Thanks For The Memory: The First Fifty Years of Oscar Openings
Do you feel that in the air? Do you smell the greasepaint? Do you feel the sense of self-satisfaction?
It’s Academy Awards night!
Yes, it’s the Academy Awards! The Oscars! It’s everyone’s favorite three-hour broadcast of the year. Even those who profess to hate or not care about it at all feel the need to jump in to let everyone know just how much they hate it and don’t care about it. And admittedly, it can be a giddy hate-watch; the sheer amount of time that needs to be filled can lead to some jaw-dropping moments. Just last year, we got Adrian Brody droning on and on about whatever it was and the songwriter from EMILIA PEREZ sharing her art with the world. Even if you’re just watching to make fun, the unique circumstance of live TV will nearly guarantee your mill will get some grist.
I’d argue this is a waste of time, though, haters. Honestly, you can get a sense of how the broadcast is going to go within the next twenty minutes.
Besides the Best Picture reveal, It’s probably the most watched part of the program. It’s certainly the part I’m most invested in. We all know what part I’m talking about; this is the section that kicks the whole gala off, where Jimmy Kimmel or Steve Martin or whoever comes out, gets a few ribs out on the famous crowd, gets the energy up, and then hands it all off to our first set of presenters. Sometimes, there’s even an up-tempo dance number, performed by a notable star. It’s the real razzle-dazzle part of the show, to ensure everyone keeps watching. It’s probably the most valuable real estate of the entire evening.
We now know it as the spot where Billy Crystal does his parodies, or where Chris Rock (*gasp*) makes fun of celebrities, or where Conan O’Brien now does his beautiful giddy clown act. But, the Oscars opening has a whole history all its own, one that has undergone several changes in generation, philosophy, and audience. I’ve always wanted someone to do a long, drawn-out deep dive on this portion of TV history.
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Fine! I’ll do it myself!
What follows is the first yearly installment of a new three-part series. Today, let’s work our way through as many Oscars openings as we can.
A couple of caveats before we get started in earnest. First, my definition of “Oscars opening” is pretty simple. The “opening” is the period of time that elapses between the second the TV broadcast begins to the second before the first set of presenters take the stage. This historically includes a host monologue, but not always! The Oscars have gone hostless more often than you think!
Secondly, I’m ignoring the first twenty Academy Award ceremonies. This is for a couple of reasons. The first Academy Awards to be broadcast on TV was the 25th edition, in 1953. Of the 24 preceding ceremonies, six weren’t even put on the radio. Of the remaining 18, 9 were only partial broadcasts, usually an hour, but could be as short as 15 minutes. Those radio programs are not particularly well-preserved; I’ve only tracked one of them down as of this writing. My point being: I couldn’t evaluate most of these openings even if I wanted to.
But, even if all of them were up for review….Oscar openings not aimed at a TV camera feels like an entirely different thing. The congenial host, the glitz and glamour, the risk of people looking really stupid…that’s the Oscars openings you think of. In the radio age, it’s just people walking up to, and off of, the stage. My plan from the beginning, then, was to just start this thing with the first officially televised Academy Awards opening, in 1953.
However, I then noticed that the four openings before that are actually archived by the Academy and just sitting on a YouTube playlist on their official channel (a playlist, by the way, that frustratingly isn’t updated anymore…we’ll get there). Well, you know I had to watch those, too. Thus, I threw them into this article as a bit of a warm-up, before we get to the actual broadcast openings. At the very least, it gives us an idea of what the Oscar openings were like prior to TV cameras being rolled in.
21st ACADEMY AWARDS
Date: March 24, 1949
Host: Robert Montgomery
Broadcast: ABC Radio
Location: The Academy Theater
Best Picture: HAMLET
The opening of the 21st Academy Awards comes to us via newsreel, one of those old-timey things that completely, 100% live up to the stereotypes you have about them in your heads. After the opening credits, we get a guy doing “1940s news guy” voice (the same type of guy who probably found a second career as a horse-race color commentator), announcing to us the arrival of this year’s stars to “the final heat of the richest sweepstakes in the country”.
We open with a speech by then-Academy president Jean Hersholt. Opening with the President’s speech will become a long-standing tradition for the Oscars broadcast, one which rattled me. Boring speeches about the state of the Academy typically get buried in the middle of modern broadcasts (sometimes followed by a zinger by the host about how the energy in the room is gone). But, the logic is sound. The ceremony at this point is still for industry insiders.
Then comes our MC for the evening, actor and two-time Oscar nominee Robert Montgomery. His opening routine is short and to the point, a far cry from the long stand-up acts we’ve grown accustomed to. What’s interesting about Montgomery’s speech is that, even in 1949, Oscar hosts are already making cracks about the vanity and solipsism of Hollywood stars; he laments not having won an Oscar yet, which keeps him from making an acceptance speech thanking the only people pertinent to the victory: the Academy and himself. It gets a big, uproarious laugh.
This brings Montgomery to his only real obligation in his opening remarks, a request for winners to keep their acceptance speeches brief and to the point. Even in 1949, the Academy was desperately trying to reign in long-winded speeches! This is not a new phenomenon! History isn’t so much a straight line, as it is a perpetual circle.
22nd ACADEMY AWARDS
Date: March 23, 1950
Host: Paul Douglas
Broadcast: ABC Radio
Best Picture: ALL THE KING’S MEN
I can’t say for sure, but the video we have of this opening on YouTube, rather than being a newsreel, feels very much like the audio from the radio broadcast synced up to archival video. The opening narration is mostly descriptive (“Slowly the curtain rises to expose a stunning stage setting, dominated by a huge replica of the hero of the evening: the Academy Oscar!”).
Academy President Charles Brackett comes out to discuss the state of film, highlighting its successes in light and grand entertainment, as well as in its dealing with social and racial issues, in case you think the Oscars only recently became “woke”. Then, here comes actor Paul Douglas, who seems like an unusual choice, a fact he leans into with his opening line: the Academy's pursuit of a fresh hosting face came up with only one choice….get Douglas! “Well, we all know how busy Kirk is.”
This opening also is our first indication of an extremely long-standing Oscars tradition: the explanation of how the votes are tallied, evoking the good people over at PricewaterhouseCoopers and the fact that they are the only ones who know the results of the evening ahead. This leads into Douglas explaining something that I never really thought about: if nobody else knows the winners, how is the orchestra always ready to go with the appropriate music once a winner is announced? The answer is logical, but unexciting: everyone in the orchestra has the five possible pieces of music ready to go, and the conductor is just really good and can get a downbeat going as soon as the winner is revealed. Turns out there’s no conspiracy, people are just good at their job! Boring, I know.
Oh, and Paul Douglas also has to give an announcement to tell winners to keep their damn speeches short. Whereas last year, Robert Montgomery implored everyone to end their extended thanks through certified mail, Douglas just thanks the cameramen, procedures, and makeup artists all at once on their behalf, so that nobody else has to. “We’ll also assume that without your mother, none of this would be possible.” Good bit! How pissed do you think the Board of Governors would be if you told them this is an issue still plaguing the Oscars sixty years later?
23rd ACADEMY AWARDS
Date: March 29, 1951
Host: Fred Astaire
Broadcast: ABC Radio
Location: Pantages Theatre
Best Picture: ALL ABOUT EVE
Another “radio broadcast synced to the filmreel footage” video, although in this one we also get to enjoy the Alfred Newman-conducted overture over footage of stars like Tony Curtis, Janet Leigh, Ronald Reagan and Elizabeth Taylor arriving. I can’t say with 100% certainty, but based of the presence of “Bibbidy-Bobbidy-Boo” and “Mona Lisa” in the orchestra, I thiiiink the overture is covering the previous year’s Best Original Song nominees. It would make more sense to be that year’s batch of noms, so it’s possible this radio broadcast opening is synced to the wrong year. Who knows. Not me!
