The AFI Tribute to...

In 1966, a small-circulation magazine for movie buffs changed hands. Film Fan Monthly had been published in Canada by a gentleman named Daryl Davy. If memory serves, Mr. Davy was no longer able to handle the workload associated with the publication of a monthly magazine. I don’t know what kind of a deal he worked out, but the magazine was taken over by a 16-year-old kid who started putting issues together in his parents’ home in Teaneck, New Jersey.

I still have the special eighth anniversary issue of Film Fan Monthly - a special issue focused on one of Hal Roach’s ‘forgotten comedians’ – Charley Chase. The editor, now all of 19, wrote in the issue's preface that: "…virtually nothing has ever been written on Chase, and it is our hope that this issue will serve as a definitive source on this fine, neglected comedian."

The editor also apologized for having to raise the subscription rates for FFM by fifty cents, a price hike he considered "nominal." In doing so, he noted that "Film Fan Monthly, as most of you know, is a very small operation, and a labor of love. We're not in the business with the hope of making millions of dollars."

Today, the kid still reports on movies... and you get the sense that it's still a "labor of love," even though the pay is probably better.

The kid, of course, is Leonard Maltin.

These days, he does a lot more than research and write. Through his association with the Walt Disney Co., Leonard has personally made the case for the release of many Disney titles to DVD that most Disney fans believed would never come to the market (Victory through Air Power, the Mickey Mouse Club TV serials, and, coming up in December, Disney's Oswald the Lucky Rabbit silent cartoons, to name but a few.) Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide is on every film-lover's shelf. Even though he's come so far and accomplished so much, he's still publishing a fanzine not entirely unlike Film Fan Monthly titled Movie Crazy.

In an earlier post here on Isn't Life Terrible, (which, by the way, is a blog that takes its name from a 1925 Charley Chase two-reeler), I wrote about a clueless “film preservationist" from the future who, working from digitally preserved masters made in the distant past, does not comprehend why Leonard Maltin appears at the beginnings and endings of so many digitally preserved movies. My fictional future preservationist comes to the conclusion that this guy “may well have been the most beloved ‘movie star’ of all time.”

This is the one thing she comes even close to getting correct.

No, not a movie star; not an actor; but consider this: when the American Film Institute was founded (a year after Leonard Maltin took over Film Fan Monthly), one of its purposes was "...to ensure that great accomplishments of the past are recognized to the end that the masters of film may take their deserved place in history beside leaders in other arts."

I submit to you that no one has contributed more to this effort than Leonard Maltin.

Consider this, too: AFI's Board of Trustees established the AFI Life Achievement Award on February 23, 1973, in order to honor "...an individual whose career in motion pictures or television has greatly contributed to the enrichment of American culture."

So far, the award's gone exclusively to actors and directors. It no doubt will continue to do so.

I don't know, though. If there's somebody out there whose entire life has been about ensuring "that great accomplishments of the past are recognized," that would be Leonard.

I know that Dustin Hoffman was exaggerating for comic effect when he called Leonard "the greatest human being that ever lived." But have you ever heard anyone say a discouraging word about Leonard? If the AFI doesn't have an appropriate award to bestow upon Mr. Maltin, they ought to invent one and build a TV special around it.

After all, he's been in the business longer than they have.