All About the Oscars: Trivia, Highlights and Lowlights
Ah, Oscar Monday: Video guides are hung by the fireplace with care, children sleep with visions of Reese’s Pieces dancing in their heads, and we all await the arrival of Oscar the Great. Everyone is happy and, for a single day, America considers film as the most wondrous of art forms, well beyond familiar notions of mindless entertainment. Bearing these warm Dickensian thoughts in mind, Prsented below are some highlights and lowlights from Oscar’s long history for you to peruse during the Best Documentary Short Subject award or any number of “I want to thank my dog and my dog’s agent and her puppies and her puppies’ agentsâÂ?¦”-style acceptance speeches. The envelope, please!
Ah, Oscar Monday: Video guides are hung by the fireplace with care, children sleep with visions of Reese’s Pieces dancing in their heads, and we all await the arrival of Oscar the Great. Everyone is happy and, for a single day, America considers film as the most wondrous of art forms, well beyond familiar notions of mindless entertainment. Bearing these warm Dickensian thoughts in mind, Prsented below are some highlights and lowlights from Oscar’s long history for you to peruse during the Best Documentary Short Subject award or any number of “I want to thank my dog and my dog’s agent and her puppies and her puppies’ agentsâÂ?¦”-style acceptance speeches. The envelope, please!
Ah, Oscar Monday: Video guides are hung by the fireplace with care, children sleep with visions of Reese’s Pieces dancing in their heads, and we all await the arrival of Oscar the Great. Everyone is happy and, for a single day, America considers film as the most wondrous of art forms, well beyond familiar notions of mindless entertainment. Bearing these warm Dickensian thoughts in mind, Prsented below are some highlights and lowlights from Oscar’s long history for you to peruse during the Best Documentary Short Subject award or any number of “I want to thank my dog and my dog’s agent and her puppies and her puppies’ agentsâÂ?¦”-style acceptance speeches. The envelope, please!
1928: The first Academy Awards ceremony takes place in California. A mere eight years after regulated American radio broadcasting has begun, few stations can resist covering the event. Coast to coast, the facts and celebrities and tinsel are described for an audience of millions. Hollywood, meanwhile, still finds itself trapped under the crush of silent films, mostly bypassing the 1927 talkie release The Jazz Singer in its nods.
1932: Walt Disney receives Special Commendation from the Academy for the blandly-titled “Mickey Mouse.” In those days of cinematic infancy, it rapidly became apparent that this charismatic little bulbous-eared rodent would become an international icon. With the advantage of hindsight, one can’t help but wonder how many regretted paving the way for Disney’s infamous writers’ sweatshop, for Disney’s infamous testimony during the McCarthy witch hunt, for Disney’s infamous $12 French fries at either ‘Land or ‘WorldâÂ?¦
1935: Allen Konigsberg is born in Brooklyn. Later to become known worldwide as Woody Allen, the young tot’s first words are reported to be an announcement that he will not attend the following year’s Academy Awards ceremonies, for he has an engagement to play jazz clarinet on Monday evenings.
1939: Civil War epic Gone with the Wind receives Best Picture honors, and Hattie McDaniel “breaks the color barrier” at the ceremony, taking home the Best Supporting Actress trophy for her role in the epic. Ms. McDaniel and her entourage are heartily invited to attend the ceremony, under the proviso that they sit in a room separate from the otherwise all-white crowd. McDaniel delivers her acceptance speech via microphone from her segregated quarters.
1941: At 25 years of age, Orson Welles becomes the youngest ever to be nominated in the category of Best Director. He does not win, nor does Oscar bestow his favors upon Citizen Kane, the film which has become clich�©d to mention as Greatest Film Of All-Time.
1948: Lawrence Olivier wins the Best Actor nod for his Hamlet; the strength of his performance alone guarantees Best Film prize for Two Cities Studio. This marks the final time Mr. Shakespeare competes for the little bald guy, even though Mel Gibson and Kenneth Branagh have tried really hard�
1951: In the all-cool competition for Best Actor, The African Queen‘s Bogie beats out Streetcar Named Desire‘s Brando, thereby denying Streetcar a sweep of all four acting categories. Bogart dies in less than six years, Brando goes on to become Superman’s father (twice).
