It occurred to me that I ended my last post with a bit of a tease, asking Cinedrome readers how many people they could identify in the Oscar “reunion” photo from the 75th Academy Awards ceremony on March 23, 2003. Depending on your monitor size and resolution, putting names to faces could be a pretty daunting task. So, as a public service, here is the photo again, captioned with the names of everyone in it (if you need to know what anyone won for, you’ll have to look it up yourself):

TOP ROW: Julie Andrews, Kathy Bates, Halle Berry, Ernest Borgnine, Red Buttons, Nicolas Cage, Michael Caine, George Chakiris, Jennifer Connelly, Sean Connery, Geena Davis, Daniel Day-Lewis, Olivia de Havilland, Kirk Douglas, Michael Douglas, Robert Duvall, Louise Fletcher. SECOND ROW: Brenda Fricker, Cuba Gooding Jr., Louis Gossett Jr., Joel Grey, Tom Hanks, Marcia Gay Harden, Dustin Hoffman, Celeste Holm, Anjelica Huston, Claude Jarman Jr., Jennifer Jones, Shirley Jones, George Kennedy, Ben Kingsley, Martin Landau, Cloris Leachman. THIRD ROW: Karl Malden, Marlee Matlin, Hayley Mills, Rita Moreno, Patricia Neal, Jack Nicholson, Margaret O’Brien, Tatum O’Neal, Jack Palance, Luise Rainer, Julia Roberts, Cliff Robertson, Mickey Rooney, Eva Marie Saint, Susan Sarandon. FRONT ROW: (standing) Adrien Brody, (seated) Maximilian Schell, Mira Sorvino, Sissy Spacek, Mary Steenburgen, Meryl Streep, Barbra Streisand, Hilary Swank, Jon Voight, Christopher Walken, Denzel Washington, Teresa Wright, (standing) Chris Cooper, Nicole Kidman, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Peter O’Toole.

All in all, it’s a pretty impressive slice of Oscar history, ranging over 66 years from 1936 (when Luise Rainer won for The Great Ziegfeld) to that year’s winners for The Pianist, The Hours, Adaptation and Chicago. Claude Jarman spoke of being in two of these reunions of past winners; I don’t know if this one in 2003 was the first or the second, but it’s unlikely you’ll see an assemblage like this again, spanning eight decades.  By now, 22 of the 64 shown here have left us, an average of one per year since the night this picture was taken.

Curiously enough, this picture, as star-studded as it is, represents less than half of the past winners who were still alive in March of 2003. There are a total of 75 who, for various reasons, were not present at the Kodak Theatre that night, both competitive winners and honorary awardees (like Claude Jarman, Kirk Douglas, Margaret O’Brien and Peter O’Toole). The no-shows were: F. Murray Abraham, Anne Bancroft, Roberto Benigni, Marlon Brando, Ellen Burstyn, Art Carney, Cher, Julie Christie, Russell Crowe, Robert De Niro, Benicio Del Toro, Judi Dench, Richard Dreyfuss, Olympia Dukakis, Patty Duke, Fay Dunaway, Deanna Durbin, Jane Fonda, Joan Fontaine, Jodie Foster, Whoopi Goldberg, Lee Grant, Gene Hackman, Goldie Hawn, Katharine Hepburn, Charlton Heston, Wendy Hiller, Anthony Hopkins, Helen Hunt, Linda Hunt, Holly Hunter, William Hurt, Timothy Hutton, Jeremy Irons, Glenda Jackson, Tommy Lee Jones, Diane Keaton, Deborah Kerr, Michael Kidd, Kevin Kline, Jessica Lange, Sophia Loren, Shirley MacLaine, Dorothy Malone, Mercedes McCambridge, Frances McDormand, John Mills, Liza Minnelli, Paul Newman, Al Pacino, Gwyneth Paltrow, Anna Paquin, Estelle Parsons, Gregory Peck, Joe Pesci, Sidney Poitier, Vanessa Redgrave, Mercedes Ruehl, Geoffrey Rush, Paul Scofield, Maggie Smith, Kevin Spacey, Maureen Stapleton, Elizabeth Taylor, Shirley Temple, Emma Thompson, Marisa Tomei, Miyoshi Umeki, Peter Ustinov, Jon Whiteley, Dianne Wiest, Robin Williams, Shelley Winters, Joanne Woodward and Jane Wyman. One marvels to think how the Academy would have handled it had even half of those decided to come. They’d have needed a small stadium to seat them all, and identifying everyone (as I recall, the camera panned over the group, with each person’s name superimposed as they appeared) would probably have made the ceremony a good 20 minutes longer.