Out comes Academy Prez Charles Brackett again to look back on the year 1950 and, boy, does he seem ready to move on to 1951. He evokes the horrors and bloodshed of Korea, Russian land grabs, and the threat of atomic annihilation. It’s an intense, socially conscious, overtly political opening speech, one that champions Hollywood for presenting inclusive, diverse, and individualistic stories in response. Again, just in case you thought the Oscars only started doing this kind of thing due to Trump Derangement Syndrome or whatever.
Anyway, following this is our MC, Fred Astaire! As far as name brand value, he’s about as good as you could get for 1950, but he’s not who you might imagine as an Oscar host. He’s more nervous than you might expect, but he’s appropriately self-effacing, stating that following Paul Douglas’ stint last year, the Academy switched from one of Hollywood’s newest faces to “one of its oldest”. It’s more interesting to watch how stuck he is to the pages in front of him, even using his finger to stay in place. Considering this is a radio broadcast, it doesn’t really matter, but it’s also weirdly humanizing to see a first-class entertainer be put slightly out of their element. Stars: they’re just like us!
Oh, and yes, he implores winners to keep their speeches short. The comic bit here is to reflect on obviously-false past instances of speeches running long, stating a past winner once brought “the Beverly Hills phonebook” up with her. It’s light, fun and a good counterpoint to Brackett basically calling 1950 the worst year in human history.
24th ACADEMY AWARDS
Date: March 20, 1952
Host: Danny Kaye
Broadcast: ABC Radio
Location: Pantages Theatre
Best Picture: AN AMERICAN IN PARIS
An interesting opening for a couple of reasons: first of all, it’s the first opening of these four to feel like more than just a live radio taping. For the most part, these have been stars and Academy presidents coming out on stage, hitting the dais, reading their prewritten remarks and getting out of there. This is mostly that, except…our new host can’t help but make a bit out of his entrance.
President Charles Brackett does his normal “state of the Academy” speech, this time focused on the pipeline between Broadway play and Hollywood movie (a timely topic, given the prominence of A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE, DEATH OF A SALESMAN and A PLACE IN THE SUN amongst the nominees), then transitions to introducing the host, Danny Kaye. Kaye makes a bit of entering too early, then having to retreat back to the wing, which gets a huge laugh. This happens a couple of times before finally getting on stage, each time getting just as many laughs. As Brackett lists off the attributes of a successful host, Kaye has a little dance bit to mark each, until leaving the stage again after the mention that he must be “dignified”. It rightfully kills.
This is notable to me because this bit would be inscrutable on radio, the kind of comedic routine that could only work on film. I can’t speak to the first twenty Oscars openings, but this is certainly the first non-verbal bit I’ve seen in this project, and it’s a great one. It could be a coincidence that the next Oscars would be fully broadcast, but maybe not.
Danny Kaye is also the reason behind the second interesting thing about this: his opening routine is exclusively centered around his having never won, or even held, an Academy Award. He starts off funny about it, being self-deprecating about his lack of nominations. But it takes a weird turn, going into the reasons behind why everyone goes nuts over a little statue: it’s a recognition of excellence from your peers. He transitions into a story about a man joining the navy, working his way up the ranks through hard work, then writing his mother about his recent promotion to Captain. Her response? “To me, you’ll always be a Captain. But to a Captain, are you a Captain?”
I feel like Kaye is revealing too much about himself on this one. The idea of wanting to be considered the best by your peers is insightful, even a little poetic. But after just getting done doing a whole bit on never having received one, it all comes a little (okay, a lot) needy to me. Unfortunately, Kaye would have to settle for his two honorary Oscars (one in 1955, the other in 1982).
Oh, and yes, he warns everyone not to let their speeches run long, stating there’s a new rule in place dictating that speeches “be no longer than the movie itself”.
25th ACADEMY AWARDS
Date: March 19, 1953
Host: Bob Hope
Broadcast: NBC
Location: Pantages Theatre (Los Angeles), NBC International Theatre (New York)
Best Picture: THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH
The Oscars have made the big time! Its 25th birthday is broadcast live, and from two different cities! For the first time, the Academy Awards are held at two simultaneous locations: there’s the main hub at the Pantages Theatre in Los Angeles, but there’s also a whole separate audience sitting in Columbus Circle at the NBC International Theatre in New York. Each has its own host (New York is supervised by Conrad Nagel and Fredric March), although it’s made fairly clear that Bob Hope is the official MC of the 25th Academy Awards. They have a little bit of fun with this, switching back and forth in the opening to check in on each other, but it’s nothing special. I suspect just being able to switch cameras across the country was novelty enough.
Speaking of Bob Hope, this is the first time we’re hitting one of his monologues in this project, but he was an old Oscars hosting veteran by 1953. This marks his seventh time as Academy Awards host, and it’s nowhere near his last. As a result, there’s a level of professionalism and comfort that we haven’t gotten to see in the reviewable years prior. The big topic of his opening bit is television, with Hope indicating just the slightest bit of animosity towards the Academy conceding to a “lesser” art form. One of his best lines is “Television: where old movies go to die.” He also mentions the particular novelty of being able to see stars in your living room for the first time: “All over America, housewives are turning to their husbands and saying, ‘Put on your shirt, Joan Crawford is coming.”
There are several aspects to his opening bit here that should be marked, as they will become mainstays to his Oscars monologues to come. First, he kicks things off with a “Ladies and gentleman, welcome to (insert name of TV show here)”, in this case “Suspense!”* He also has a whole section about how he’s never been nominated for an Oscar. Now, for whatever reason, where Danny Kaye came off super-insecure doing this same bit last year, Hope is able to make it funny with ease. Maybe it’s because it’s all just setup-punchline joke format, instead of it segueing into a weird story about a fake Navy captain. Anyway, this will become a central tent to Hope’s Oscar monologues.
*A CBS show from the 50s. Look it up.
Overall, what surprised me most about this, coast-to-coast technological theatrics aside, is the lack of dynamics, almost as if the broadcast wasn’t sure what to do to sell itself on television. This will soon change, as it becomes increasingly clear that TV is no novelty, and will soon become intertwined with movies themselves…
26th ACADEMY AWARDS
Date: March 25, 1954
Host: Donald O’Connor, Fredric March
Broadcast: NBC
Location: Pantages Theatre (Los Angeles), NBC Century Theatre (New York)
Best Picture: FROM HERE TO ETERNITY
The second ever Oscars television broadcast commences with a lot more grandeur than before, with a sweeping, intense opening narration selling just how important this is: “This is Movietown’s election night, the final game of the World Series, the running of the Derby, the Rose Bowl!” A lot of this, I imagine, is in place in order to sell the Academy Awards to a wider audience. But also, consider the fact that, at the time, the Oscars really were a bigger deal than they are now. The Tonys, Emmys, and Golden Globes were still in their infancy, and there just weren’t that many other opportunities to see major stars altogether like this.
