The Talkies / The Oscars

...If this process of decline is permitted to go much further the results could easily move from the realm of the sad to the comic...

...There are innumerable scenes vhere a primitive box will blare in the )ackground, and people will off-handedly ;aze at it horror or bemusement...

...As 7ith so many things redolent of Holly~ood, and of annual awards in general, it vas to grow into something quite different rom what its originators must have coneived...

...By examining the Constitution and the First Amendment, and by recalling what Madison and Jefferson did with public education in Virginia, we can see that the Founders intended no such absolute separation...

...shameless the trade of public relations can be at times...

...The culminating dis...

...one with less tenuous connections to Hollywood could have been found...

...The saga of the production of Rocky is what was patted on the back, and Hollywood, a bastion of free enterprise if ever there was, could not but acknowledge that in show business nothing succeeds like success, and Rocky was, if nothing else, a triumph of all that "Hollywood" has come to represent: gimmickry, publicity, victoryagainst-the-odds, commercial expertise, profundity via ignoramuses...

...He fails to examine what the Framers understood by the words "establishment" and "religion...

...Whatever the defects of his lucid essay, it has the supreme virtue of insisting that only the original meaning of the two amendments is authoritative, and that the Court's task is not to balance competing interests for and against an accommodation between church and state but to discover and apply this meaning...

...And he concludes in favor of Justice Black's mistaken statement of principles in Everson calling for a "wall of separation between church and state...

...Peter Finch was congratulated posthumously for what must be considered a second-rate part in an otherwise distinguisbed career...

...But that would be too much to hope for, particularly when I am mindful of two of the presenters of awards...

...This year, for the first time, that awknard symbiosis has received an official mprimatur...

...Chapman's essay contains some errors that are unfortunately common in discussions of church and state...

...security and unity to a free, diverse, and changing people...

...How many standing ovations can one woman endure in a lifetime...

...We are not told that most of them were, in fact, rationalists of the Enlightenment, nurtured on the writings of John Locke and Montesquieu, and hence not only suspicious of revealed religion as such but bent on freeing political life from the hostilities, follies, and degradation associated with it...

...Sylvester Stallone, in accepting the Oscar, appeared onstage without a tie, his hairy chest and indecipherable medallion becoming a kind of axis around which the evening's events revolved...

...Or something to that effect --the cycle of irony and paradox is complicated, but there it is, and there we were, and there they were, gloriously ignoring the lessons pounded home by Paddy Chayefsky's Oscar-winning screenplay...

...He seems to realize, as few do today, that a fixed constitution forms the backbone of the American Republic, providing, through its constancy as the supreme law of the land, a sense of David Lowenthal is professor of political science at Boston College...

...Yet the same "colonial mind" that favored widespread toleration admittedly favored state assistance to religion and even limiting the scope of toleration itself...

...The contented galleries confirmed all the hackneyed formulae of boxing films...

...i6QO000~iQ~DQD00OOQ~00OQ~00tQQ~9DI0~009~000i0mB0D00iQoO~BD0DD0tBD000D0QDD0DDD0Q0BQIQQ800IgQDmii0DD9IQjD00OoDD~D~0QQoBDD00Iu0UDQ~m~U900t00 000Q0DDD Speeial Correspondenee / DavidLowenthal Couuectiug Religiou aud Govemmeut Coustitutioually A ease for incomplete separation, with a response from Stephen Chapman...

...grace was the 1971 winner, something called "Shaft," from a black exploitation movie of the same name...

...In the early days ,f commercial television movies treated he new medium with ill-disguised conerupt...

...In its original form it was a discordant series of electronic burps and screeches, punctuated by spoken street-wise argot and containing, literally, no discernible melody...

...Stephen J . Chapman argued that the First and Fourteenth Amendments require a complete separation of church and state at all levels of government...

...I personally don't believe so, and suspect that Peter Finch would have agreed...

...Do a few parts in poorly received comedies qualify one to cavort about as a host to fdmdom ? Surely some...

...Another tuneless, banal series of bars like "Evergreen" serves only to emphasize the sad fact that movies are no longer musical, and that k is practically felonious to give the same award to Paul Williams as to any of the songwriters mentioned above...

...elevision, the despised competitor, has )ecome the unwitting savior of the movie ndustry, and more people will watch the :elevised Oscar awards than saw the fdms n a theatre...

...In avoiding the artificial "glitter" of previous occasions, the director of this year's performance replaced it, in suitable style, with those elements of '70s glitter that, one can only hope, will be dismissed with a sneer in some comfortable future...

...After advertising minks and sharing a stage with Richard Pryor, what triumphs remain for this Grand Old Woman who, as she has said, has no regrets...

...There the separation of church and state was first set forth as a leading principle of political life, along 18 The Alternative: An American Spectator May 1977...

...Here we were watching tele...

...It has also become, with unconscious rony, a television event...

...vision to see tributes to a movie that purported to chastise us for falling victim to the reasons we were watching television in the first place...

...Chapman does not encourage judicial activism...

...Who ever supposed that Jane Fonda's schoolmarm sermonizing and Warren Beatty's middleaged eroticism were in any sense an improvement over Bob Hope...

...I was reminded, in a curious sort of way, of our President, whose ostentatious casualness (inaugural business suit, cardigan-sweaterno-jacke0 makes the same sort of calculated appeal...

