Woman Featured in Oscars Memoriam: "I Am Alive and Well"

BY Josiah HughesPublished Feb 27, 2017

Let's not mince words — the 89th Academy Awards were a complete fucking disaster. Wrong envelopes were opened, Suicide Squad somehow received a trophy and Jimmy Kimmel did some questionable stuff. Just when we thought it couldn't get any weirder, however, we've now learned that a woman featured in the In Memoriam segment is still very much alive.

To be clear, a costumer designer named Janet Patterson did pass away in 2016, but the person in charge of Google Image Search behind-the-scenes went with the wrong Jan while assembling the segment. Pictured on the screen was Australian producer Jan Chapman.

Chapman was not too impressed with the flub. In an email to Variety, she said, "I was devastated by the use of my image in place of my great friend and longtime collaborator Janet Patterson.... I had urged her agency to check any photograph which might be used and understand that they were told that the Academy had it covered. Janet was a great beauty and four-time Oscar nominee and it is very disappointing that the error was not picked up. I am alive and well and an active producer."

Incredibly, the mistake was predicted by Billy on the Street host Billy Eichner during the In Memoriam segment.
 
The Janet/Jan mixup wasn't the only flub during the In Memoriam section, as producers either forgot to include or intentionally omitted industry folks like Garry Shandling, Doris Roberts, Florence Henderson and Robert Vaughn.
 

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