After a quick overture of “Lullaby of Broadway” (led by Andre Previn!), Academy President Charles Brackett comes out to declare the return of the Film. Where it supposedly went to is not clarified, but I have to wonder if this was Hollywood feeling a bit of the heat from the competition of television. Then out comes our host for the evening, famous funnyman Donald O’Connor. And, here’s the thing: he kind of bombs! He does sort of admit, in a joking manner, that he’s “terrified”, and it’s not like it’s a catastrophe or anything. But it does highlight that the role of “Oscar host” requires a unique set of skills. You have to be a capable public speaker, congenial, and funny, but you also have to be comfortable being out of your element. O’Connor may be one of the best screen comedians Hollywood has ever had, but being in front of a live broadcast with prepared remarks in front of a room of your peers is a whole different ballgame. It’s comforting, in a way, watching such a huge star like O’Connor resort to “Is this thing on?” ad-libs. It can happen to any of us.
Then, we cut to New York (dual broadcast again!) and Fredric March takes it away once more. This leads to this year’s big technical stunt: the screen splits, giving way to O’Connor and March “talking to each other”. It’s kind of a stilted routine: both men are clearly hanging on to their scripts for dear life, and the punchlines aren’t that great. But the trick technically goes off without a hitch.
Oh! One other novelty: we also briefly cut to a live ad spot for Oldsmobile, with a group of singers introducing Paul Douglas climbing out of said Oldsmobile and hawking its virtues. Betty White comes out to help him pitch the sponsor, and the whole thing ends in a robust song-and-dance number. Back when we had proper ads!
27th ACADEMY AWARDS
Date: March 30, 1955
Host: Bob Hope, Thelma Ritter
Broadcast: NBC
Location: Pantages Theatre (Los Angeles), NBC Century Theatre (New York)
Best Picture: ON THE WATERFRONT
David Rose’s orchestra leads us through a medley of some past Best Original Song nominees and winners as the camera pans over the stars in attendance at the Pantages and NBC Century Theatres. Also, something I’ve never seen before or since: the full list of nominees are superimposed on the screen. I know that the full cottage industry of entertainment magazines and Oscar odds have rendered this unnecessary, but I would love it if they brought this back. It’s just the right amount of dorky for me.
The theme of this year’s Charles Brackett sketch: PricewaterhouseCoopers. He also explains that this year’s set of presenters are the 20 acting nominees for that year, in order to give them “something to do”. I find this insane for some reason. Imagine if Timothee Chalamet and Rose Byrne had to go up and present this year? No, go sit there and be nervous all night like everybody else.
Then comes Bob Hope. Opening line: “Welcome to ‘You Bet Your Career’”. His act has a bit more of an edge this time than last year. Early on, he mentions that winners will receive Oscars, while the losers will receive “monogrammed do-it-yourself suicide kits”. He also alludes to the industry’s bounceback after the “TV scare”: “I was a little worried last year when the Oscars came through in a kneeling position”. Otherwise, it’s more of the same you expect from Hope: cracks about his lack of an Oscar, swipes at the amount of minks in the audience, and jokes about Cecil B. DeMille’s Biblical pictures.
(Another interesting theme to his monologue? The supposed edgy content of this year’s nominated pictures. Yet one more “the more things change” kind of moment.)
Hope kicks it to Thelma Ritter in New York to give a head count of the stars in attendance on that coast, and the ceremony goes on from there. Another solid outing from the man most associated with “classic Oscar host”. It’s kind of amazing: his punchlines are almost eighty years old at this point, and I fully do not understand half of them, given their topical nature. But I find myself laughing anyway. He just has a cadence to his delivery. He’s almost as good as James Franco and Anne Hathaway.
28th ACADEMY AWARDS
Date: March 21, 1956
Host: Jerry Lewis, Claudette Colbert, Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Broadcast: NBC
Location: Pantages Theatre (Los Angeles), NBC Century Theatre (New York)
Best Picture: MARTY
As Andre Previn leads the orchestra through a rendition of “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah!”, an announcer walks us through the Oscar voting process. This indicates that the Academy still can’t quite crack how to present this necessary element of transparency in a way that doesn’t feel like the home audience needing to eat their veggies. This doesn’t really work, either: I just wanna hear the overture! Shut up!
After Academy President George Seaton gives opening remarks, highlighting the ever-increasing international scope of Hollywood films, out comes this year’s Oscars host: Jerry Lewis! He does pretty well here, and it helps that he’s a rapidfire set up-punchline type of guy, cut from the same cloth as Bob Hope. Interestingly, though, he’s even funnier after a line bombs, which happens more often in these few minutes than you might expect. After a particularly silent reaction, Lewis merely grabs his forehead and does an exaggerated “ohhhh.”. At one point, he informs the audience, “these are the jokes!” Some might take issue with this, preferring he just move on rather than apologize to the audience. But, I liked it.
He then kicks it over to Colbert and ol’ Mank in New York to kick off the awards. There’s some stilted back-and-forth, the kind that can only be generated by two people doing comedy in two different rooms. But Colbert is genuinely tickled, leading Lewis to beg her to please keep laughing like that, a nice button to a funny (if choppy) Oscars opening. Look, the Academy must not have minded, because Lewis would return the very next year…
29th ACADEMY AWARDS
Date: March 27, 1957
Host: Jerry Lewis, Celeste Holm
Broadcast: NBC
Location: Pantages Theatre (Los Angeles), NBC Century Theatre (New York)
Best Picture: AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS
We open with another blatant Oldsmobile ad, then it’s the customary overture-and-Academy-president-speech combination. The former, led by Johnny Green, plays David Raksin’s “Prelude to a Gala Evening”, while the latter expounds upon Hollywood’s growing global influence, with the world being roamed for story content. He points to the stories of the Best Picture nominees. Most of them (AROUND IN THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS, THE TEN COMMANDMENTS and THE KING AND I) speak for themselves on that front. However, Seaton has to stretch a little bit to include FRIENDLY PERSUASION (it apparently “explores a region too often bypassed: the human heart”).
Then it’s time for Jerry’s second straight turn as Oscars MC. And, you know, he’s even better this time around. He doesn’t really have to juice the audience in order to save a flop. That said, his best line happens to be an ad-lib; as New York host Celeste Holm begins to turn the wrong way for an attempted split-screen “kiss” between her and Lewis, he exclaims “you need a shave, baby!”. Good stuff.
By the way, another little “they’ve been complaining about this for years” moment: a decent chunk of Lewis’ routine centers around the ever-increasing length of the nominated movies. His best one: “The other night, I went to see WAR AND PEACE, and of course, I couldn’t see all the picture because the kid in front of me grew up.”
30th ACADEMY AWARDS
Date: March 26, 1958
Host: Bob Hope, David Niven, James Stewart, Jack Lemmon, Rosalind Russell, Donald Duck
Broadcast: NBC
Location: Pantages Theatre
Best Picture: THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI
For the 30th anniversary of the Academy Awards, they went all the way out for hosting star power. Look at that list up there! Two hosting legends in Bob Hope and David Niven! Jimmy Stewart! They booked Donald fucking Duck.
Unfortunately, under the parameters of this project, we get to talk about none of them. The opening of the 30th Academy Awards is actually pretty lowkey. After an announcement that Wagon Train, Kraft Theatre and Father Knows Best are being preempted, the show just starts and out comes Academy president George Seaton. His speech is short, but fascinating: the big gimmick this year, besides the bevy of hosts (who just end up being glorified presenters, in a way), is that the broadcast is being aired commercial-free, due to their view of it as a public service.
The idea of the Academy Awards broadcast being considered a public good sounds really foreign in 2026. Most of the time now, you hear it being discussed as the complete opposite, this archaic, problematic thing that nobody likes. But, consider what it really is: a celebration of a major art form. Yes, it’s a self-congratulatory, somewhat elitist and insular celebration, but it’s a celebration nonetheless. Nearly 70 years of cynicism and missteps has led to us constantly worrying about how to “fix” the Oscars, a problem that doesn’t really have a clear and obvious solution. So, it’s kind of nice to travel back in time to a place where just the existence of them in your living room was considered art in and of itself.
Anyway, sorry, Mr. Duck, your segment isn’t eligible.
31st ACADEMY AWARDS
Date: April 6, 1959
Host: Bob Hope, David Niven, James Stewart, Tony Randall, Mort Sahl, Laurence Olivier, Jerry Lewis
Broadcast: NBC
Location: Pantages Theatre
Best Picture: GIGI
After a quick (and kinda boring) intro from Bill Holden and John Wayne and another overture, this one kicks off with my single favorite find of this entire project: a sarcastic song-and-dance number called “It’s Great Not To Be Nominated”, performed by Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas! Besides the total surprise of either of them ever being involved in such a thing, it becomes immediately clear that, um, this number is also genuinely good. The Sammy Cahn-penned tune is witty and clever, yes. But Burt and Kirk get so much more into it than you could ever possibly imagine; the whole thing ends with Kirk standing on Burt’s shoulder, before both tumble forward. Incredible stuff, and way better than the standard “Academy President speech” opening.
(And if you liked this, good news: this was actually a reprise of a number Burt and Kirk did for the previous Academy Awards. That means there’s another one out there for you to watch!)
Then it’s time for Bob Hope to come on out. Although, as you can see, this is another vegetable medley of hosts, Hope gets pole position with a genuine monologue. At this point, there are no further surprises to be had in his routine; he opens with a TV-related “welcome to…” line*. He feigns heartbreak over not being nominated. He even repeats a joke from years prior (“the best acting tonight will be from the losers”). But, as mentioned, he’s so comfortable in the role that I just find myself put at ease when watching his openings. You know exactly what you’re going to get, and that’s the beauty of it.
*This year, it’s “You Bet Your Life”.
32nd ACADEMY AWARDS
Date: April 4, 1960
Host: Bob Hope
Broadcast: NBC
Location: Pantages Theatre
Best Picture: BEN-HUR
Another year, another Andre Previn-conducted overture, this time a sizzling medley of Harold Arlen songs (including “Blues in the Night” and “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”). For what it’s worth, this is probably the best overture thus far, the perfect uptempo setup for Academy President B.B. Kahane’s stumbly opening remarks, who uses his time to introduce Bill Miller of PricewaterhouseCoopers. I mention Bill Miller here because by 1960, he had already become somewhat of a fixture on the Academy Awards broadcast, the public face of the accounting firm that tabulates the votes. It’s such a weird, vaguely inconsequential rite of passage, but I get a little giddy from here on out whenever Bill gets introduced in these openings. The Oscars! An award show so magical that it can turn anyone into a star!
After a corny introduction where the first envelope of the evening contains the name of the host, out comes Bob Hope, or as he refers to himself “Better Luck Next Year”. The big historical topic of note is the then-ongoing SAG/AFTRA strike, which Hope refers to as the first “mink-lined picket in history”. I wonder how a lot of this routine would go nowadays; Hope’s shtick is heavy on the “oh, the poor rich actors in their mansions” aesthetic, although I also have to say that he’s pretty funny about it. “Where else can a man walk off a job and refuse to get out of his swimming pool unless they improve working conditions?” It’s sort of a precursor to Ricky Gervais’ scorched-Earth Golden Globes monologues, but not everyone loved those either.
If it helps: this section also contains one of the only real stumbles I’ve ever seen from Hope in this context, where he accidentally says “strinke” instead of “strike” (his ad-lib response: “That’s alright, I’ll be fine in about an hour”).
Other thing of note: a passing reference to Smell-O-Vision (“we used to have to wait for the reviews”), as well as a prescient dig at psychologically-driven pictures (“in the future, we’ll have the villain shoot the hero, and the hero will say, ‘Gee, I wonder what he meant by that?’”).
33rd ACADEMY AWARDS
Date: April 17, 1961
Host: Bob Hope
Broadcast: ABC
Location: Santa Monica Civic Center
Best Picture: THE APARTMENT
This year’s Andre Previn overture is a medley of Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown-penned movie tunes (why, yes, they do play “Singin’ in the Rain”, thank you for asking). Then comes a pretty rough opening speech from Academy president Valentine Davies. This is a problem that sometimes comes with presidents whose credits are mostly behind the scenes: public speaking is not a gift bestowed to all. To that end, I swear there’s a point where he stops a section of the speech too early, prompting someone off-stage to say “keep going”. I’m not trying to be an ass, and I swear it doesn’t make me feel good that Mr. Davies passed away a couple of months later. I’m just telling you that’s what happened.
Then comes a rendition of “Thanks For The Memories”, which can mean only one thing…it’s Bob Hope time. The big topic of the evening for Mr. Hope is the awards’ recent change in venue from Hollywood proper to Santa Monica. Look, getting into Southern California minutiae is a risky business, lest one come off like a character in one of those SNL sketches, but Bob has a point here. Santa Monica is, charitably, a thirty-minute drive from Hollywood. What are we doing here, exactly? Mixed into the act is his usual blend of “I don’t have an Oscar”, “Walt Disney has all the Oscars”, and “Jack Lemmon”.
34th ACADEMY AWARDS
Date: April 9, 1962
Host: Bob Hope
Broadcast: ABC
Location: Santa Monica Civic Center
Best Picture: WEST SIDE STORY
This Oscars opens with something completely unexpected: the “Star Spangled Banner”, sung by Mary Costa. Take that, libtards! In all seriousness, I don’t have a problem with it, I just have no idea why they decided to do it this year, and never before or since. Seriously, do you know? Please contact me if you do. For lack of a better answer, I’m assuming it’s in honor of Taco Bell being founded just a couple of weeks before.
After that, it’s back to business as usual. A Johnny Green-conducted medley (this time, a work called “The Oscar Fantasy Orchestra #1”), followed by a vaguely boring speech by the Academy president. At least this year, it’s an actual performer (Wendell Corey), which helps it brisk, crisp, and professional. He first introduces Bill Miller, who’s looking hot as always, then Bob Hope.I should mention, at this point, that I’m running out of things to say about Mr. Hope. He’s good! He’s steady! He’s the perfect opening note for the song that is the classic Academy Awards.
So, instead of just hitting variants of “he make me laugh, lol”, I want to at least reflect on some topics that come up that seem notable. Firstly, he mentions the new Dodger stadium (which would officially open the very next day!). Second, he mentions George C. Scott, not for the last time, who famously made it known he’d refuse any award he was provided (Hope’s retort: “Hollywood needs more people like him; if enough people refuse Oscars, maybe I’ll get one”). Third, there’s a lot of ribbing about how adult and mature movies are becoming nowadays (“Who knew Tennesee Williams would be afraid to go?”), in yet another edition of Nothing Anybody Is Complaining About These Days Is New.
35th ACADEMY AWARDS
Date: April 8, 1963
Host: Frank Sinatra
Broadcast: ABC
Location: Santa Monica Civic Center
Best Picture: LAWRENCE OF ARABIA
A change in host! It’s like they knew I was running out of things to say about Bob Hope. And what a change; this year, it’s perhaps the most famous person to ever live: the Chairman of the Board himself, Frank Sinatra.
Before Frank comes out, we can see a future full-on tradition forming in the intro: the announcement of the various stars arriving to the venue. This would eventually get spun off into the all-day red carpet extravaganza we have now, but in 1963, it’s just taking a few minutes at the top to announce folks like Robert Stack, Ginger Rogers, Danny Thomas, and Edward G. Robinson. We also get a quick overture, this time of the current Best Picture incumbent WEST SIDE STORY’s main theme “Tonight”.