...Jefferson's study of Locke is demonstrated by his notes of 1776 closely paraphrasing the argument of Locke's revolutionary Letter on Toleration...

...So, appropriately, this year's winner was a song entitled "Evergreen" from the recent reincarnation of A Star Is Born, lyrics by Barbra Streisand (!), music by someone called Paul Williams...

...He does not claim for the Supreme Court the role of supreme policymaker, or look to it for an expansion of liberty and equality beyond that intended by the Founders and the Framers of amendments...

...It is significant that Mr...

...the real winner of the sweep;takes was Network, the sort of movie 1bout television that would probably have )een made about movies--and in some instances was--a generation ago...

...Whether it succeeded, of course, is a point of view, but in Hollywood's frame of reference it certairfly did, and was duly noted...

...Sad to say, he would never have won the Oscar had he not had the misfortune to die between the film's release and the naming of the winners...

...I like to think that she kicked herself backstage for having been bested in repartee by Jason Robards, who won an Oscar for his portrayal of the executive editor of the ~Vashington Post in All the President's Men...

...A few years ago there was a television production of all the Oscar-winning songs, performed by a spirited choral troupe, who became notably dispirited as the evening went on, so dramatic has been the decline in the quality of popular music and lyrics...

...What was remarkable about Rocky was that it was not remarkable, that it was clumsy and warmedover, and managed to Crawl under all the technical and fmancial complexities of modern film-making...

...Chapman attributes the "major impetus for toleration" to the Great Awakening of the eighteenth century--a wave of religious revivalism in the I740s spawning many new sects and hence a "general acceptance of toleration...

...I suspect it is a lot easier to button the collar and tie a tie than to open the shirt just so and keep the requisite inches of flesh in view...

...When the Academy Awards were begun, nearly half a century ago, there were only three categories for recognition: best actor, best actress, and best picture of the year...

...He argues for an illogical incorporation of the First Amendment into the Fourteenth's guarantee of"liberty...

...Is it necessary to scientifically compare "Evergreen" with the winning entries of Cole Porter, the Gershwin brothers, Harry Warren, or Harold Arlen...

...It has become, intead, a kind of industrial luncheon, or reirement party...

...The golden days of the '30s melted slowly but inexorThe Alternative: An American Spectator May 1977 17 ably into the '40s, '50s, and '60s, and there was not a single winner of the past decade or two that could not be described as anything but appalling...

...Norman Mailer, America's next nominee for the Nobel Prize for literature, handed the screenplay Oscar over after some introductory remarks about pederasty...

...What is particularly discouraging is that "Evergreen" won practically by default, there being such a dearth of suitable entries...

...After a career of justified neglect as a playwright, Miss Hellman has gained solace in her old age by the constant and gratifying sight of people standing up and applauding when she enters a room...

...The Oscars #hen Janet Craynor was handed a gold tatuette in 1927 to commemorate her per3rmance in Seventh Heaven, it is doubtful hat she, or the recently-founded Academy f Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, had ny idea of what was to become of the ward, the institution that bestowed it, or he town where the event took place...

...What is the test of a good song...

...And Lillian Hellman--well, what more is there to say...

...And who, or what, is Richard Pryor, another master of ceremonies...

...an occasion for standing ,vations for sentimental favorites, recogniion of financial success, or, in many cases n recent years, handing gold watches to ,eople who might not be in any sort of conlition (physical or professional) to accept he award the following season...

...I will not bother to recite a list of fdms that came out in the same year in an effort to emphasize the silliness of the choice...

...No more...

...It was generally remarked that it was a shame he was not alive to receive the award himself, when in fact, of course, had he had the luck to be alive he would not have received it in the first place...

...He accepts the widespread but questionable view that the First Amendment represented a victory for Madisonian principles...

...It seemed to all concerned that Stallone's appearance was a natural part of his rough non-conformity...

...He wished to thank, more than anyone else, Ben Bradlee himself, "for being alive"--making Robards surely the only person extant to think such a thing, much less say it...

...The first effort completely to separate church and state came, it seems, from Madison and Jefferson in Virginia, but we learn nothing to dispel the possible inference that somehow these men and their eminent allies were also part of the Great Awakening and brought its tolerant tendencies to their completion...

...Was the Oscar worth dying for...

...why separate awards for a male performer and a female performer...

...In this year's February issue, Mr...

...The trio had a lean, healthy appearance in contrast to the remarkable proliferation of slots over the years, leading in the present day to such absurdities as best live short and best adaptation score...

...The Academy Awards ceremony no 3nger has anything to do (if it ever did) vith its ostensible purpose of signifying he most distinguished performances of he past year in movies...

...This dates back to the days of movie musicals, when films were a noteworthy vehicle for new songs, and when songs were more naturally a part of film and stage entertainment...

...How Philip Terzian is assistant editor of The New Republic...

...It was alad remains a musical impossibility to sit at the piano and accompany oneself to "Shaft...

...Rocky, alas inevitably, was named the best picture of the year...

...I am surprised that feminists have not seized in righteous indignation on the proposition that actors must perforce be divided by sex...

...Nevertheless, Mr...

...Before that reform is legislated, however, my own candidate for oblivion is the Oscar for best original song...

...Instead, it might be worth remarking that what made Rocky the picture of the year had nothing whatever to do with its content, but had everything to do with it as a piece of marketable celluloid...

...Which, in fact, is where the awards ceremony resides today...