Screen
Westerbeck, Colin L. Jr.
Screen STAR WARTS 'AND THE WINNER IS . . . LOUIS B. Mayer invented the Oscars in 1927 in an effort to create an elite for the movie industry. This attempt to dignify Hollywood, which had a lot of...
...That's where the real damage to the movies is done...
...I always have a knot in my stomach as I wait for its missed cues, its bungled attempts at wit, its failure to entertain...
...Perhaps it's right that the one performer who survives the annual fiasco is the only one whose career is in television and not in motion pictures at all...
...If so, all great movie careers end not with a bang but a whimper...
...Every year the Academy Awards program's own numbers struggle to top that old standard...
...The program is truly embarrassing to watch...
...Television himself, Johnny Carson...
...Carson at least helps relieve my anxiety because he brings it out in the open...
...Mary Tyler Moore's was so elaborate that she should have had two escorts-one to escort her and another to escort her left sleeve...
...And now, from the people who brought you 1941, The Blues Brothers, and Heaven's Gate, . . ." here was another overproduced turkey...
...It's as if the sole criterion for elegance in a gown were that it be impossible to wear...
...Even in Singin' in the Rain, such a number is only attempted once, as a finale...
...On the nationally televised Awards ceremony each year, Hollywood makes such a pathetic spectacle of itself that, far from encouraging the public to go to movies, the program is keeping people away...
...The film is one of hundreds nominated over the years that tell us less about their purported subjects than about the mores of the Academy's members...
...Maybe it was just decrepitude and old age, but even Henry Fonda, whose Lifetime-Achievement Award was the program's only affecting moment, seemed rather lackluster...
...It has been television's show since the beginning-TV's annual put-down of the whole idea of movies and movie stars...
...All the charm of Fame, for instance, lies in the improvised and spontaneous feeling of its numbers...
...When he warns us not to "drive a car or operate heavy machinery" after listening to a speech by Jack Valenti, or when he points out ominously that after forty minutes only one of the program's twenty awards has been given, he at least turns the occasion to his advantage...
...It's not only the ineptness of the stars that makes the program seem pathetic...
...Staring at this trophy in recognition of a half-century career, he reflected wearily, "I guess this is the climax...
...By trying to match it four or five times in the course of one show, the Awards program makes itself ridiculous...
...It showed up all the others for what they were: vulgar...
...This attempt to dignify Hollywood, which had a lot of social insecurities, was much appreciated by local residents...
...Every year the same old clips of Great Moments in Movie History are shown, and among them is the' 'Gotta Dance'' number from Singin' in the Rain...
...As he has now come to have the opposite effect, however, it is time to cut out the annual nonsense and retire Oscar to history...
...But these were the very qualities sacrificed by the program's rendition of "Out Here on My Own," where Fame's black teenage star wore a slinky sequined gown and was delivered to a chorus of fans by a stage-set limousine...
...It is Oscar, rather than the Elephant Man, who is the Victorian grotesque here...
...I'll spare you a long litany of the evils of the nominations- the good films that have been overlooked, the mediocre ones that are being honored, etc...
...Indeed, none can even do two minutes of repartee from cue cards without flubbing half the lines...
...Second, the program demonstrates that no movie star has any personality...
...His monologue fell flat...
...Standing at a podium on a vast, empty stage before a .convention-hall audience, he too becomes stiff and graceless...
...Lily Tomlin' s black satin slacks and red blouse with a simple Chinese collar were the only outfit with real class...
...That has been Oscar's goal in life, his raison d'etre, ever since: to help buck up the flagging fortunes of movies...
...No one is exempt from the exercise in self-humiliation, including Mr...
...colin l. westerbeck, jr.beck, jr...
...Worse still, it ignores the individual requirements of the nominated songs that are being performed...
...Even the clothes were over-produced...
...Yet the Oscar didn't really come into its own until the mid-1930s, when the Depression finally hit the movie business and Oscar turned out to be a great promotional device with which to compensate for the decline...
...But he's the only one who can...
...First, the program demonstrates that no movie star can act...
...But let's get right to the Awards program itself...
...It's a movie in which exuberance makes up for the stars' lack of experience...
...We were constantly reminded that this was the Fifty-Third Annual Academy Awards, but no one mentioned that the program has also been on television for almost thirty years...
...The production numbers interspersed throughout the proceedings help too...
...In fact, he only managed to make himself amusing later, when his jibes at the program became more specific and vicious...
...Bad material is Carson's speciality, but he can only get laughs out of it in the intimate format of his own show, where he has a small, live audience and one person, Ed McMahon, to play to...
...Suffice it to say that eight nominations for a nonentity like The Elephant Man was absurd...
Vol. 108 • May 1981 • No. 9