Then, it’s Ol’ Blue Eyes’ turn. And…I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t the weirdly poignant and serious exegesis on the nature of art. How we once made movies as an industry because we just had to express ourselves. How people would flock to it like they did to The Mona Lisa. And now that due to cheaper and faster competition coming from overseas, we “find ourselves back in the Mona Lisa business [...] a nice business to be in”. He then goes into a whole thing about how, if Da Vinci had tried to make The Mona Lisa here, the damn thing would be killed by a thousand cuts administered by some no-nothing producer.
It’s an odd speech to watch! He’s completely right, at least philosophically, but it cuts against the ra-ra “everything is great!” nature that’s so typical of Oscar openings. It’s jarring to see one of these open with a beloved cool guy saying, “thank god we’re making good movies again, no thanks to the jerks that bankroll them”. Can we get back to that? Can we get Pedro Pascal to open the Oscars by saying, “fuck Netflix” or something?
Sinatra then introduces president Wendell Corey to give his remarks, but who cares. Sinatra already said it all.
36th ACADEMY AWARDS
Date: April 13, 1964
Host: Jack Lemmon
Broadcast: ABC
Location: Santa Monica Civic Center
Best Picture: TOM JONES
New year, new host. This time, it’s Jack Lemmon, which is a pretty funny choice, considering how often Bob Hope joked about him in his openings.
Stars like Bobby Darin and Sandra Dee, Julie Andrews, David Niven, Patty Duke and Shirley Jones arrive to hear the overture, a lengthy medley in tribute to one of the great lyricists in Hollywood history (and current Academy president) Arthur Freed. It’s a swinging, jazzy medley, and is a total blast, if you’re into such things (and I imagine if you’re this deep into this article, you must be).
Then out comes Mr. Lemmon, who fits pretty neatly into a particular category of Oscar host: “comedic actor who isn’t quite a stage comedian”. His opening routine lamenting on the increasingly taboo nature of smoking in movies is actually pretty witty and insightful when you take it all in, and would probably be worth a series of knowing nods and chuckles were you read it, but Lemon doesn’t quite bring the house down the way a Bob Hope might have. Still, it’s sold, short, and sweet, and he gets in a couple of jabs about Arthur Freed both on the way in and way out, which feels gutsy.
(Speaking of Freed, up to this point, he strikes me as the platonic ideal of the Academy president: a booming stentorian of a certain age who gets in, gets out, and doesn’t waste time trying to wax poetic. Thumbs up for Freed.)
37th ACADEMY AWARDS
Date: April 5, 1965
Host: Bob Hope
Broadcast: ABC
Location: Santa Monica Civic Center
Best Picture: MY FAIR LADY
It’s funny, I was just sitting here a few entries ago, lamenting how Bob Hope’s solid act defied extended analysis. And now, getting back to him after a quick break, I find myself wondering why they ever had anybody else host these things during his lifetime.
Anyway, we’ll get to him. In the meantime, a young Dick van Dyke, Agnes Moorehead, Greer Garson, Ann-Margret, Deborah Kerr, Anthony Quinn, and Jane Fonda are among the highlights in the brief “red carpet” segment that is becoming commonplace by 1965. We get another Johnny Green-conducted overture, which appears to be themes from the year’s nominees, and another short and to the point speech by Arthur Freed. To his credit, Freed still finds time to introduce my man Bill Miller from PricewaterhouseCoopers.
(By the way, I haven’t mentioned it yet, but the 60s Oscars telecasts have this little elegant technique to kick things off; an extreme close-up of the program, followed by a pair of hands opening the program to page One, leading to a zoom-in and fade to the stage. I like it! Like many nice touches of this era, I wish we still did it!)
Then comes Bob Hope once again for his 11th hosting stint, and it’s business as usual. It’s a particularly good and energetic set for Hope, no doubt bolstered by the three year break he enjoyed. Although the topics won’t surprise you (movies are being made overseas, subject matter is getting more mature, I will never win an Oscar), pretty much every punchline lands. Outside of a weirdly brutal line about Richard Burton (“he doesn’t know he’s been nominated yet, the phone is still off the hook”), his best joke is an insightful read of the room: “Thousands of voices saying silently, ‘please let it be me…but if it can’t be me, not him’”. Welcome back, Bob!
This kicked off a four-year streak of Hope hosting duties, which means he oversaw another major leap in technology for the Oscars…
38th ACADEMY AWARDS
Date: April 18, 1966
Host: Bob Hope
Broadcast: ABC
Location: Santa Monica Civic Center
Best Picture: THE SOUND OF MUSIC
The Oscars! Now brought to you in living color! I gotta say, it’s not a moment too soon, either. As comforting as I often find black-and-white television, the Oscars without color have just never seemed right. It’s the lush kind of TV color, too, back when it was a novelty, and networks wanted to make damn sure it was taken advantage of. It’s perfect for a grand event like the Academy Awards.
The broadcast goes all out to mark the transition. It kicks off with a trip down memory lane, complete with a pair of hands flipping through an album filled with black-and-white photos of past winners and highlights. There’s even an original song to go along with it, whose name I cannot locate, but I have decided is called “This is Mr. Oscar’s Album” (it’s the first line of the song, and it’s good enough for me).
We then see stars like Gregory Peck, Lee Marvin, and Shelley Winters shuttle into the Civil Center, and the show is officially underway. The official video on the Oscars YouTube channel cuts out the overture and Arthur Freed’s speech, so we bounce immediately to Bob Hope’s monologue. It’s his standard funny fare, including yet another killer “Richard Burton is a miserable drunk” joke, as well as another repeat “the best acting comes from the losers” line. Something that stood out to me was a pair of jabs about the prospect of actors getting into politics (one spurred by George Hamilton’s escorting of Lynda Bird Johnson to the awards), which is only funny because, Bob, you won’t end up knowing the half of it.
39th ACADEMY AWARDS
Date: April 10, 1967
Host: Bob Hope
Broadcast: ABC
Location: Santa Monica Civic Center
Best Picture: A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS
This opening seems uniquely focused on star power. Yes, we get our normal round-up of stars during the brief red carpet segment; notable names include Jimmy Stewart, Glenn Ford, Rock Hudson, and Raquel Welch (the latter of which elicits the announcer comment “gold pyjamas”). But, during the overture, the broadcast goes overtime in announcing stars, finding more in the audience and putting their names up on the screen. This is how Ronald Reagan, Steve McQueen, Alan Arkin, and Walter Matthau all get spotted and namechecked. To my knowledge, doubling down on “look at all the stars!” isn’t something the Oscars had quite done before. Something to mark as we go forward.
Following, we get a typically brief speech by Arthur Freed, and a thrilling cameo from accountant Bill Miller, then out comes Bob Hope, who immediately alludes to the big topic du jour: the 1967 AFTRA strike, a labor dispute surrounding better working conditions for broadcast journalist and announcer, one which had ended literally just the day before. Hope makes much out of the networks’ scrambling for any sort of on-air talent that could talk (“NBC traded the peacock for a parakeet”).
Besides his typical laments of “I’ll never get an Oscar” (which were once funny, then tedious, and have now swung all the way back around to being hilarious to me) and “movies are becoming increasingly mature and English”, this monologue is notable for being ever-so-slightly politically charged, at least by Bob Hope standards. Noting the fact that an actor has been governing California, and that politicians have been increasingly relying on being good in front of TV cameras, he throws little jabs at Governor Reagan, President Kennedy and VP Hubert Humphrey. None of them are particularly venomous, but considering he did this essentially not at all up to this point, it stood out to me.
