My Thoughts on the 97th Academy Awards

I'm continuing the occasional pop-in for the blog here today with a look at last night's Oscars, an annual tradition on a blog that is largely devoted to the Academy Awards.  Because I just finished a vacation, I will actually be revealing my OVP for 2024 two weeks from today (and my My Ballot two weeks from tomorrow), but I did see all of the 2024 OVP nominees before the ceremony, a first for me (I have never gotten them all done in advance, a testament specifically to the lack of surprises in the International Feature Film lineup which is usually where I struggle).  We're going to play around with the formula a little bit from last night, which we normally refer to as the "The Good, the Bad, & the Ugly" of the Oscars, mostly because I wasn't really impressed at all with last night's Academy Awards, but also because it was more blasé than actually bad (which would've honestly been more fun).  Let's instead break it out by the components of what makes a quintessential Oscar night, starting with our host Conan O'Brien.

The Host

I initially thought of O'Brien as a really strong choice for the Oscars.  I enjoy O'Brien's brand of self-referential and dry humor, and he was an ace host when he did the Emmys, particularly in 2006.  But I felt underwhelmed.  His musical number about how long the show was was a complete dud, and he particularly couldn't figure out how to continue the emcee role beyond the opening monologue.  The monologue had some good lines, my favorite being "Bob Dylan wanted to be here tonight...but not that badly" but it also included both that tired number and a weird bit with Adam Sandler where he came out dressed like John Fetterman that felt like it might be an attack on Donald Trump's attacks on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's appearance...but was so out of place that it was hard to tell.  I get that Oscar-hosting is a tough job, but I was underwhelmed by O'Brien here, and he wasn't able to keep up with the jokes throughout the night the way that Billy Crystal used to be able to (think of Crystal's many post-speech jokes about people like Jack Palance & Cuba Gooding Jr.), losing a lot of the improvisational humor that normally is important for hosting (Crystal, for example, would've had at least one good line about Kieran Culkin wanting his wife to have two more kids with him).  O'Brien has indicated this was a one-time thing for him, and I think that might be for the best; like his hero Dave Letterman, this might not be his schtick.

The Winners

The winners continued to be what they have been for years-a continuation of the slow death march of a too crowded awards season, where stats-based punditry has not just taken over, but it's also taken all of the fun out of Oscar predictions.  The one truly competitive major race of the night was Best Actress, which was weirdly the only competitive race of the night the past few years in a row, and did result in something of a surprise: the Anora sweep took out sentimental favorite Demi Moore in favor of the film's title actress Mikey Madison.  But most of America didn't see that (we'll get to that in a second), and the rest of the acting winners (Adrien Brody, Zoe Saldana, & Kieran Culkin) were preordained months ago, and outside of the Shorts categories and Animated Feature Film, there were no really big shocks in the remainder (and the Shorts, let's face it, don't count as surprises).

This wouldn't have been so bad if it was a quartet that truly deserved it, but Culkin & Saldana's wins feel particularly untoward because they are not remotely supporting performances.  Category fraud has been a threat to character actor performances like those of Yura Borisov & Isabella Rossellini (true supporting roles) for years, and some have scoffed at this, saying it's not that serious.  What happened last night, though, was the complete death of supporting performances.  Culkin has a larger screen presence than any Supporting Actor winner ever, including people like Jack Albertson (The Subject was Roses) and Timothy Hutton (Ordinary People) who are pretty much universally agreed-upon to be leads by Oscar observers (he nearly has more screen time percentage than Tatum O'Neal in Paper Moon, who is literally in all but one scene of that movie).  Saldana isn't much better-she has more screen time than her lead costar Karla Sofia Gascon, and is #5 on the list of largest screen time shares, right around the mark of clear leads like Goldie Hawn in Cactus Flower and Viola Davis in Fences.  This means that for the first time ever(?) literally no supporting performance actually won an Academy Award...I don't know how to fix this, but you're going to continue to see leading stars ensure that performers who are in the true category actor vein of Eileen Heckart, Walter Brennan, & Joe Pesci will never have a shot at an Oscar win again.  And given the group think is getting worse, those victories will not be a surprise.

The Presenters & the Performers

The one silver lining for me in last night's ceremony was the presenters.  Billy Crystal & Meg Ryan were an inspired choice to present Best Picture, both screen favorites who have never given out the big award (and two actors who have weirdly never been nominated for an Oscar, a rarity-just four actors, the other two being Carol Burnett & Will Rogers, have presented Best Picture without eventually getting a nomination or a win...perhaps something in their future?).  I loved some of the oddball pairings like June Squibb & Scarlett Johansson, Goldie Hawn & Andrew Garfield, Miles Teller & Miley Cyrus, and Selena Gomez & Samuel L. Jackson all come to mind as actors that make sense as Oscar presenters, just not together, and that's honestly what I want (Oscars should be about being inventive).  You also had a few names I wouldn't have guessed (Mick Jagger & Darryl Hannah specifically) which got us some new energy and gave this ceremony its own appeal.  Overall, whoever chose the presenters this year deserves a pat on the back.

The musical performances, though, were unnecessary.  Somehow on a night where we had genuine musicals in contention (Emilia Perez, A Complete Unknown) we instead got not one but two musical numbers from The Wiz, a film that came out 47 years ago.  The Wicked opening was inevitable (and understandable), and lord knows the Best Original Song contenders were so dreadful that not including them made sense, but did we need yet another uninspired tribute to James Bond, presented, once again, by Halle Berry...is she the only person they know from this movie?!?  I get the rationale here (Michael G. Wilson & Barbara Broccoli just won the Thalberg, and this felt like a death knell for Bond given they just sold the rights to Amazon), but at least mix it up-bring out Bond girls from every era or something, or have the original singers sing their songs (how cool would having Paul McCartney, Shirley Bassey, & Madonna taking the stage have been?).  Something more was needed, as the music felt either boring or silly.

The In Memoriam

It has become a performative bit each year for people to call out random missing names in the In Memoriam, and generally I don't get behind it.  I always find the way that certain performers are signaled out for recognition a bit arbitrary (why Gene Hackman & Quincy Jones instead of Maggie Smith, for example), but this year...woof, I cannot remember the Oscars bungling this badly.  And I say this as someone who generally has sympathy for AMPAS on how hard it is to handle the In Memoriam (side note: I kind of liked the Amadeus dirge being the background, as at least it was memorable).

Most of the headlines you'll see this morning will be about Michelle Trachtenberg, who is the most recognizable name to most people, but honestly feels like one of those performative callouts since Trachtenberg's career was largely in television (the same for Shannon Doherty, Linda Lavin, & Martin Mull), even if her death hits hard since it's so recent (and she was so young).  But the In Memoriam segment forgot some major classic film stars in its list, including some of the biggest snubs I can remember.  Claude Jarman, Jr., who won the Juvenile Oscar for The Yearling, became only the third Oscar-winning actor since the advent of the In Memoriam as a recurring segment in 1994, to be cut from the ceremony.  Mitzi Gaynor, who received the longest standing ovation of any musical performer in the history of the Oscars for her rendition of "Georgy Girl," and whose musical South Pacific is so engrained in Hollywood culture that June Squibb & Scarlett Johansson walked out to "Some Enchanted Evening" earlier in the night, was also cut.  Janis Paige, Kathryn Crosby, Alain Delon, Olivia Hussey...these are not just movie actors, they're movie stars...skipping them felt intentional.  In a night where we were being asked to celebrate the movies, it was hard not to think of it as celebrating movies...as long as they were made after 1975.

The Streaming Fiasco

The single biggest issue for the Oscars last night-most people didn't get to see how they ended.  ABC & Disney had made a big deal about how this would be the first year ever that all Hulu subscribers could watch the ceremony in full on their streamers.  It was included in all of their advertisements, and was omnipresent at the top of the Hulu page for weeks.  And then, right in the middle of the Best Actress field (for me they'd just announced Karla Sofia Gascon), a giant blue screen popped up, saying the live show had ended.  What it appeared had happened was that ABC had only allotted 3.5 hours for the ceremony, not taking into account the Oscars regularly run long, and for streamers this meant that they weren't still watching live like they would've on ABC, and instead this allotted time was over and it was now time for American Idol.  But in the process they cut off their two signature awards of the night.  I was one of those impacted (I have since sought out and saw the full presentations and speeches for Best Picture & Actress so I can say I've seen the full ceremony), but it is a fitting epitaph for the evening.  After all, the night's biggest winner, Sean Baker (tying Walt Disney's record for most wins in a single evening), made an impassioned plea to go to the movies in theaters rather than streaming.  That streaming proved it was too incompetent to handle celebrating Hollywood's biggest night just an hour later kind of feels like an exclamation point that even Baker couldn't have anticipated.

