for their lifetime achievements. The awards were given
out during an awards dinner on November 12 but the acknowledgment on national
television during the Oscars was traditional. Present in the audience to be acknowledged
were the award winners: actor Jackie Chan, film editor Anne V. Coates, documentary
filmmaker Frederick Wiseman and casting director Lynn Stalmaster. The latter of
whom made history.
Lynn Stalmaster, a
native of Omaha, Nebraska, went to Hollywood in 1950 to seek out a career as an
actor. He played all-too-brief roles in two movies, The Steel Helmet and Flying
Leathernecks, while attending UCLA, then pursued a career as a production
assistant at Gross-Krasne. When the studio system restructured as a result of
the growing television industry, Stalmaster, along with his wife Marion
Dougherty, opened their own casting office.
Among his first projects
was casting supporting roles and guest spots for television’s Gunsmoke, The Lone Wolf and Official
Detective. Over the next five decades Lynn Stalmaster handled casting for
more than 200 feature films and dozens of weekly television programs. In case
you are wondering what a casting director does in the entertainment industry…
Lynn Stalmaster was basically the man that producers turned to and said, “find
me a cast for my movie” or “find me four extras who play henchmen in next week’s
television episode.”
Stalmaster is credited
for the careers of Richard Dreyfus, John Travolta, Christopher Reeve, Jill
Clayburgh, Jeff Bridges, Scott Wilson and Jon Voight, among others. He was responsible
for casting such films as In the Heat of
the Night, Tootsie, The Graduate, Inherit the Wind, Pork Chop
Hill, Deliverance, The Right Stuff and many others.
Casting directors,
believe it or not, is the only position in Hollywood that appears during the
opening credits of motion-pictures and has yet to receive acknowledgement by
the Academy with an Oscar category of its own. So for Lynn Stalmaster this
award meant something more.
As
a fan of television’s Have Gun- Will
Travel I found it amusing that, among Stalmaster’s achievements featured in
a brief montage on the screen during the Oscar ceremony, was the television Western
by name. Amusing when you consider the fact that the Motion Picture Academy
honors motion-pictures, not television.
So
for fans of a television Western that premiered almost sixty years ago and
never conceived of the notion that it would – even for a brief glimpse – be
acknowledged during the annual Oscar awards… well, it happened!