40th ACADEMY AWARDS
Date: April 10, 1968
Host: Bob Hope
Broadcast: ABC
Location: Santa Monica Civic Center
Best Picture: IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT
By 1968, the Oscars had hit a groove. The broadcast formula was working, so there seemed no need to screw with it. You know it by now:
A quick red-carpet segment, highlighting the arrival of that year’s crop of stars, including Raquel Welch (no gold pyjamas this time), Audrey Hepburn, Paul Newman, and Sidney Poitier;
A jazzy, uptempo overture;
A speech by the Acadmey president, although I should note that this year, it’s fucking Gregory Peck. He’s a little slower and more methodical with his opening remarks than Arthur Freed ever was, but, considering the turmoil swirling in 1968, he meets the moment perfectly. Peck takes the time to reflect on the recent assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, as well as make some prescient comments about the Hollywood New Wave that was just on the horizon. It’s a great speech, easily one of the most compelling so far;
A cameo by accountant Bill Miller (referred to by Peck as “one of the few constants in Oscar’s ever-changing world”)
An opening act by Bob Hope, this time with possibly his best “I’ll never get an Oscar” line ever (“Oscar…or as it’s known at my house: Passover”). It also has his best line regarding the fake camaraderie amongst the nominees: “The crucial time in the life of an actor when small grievances, petty dislikes, and envy are thrust aside for the opportunity for outright hatred”. He also has a whole bit about which cars the celebrities rolled up to the Oscars in (he jokes that DOCTOR DOLITTLE star Rex Harrison arrived on a giraffe). Hope is on fire tonight, befitting the 40th anniversary of the Oscars.
Solid and consistent, the kind of thing that the Academy Awards of today are only now returning to. Well, good news, things get shaken up in 1969…
41st ACADEMY AWARDS
Date: April 14, 1969
Host: none
Broadcast: ABC
Location: Dorothy Chandler Pavilion
Best Picture: OLIVER!
The fifth decade of Oscar starts off with many changes. First off, we kick off with something resembling a sketch, as OLIVER stars Ron Moody and Jack Wild pop up outside the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in character as the Artful Dodger and Oliver. As they scheme how to get their hands on one of them golden statues*, we cut to a pre-taped speech by Academy president Gregory Peck. The theme of his speech is simple: as he descends down the stairs in the lobby of the pavilion, he’s here to introduce ten “friends of Oscar”. Yeah, instead of a host, this time, we just have ten familiar faces pop in throughout the night to present and do miscellany.
*They won’t need to worry; the Academy would give them five for free later that night.
The ten Friends of Oscar for 1969, then, are:
Ingrid Bergman
Jane Fonda
Frank Sinatra
Tony Curtis
Natalie Wood
Rosalind Russell
Diahann Carroll
Sidney Poitier
Walther Matthau
Burt Lancaster
Not a bad list! As a bonus, each one has a little line about the next as they get introduced. For instance, Jane Fonda introduces Frank Sinatra as “Nancy Sinatra’s dad” (he responds by calling her “Henry Fonda Jr.” . In the meantime, the opening ends with Frank singing the title tune from STAR!, then off we go! Hope will return in the broadcast to present an Honorary Award to Martha Raye, but that segment isn’t eligible for review. So instead, let’s move onto the…
42nd ACADEMY AWARDS
Date: April 7, 1970
Host: none
Broadcast: ABC
Location: Dorothy Chandler Pavilion
Best Picture: MIDNIGHT COWBOY
The festivities kick off with a black-and-white retrospective of stars arriving to Oscars past, before showing us this year’s crop arriving to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Jane Fonda, Vicente & Liza Minelli, Dyan Cannon and (of course) Raquel Welch are among the highlights.
We then cut right to Academy president Gregory Peck; and why not? When you have Peck on deck, there’s no reason to make him wait. He speaks to the Oscars’ growing international audience by giving a bit of an introduction to what the Academy Awards and how they’re decided. He then brings out my personal hero, accountant Bill Miller, to verify the process (he even gets a little exit applause).
Then comes the Friends of Oscar 1970! This time, they just get called out on stage one by one, no bits or anything. I find this so charmingly silly! They are, as follows:
Claudia Cardinale
Elliot Gould
Myrna Loy
Jon Voight
Barbara McNair
Fred Astaire
Elizabeth Taylor
Ali McGraw
Cliff Robertson
Katharine Ross
James Earl Jones
Candice Bergen
Raquel Welch
Clint Eastwood
Barbra Streisand
John Wayne
Interestingly, this show officially has no host. That said, John Wayne immediately introduces Hope (who is befixed with an eyepatch, in honor of TRUE GRIT) and he comes out and basically does the traditional host monologue. I don’t really know the difference between this and an official “hosted” show.
It is a bit of a novelty to see the Hope hosting period intersect with the rise of New Hollywood, two distinct eras of moviemaking that you don’t really associate with each other. To that end, I think the Hope monologues from here start to feel either a little more mean-spirited, or simply more pointed, depending on your perspective. It’s hard to imagine someone like Conan O’Brien saying a line phrase quite like “This will go down in history as the cinema season which proved that crime doesn’t pay, but there’s a fortune in adultery, incest, and homosexuality”. It’s subtle, and speaks more to how changing mores would start to make Hope look a tad antiquated than to any real malice on his part*. But it is clear from this Oscars opening that the industry was changing, not for the first or last time.
*And, to my knowledge, Hope was always apologetic when called out on using now-off-color language in his later years.
Still, he gets in one of my favorite lines of them all in this opening, speaking to the rise of X-rated films in the mainstream: “One theater manager told me he’d been popping corn for six months and still hasn’t plugged the machine in”. So, maybe he still had it after all. What do I know?
43rd ACADEMY AWARDS
Date: April 15, 1971
Host: none
Broadcast: NBC
Location: Dorothy Chandler Pavilion
Best Picture: PATTON
In living color on NBC!
Ryan O’Neal, George Segal, Ali McGraw and Robert Evans, Ginger Rogers and Jack Nicholson enter just in time for the overture, this time orchestrated by Quincy Jones. It’s a fun, uptempo affair, but you get distracted by the heavy neon on stage, illuminating the names of our best Best Picture nominees. We’re in the 70s, now, baby!
We also have a changing of the Academy president guard. This year, it’s Daniel Taradash. He’s fine, confident and informative, but it’s a tough draw to follow Gregory Peck in any public-speaking role. It doesn’t help that the speech is largely a stock affair, speaking to the importance of the Academy and the Oscars at large. There is an interesting side tour, though, letting us in on some behind-the-scenes footage that answers the question “how are they able to zoom in on the winners so quickly?” They hadn’t yet learned to just have five simultaneous shots ready to go, so instead the camera crew, director, and Quincy Jones had to just rehearse every possibility so they’d be prepared. Crazy display of craft.
Oh, and yes, it’s time for the 1971 Friends of Oscar!
Sally Kellerman
Jim Brown
Sarah Miles
Angie Dickinson
Burt Bacharach
Joan Blondell
John Marley
Genevieve Bujold
George Segal
Paula Prentiss
Richard Benjamin
Shirley Jones
Walter Matthau
Juliet Prowse
Glen Campbell
Merle Oberon
Gregory Peck
Jeanne Moreau
Ryan O’Neal
Eva Marie Saint
Steve McQueen
Goldie Hawn
Harry Belafonte
An extremely 1971 list, if you ask me, although not without its heavy hitters. They stick Belafonte with the “how the voting works” speech, which I think is probably a good idea. He ends the dry-as-hell spiel with a charming “get all that?”, which kicks off the envelope opening as well as anything else.