The 31 Last Living Stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood

A little over a week ago, actress Piper Laurie passed away.  Laurie was best-known as an actress for two films, both of which got her Academy Award nominations: as Paul Newman's love interest in The Hustler and as Sissy Spacek's domineering mother in Carrie.  Laurie had worked in movies since the 1950's, and had starred opposite everyone from Ronald Reagan to Jimmy Durante to Rock Hudson.  She was one of the only living people that had been submitted for the 1999 TV special AFI 100 Years...100 Stars's ballot.

Laurie's death means that another figure from the Golden Age of Hollywood (roughly from the 1920's through 1959, though that date varies greatly depending on who you ask) had passed away.  In recent years stars such as Kirk Douglas, Rhonda Fleming, Sidney Poitier, & earlier this year Gina Lollobrigida have died, giving us very few actors who are connected to this era, which is one of the primary points-of-conversation on this blog and is the frame-of-reference when you refer to something as "Old Hollywood."

So I decided to do some sleuthing, and understand exactly how many "stars" are left from Classical Hollywood.  The definition is hard to clarify, to be fair.  I've heard everyone from Elizabeth Taylor to Lauren Bacall to Olivia de Havilland being called the "last living star" of Classical Hollywood when they died, and still there are other figures from the era that seem like they would make the grade.  So I decided to make a definition, and see how many were left.

Our definition below, for the actors & actresses I have highlighted, is pretty simple.  We're using 1959 as the cutoff, and so each of these actors either A) got above-the-line billing in at least three Hollywood studio, feature-length, live-action films in 1959 (or earlier) or B) were listed on the AFI's 100 Years...100 Stars ballot (which now only consists of six living actresses).  By my count (and I could've missed someone-the comments are there for a reason), this includes just 31 actors.  I have listed them below.

Before we get into the list, I want to call out perhaps my biggest learning here.  This list runs the gamut from Oscar-winnings actors who are pretty much universally-known to anyone that talks about Old Hollywood to actresses that basically just played love interests in a couple of films and never took off in their careers.  What's remarkable though, is when I started to look at the lists of stars that they had played opposite.  I listed the names below, and I was drawn to two things.  One, for the next few years (and only for the next few years, as the youngest of these performers is 86), we still have a real connection to the Hollywood of lore.  These actors stood on soundstages with Bette Davis, with Fred Astaire, with Marilyn Monroe...icons that make up the foundation of Hollywood.  And not just as extras-they were their peers and love interests and costars.  And so for a brief time, we're still allowed at least a glimpse into that world.

The other thing that I noticed was that so many of the films they starred with with these actors are not well-known.  I list north of 100 movies below, many of them I'd never heard of starring the most famous actors of all-time.  It's a humbling moment to see so many movies, many forgotten to time, left to discover, knowing that I'll never get to all of them.  It's a good reminder that for all of these stars, including Piper Laurie, though they won't be with us forever, they will always be with us as long as there are movies to be seen.

Honorable Mention #1: If we use 1959 as the cutoff for the "Golden Age," we run into a lot of actors that are in a grey area.  First is getting hung up on the title of "Star." All 31 of the below actors were either proper headliners in at least three studio films on or before 1959 (or were in the AFI Stars ballot).  This means that there are a few living actors who were either character actors, supporting stars, or who weren't yet getting major roles in the 1950's (but were definitely a part of the era, sometimes in crucial or even Oscar-cited parts) that won't be on the list.  This is not a conclusive list, but some actors that meet that criteria include: Lee Grant, Earl Holliman, Patrick Wayne, Marion Ross, James Hong, Ann Robinson, Russ Tamblyn, Ursula Andress, Richard Beymer, Diane Baker, Connie Stevens, France Nuyen, Karen Sharpe, & Dolores Hart (Ann Robinson, for the record, comes really close getting leads in two films of the era (The War of the Worlds and Gun Brothers), but just misses the cutoff without a third one).

Honorable Mention #2: On the flip side, there are actors who are indisputably stars in movies or TV in the years that followed, some of the biggest stars of New Hollywood who were definitely working in movies during the 1950's...but weren't headlining films yet.  They have their connections to the era, but just miss the cut from this list, in some cases by a few years.  This would include Clint Eastwood, Tippi Hedren, Gena Rowlands, Barbara Eden, Julie Newmar, Fabian, Tina Louise, & George Hamilton.

Honorable Mention #3: This list only includes people who appeared in films in 1959 or earlier.  There are several actors (Jane Fonda, Warren Beatty, Robert Duvall, Paula Prentiss, & Nancy Kwan all come to mind) who made their screen debuts in the early 1960's, which is why they aren't listed at all here, but are generally associated with the Golden Age because they did star with a number of famous actors of that era in the period before New Hollywood started later that decade.

Honorable Mention #4: Finally, this list is focused on Golden Age stars in Hollywood.  We have a few actors like Glynis Johns, Brigitte Bardot, & Claudia Cardinale who would eventually become crucial names in movies, even starring in some Hollywood films...but not in the 1950's.  As a result, you're not going to see names of actors not largely associated with American cinema prior to this, since the whole "Old Hollywood Glamour" thing has a geographic definition.

Editor's Note from John: All of these actors were living as of October 26th, 2023.  However, I have noted the death date of some of these performers below if they have since passed and you are finding this article years after-the-fact, specifically the age they died.  I am not updating the other stars ages in real time (you know how to do math, and their birth dates are living).  All other parts of the write-up remain as is.

And with that, it's time to see stars!

Carroll Baker

Age: 92 (May 28th, 1931)

Screen Debut: Easy to Love (1953)

Best Known For: Her proto-Lolita work in Elia Kazan's Baby Doll

AFI Nominee?: No

Oscar Nominations: She was nominated for Best Actress for Baby Doll, losing to Ingrid Bergman's comeback role in Anastasia

Famous Costars: I thought it'd be fun to do a smattering of each of these living names connections to lost legends, proving how we still have not only stars of this era, but links to some of its biggest icons (I'm only listing deceased actors here-though of course many of these actors, including Baker, starred alongside each other during this time frame).  With Baker you have James Dean, Elizabeth Taylor, & Rock Hudson (Giant), Gregory Peck & Charlton Heston (The Big Country), Jimmy Stewart (Cheyenne Autumn), and Clark Gable (But Not for Me)

Are They Still Acting?: No.  We're going to focus primarily on film with final roles here, given this is a film article, but if they're still acting in TV I'll call that out.  Baker hasn't worked in decades-her last film was The Game with Michael Douglas & Sean Penn.

Claire Bloom

Age: 92 (February 15th, 1931)

Screen Debut: The Blind Goddess (1948)

Best Known For: The stage.  Bloom is probably a questionable inclusion here if I'm skipping Glynis Johns, to be honest.  She did work regularly in the 1950's & 60's, but in British cinema, not in American pictures as often (though she was in them).  In American film, her best known work was as Cliff Robertson's love interest in Charly.

AFI Nominee?: The reason I'm including her is that she is one of only six living stars from the AFI's "100 Years, 100 Stars" list, which automatically got you into this compendium.

Oscar Nominations: No Oscar nominations, though she was given a CBE in 2013 (why they didn't just trot out the "Dame" is anyone's guess, and should be rectified immediately.

Famous Costars: Charlie Chaplin & Buster Keaton (Limelight), James Mason (The Man Between), Richard Burton (Alexander the Great, Look Back in Anger, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold), Laurence Olivier (Richard III, Clash of the Titans), Paul Newman & Edward G. Robinson (The Outrage), and Charles Boyer & Charlton Heston (The Buccaneer)

Are They Still Acting?: Yes.  She had a small role in the 2019 miniseries Summer of Rockets with Toby Stephens & Timothy Spall.

Ann Blyth

Age: 95 (August 16th, 1928 - June 24, 2026)

Screen Debut: Chip off the Old Block (1944)

Best Known For: Playing Joan Crawford's spoiled daughter Veda in Mildred Pierce

AFI Nominee?: Yes, Blyth is one of the six living actresses still left from the AFI list

Oscar Nominations: Blyth was cited for one Oscar, for her work in Mildred Pierce, but lost to Anne Revere in National Velvet.

Famous Costars: Blyth is so famous for her supporting role in Mildred Pierce that it's frequently forgotten she had a career in the early-1950's as a proper leading lady.  She starred opposite not just Crawford but Mickey Rooney (Killer McCoy), Charles Boyer (A Woman's Vengeance), William Powell (Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid, Bing Crosby (Top o' the Morning), Claudette Colbert (Thunder on the Hill), Gregory Peck (The World in His Arms), & Paul Newman (The Helen Morgan Story)

Are They Still Acting?: No-Blyth's last film was The Helen Morgan Story, for some reason quitting pictures before she turned 30, and her last television appearance was opposite Angela Lansbury on Murder, She Wrote in 1985.

Pat Boone

Age: 89 (June 1st, 1934)

Screen Debut: Bernardine (1957)

Best Known For: Boone is far more famous today as a singer than as an actor.  In the late-1950's, he was a serious rival to Elvis Presley as the most popular singer of the era.  Some of his hits included "April Love," "Love Letters in the Sand," and "Ain't That a Shame,"...none of which have had the lasting pop culture impact of Presley, proving that every era gets their Jessica Simpson.

AFI Nominee?: No

Oscar Nominations: Never nominated for an Oscar or a Golden Globe, though Boone is currently 0-for-6 at the Grammys.

Famous Costars: Janet Gaynor (Bernardine), James Mason & Arlene Dahl (Journey to the Center of the Earth), Bobby Darin & Alice Faye (State Fair), Tony Curtis & Debbie Reynolds (Goodbye Charlie), 

Are They Still Acting?: If we're being honest, the thing that Boone is best-known for is not music or film, but for his religious & political beliefs.  The actor is a devout evangelical Christian, staging rallies for school prayer as far-back as the 1960's.  He is famously homophobic, and is actively involved in Republican politics, campaigning for figures like Donald Trump, Ernie Fletcher, & Mike Huckabee.

Leslie Caron

Age: 92 (July 1st, 1931)

Screen Debut: An American in Paris (1951)

Best Known For: Probably Gigi?  Honestly, Caron was a major star in movie musicals in the 1950's, so she might just be famous without needing a qualifier, but if there's a movie, it's Gigi.

AFI Nominee?: The cutoff needing your screen debut to be before 1950 means that Caron, who surely would've been a lock for inclusion otherwise, didn't get cited on the ballot.

Oscar Nominations: She received two-one for Lili which she lost to Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday (it's a movie I love, and I was shocked to find recently I'm by myself on that front) and then ten years later was a presumed frontrunner for The L-Shaped Room, but missed to Patricia Neal in Hud.

Famous Costars: The only living person to have danced with both Gene Kelly (An American in Paris) and Fred Astaire (Daddy Long Legs) onscreen.  In addition to those two, she also costarred with Maurice Chevalier (Gigi), Henry Fonda (The Man Who Understood Women), Charles Boyer (Fanny, A Very Special Favor), & Cary Grant (Father Goose)

Are They Still Acting?: Yes, though not steadily-her most recent film was a voiceover work in a British adaptation of A Christmas Carol.

Joan Collins

Age: 90 (May 23rd, 1933)

Screen Debut: Lady Godiva Rides Again (1951)

Best Known For: Her turn as Alexis Carrington in the 1980's soap opera Dynasty.  She also was a tabloid staple for decades along with her late sister, novelist Jackie Collins.

AFI Nominee?: No

Oscar Nominations: No, though she won a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Emmy Award for her work on Dynasty.

Famous Costars: Bette Davis (The Virgin Queen), Richard Burton (Sea Wife), Jayne Mansfield (The Wayward Bus), Harry Belafonte, Dorothy Dandridge, & Joan Fontaine (Island in the Sun), Paul Newman (Rally Round the Flag, Boys!), Edward G. Robinson (Seven Thieves), and Bing Crosby & Bob Hope (The Road to Hong Kong)

Are They Still Acting?: Yes.  She made a guest spot in 2019 on Hawaii Five-O, and has done quite a bit of theater in recent years, including one-woman shows as herself.

Kathryn Crosby

Age: 90 (November 25th, 1933 - September 20th, 2024)

Screen Debut: So This is Love (1953)

Best Known For: Crosby's screen name wasn't actually Crosby (or at least it wasn't for the bulk of her acting career)-she was billed as Kathryn Grant for most of her acting career (if you're googling her, she's Crosby on Wikipedia & Grant on IMDB/Letterboxd...we're going with Crosby as her name because that's what she prefers).  As a result, she's best known as Bing Crosby's second wife; the couple remained married for twenty years, until the actor's death in 1977.

AFI Nominee?: No

Oscar Nominations: No

Famous Costars: Ginger Rogers & William Holden (Forever Female), Bob Hope & Joan Fontaine (Casanova's Big Night), Jimmy Stewart & Grace Kelly (Rear Window), Ginger Rogers (again) & Edward G. Robinson (Tight Spot), Anthony Quinn (The Wild Party), Jack Lemmon (Operation Mad Ball), Tab Hunter (Gunman's Walk), & Jimmy Stewart (Anatomy of a Murder)

Are They Still Acting?: Crosby largely retired from acting after her marriage, though she randomly appeared in the 2010 independent comedy Queen of the Lot.

Audrey Dalton

Age: 89 (January 21st, 1934)

Screen Debut: My Cousin Rachel (1952)

Best Known For: I don't know that Dalton is super well-known for anything today.  This happens sometimes, and will for stars today too-where someone gets regular work leading forgettable pictures, or getting prominent supporting work in movies, but as a star she doesn't click with pop culture at large.   But she definitely led 3+ films in the 1950's, so she qualified for this list (I'll happily take recommendations of how to familiarize myself with her in the comments, as she's the one star totally unknown to me before I wrote this).

AFI Nominee?: No

Oscar Nominations: No

Famous Costars: Richard Burton & Olivia de Havilland (My Cousin Rachel), Clifton Webb & Barbara Stanwyck (Titanic), Bob Hope & Joan Fontaine (Casanova's Big Night), Rita Hayworth & Burt Lancaster (Separate Tables), & Lana Turner (The Prodigal)

Are They Still Acting?: No-Dalton retired in 1978, appearing on Police Woman with oddly enough the next star on this list.

Angie Dickinson

Age: 92 (September 30th, 1931)

Screen Debut: Lucky Me (1954)

Best Known For: Dickinson was a sex symbol star of the 1960's, but a modern one in the mold of Jane Fonda & Faye Dunaway, rather than the more exaggerated looks of Marilyn Monroe or Jayne Mansfield, with her most famous film being in the original Ocean's 11.  In the 1970's, she was a huge star on television playing Pepper Anderson on NBC's Police Woman.  She also had a high-profile marriage at the peak of both of their fame with singer Burt Bacharach.

AFI Nominee?: No

Oscar Nominations: No Oscar nominations, but she won two Golden Globes and was nominated for three Emmy Awards, most of these for Police Woman.

Famous Costars: Doris Day (Lucky Me), Robert Mitchum (Man with the Gun), Randolph Scott (Shoot-Out at Medicine Bend), James Mason (Cry Terror!), John Wayne & Dean Martin (Rio Bravo), Richard Burton (The Bramble Bush), The Rat Pack-Frank Dean, & Sammy (Ocean's 11), Maurice Chevalier (Jessica), Troy Donahue (Captain Newman, MD), Marlon Brando (The Chase), & Kirk Douglas (Cast a Giant Shadow)

Are They Still Acting?: Dickinson quit acting in 2009, her last TV movie being Mending Fences, while her last theatrical film being Elvis Has Left the Building with Kim Basinger.

Peggy Dow

Age: 95 (March 18th, 1928)

Screen Debut: Undertow (1949)

Best Known For: She played the main nurse (who is in love with her doctor) in the Oscar-nominated Jimmy Stewart classic Harvey.

AFI Nominee?: No

Oscar Nominations: None

Famous Costars: In addition to Stewart, she also acted opposite Rock Hudson (Undertow), Ida Lupino (Woman in Hiding), Dick Powell (You Can Never Tell), Dana Andrews and Dorothy McGuire (I Want You)

Are They Still Acting?: No-of all of these actors I believe that Dow has had the longest period of inactivity, retiring in 1952 when she married her husband Walter Helmerich III (a wealthy oilman), and has devoted her life to philanthropy, specifically around funding libraries & literacy-related causes.

Felicia Farr

Age: 91 (October 4th, 1932)

Screen Debut: Big House, USA (1955)

Best Known For: I hate to say it this way, but similar to Kathryn Crosby, what Farr is best-known for today is her celebrity marriage.  Farr was married for almost fifty years to screen legend Jack Lemmon, with whom she occasionally worked.

AFI Nominee?: No

Oscar Nominations: No

Famous Costars: Glenn Ford & Ernest Borgnine (Jubal), Joel McCrea (The Last Texan), Andy Griffith (Onionhead), Dean Martin (Kiss Me, Stupid), & Walter Matthau (Kotch, Charley Varrick), 

Are They Still Acting?: After a decade away from film, she made a random independent film called Loser's Crown in 2014. The last studio film where she didn't play herself was 1986's That's Life! with her husband Jack Lemmon & Julie Andrews.

Mitzi Gaynor

Age: 93 (September 4th, 1931 - October 17th, 2024)

Screen Debut: My Blue Heaven (1950)

Best Known For: Her big claim-to-fame was as Nellie Forbush in the Rodgers & Hammerstein smash hit South Pacific.  If you follow this blog closely, you'll know that she was one of our Stars of the Month during its first season.

AFI Nominee?: Yes, Gaynor was one of the six actresses cited by the American Film Institute.

Oscar Nominations: Weirdly no, but she was nominated for Best Actress at the Golden Globes for South Pacific, and I have to assume she was pretty close.

