The 94th Academy Awards ceremony took place on Sunday night and while the actual golden statue winners were overshadowed by a controversial altercation between presenter Chris Rock and Oscar winner Will Smith, the In Memoriam tradition, didn’t lose its pull.
Every year the awards ceremony presents its cherished In Memoriam tribute, honoring industry veterans and iconic personalities that have passed away over the course of the year.
The 2021 tribute included internationally renowned Greek composer, Mikis Theodorakis, who died on September 2, 2021 at age 96 in Athens. His career, spanning well over 50 years yielded more than 1,000 musical works, a list that consists of songs, music carpets for films and theatrical plays, soundtracks, symphonies and operas.
Theodorakis scored for the films Zorba the Greek (1964), Z (1969), and Serpico (1973). He composed the ‘Mauthausen Trilogy’, also known as ‘The Ballad of Mauthausen’, which has been described as the “most beautiful musical work ever written about the Holocaust” and possibly his best work. Up until his death, he was viewed as Greece’s best-known living composer.
Greek heritage actresses Olympia Dukakis and Betty White, were also featured in ‘In Memoriam’.
White, who exited this world on the last day of 2021, 31 December – just before she turned 100 – was famous for playing an extravagant TV hostess on The Mary Tyler Moore Show in the 1970s and a controversial widow on The Golden Girls in the 1980s.
Although born in Oak Park, Illinois, on 17 January 1922, her mother – Tess Cachikis – was half Greek, as her father was originally born in Greece. The Emmy Award-winning comic actress was a TV icon for decades and never stopped working nor smiling.
Dukakis, who had also won an Oscar died on 1 May 1, 2021 at the age of 89. The Greek American who performed in more than 130 stage productions, over than 60 films and 50 television series broke into Hollywood when she got an Academy Award and a Golden Globe, among other accolades, for her performance in ‘Moonstruck’ (1987) as the mother of Cher.
Sidney Poitier, who died in January 2022 aged 94 and became the first black winner of the Best Actor Oscar opened the ‘In Memoriam’ video segment this year. Actors such as Carmine Salinas, William Hurt, Ned Beatty, Peter Bogdanovich, Clarence Williams III, Michael K Williams, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Sally Kellerman, Yvette Mimeux, Sonny Chiba, Saginaw Grant, Dorothy Steel, Dean Stockwell, Melvin Van Peebles, Norman Lloyd, and Max Julien were among the names that were celebrated, including several other artists.
Watch the Oscars annual ‘In Memoriam’ video below:
