Early this morning, TCM posted a letter from TCM host and film historian Robert Osborne, a letter which won’t have fans of the 2016 TCM Classic Film Festival “singing in the rain.” Osborne is the guru, the patriarch, the anchor of TCM and the TCM Classic Film Festival, the face whom fans want to meet, but as happened with the 2015 TCM Classic Film Festival, he has been forced to bow out of the festivities for the this year’s Festival, running April 28 to May 1 in Hollywood.
Citing “a health issue” as the reason for absence, Osborne goes on to state, “I’ll be taking time off to focus on that and enjoy some vacation time.”
As TCM fans and attendees at prior TCM Classic Film Festivals can attest, Osborne is one of the highpoints of the Festival and the glue that brings it all together. That feeling is mutual as Osborne candidly admits, “Those four days each spring are always high points of the year for me.”
Putting full faith in Ben Mankiewicz and other TCM Festival hosts to provide another year of excellent festival-going for the legions of faithful classic film fans, Osborne assures all, “I’ve seen what’s been planned and it’s going to be great, as is the programming scheduled on TCM in the coming months, which I’ll be watching right along with you.”
A copy of Robert Osborne’s letter is below:
