The modern world has so few truly classy people left among its ranks, and Monday it lost one of the classiest: Robert Osborne.

Himself an actor and then author, Osborne will be remembered best for his role as presenter on Turner Classic Movies, the cable channel somehow still popular in an era in which one can view pretty much any movie at any time on any device. Why would anyone wait to see a movie on TCM instead?

Robert Osborne.

Like hearing your name pronounced by a great sports broadcaster or perhaps by St. Peter, you wanted your movie introduced by Robert Osborne. Sort of a cross between Dick Clark, Robert Redford, and Vin Scully, Osborne brought warmth, good looks, geniality, and an encyclopedic knowledge of films to audiences on TCM for more than two decades. One of his finest hours came in 2015 at the 20th anniversary of TCM, a retrospective at which I marveled and subsequently chronicled here.

In 2014 Mr. Osborne said in a New York Times interview that he was often approached by strangers who told him he got them through tough times. The movies were an escape for them, just as they had been in the ’30s and ’40s. Perhaps movies have always been an escape for us, there when we need them and still there when we don’t.

And thanks to the many, many hours he spent recording what he did best, Mr. Osborne, though no longer presenting live, is still there when we need him.