44th ACADEMY AWARDS
Date: April 10, 1972
Host: Helen Hayes, Alan King, Sammy Davis Jr., Jack Lemmon
Broadcast: NBC
Location: Dorothy Chandler Pavilion
Best Picture: THE FRENCH CONNECTION
“All these Friends of Oscar lists are great, Ryan, but where are all those crazy musical numbers old Oscar openings used to have?” you’re surely not asking.
Well, let me tell you: 1972 kicks off that era in earnest as, after the usual roundup of arriving stars, and a quick shout-out to sponsors like Shell, the show begins with Joel Grey singing a song called “Lights, Camera, Action!” In substance and sound, it sounds like the kind of cheesy, jaunty tune that someone writing a parody of an overly earnest Hollywood tribute might have come up with. As Grey moves across the stage, these little skits emerge that are meant to represent different eras of film: silents, the advent of sound, the Busby Berkeley musicals, Astaire-Rogers dance films, etc. All of these skits are performed really broadly, and would respectfully be called “cringe” by teenagers now. They’re probably right.
Here’s the thing: I kind of like it in its sincerity. Nowadays, Hollywood tributes itself with sweeping pretapes, with swelling orchestral music meant to highlight how important every single person who ever stepped on a set has Done Important Work. The goal now is to inspire, to elevate. In 1972, they honored themselves by doing a brightly colored revue number that paints in broad colors. Sure, all silents were dopey cowboys untying women from train tracks. Naturally, all musicals featured showgirls. We’re just having fun here, and I gotta love it.
Academy president Daniel Tarradash gives his speech, and Helen Hayes gets stuck with the “here’s how the voting works” dead weight and the energy all comes to a crashing halt. Oh, well. We’ll always have Joel Grey.
45th ACADEMY AWARDS
Date: March 27th, 1973
Host: Carol Burnett, Michael Caine, Charlton Heston, Rock Hudson
Broadcast: NBC
Location: Dorothy Chandler Pavilion
Best Picture: THE GODFATHER
If you haven’t noticed, the Oscars at this point had been doing “hosts by committee”, which to me has always been the same thing as “no host”. None of the listed hosts above appear in the opening. That honor goes to Angela Lansbury, who performs our opening number “Make a Little Magic”. This number works along the same lines as last year’s “Lights, Camera, Action!” Instead of going through the history of Hollywood, however, this one fetes the different departments and disciplines that create “the magic” of film. Overall, I liked it about the same; it’s maybe less aggressively 70s camp, and Lansbury remains one of the most effortlessly watchable performers in the history of the medium. But I think Joel Grey’s number was more “fun”. Let’s call it a draw.
Here comes president Tarradash to temper the mood once again, although this time he actually works in a well-received joke about the impending length of the ceremony to come. But, who cares? What follows is one of the most well-remembered Oscars moments of the decade: Clint Eastwood being hurried onto the stage to fill in for Charlton Heston and read the voting rules.
If you’ve never seen this clip, it’s worth pulling up: Eastwood, one of the coolest motherfuckers in all of film, is so clearly out of his element, and he knows it: “They pick the guy who hasn't said but three lines in 12 movies to substitute”. He’s stumbling, and he begs the cue card guy to hurry up: “this isn’t my bag”. They cut to Burt Reynolds, who is howling. When Heston (who had a flat tire) finally arrives mid-spiel, the relief Eastwood experiences is more cathartic an ending than any movie I’ve seen in the last twenty years.
46th ACADEMY AWARDS
Date: April 2, 1974
Host: John Huston, Burt Reynolds, David Niven, Diana Ross
Broadcast: NBC
Location: Dorothy Chandler Pavilion
Best Picture: THE STING
Walter Matthau, Groucho Marx, Jack Lemmon, Joel Grey, Peter Falk, Paul McCartney, William Friedkin, Diana Ross and (of course) Raquel Welch are among this year’s crowd to arrive. Then, we jump right into this year’s musical number, “Oscar”, performed by Liza Minelli. It won’t shock you that this year’s song is all about the golden man himself, Oscar. How everyone wants it, longs to have it.
This is probably my least favorite opening number so far, if only because it’s not really about the Oscar, so much as it is about Liza herself. If you don’t believe me, consider that a humongous section of this is a staged recreation of Liza sitting there waiting to hear the winners for the Best Actress of 1971 (where she lost) and 1973 (where she won). It’s filled with nervous patter, expressing all the anxieties that go through one’s mind as the envelope opens, which I imagine is supposed to be universal to this particular crowd (it gets a big reception). But, to me at home, it came off a little self-indulgent. Your mileage may vary.
Academy President Walter Mirisch does the standard “the Academy doesn’t just give out awards, it actually does a lot of good” spiel. Who cares? After him, it’s Burt Reynolds time, Yes, Mr. Reynolds gets the privilege of “pole position” amongst this year’s crop of celebrity hosts, getting to do the opening monologue. Two things strike me: one, hearing 70’s Burt talk makes you realize how weirdly accurate Norm Macdonald’s broad impression really was.
Two: Burt’s fucking great. It’s a very specific act: it’s a monologue brimming with comedic arrogance and juvenile confidence (at one point, he blows a raspberry to all the jealous, catty folk talking mad about the attendees at various cocktail parties), but it’s also got more than a serving of self-mockery, poking fun at his Hollywood Squares appearances and his lack of any nominations. I can see some people finding this fake machismo tedious, but I loved it. I genuinely think, had Reynolds not already been a major star, he could have just been the Oscars host for a while.
We end the opening proceedings with an extended montage of classic “Thank You” speeches from Oscars past, which I found to be a blast. One of the downsides of this specific project is that any major moments that happen outside the confines of the opening is ineligible for review. But, here, we can talk about the “hello, gorgeous” moment, or Sammy Davis Jr. accidentally being given the wrong envelope to read (his retort: “wait until the NAACP hears about this!”) All this while the Leslie Bricusse tune “Thank You Very Much” blares. It’s fun!
(Oh, and buried in the middle of all this is the “voting procedure” speech, this time provided to us by Timothy Bottoms. Not who I would have picked; they should have just let Burt burn through that as well.)
47th ACADEMY AWARDS
Date: April 8, 1975
Host: Bob Hope, Shirley MacLaine, Frank Sinatra
Broadcast: NBC
Location: Dorothy Chandler Pavilion
Best Picture: THE GODFATHER PART II
Fred Astaire, Diane Ladd, Gena Rowlands, John Wayne, Jack Nicholson, and Jack Lemmon are all amongst this year’s highlighted arrivals. Then, we’re implored to flash back to 1928, the dawn of the Academy’s creation. As the impetus behind the Oscars is explained, along with the who, what, where, whys, we transition into a montage of each Best Picture winner and associated poster. This is a lot of fun, but feels like something they should have held off from for a couple more years to do for the 50th anniversary. Why now?
Well, Academy president Walter Mirisch comes out, and it immediately becomes clear why. For whatever reason, Mirisch sounds really defensive about the Oscars (it might have something to do with Dustin Hoffman’s comments calling the awards “ugly” and “grotesque”, joining George C. Scott in outright boycotting the ceremony), stating that they don’t already get it right, and that audiences don’t always agree with their choices. He basically outright states, though, that the difference is when audiences disagree, they just stop showing up, while when the Academy disagrees, they dig deep and do what they can to get better. This is all probably true, but it feels weird to hear it as the centerpiece of the president’s opening remarks.