1956: For the final time in Oscar history to date, Best Director, Picture and all acting awards are split among a half-dozen films. The winners are director George Stevens for Giant; Best Picture Around the World in 80 Days; Best Actor Yul Brynner for the role he made famous in The King and I; Ingrid Bergman for her portrayal of the titular character in Anastasia, Best Supporting Actor Anthony Quinn in Lust for Life; and supporting actress Dorothy Malone, somehow noticed in the Hudson-and-Bacall flick Written on the Wind.
1969: After decades and decades of starring in cheap-thrill genre flicks, John Wayne is recognized as Best Actor for his work in True Grit, making the Oscar trail safe for Western movie veterans like Clint Eastwood to garner accolades. Oh, and Goldie Hawn – yes, Goldie Hawn – wins the Best Supporting Actress trophy for Cactus Flower.
1972: Brando is back, sort of. The Great One turns down the award he bags for The Godfather, sending young Sioux woman Sacheen Littlefeather to dis presenters Roger Moore and Liv Ullman in delivering his refusal. This is later called a ploy on Brando’s part to get quality TV airtime for the plight of the Native American, and is now regarded as a meaningless Hollywood stunt that is parodied time and again. In other news, “Theme Song from Shaft” takes Best Movie Song. Shut yo’ mouth!
1974: As David Niven attempts to deliver the award for âÂ?¦ ah, who remembers? âÂ?¦ a streaker dashes by, prompting Niven to remark, “the only way that fellow could get a laugh was by showing off his shortcomings.”
1977: Lead actress Diane Keaton and the eponymously-named Annie Hall take home big prizes, but writer/director/star Woody Allen is nowhere to be seen, unable to attend due to an engagement to play jazz clarinet on Monday evenings. The film becomes the last comedy to take home the trophy until musical-comedy Chicago in 2003.
1981: In what is certainly the biggest upset in Oscar history, 9-1 longshot Chariots of Fire beats out heavily favored On Golden Pond (given odds of 3-5 by Las Vegas bookmakers) and Reds (2-1). This critic’s choice? Raiders of the Lost Ark, the 100-1 shot.
1986: Woody Allen’s tale of New Yorkers-in love loses to the Vietnam War as Platoon defeats Hannah and Her Sisters (in eerie similarity to the 1978 awards, which had Woody’s New Yorkers-in-Love pic Manhattan losing out to Vietnam War film The Deer Hunter). Allen is nowhere to be seen, unable to attend due to an engagement to play jazz clarinet on Monday evenings.
1992: Silence of the Lambs becomes the first film to bag the “Big Five” categories since One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest achieved the feat in 1976. Lambs luminaries include Anthony Hopkins, Jodie Foster, director Jonathan Demme and scriptwriters Edward Saxon, Kenneth Utt and Ronald M. Bozman.
1995: Tom Hanks wins the Best Actor Oscar for Forrest Gump, making him only the second actor or actress to do so since way back in 1938-39, when Spencer Tracy won for Captain’s Courageous and Boys Town, respectively. Hanks appears much more cogent that he did in 1994 when his nervousness about his Philadelphia bid clearly caused him to getâÂ?¦nervous.
1998: Titanic, Titanic, Titanic. James Cameron declares himself “King of the World,” a throng of young Leonardo DiCaprio fans protests their hero’s exclusion from the nominations, and the Biggest Film Of All Time wins eleven of its amazing thirteen nominations. Even Titanic‘s losers are winners. The nominations of Kate Winslet and Gloria Stuart mark the first time two actors/actresses garner nods for their portrayal of the same character in the same film (an occurrence repeated by Winslet and Dame Judi Dench in Iris at the 2002 show). Stuart’s nomination at 76 makes her the oldest first-time nominee in any acting category.
2002: To present Nora Ephron’s film tribute to New York and liven up an otherwise blah broadcast, Woody Allen cancels his Monday night jazz gig and delivers a brilliantly funny monologue, wondering aloud what all the hoopla’s been about.
2005: For the second time, Annette Bening (Being Julia) is the odds-on favorite to hold the Best Actress statuette aloft and for the second time is beaten out by Hilary Swank (Million Dollar Baby). No doubt flashing back to 2000 (when Bening in American Beauty lost out to Swank for Boys Don’t Cry), Bening shows her acting talent by truly appearing happy for Swank.