Famous Costars: Betty Grable (My Blue Heaven), Marilyn Monroe & Ethel Merman (There's No Business Like Show Business), Bing Crosby (Anything Goes), Frank Sinatra (The Joker is Wild), Gene Kelly (Les Girls), and David Niven (Happy Anniversary)

Are They Still Acting?: Gaynor still does public appearances and interviews (and did decades of television specials-the Beatles took second billing to her when they performed on The Ed Sullivan Show), but her last studio film was 1963's For Love or Money with Kirk Douglas.

Claude Jarman, Jr.

Age: 89 (September 27th, 1934 - January 12th, 2025)

Screen Debut: The Yearling (1946)

Best Known For: Jarman is best-known for his work in the 1946 Best Picture nominee The Yearling, where he plays Gregory Peck's son Jody

AFI Nominee?: No

Oscar Nominations: He was not nominated for an Oscar, but he is one of just a handful of living winners of the Juvenile Oscar statue, which he won for The Yearling.

Famous Costars: Gregory Peck & Jane Wyman (The Yearling), Van Johnson & June Allyson (High Barbaree), Gloria Grahame (Roughshod), Pal (aka the original "Lassie") & Jeanette MacDonald (The Sun Comes Up), John Wayne & Maureen O'Hara (Rio Grande), Arlene Dahl (The Outriders), Randolph Scott (Hangman's Knot), & Fred MacMurray (Fair Wind to Java)

Are They Still Acting?: No-he gave up acting in the mid-1950's, only returning briefly for the TV miniseries Centennial, though he helped to run the San Francisco International Film Festival for a number of years & just published his memoirs a few years back (also, every person on this list should have a memoir if they don't already, pretty please!).

Shirley Jones

Age: 89 (March 31st 1934)

Screen Debut: Oklahoma! (1955)

Best Known For: Jones is probably known to most as Shirley Partridge, the lead of The Partridge Family, which ran for four seasons on ABC and was a pop culture phenomenon.

AFI Nominee?: No

Oscar Nominations: Not only is Jones an Oscar nominee for Elmer Gantry, but she won for her work.  Thanks to her song "I Think I Love You," on The Partridge Family, she is one of only four performers (along with Frank Sinatra, Cher, & Barbra Streisand) to win an acting Oscar and have a #1 Billboard hit.

Famous Costars: James Cagney (Never Steal Anything Small), Burt Lancaster & Jean Simmons (Elme Gantry), Jimmy Stewart (Two Rode Together), Glenn Ford (The Courtship of Eddie's Father), Marlon Brando & David Niven (Bedtime Story), and Jimmy Stewart (again) & Henry Fonda (The Cheyenne Social Club)

Are They Still Acting?: Not super regularly, but Jones still makes the odd film or television cameo, usually playing some version of her star persona.

June Lockhart

Age: 98 (June 25th, 1925 - October 23rd, 2025)

Screen Debut: A Christmas Carol (1938)

Best Known For: Lockhart has had literally almost a 90-year career, starting in film in the 1930's, but she's more famous for her work in television, where she played Ruth Martin on Lassie and Maureen Robinson in Lost in Space.

AFI Nominee?: No

Oscar Nominations: She never received an Academy Award nomination, but Lockhart did win a Tony Award for the play For Love or Money and was nominated for two Emmy Awards in the 1950's.

Famous Costars: Bette Davis & Charles Boyer (All This, and Heaven Too), Ingrid Bergman (Adam Has Four Sons), Gary Cooper (Sergeant York), Judy Garland (Meet Me in St. Louis), Lana Turner (Keep Your Powder Dry), Richard Widmark (Time Limit), and Orson Welles (Butterfly)

Are They Still Acting?: No, Lockhart appears to be retired now, revising her role from Lost in Space (as an alien) for the Netflix remake for her final role.

Sophia Loren

Age: 89 (September 20th, 1934)

Screen Debut: Hearts at Sea (1950)

Best Known For: There are a lot of actors on this list that were famous in their day, and there's a lot of debate over who would actually count as the "Last Living Golden Age Star," given that many of these people were only somewhat famous in their day (this is a literal definition of the name more than a subjective one), and others, like the next actress on this list, were more stars of the New Hollywood era.  All this is to say, as long as Sophia Loren is still alive, the question objectively has an answer-Loren is synonymous with Old Hollywood through her decades of fame in the same way all of the late famous costars I've listed throughout this article are.  "I worked with Sophia Loren" carries the same weight as "I worked with Clark Gable" or "I worked with Joan Crawford."

AFI Nominee?: Not only was she nominated, but she is the only living person to have actually been selected for the list, Ranked #21 between Lauren Bacall & Jean Harlow.  Loren has also been one of our Saturdays with the Stars in our second season.

Oscar Nominations: She won for Best Actress in 1961 for Two Women, but lost for Marriage Italian Style to Julie Andrews in Mary Poppins.  She also won an Honorary Academy Award in 1991 for lifetime achievement.

Famous Costars: A lot of her best work is in Italian, but in terms of Hollywood stars we've got Alan Ladd (Boy on a Dolphin), Frank Sinatra (The Pride and the Passion), Cary Grant (The Pride and the Passion, Houseboat), John Wayne (Legend of the Lost), William Holden (The Key), Tab Hunter (That Kind of Woman), Clark Gable (It Started in Naples), Peter Sellers (The Millionairess), Charlton Heston (El Cid) & Marlon Brando (A Countess from Hong Kong)

Are They Still Acting?: Yes-as recently as 2020 she was in the running for an Oscar nomination (in my opinion, she deserved one) for The Life Ahead.

Shirley MacLaine

Age: 89 (April 24th, 1934)

Screen Debut: The Trouble with Harry (1955)-it is such a Shirley MacLaine mic drop move to have your screen debut as the lead in an Alfred Hitchcock movie.

Best Known For: MacLaine, like Loren, is one of those stars you don't need a qualifier for-she's just a movie star, full-stop.  Depending on your age it could be anything from The Apartment to Terms of Endearment to Steel Magnolias to Downton Abbey, but you've heard of her if you know anything about cinema.  She's also my favorite actress of all time.

AFI Nominee?: No-her debut was too late, otherwise she would've undoubtedly been an option.  But she was also one of our Saturdays with the Stars during our third season (the third and final person on this list we've profiled to date).

Oscar Nominations: Definitely-MacLaine has been cited for six Oscars, winning for 1983's Terms of Endearment, and also was nominated for Some Came Running, The Apartment, Irma la Douce, The Turning Point, and for directing the documentary film The Other Half of the Sky

Famous Costars: Theres a LOT, but I'll give you a smattering with David Niven (Around the World in 80 Days, Ask Any Girl), Frank Sinatra & Dean Martin (many films, but probably best in Some Came Running), Anthony Quinn (Hot Spell), Jack Lemmon (The Apartment, Irma la Douce), Audrey Hepburn (The Children's Hour), Robert Mitchum (Two for the Seesaw), Ingrid Bergman & Rex Harrison (The Yellow Rolls-Royce), Gene Kelly & Paul Newman (amongst others, in What a Way to Go!), & Anne Bancroft (The Turning Point)

Are They Still Acting?: Yes, MacLaine still acts regularly, appearing in American Dreamer and Only Murders in the Building in 2022 alone.

Vera Miles

Age: 94 (August 23rd, 1929)

Screen Debut: When Millie Goes Marching Home (1950)

Best Known For: Miles is best-known for playing Lila Crane, Janet Leigh's sister in Alfred Hitchcock's classic thriller Psycho.

AFI Nominee?: No

Oscar Nominations: No nominations, despite appearing in a number of well-known classics.

Famous Costars: Lloyd Bridges (Pride of the Blue Grass), Joel McCrea (Wichita), John Wayne (The Searchers, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The Green Berets, Hellfighters), Joan Crawford (Autumn Leaves), Henry Fonda (The Wrong Man), Bob Hope (Beau James), Jimmy Stewart (The FBI Story, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance), & James Garner (One Little Indian)

Are They Still Acting?: No-Miles retired in 1995 after the flop psychosexual thriller Separate Lives.  The woman who worked alongside Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford, Robert Wise, & Walt Disney appears to have ended her career in a movie starring Jim Belushi.

Colleen Miller

Age: 90 (November 10th, 1932)

Screen Debut: The Last Vegas Story (1952)

Best Known For: Miller was one of the many contract stars of the 1950's during the end of the studio system that the studio couldn't quite make work as a leading lady during the beginning of television, despite getting to play opposite some big stars & largely getting above-the-line parts.

AFI Nominee?: No

Oscar Nominations: No nominations

Famous Costars: Jane Russell (The Las Vegas Story), Rory Calhoun & Walter Brennan (Four Guns to the Border), Tony Curtis (The Purple Mask, The Rawhide Years), Orson Welles (Man in the Shadow), & Audie Murphy (Gunfight at the Comanche Creek)

Are They Still Acting?: No-Miler retired entirely from acting in 1972 with a brief cameo in the 1972 comedy Stand Up and Be Counted with Jacqueline Bisset & Steve Lawrence.

