Okay, so the Emmy Awards are tonight and the ceremony will include the traditional "In Memoriam" reel of prominent TV folks who've passed since the airing of the last "In Memoriam" reel. There will also be special, separate tributes to five folks: James Gandolfini, Jonathan Winters, Jean Stapleton, Gary David Goldberg and Cory Monteith. They selected those five over others who might have merited such recognition including Larry Hagman and Jack Klugman. Some, like Jack Klugman's son, are irate that Mr. Monteith — a younger performer with no Emmy nominations who died of a drug overdose — is getting that standalone moment in lieu of, say, Jack Klugman's son's father.
There is, of course, no way these selections are ever going to be free of controversy and the hurt feelings of those whose loved and departed ones didn't make the cut. There are probably at least a hundred folks around who would say to Adam Klugman, "Yeah, maybe your father deserved more mention…but at least he's getting a mention. My father, who worked his whole life in the TV industry and then died this past year isn't being mentioned at all!" Every time an award show does one of these, someone has a job I don't envy: They have to decide that these people get named in the montage and those people don't. There are always many who could be included but there just isn't time so there are always friends and relatives who are hurt by some exclusion.
Did Jack Klugman contribute more to television than Cory Monteith? Sure. But I'm not sure anyone is saying otherwise.
But remember how these montages started. They weren't about who'd contributed the most. They were about who were the best-known. It's only fairly recently that they've included people like costume designers and studio execs and composers and cinematographers at all. The Emmy reels still ignore a lot of past winners of multiple Emmy awards because they aren't deemed by someone as well-enough known. A fellow like Jack Klugman, who starred in The Odd Couple and Quincy to name but two shows, was always a lock for inclusion. The writers, producers, directors, art directors, composers, sound technicians, etc., who also made those two programs successful never, in life or death, receive quite the same kind of recognition. Where would Jack Klugman have been without them? To say nothing of the hundreds of thousands of artisans who crafted and applied his toupées?
I suspect that if the producers of this year's Emmys had been ordered to also do a special tribute to Klugman — and while they're at it, Larry Hagman — it would not have been Cory Monteith who got bumped. It would have been Gary David Goldberg, the producer-writer of Family Ties, Spin City and Brooklyn Bridge.
A lot of folks are irate about the Klugman "snub." He's not being snubbed. He's in the montage. He's just not being mentioned as prominently as someone else. But for most of his career, Jack Klugman was mentioned more prominently — and probably paid better — than 98% of the people who worked on his shows. Even if they left him out of the Emmy Awards completely, he'd still continue to be better known than every one of them except, arguably, Tony Randall.
Thanks to the invention of the rerun, the man is in zero danger of being forgotten, and viewers still unborn will get to see how good he was. I'm not saying it's right to single out Cory Monteith to the exclusion of others. But when you're a star of the magnitude and longevity of Jack Klugman, you spent most of your career being singled out to the exclusion of others. Tonight, a lot of people who were as good at their jobs as Klugman was at his won't get mentioned at all.