Well, I was just watching Turner Classic Movies’ annual montage, similar to the one they do at the Oscars, of noted actors, actresses, directors, writers and so on who passed away over the past year.

I didn’t realize that the very funny comic Richard Jeni had died, tragically, after suffering from severe clinical depression.

I also didn’t realize that Charles Lane was, at least until last summer, still alive. He died at age 102, according to the dates on IMDb. Lane had been a character actor in many movies and TV shows — he has 341 actor credits on IMDb, going back to 1933. His last on-screen appearance was in 1995, in a TV-movie remake of “The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes,” but he actually had a 2006 credit, at age 101, as narrator of a Christmas-themed short subject!

I will always remember him from another Christmas project: “It’s A Wonderful Life.” He’s the rent collector who reports to Mr. Potter about how many houses George Bailey is building through the Building & Loan.

“One of these days, this young man is going to be asking George Bailey for a job,” he says, which always sounded funny to me, because by the time I first saw “It’s A Wonderful Life” I already thought of him from his TV roles as the ultimate crotchety old man.

Anyway, he was playing grumpy-old-man roles in the 60s and 70s, and I would never have imagined that he was still alive.

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