Terry Moore

Age: 94 (January 7th, 1929)

Screen Debut: Maryland (1940)

Best Known For: A former child actor, Moore was most-noted for her work in the Oscar-winning 1952 stage adaptation of Come Back, Little Sheba.  She also was involved romantically with Howard Hughes, and may have actually committed bigamy by being secretly married to him while also wedding three other men (where is THAT biopic?).

AFI Nominee?: No

Oscar Nominations: Moore was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Come Back, Little Sheba, but lost the statue to Gloria Grahame.

Famous Costars: Cary Grant (The Howards of Virginia), Rita Hayworth (My Gal Sal), Laurel & Hardy (A-Haunting We Will Go), Claudette Colbert & Jennifer Jones (Since You Went Away), Judy Garland (The Clock), Jimmy Durante (The Great Rupert), Mickey Rooney (He's a Cockeyed Wonder), Tyrone Power (King of the Khyber Rifles), Fred Astaire (Daddy Long Legs), Lana Turner (Peyton Place), and Linda Darnell & Lon Chaney, Jr. (Black Spurs)

Are They Still Acting?: She still takes bit parts in movies and television, including a 2014 guest spot on the Emmy-winning HBO series True Detective.

Rita Moreno

Age: 92 (December 11th, 1931)

Screen Debut: So Young, So Bad (1950)

Best Known For: Moreno is an icon of the stage & screen, winner of the Kennedy Center & Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Awards.  Her best-known screen work, though, is as the original Maria in the 1961 Best Picture winner West Side Story.

AFI Nominee?: Yes, she is one of the remaining six, and by-far the most active.

Oscar Nominations: Moreno was nominated for one Oscar in her career, for West Side Story, but at least the Academy had the good sense to give her the statue for it.

Famous Costars: Gene Kelly & Debbie Reynolds (Singin' in the Rain), Gary Cooper & Susan Hayward (Garden of Evil), Tyrone Power (Untamed), Deborah Kerr & Yul Brynner (The King & I), Geraldine Page (Summer and Smoke), and Marlon Brando (The Night of the Following Day)

Are They Still Acting?: Yep!  Moreno made 80 for Brady earlier this year with Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, & Sally Field.

Don Murray

Age: 94 (July 31st, 1929 - February 2nd, 2024)

Screen Debut: Bus Stop (1956)

Best Known For: Murray is best-known today for his role in the film Bus Stop, which is generally considered to be the movie where Marilyn Monroe "proved she could act" (anyone paying attention beforehand would've already known that she could act).

AFI Nominee?: No

Oscar Nominations: Murray is that rare guy who got nominated on his first film, getting a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for Bus Stop but losing to Anthony Quinn.

Famous Costars: Marilyn Monroe (Bus Stop), James Cagney (Shake Hands with the Devil), Alan Ladd (One Foot in Hell), Charles Laughton & Gene Tierney (Advise & Consent), Steve McQueen & Lee Remick (Baby the Rain Must Fall), Janet Leigh & Broderick Crawford (Kid Rodelo), and Roddy McDowall & Ricardo Montalban (Conquest of the Planet of the Apes)

Are They Still Acting?: Yes, Murray still works, and had a principle role on the 2017 reboot of Twin Peaks.

Kim Novak

Age: 90 (February 13th, 1933)

Screen Debut: The French Line (1953)

Best Known For: Kim Novak started her career as a potential copycat to Marilyn Monroe, but she is best known as her antithesis, an icy blonde goddess in Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, frequently name-checked as the greatest movie ever made.

AFI Nominee?: Similar to Shirley MacLaine & Leslie Caron, she definitely would have been an option here, but her film debut was too late.

Oscar Nominations: Novak received Golden Globe & BAFTA nominations in her career, but the closest she got to an Oscar nomination was as a frequent presenter.

Famous Costars: Fred MacMurray (Pushover), William Holden (Picnic), Frank Sinatra (The Man with the Golden Arm, Pal Joey), Tyrone Power (The Eddy Duchin Story), Rita Hayworth (Pal Joey), Jimmy Stewart (Bell, Book, and Candle, Vertigo), Fredric March (Middle of the Night), Kirk Douglas (Strangers When We Meet), Jack Lemmon & Fred Astaire (The Notorious Landlady), James Garner & Tony Randall (Boys' Night Out), Dean Martin (Kiss Me, Stupid), and Rock Hudson, Angela Lansbury, & Elizabeth Taylor (The Mirror Crack'd)

Are They Still Acting?: No.  Novak quit acting after the 1991 mystery-drama Liebestraum, but in recent years she has done a number of public appearances, including presenting at the Oscars & the Cannes Film Festival.

Margaret O'Brien

Age: 86 (January 15th, 1937)

Screen Debut: Babes on Broadway (1941)

Best Known For: O'Brien was a child star throughout the 1940's, but is best-known for her work in the seminal Christmas classic Meet Me in St. Louis (which given my neighbor's holiday decorations are already out, some of you have started to put up already).

AFI Nominee?: Yes, O'Brien is the youngest-living nominee on that list and our last of the AFI contenders.

Oscar Nominations: O'Brien never won a competitive Academy Award, but like Claude Jarman, she was given a Juvenile Academy Award statue for Meet Me in St. Louis.

Famous Costars: James Cagney & Ann Sothern (You, John James!), Greer Garson (Madame Curie), Orson Welles & Joan Fontaine (Jane Eyre), Charles Laughton (The Canterville Ghost), Judy Garland (Meet Me in St. Louis), June Allyson & Jimmy Durante (Music for Millions), Edward G. Robinson (Our Vines Have Tender Grapes), & Anthony Quinn (Heller in Pink Tights)

Are They Still Acting?: She is still making movies, including apparently a 2017 low-budget Saw ripoff.  Yes, Margaret O'Brien, Queen of TCM, Oscar winner, and onetime America's Sweetheart is one of the stars of a film called Halloween Pussy Trap Kill! Kill!.

Nancy Olson

Age: 95 (July 14th, 1928)

Screen Debut: Canadian Pacific (1949)

Best Known For: Olson had two big roles in Hollywood, the first being as the oblivious Betty Schaefer in Sunset Boulevard and the second as the love interest Betsy Carlisle in The Absent-Minded Professor & Son of Flubber.

AFI Nominee?: No

Oscar Nominations: Olson received an Academy Award nomination for Sunset Boulevard, only her second movie, but lost to Josephine Hull in Harvey.

Famous Costars: Randolph Scott (Canadian Pacific), Gloria Swanson & William Holden (Sunset Boulevard...she starred quite regularly after this with Holden), Bing Crosby (Mr. Music), John Wayne (Big Jim McLain), Jane Wyman (So Big, Pollyanna), Fred MacMurray (The Absent-Minded Professor, Son of Flubber), Glenn Ford (Smith!), and Charlton Heston & Myrna Loy (Airport 1975)

Are They Still Acting?: Olson made a rare film appearance for some reason in the 2014 sex comedy Dumbbells, her first role in 17 years after the more appropriate epitaph to her career revisiting her work in Flubber, in the remake with Robin Williams

Debra Paget

Age: 90 (August 19th, 1933)

Screen Debut: Cry of the City (1948)

Best Known For: You see her every Easter as Lilia in The Ten Commandments, her most successful film, a movie so well-known she managed to get higher-billing on Love Me Tender later that year than (checks notes) Elvis Presley.

AFI Nominee?: No

Oscar Nominations: No, but more glaring she also doesn't have a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, which feels like a miss given some of her bigger-known roles.

Famous Costars: Loretta Young & Van Johnson (Mother is a Freshman), Edward G. Robinson & Susan Hayward (House of Strangers), Jimmy Stewart (Broken Arrow), Jeanne Crain & Myrna Loy (Belles on Their Toes), James Mason & Janet Leigh (Prince Valiant), Victor Mature, Susan Hayward, & Anne Bancroft (Demetrius and the Gladiators), Robert Taylor (The Last Hunt), Charlton Heston & Yul Brynner (The Ten Commandments), Elvis Presley (Love Me Tender), Joseph Cotten & George Sanders (From the Earth to the Moon), and Vincent Price & Lon Chaney, Jr. (The Haunted Palace)

Are They Still Acting?: Paget retired from film in the early 1960's, doing her final film (Roger Corman's The Haunted Palace) in 1963 and doing her final television appearance soon after.  Instead, she became a born-again Christian and became involved with the Trinity Broadcasting Network.

Janis Paige

Age: 101 (September 16th, 1922 - June 2nd, 2024)

Screen Debut: Bathing Beauty (1944)

Best Known For: Paige was in the original run of The Pajama Game (which also launched Shirley MacLaine's career), which made her a household name (even getting the cover of Esquire), though she lost out on the film role.  Instead, for film you recognize her from a number of different musicals, playing the similar "prominent supporting role" that actresses like Betty Garrett & Ann Miller also did during the Golden Age.

