2026 Walk of Fame Medallion Ceremony

Join us on opening night of the Circle Cinema Film Festival as we welcome four new honorees to our Walk of Fame, the medallions set into the concrete at our east entrance celebrating Oklahomans who have made significant contributions to the film industry.

This year's honorees are composer and lyricist Ralph Blane and cinematographer Lucien Ballard, both honored posthumously, alongside living honorees Olivia Jordan, actress and Miss USA 2015, and Cherokee filmmaker Jeremy Charles. Jordan and Charles will both attend the ceremony.

For Charles, the honor arrives the same year his documentary Return of the Sacred Red Rock takes the Best Documentary Jury Award at the festival. The film follows the Kaw (Kanza) Nation's rematriation of In'zhúje waxóbe, a 28-ton sacred quartzite boulder, from Lawrence, Kansas, back to Allegawaho Memorial Heritage Park in Council Grove. Founder of Pursuit Films, Charles has built his career around Indigenous representation. "The vision was always to celebrate Cherokee people and hand them the microphone," he said. "In Indian Country it's still rare for tribes to tell their own stories and that's what gets me out of bed every day."

For Jordan, the recognition reflects a career and a resilience she traces to her home state. "Oklahoma made me strong," she said. "Growing up here, I watched people build something out of nothing and make a real impact. And that's exactly what we're seeing in our film community now."

During the ceremony, all four honorees will receive a special award, and board member and former TU professor Michael Wright will lead a moderated discussion with Olivia and Jeremy about their careers. Afterward, guests are invited outside through the east entrance for the unveiling of the new medallions.

The reception begins at 6:00 p.m. with light bites and cash bar, with the ceremony to follow at 7:30 p.m.

Lucien Ballard (1904–1988) — Born in Oklahoma and of Cherokee descent, Ballard studied at the University of Oklahoma and the University of Pennsylvania before breaking into Hollywood as a film cutter and earning his first cinematography credits on Josef von Sternberg productions. Over a five-decade career he shot more than 130 films and became a celebrated stylist, equally at home in moody black-and-white and sweeping color, and a favorite of directors including Stanley Kubrick (The Killing), Budd Boetticher, and Sam Peckinpah (Ride the High Country, The Wild Bunch). A master of the Western landscape, he also devised a soft, line-smoothing light nicknamed "the Obie" for actress Merle Oberon, to whom he was briefly married. Ballard earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Cinematography for The Caretakers (1963) and won the National Society of Film Critics Award for The Wild Bunch. "I want to contribute to a picture, not just work on it," he once said.

Ralph Blane (1914–1995) — Born Ralph Uriah Hunsecker in Broken Arrow, Blane grew up in the Tulsa area and attended Tulsa Central High School before studying at Northwestern University and then music in New York, where he took the name Ralph Blane, reportedly because it fit better on a theater marquee. Working as a singer and vocal arranger, he began a fifty-year songwriting partnership with Hugh Martin, and over the years the two collaborated with Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, and Richard Rodgers. Their most enduring work was the score for the 1944 MGM musical Meet Me in St. Louis, starring Judy Garland, which introduced the title song and the holiday standard "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." Blane earned two Academy Award nominations for Best Original Song, both written with Martin: "The Trolley Song," from Meet Me in St. Louis, and "Pass That Peace Pipe," from Good News (1947). Blane's later credits ranged from the Broadway hit Sugar Babies (1979) to a 1989 stage adaptation of Meet Me in St. Louis that earned four Tony nominations, and he contributed lyrics to Home Alone in 1990. He retired to his hometown of Broken Arrow, where he died in 1995; at the time, ASCAP listed more than five hundred songs in his name.

Jeremy Charles — A co-creator, director, and producer of Osiyo, Voices of the Cherokee People, Charles has earned recognition for the docu-series with 30+ regional Emmy Awards, including Best Director in 2017. His narrative short Totsu (Redbird) won top honors at the L.A. Skins Film Festival, the Phoenix Film Festival, and deadCenter Film Festival. He developed the Cherokee-language animated series Inage'i (In the Woods), is a 2020 alumnus of the Native American Media Alliance TV Writers fellowship, and served as co-executive producer on FOX's The Girl Scout Murders.

Olivia Jordan — Olivia Jordan has made a name for herself as an accomplished actress, model, television host, and pageant titleholder, earning the coveted title of Miss USA in 2015. Olivia's impressive career highlights include being featured in Sports Illustrated in 2018. She has graced the screens as the lead in numerous captivating Lifetime movies, and has made memorable appearances on popular shows like NCIS, Hawaii Five-0, Murder in the First, and Hulu's Dollface.