Then comes Bob Hope, who gets the opening monologue pole position, but not before a long montage of previous Bob Hope introductions. Again, it’s really fun, but it does feel like the ceremony is overcompensating for something, trying to remind us of better times before getting back to basics. Hope’s monologue is as good as always, with a few more edgy lines that brought down the house in real time, but may raise some eyebrows now (in regards to CHINATOWN’s 11 nominations: “6 from Column A, and 5 from Column B.”). He also gets in a great line lamenting how the campfire scene in BLAZING SADDLES got snubbed for an award for Best Sound. Strangely, the monologue has a second screen frequently overlaid on it, with reaction shots from the crowd. Again, why? To show that everyone is laughing? I can hear! The opening feels like it’s swinging with its back to the wall, and outside of the fact that New Hollywood was turning opinions on the ceremony, there’s no clear reason why. Odd opening all in all.
48th ACADEMY AWARDS
Date: March 29, 1976
Host: Goldie Hawn, Gene Kelly, Walter Matthau, George Segal, Robert Shaw
Broadcast: ABC
Location: Dorothy Chandler Pavilion
Best Picture: ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST
Charles Bronson, Elizabeth Taylor, Art Carney, Carol Kane, Jack Nicholson, Audrey Hepburn and O.J. Simpson are among the stars pouring into the venue. Then, in the blink of an eye, we jump to 72-year old Ray Bolger singing “Hollywood Honors Its Own”, a highly literal song: the opening lines contain, in part, “The 48th Annual Academy Awards/tonight on the 29th of March/At the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion/on the music center/in downtown Los Angeles/minutes away from Hollywood U.S.A.”. No lies detected!
This number is delightful, taking place outside the venue, which allows a lot of clever “arrival” jokes tied to key movies in Hollywood history, including a full-on Roman chariot, as well as Dorothy, the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion (if only the Scarecrow had been there….alas). Oh, yes, and I guess it helps that early-70s Bolger still had it in spades, seeming decades younger as he leads the team of dancers from the streets of Hollywood into the main theatre, where he wraps the whole thing up with some soft-shoe. The whole epic number is seven minutes, and he’s barely breaking a sweat. Of all the opening numbers in this section of the project, this is easily my favorite.
Spirits are high. Even Academy president Walter Mirisch’s speech is a little livelier than usual. He ties his opening remarks to the history of America itself, noting that year’s bicentennial by stating that films have always depicted America ‘as it really is, and as it never was”, which I think is a very thoughtful quote. Then it’s time for some housekeeping by Walter Matthau, whose opening joke (he was supposed to do the opening number, but panicked, and the young upstart Bolger took his place) is great. Matthau takes the thankless role of explaining the voting rules with grace and humility (saying he’ll do it in his “customary casual charm”). It’s all still dry as toast, but acknowledging it and doing it with humor feels like the way to go. With Matthau, they seemed to have cracked the “Required by the FCC” code.
49th ACADEMY AWARDS
Date: March 28, 1977
Host: Warren Beatty, Ellen Burstyn, Jane Fonda, Richard Pryor
Broadcast: ABC
Location: Dorothy Chandler Pavilion
Best Picture: ROCKY
This year’s musical number is brought to us by Ann-Margret, who brings us “Magic Circle (It All Started in Someone’s Head)”. As far as these things go, it’s okay, and her star power adds a ton (it might have been unbearable without her), but it’s a little too self-serious, a little vague, and maybe just a touch too “interpretive dance”-esque for me. It’s not my cup of tea.
New Academy president Walter Koch takes it from there, noting this as the beginning of a year-long celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Academy. Then he kicks it over to Richard Pryor, who brings the fucking house down in the way that only he can. “I’m here to explain why black people will never be nominated for anything”, he opens, in case you’re under the impression #OscarsSoWhite is a new woke phenomenon or something. He then announces that all black people are quitting the industry, “then you see who’ll sing and dance for you; you’ll have to listen to Lawrence Welk forever”. It’s short, but it’s brilliant, and I think the only reason your conservative uncle doesn’t have a problem with it is because it happened in the past, and the past is less scary than the present and future.
Pryor kicks it to Chevy Chase, who has “voting process” duties this year. Look, Chevy is full Chevy-ing on this one, which means some people are going to find it interminable and some will find it captivating. Because it’s 1977, he opens with a pratfall, which brings the house down. He then leans heavily into his weird shticks, including launching into Spanish, doing strange asides, and making little asshole remarks, which makes the whole thing feel like it’s not so much “off the rails” so much as “never on”.
Look, here’s the thing about Chevy Chase: when he’s 100% on his game, he’s one of the four or five funniest people on the planet to me. The VACATION series, the one season of SNL he managed to get through, and the first couple years of Community all present him at his absolute peak, in my opinion. The problem is that he’s so rarely 100% on his game. Most of the time…well, he makes me really nervous, because I just don’t know what he’s going to do. This falls squarely in that camp. It’s just a little too unhinged for me to be comfortable, especially compared to Pryor’s precise routine. Just my two cents.
(In his defense, he does get out a good line when a giant plaster hand of King Kong handing him an envelope: “Ernest Borgnine, everybody!”)
50th ACADEMY AWARDS
Date: April 3, 1978
Host: Bob Hope
Broadcast: ABC
Location: Dorothy Chandler Pavilion
Best Picture: ANNIE HALL
We end this year’s review with the conclusion of the 50th anniversary celebration, and it’s an all-out, star-studded affair.
It kicks off, as all things ought, with Debbie Reynolds, who sings “Look How Far We’ve Come”, another number looking back through the history of Hollywood. Yes, it’s the kind of number the Oscars had done several times already in the 70s, but consider that they hadn’t yet done it with Debbie Reynolds, who is rivaled only by Ray Bolger in terms of just old-school watchability. As a result, it’s one of the best numbers yet.
Even more impressive is the onslaught of parading talent we get towards the numbers’ conclusion. Befitting the 50th anniversary, the broadcast pulled as many stars of past and present as they could to walk across that damn stage. I couldn’t even begin to list them all (the camera crew can barely display all the chyrons in time); instead, some highlights:
George Chakiris, Rita Moreno, Cliff Robertson, Marvin Hamlisch, Eva Marie Saint, Edith Head, George Kennedy, John Avlidsen, George Cukor, Louise Fletcher, Frank Capra, Joel Grey, Cloris Leachman…it just goes on like this.
Academy president Howard Koch saunters out, and even he seems a little overwhelmed, something he admits to right at the top. He defers his opening remarks to two fitting legends: Bette Davis and Gregory Peck. You’ll never believe it, but they also have to push through the “voting rules” spiel. At least they’re engaging.
Then, after Koch brings out the accounting team at PricewaterhouseCoopers, the conductor, and the director…by god, that’s Bob Hope’s music! Yes, as “Thanks For the Memory” blares, Hope comes out to give his 22nd and final monologue as Oscars host. Although he makes some topical quips as always (“Welcome to the real Star Wars”, a comparison between Ferd and Ginger doing the Continental and Marlon Brando doing the tango), he mostly sticks to the beautiful basics: he’ll never win an Oscar; the losers will pretend to be happy for the winners; look at all the minks in the crowd! What’s incredible is that, for what constitutes a 30-year old act, it still basically works. There are a couple of stone faces being cut to, but the crowd mostly loves it.
It’s kind of the perfect way for this era of the Oscars opening to conclude; playing the hits to a happy crowd. Hope would never host again, and I suspect the Academy knew some type of change was on the way. I’m just not sure they were aware of precisely how much they’d have to go through for the next quarter of a century. Because, yes, they would eventually land on a pretty solid rotation eventually.
But they’d have to get through the eighties to get there first.
But that’s a story for next year.