AFI Nominee?: No

Oscar Nominations: She definitely should've been for her scene-stealing role in Silk Stockings (rent it-she's incredible), but alas, Oscar didn't knock.

Famous Costars: Esther Williams (Bathing Beauty), Paul Henreid (Of Human Bondage), Jane Wyman (Cheyenne), Bette Davis (Winter Meeting), Fred Astaire & Cyd Charisse (Silk Stockings), Doris Day & David Niven (Please Don't Eat the Daisies), Bob Hope & Lana Turner (Bachelor in Paradise),  Joan Crawford (The Caretakers), & Henry Fonda (Welcome to Hard Times)

Are They Still Acting?: Paige's last film was the direct-to-video thrillers Natural Causes, but in 2001 her voice had been so damaged from decades of singing that she basically had to retire.

Eva Marie Saint

Age: 99 (July 4th, 1924)

Screen Debut: On the Waterfront (1954)

Best Known For: Saint is the star of two of the biggest classics of the 1950's, the Best Picture-winning On the Waterfront and Alfred Hitchcock's seminal thriller North by Northwest

AFI Nominee?: No

Oscar Nominations: Yes, Saint was nominated for her screen debut in On the Waterfront, and won the Best Supporting Actress statue for it.

Famous Costars: Marlon Brando (On the Waterfront), Bob Hope (That Certain Feeling, Cancel My Reservation), Montgomery Clift & Elizabeth Taylor (Raintree County), Cary Grant & James Mason (North by Northwest), Paul Newman (Exodus), James Garner (36 Hours, Grand Prix), Elizabeth Taylor (again) & Richard Burton (The Sandpiper), and Gregory Peck (The Stalking Moon)

Are They Still Acting?: No-while Saint has made some public appearances in the past few years (including presenting Best Costume Design to Phantom Thread in 2018 at the Oscars), her final film was Winter's Tale in 2014 with Colin Farrell.

Mamie van Doren

Age: 92 (February 6th, 1931)

Screen Debut: Footlight Varieties (1951)

Best Known For: Being the last surviving member of the Three M's.  During the 1950's, as a reaction to the success of Marilyn Monroe, studios hired about a dozen other buxom blonde actresses that tried to duplicate her success (the only one who got there was Kim Novak, who as we mentioned above, was the opposite of Monroe in terms of eventual star persona).  Van Doren's position (along with Jayne Mansfield) as one of the better known Monroe copycats was used as a punchline in Pulp Fiction.

AFI Nominee?: No

Oscar Nominations: No

Famous Costars: Liberace (Footlight Varieties), Tony Curtis (The All American), Rhonda Fleming (Yankee Pasha), Piper Laurie (Ain't Misbehavin'), Anne Bancroft (The Girl in Black Stockings), Clark Gable & Doris Day (Teacher's Pet), Mickey Rooney (The Big Operator, The Private Lives of Adam and Eve), and Jayne Mansfield (The Las Vegas Hillbillys)

Are They Still Acting?: Van Doren transitioned largely to cabaret acts & stage shows talking about her time as a headliner in Hollywood, with her last theatrically-released film being 2002's college sex comedy Slackers with Jason Schwartzman & Devon Sawa.

Robert Wagner

Age: 93 (February 10th, 1930)

Screen Debut: The Frogmen (1951)

Best Known For: Onscreen, Wagner is probably best-remembered by modern audiences as Number Two from the Austin Powers franchise, while offscreen, he is most famous for his romantic relationship with the late Natalie Wood, with many accusing him of knowing more about her drowning than he has let on.

AFI Nominee?: No-Wagner missed the ballot by one year.  Otherwise given his longtime career as a leading man, he surely would've been the last-living male actor on the list.

Oscar Nominations: Wagner was never cited for an Oscar, but he did have an Emmy nomination & six Golden Globe citations.

Famous Costars: Dana Andrews (The Frogmen), Claudette Colbert (Let's Make It Legal), Susan Hayward (With a Song in My Heart), James Cagney (What Price Glory?), Clifton Webb & Barbara Stanwyck (Titanic), James Mason & Janet Leigh (Prince Valiant), Robert Mitchum (The Hunters), Bing Crosby & Debbie Reynolds (Say One for Me), Natalie Wood (All the Fine Young Cannibals), Steve McQueen (The War Lover), Peter Sellers (The Pink Panther), and Paul Newman (Harper)

Are They Still Acting?: Wagner still acts, though not as frequently as he once did.  His most recent role was What Happened to Monday with Glenn Close & Willem Dafoe (I'd never heard of it either).

Joanne Woodward

Age: 93 (February 27th, 1930)

Screen Debut: Count Three and Pray (1955)

Best Known For: Woodward is an accomplished actress as we'll get into in a second, but in terms of the public consciousness, she is best-known as one-half of Classical Hollywood's most enduring romance (give or take Bogie & Bacall) due to her 50-year marriage to actor Paul Newman.

AFI Nominee?: No, again a surefire option if it weren't for the 1950 cutoff.

Oscar Nominations: Woodward is one of the more decorated actresses on this list when it comes to the Academy.  She won a Best Actress statue for 1957's The Three Faces of Eve (almost thirty years before her husband would win for The Color of Money), and she would be nominated for 1968's Rachel, Rachel, 1971's Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams, and 1990's Mr. and Mrs. Bridge, losing to Katharine Hepburn (The Lion in Winter) & Barbra Streisand (Funny Girl), Jane Fonda (Klute), and Kathy Bates (Misery), respectively.

Famous Costars: She costarred with Paul Newman in 16 movies, but in addition to him there are Tony Randall (No Down Payment), Orson Welles (The Long, Hot Summer), Marlon Brando & Anna Magnani (The Fugitive Kind), Sidney Poitier & Diahann Carroll (Paris Blues), Henry Fonda (A Big Hand for the Little Lady), Sean Connery (A Fine Madness), Anthony Perkins (WUSA), & Sylvia Sidney (Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams)

Are They Still Acting?: Woodward was diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease in 2007, and has largely retreated from public life since.

Second Editor's Note: I initially thought this was 31, but there's actually 33 (if there's more call them out in the comments).  The two actresses listed below appear to qualify (just barely though-each it looks like only has the minimum of three films), and so I've added them to the list.  I have kept the original article as is above for preservation, but wanted to add these two for posterity.

Jill St. John

Age: 85 (August 9, 1940)

Screen Debut: Thunder in the East (1951)

Best Known For: St. John is one of those celebrities that was very famous in the 1970's, but is very rarely mentioned now, partially because her film work is spotty.  Her best-known movie is Diamonds are Forever (where she played Bond Girl Tiffany Case), and she's also known for her decades-long romance with Robert Wagner which has made her a frequent mention in the tabloids.  She also was a constant figure on USO Tours during the Vietnam War (similar to Joey Heatherton, she was the "hot babe" that was there to counter Bob Hope's increasingly dated routine), and had a regular cooking segment on Good Morning America.

AFI Nominee?: No

Oscar Nominations: No

Famous Costars: Vincent Price (A Christmas Carol), Alan Ladd, Charles Boyer, & Deborah Kerr (Thunder in the East), Clifton Webb (The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker), Vivien Leigh (The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone), Claude Rains (The Lost World), Frank Sinatra (Come Blow Your Horn, Tony Rome), Jerry Lewis (Who's Minding the Story?), Dean Martin (Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed), Bob Hope (Eight on the Lam), & Sean Connery (Diamonds are Forever)

Are They Still Acting?: No-St. John retired from acting in 2014 after playing Mrs. Claus to Robert Wagner's Santa in a Hallmark Christmas movie, though she unsuccessfully ran for a Fire Department Board a few years ago in Aspen.

Jacqueline White

Age: 103 (November 27, 1922)

Screen Debut: Dr. Gillespie's New Assistant (1942)

Best Known For: I would guess that White, if she's known at all today, would be best known for her work in Crossfire as the "proper wife" of George Cooper's Mitch, who desperately hopes that Gloria Grahame will confess to an affair with her husband to provide him cover for a murder (Crossfire, if you haven't seen it, is really good and White is good in it).

AFI Nominee?: No

Oscar Nominations: No

Famous Costars: Joan Crawford & John Wayne (Reunion in France), Ann Sothern (Three Hearts for Julia), Spencer Tracy & Irene Dunne (A Guy Named Joe), Robert Taylor (Song of Russia...an interesting movie if you haven't heard about it as it's very important in the history of the Blacklist), Judy Garland (The Harvey Girls), Dana Andrews, Merle Oberon, & Ethel Barrymore (Night Song), & Randolph Scott (Return of the Bad Men)

Are They Still Acting?: There's two reasons I missed White when we first did this article.  First, she made very few films as a leading woman (by my count she would just barely qualify with three, all from RKO, only one of which-The Narrow Margin-being particularly well-known, and even in that she's upstaged by Marie Windsor).  And second, she retired in 1952, going out with the successful Narrow Margin (it was nominated for a writing Oscar), moving to Wyoming, though she would occasionally in the years that followed show up at film conventions.

