As Hollywood's big night approaches, let's recall some of the onscreen talents who faded out last year.
Elizabeth Taylor, 79
The legendary Liz ruled movie screens of the '50s with classic beauty wrapped around roiling passion in A Place in the Sun (1951) and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958). Her two combative marriages to actor Richard Burton were captured in their thespian dueling in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), for which Taylor won her second Oscar (after 1960's BUtterfield 8).
Cliff Robertson, 88
President Kennedy personally chose Robertson to portray the wartime JFK in PT 109 (1963). He won an Oscar in 1968 for playing the title character in Charly, a mentally disabled man transformed into a genius. In 1977, he blew the whistle on a corrupt studio head, an act of bravery that set back his career for years.
Harry Morgan, 96
Best remembered for his TV work, especially the affectionately flinty Army doc Col. Potter on M*A*S*H, Morgan also appeared in more than 100 movies, playing everything from a menacing gunman in The Big Clock to an in-over-his-head judge in Inherit the Wind.
Pete Postlethwaite, 64
A working class hero is something to be, and Postlethwaite was one on screen and off, organizing for Britain's Labour party in real life and playing the leader of a brass band in a destitute coal town in Brassed Off in 1996. His portrayal of a father fighting for his unjustly imprisoned son in In the Name of the Father (1993) earned him a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination.
Anne Francis, 80
Leslie Nielsen's out-of-this-world love interest in Forbidden Planet (1956) and Glenn Ford's down-to-earth wife in Blackboard Jungle (1955).
Peter Falk, 83
The famously -- and deceptively -- polite TV detective Columbo, Falk also enjoyed a varied film career, playing the heavy in 1960's Murder, Inc. and the clown in 1965's Pocketful of Miracles (both of which earned him Best Supporting Actor Oscar nominations) and everymen like the grandfather/narrator in The Princess Bride (1987).
Farley Granger, 85
The boyish lead of the ghoulish Hitchcock classics Rope (1948) and Strangers on a Train (1951).
Jane Russell, 89
First seen in The Outlaw in 1943, the extravagantly statuesque Russell was already notorious for the movie's poster that showed her lying on a bed of straw in a strategically stretched blouse. The career that followed included film noir with Robert Mitchum (Macao in 1952) and a memorable pairing with sister sex symbol Marilyn Monroe in the 1953 musical Gentleman Prefer Blondes -- a theory Russell soundly destroyed.
Jackie Cooper, 88
Cooper was one of the most accomplished child actors of Hollywood's heyday, carrying films like The Champ (1931) and Treasure Island (1934) on his young shoulders. At age nine, he was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar.
James Arness, 88
Before his 20-year run on TV's Gunsmoke, the towering Arness fought movie monsters in Them! (1954) and WAS a movie monster in The Thing From Another World (1951).
Kenneth Mars, 75
Mars brought his ear for accents to the roles of the semi-comprehensible police inspector in Young Frankenstein (1974) and Franz Liebkind, the talentless author of the tasteless musical "Springtime for Hitler" in 1968's The Producers.
Susannah York, 72
York starred in major British films of the 1960s, including A Man for All Seasons (1966) and Tom Jones (1963). She was nominated in 1969 for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for They Shoot Horses, Don't They?.
Jeff Conaway, 60
On the big screen he was John Travolta's high school buddy in Grease (1978), and on the small screen he was struggling actor Bobby Wheeler in Taxi (1978-1982).
Dana Wynter, 79
Wynter's powerful work in films like Fraulein and In Love and War (both from 1958) was utterly eclipsed by her association with the low-budget, high-concept science fiction classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Karl Slover, 93
One of the last Munchkins from the 1939 fantasy The Wizard of Oz, Slover played the first of the three trumpeters who blew a fanfare for the mayor of the Munchkin city. Only three Munchkins remain.
Bid your final farewells below.