Olivia de Havilland and the Last 14 AFI Stars

Olivia de Havilland was not, despite what you might read on news releases and tributes to her, the last major star of Hollywood's Golden Age (or Classical Hollywood, as it also known).  The Classical Hollywood era's beginning is up for debate (some say as early as the 1910's, others say it began in the early 1930's, still others state it began in 1939).  Either way, there is a solid amount of agreement that the era ended in the early 1960's, so not only are there still actors alive from this era who were headlining films in the 1950's & 60's, there are some (like Harry Belafonte & Shirley MacLaine) who are still working today.

But de Havilland is probably the last major star of the 1940's and certainly of the 1930's to have still been alive, and with her passing, I wanted to discuss something we haven't done an update on in about two years on the blog (not since the death of Tab Hunter).  In 1999, the American Film Institute created a list of 50 (25 male, 25 female) of the greatest stars of Classical Hollywood, capping requirement at people who made their film debuts in or before 1950 (so people like Belafonte & MacLaine wouldn't have been eligible).  They did so from a list of 500 performers, most of whom at that point were already dead.  Though she didn't make the Top 25, one of the actors that was among those 500 was Olivia de Havilland.  We have in the years since checked in on those 500 stars, arbitrarily thrown together but significant enough to make the ballot, and since de Havilland has passed away, I wanted to see how many were left still from the list.  This is not an all-encompassing list of all of the actors who made their debut before 1950 and had a significant role in Hollywood (off the top of my head Arlene Dahl & Glynis Johns come to mind as actresses who would've qualified for this list but aren't on it), but it is a reminder of the few actors from Classical Hollywood (enough so that the AFI took note), who are still alive.

(For the curious, in addition to de Havilland, Kirk Douglas, Max von Sydow, and Doris Day have also passed since we last looked at this list.  Also, quite a few of these people still don't have Oscars of any kind, so hopefully the Academy takes note!)

The Living Actors...

Sidney Poitier (1927-Present)

Screen Debut: His first credited screen appearance came in 1950's No Way Out, which launched his landmark film career in a big way.
Oscar Nominations: Poitier received two Oscar nominations in his career, winning Best Actor for Lilies of the Field (becoming the first black man to win Best Actor).  Poitier also won an Honorary Award in 2002.
Probably Best Known Today For: Being an iconic and celebrated figure in the Civil Rights movement in the United States, and along with Dorothy Dandridge, Lena Horne, and Harry Belafonte, being one of the very first black movie stars (he was also Ambassador from the Bahamas to Japan, as he actually has dual citizenship with both the Bahamas and the United States-random fact!).  Poitier is one of the most widely-respected actors in the industry, and one of its most enduring stars.
Is He Still Working?: Poitier quit acting in 2001, with the television movie The Last Brickmaker in America-his final theatrically-released film was 1997's The Jackal with Richard Gere & Bruce Willis.
My Favorite Performance: I know that some like to quibble about how Poitier never received an Oscar nomination for In the Heat of the Night, but part of me thinks it was more to do with vote-splitting (he also had Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and To Sir, with Love out that year) than racism.  Still, he certainly deserved an Oscar nomination for his iconic Virgil Tibbs.
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: I've never actually seen the movie that landed Poitier his Academy Award.  For whatever reason Lilies of the Field has never made it to the top of my queue, though I've seen a lot of Poitier films through the years.

Dean Stockwell (1936-Present)

Screen Debut: 1945's The Valley of Decision with Greer Garson & Gregory Peck
Oscar Nominations: Stockwell has received one Oscar nomination, for 1988's Married to the Mob (he lost to Kevin Kline).
Most Famous For: The career of Dean Stockwell is a fascinating one, as he is one of those rare child actors who went on to have a very strong career as an adult, though in this case in character actor parts. Starting acting as a cherubic-faced youth in movies like Gentleman's Agreement and Anchors Aweigh, he eventually became a hit actor as an adult, dropped out of acting to get involved in the hippie subculture, reappeared in the 1980's in the art house cinema of David Lynch and Wim Wenders, and is most well-known today for playing Al Calavicci in Quantum Leap and Brother Cavil in the revival of Battlestar Galactica.
Is He Still Working?: Stockwell suffered a stroke in 2015, and has since retired.
Glaring Miss in His Filmography: I've actually seen a few Stockwell pictures, and thought he was terrific if terrifying singing Roy Orbison's "In Dreams" in the exceptional Blue Velvet.  I'll go with his Oscar-nominated work as my missing piece, though I have always meant to watch the revived Battlestar Galactica.

The Living Actresses...

Claire Bloom (1931-Present)

Screen Debut: 1948's The Blind Goddess
Oscar Nominations: Never nominated
Most Famous For: For her long and illustrious career on the British stage, as well as her many tabloid romances.  Ms. Bloom made her stage debut at sixteen opposite John Gielgud and a young Richard Burton, whom she had a passionate love affair with (Burton claimed he loved two women before Liz Taylor-his wife Sybil and Claire Bloom).  She would perform on in the West End for decades, and continue having tabloid-worthy relationships, including marriages to Rod Steiger and Philip Roth, as well as affairs with Laurence Olivier and Yul Brynner.
Is She Still Working?: Yes!  Her most recent work was in the BBC Miniseries Summer of Rockets as Aunt Mary opposite Toby Stephens & Timothy Spall.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: With Bloom it's hard not to pick her first international starring role in Limelight, where she plays a suicidal ballerina in the only film that features both Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton.

Ann Blyth (1928-Present)

Screen Debut: Chip off the Old Block (1944) with Donald O'Connor & Peggy Ryan
Oscar Nominations: 1 nomination (for Mildred Pierce)
Most Famous For: Portraying the selfish daughter from hell in Mildred Pierce.  Her work opposite Joan Crawford won her an Oscar nomination early in her career, and she eventually went on to become a major star of musicals, at one point being a rival for Kathryn Grayson at MGM.  She eventually moved completely away from the cinema, instead starring in a series of television guest spots, including a memorable turn as a potential murderer opposite longtime friend Angela Lansbury in Murder, She Wrote and as an actress with a secret on The Twilight Zone in "Queen of the Nile."
Is She Still Working?: Blyth quit working in film after her role in The Helen Morgan Story with Paul Newman.  She quit television in the 1980's, though she does occasional do interviews still.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I've actually seen Mildred Pierce and The Great Caruso, the two most important pictures in her filmography, so maybe Brute Force with Burt Lancaster, where she plays a woman dying of cancer whose husband is in prison.

Rhonda Fleming (1923-Present)

Screen Debut: While she did work before then, her first onscreen credit was in Spellbound, making her the (only?) person to play a significant role in one of Hitchcock's films of the 1940's.
Oscar Nominations: Never nominated
Most Famous For: Being the "Queen of Technicolor."  Along with Maureen O'Hara and Arlene Dahl, Fleming's red hair made her a major motion picture star, and one that photographed particularly well in Technicolor, which was very in fashion during the height of her fame.  Her best known films are probably from the 1940's, when she had supporting roles in Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound and the brilliant Out of the Past, but she was a bigger headliner in the 1950's when she appeared opposite Dana Andrews, Ronald Reagan, Burt Lancaster, and Kirk Douglas.  Like a number of women on this list, she was an ardent Republican in her personal life, particularly as an advocate for school prayer.
Is She Still Working?: No-her most recent film would be 1990's Waiting for the Wind with Robert Mitchum, her Out of the Past costar.  She still frequently makes appearances, though, and has participated in the Turner Classic Film Festival.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: In case you missed it, Rhonda Fleming was one of our Saturdays with the Stars actresses last year, so I'm actually very familiar with her work.  As a result, I'll pick the curiosity of Fleming playing Cleopatra in Serpent of the Nile as the next of her movies I want to investigate.

Mitzi Gaynor (1931-Present)

Screen Debut: 1950's My Blue Heaven (which we talked about earlier this year when were discussing Betty Grable in February)
Oscar Nominations: Never nominated
Most Famous For: Being Krusty the Clown's go-to name drop?  Just kidding (Simpsons reference!).  Gaynor was in fact one of 20th Century FOX's biggest stars in the 1940's and 1950's, starring in a number of hit musicals.  While she could boast costarring roles with Bing Crosby and Gene Kelly, it was with Rossano Brazzi, a little-known Italian actor, that she enjoyed her biggest and most enduring cinematic success.  The movie?  Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific, with Gaynor as the main character of Nellie Forbush, forever washing that man right out of her hair before a very enchanted evening.  She also had one of the most famous numbers in Oscar history (though she wasn't nominated for or even in the film) when she got the longest-standing ovation in the history of the ceremony for her performance of "Georgy Girl" in 1967.
Is She Still Working?: While she no longer acts, she frequently is featured in documentaries chronicling the Golden Age of the musical, and actually won an Emmy for her 2010 documentary "Mitzi Gaynor: Razzle Dazzle!"  Also, she's on Twitter!
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: Gaynor was also one of our stars last year, and so I've seen most of her major movies, though I have not caught the big-screen adaptation of Anything Goes.

Marsha Hunt (1917-Present)

Screen Debut: The Virginia Judge (1935)
Oscar Nominations: Never nominated
Most Famous For: Her politics.  A star for both Paramount and MGM in the 1930's and 1940's who watched her career unravel during the 1950's as part of the blacklist, Hunt was a vocal advocate for free speech and freedom to petition, and refused to denounce her activities protesting Congress on behalf of the blacklist...and therefore didn't work for most of the 1950's, extinguishing her career.
Is She Still Working?: It doesn't appear so-Hunt quit acting in 2008, but does make some public appearances and grant interviews despite her advanced age.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I'm going to go with Born to the West, starring an extremely handsome John Wayne in his twenties, which gives Hunt an unusually robust screenplay to work with for a love interest role in the 1930's.

Angela Lansbury (1925-Present)

Screen Debut: Gaslight (1944) with Charles Boyer & Ingrid Bergman
Oscar Nominations: 3 (for Gaslight, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and The Manchurian Candidate, as well as an Honorary Oscar in 2013).
Most Famous For: Lansbury has enjoyed an incredible amount of succcess throughout her career, principally on Broadway (she has won five Tony Awards) and on television (as J.B. Fletcher on the long-running CBS show Murder, She Wrote).  Of course, Lansbury has had a plethora of film roles as well that have become part of her own personal lore.  Her work in John Frankenheimer's The Manchurian Candidate and Disney's Beauty and the Beast would be toward the top of the public consciousness.
Is She Still Working?: Yes-one of her most recent rolls was as the Balloon Lady in Mary Poppins Returns just two years ago.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: Here I've seen enough of her work (I've even seen her on-stage) to have a favorite performance (The Manchurian Candidate, though honestly I've loved almost everything-she's a personal favorite) and have all three of those Oscar-nominated roles done, so I'll go with the comic classic The Court Jester, which I have for some reason never gotten around to and in which she plays Princess Gwendolyn opposite Danny Kaye & Glynis Johns.

Piper Laurie (1932-Present)

Screen Debut: Louisa (1950) with Ronald Reagan & Ruth Hussey
Oscar Nominations: 3 (for The Hustler, Carrie, and Children of a Lesser God)
Most Famous For: Laurie is most known to film audiences as the mother from hell in Carrie (oddly enough, Angela Lansbury arguably plays the cinema's other most famous mother from hell on-screen in The Manchurian Candidate).  Laurie also was Paul Newman's love interest in The Hustler, and got a Best Actress nomination for it and was Catherine Martell on Twin Peaks.
Is She Still Working?: After an eight year absence, Laurie was on movie screens opposite Matthew McConaughey and Jennifer Jason Leigh in White Boy Rick in 2018.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I cannot believe I am admitting this, but I have somehow never seen The Hustler, one of those great films from the 1960's and one of the most important roles of Paul Newman's (and of course Piper Laurie's) careers.  I should get on this quickly.

Gina Lollobrigida (1927-Present)

Screen Debut: Return of the Black Eagle (1946)
Oscar Nominations: Never nominated
Most Famous For: Look at the picture to the left and I'll give you one (err...two) guesses.  Lollobrigida was the Italian sex symbol, a counterweight to the American Marilyn and the French Bardot.  She did make a handful of films with the leading men of the era (Burt Lancaster, Anthony Quinn, Frank Sinatra), but quite frankly it was her incredible beauty and her bizarre change in careers late in life (she became a journalist, and eventually managed to land an interview with Fidel Castro of all people in the 1970's) that made her a household name.
Is She Still Working?: She is not acting, but she does still stay in the tabloids for her charitable giving and bizarre love life (as well as the occasional public snipe at her longtime rival Sophia Loren).
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I don't know if I've ever actually seen a Lollobrigida film, so I would probably make it a bit of a marathon to catch up.  I'd start with her Golden Globe-winning work in Come September with Rock Hudson, follow it with her Esmerelda opposite Anthony Quinn in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and finish things with her Solomon and Sheba with Yul Brynner, which has the distinction of being King Vidor's final film.

Sophia Loren (1934-Present)

Screen Debut: Bluebeard's Six Wives (1950)
Oscar Nominations: Loren received two Oscar nominations in her career, winning for Two Women in 1961 (the first person to win for a foreign-language film).  She would go on to win an Honorary Oscar in 1991 for her body of work.
Probably Best Known Today For: For starters, thankfully being alive and still working (the only woman on the Top 25 still with us, and along with Poitier the only person who charted on either list).  Loren's most recent film is Rob Marshall's Nine, but is probably best known for her enduring beauty.  Consistently considered one of the most striking and attractive women in the history of cinema, she was a major star at the height of America's fascination with foreign language cinema. (Completely Random Aside-I once had a car that I named after Loren because the car was so pretty...my brother still drives it).
Is She Still Working?: After an 11 year absence, Loren is returning to the movies with The Life Ahead, which has a significant part for her (could this be a third Oscar nomination if it's done well?).
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: Let's go with The Fall of the Roman Empire, which was a huge film for Loren, and made her the second (after Elizabeth Taylor) actress to receive $1 million for a film.

Rita Moreno (1931-Present)

1950: The Toast of New Orleans (1950) with Mario Lanza & Kathryn Grayson
Oscar Nominations: One nomination (which she won for-Best Supporting Actress for 1961's West Side Story)
Most Famous For: For thoroughly enjoying life in Ame-RIC-a.  Moreno starred in one of the great American musicals in 1961, taking over the role made famous by Chita Rivera on Broadway and becoming a household name as a result (as well as an Oscar-winner).  Though at that time she had been featured in three of the best-loved musicals of all-time (she was also in Singin in the Rain and The King and I), she didn't star in a lot of high-profile films again (a Latina actress in the 1960's frequently had to rely on stereotypical roles, which Moreno refused to partake of).  Instead she forged a bold multi-platform career, winning an Emmy, Grammy, and Tony in the 1970's to complete her EGOT.  She is best known from this period for her work on The Muppets and The Electric Company (with Morgan Freeman).  Moreno also had a pretty spectacular personal life, being romantically involved with both Marlon Brando and Elvis Presley during her career.
Is She Still Working?: Absolutely-she was one of the key players in One Day at a Time and supposedly has a role in Steven Spielberg's upcoming West Side Story.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I've seen her three iconic musicals, so I'm going to go with The Ritz, which earned Moreno a Tony Award on Broadway and a Golden Globe nomination on film.

Margaret O'Brien (1937-Present)

Screen Debut: Journey for Margaret (1942)
Oscar Nominations: None, though she won the Juvenile Academy Award in 1944.
Most Famous For: Being one of the biggest child stars on the planet.  Margaret O'Brien was to the 1940's what Shirley Temple & Judy Garland were to the 1930's.  She even appeared opposite Garland in the most famous of O'Brien's movies: Meet Me in St. Louis, where she played Tootie.  O'Brien was a major star, but couldn't jump to adult roles like Garland, whom she is oftentimes compared to, and instead only made the occasional television or film appearance.  If you ever want a fun story, read about O'Brien's Oscar and how she lost it for some fifty years before it finally returned to her.
Is She Still Working?: I think so-it looks like she has a relatively long recent IMDB cast page but it's not entirely clear if these are just clips of her in her youth or her actually playing a role.  If the 2017 movie where she stars opposite Mickey Rooney in a retelling of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde actually exists, I need to see it immediately.  Her last roles you'd have heard of would have been guest spots on The New Lassie and Murder, She Wrote in the early 1990's.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I'd probably go with the film that made her a star, Journey for Margaret with Robert Young and Fay Bainter, as I've seen (and loved) Meet Me in St. Louis before.

Jane Withers (1926-Present)

Screen Debut: Bright Eyes (1934)
Oscar Nominations: Never nominated
Most Famous For: Being insufferable.  Or rather, playing insufferable, in the Shirley Temple classic Bright Eyes, where Withers plays her bratty nemesis.  Withers became one of the biggest stars of the late 1930's, joining Shirley Temple as a major box office draw despite being a child star, and then eventually going into supporting roles, like her work in Giant (she and James Dean were good friends) and eventually commercials, taking on what would become her most famous role for the Baby Boomer generation: Josephine the Plumber in the Comet commercials (for comparison's sake, think of Flo from the Progressive commercials and her ubiquity).  And continuing our streak, she was in several episodes of Murder, She Wrote.
Is She Still Working?: From what I can tell her most recent work would be voiceover contributions to The Hunchback of Notre Dame and its direct-to-video sequel, which happened almost 18 years ago, so she does appear to be retired.
Glaring Miss in Her Filmography: I think Bright Eyes, Withers' most noted work, would probably have to be at the top of the list.