Cinema: The Oscars

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For the second year in a row, Hollywood had to let television take over the biggest event of the movie year—the Academy Awards. Dressed in their best, the cream of Hollywood glided up to the Pantages Theater in their Cadillacs and filed into their $12 seats, all the while meekly conscious of the ubiquitous eyes of the TV cameras and the 40 million or so home viewers. The big show itself was suitably glamorous, much like a 1930-style movie revue, and in some respects, all too typical of television.

The commercials for Oldsmobile, which paid $275,000 to sponsor the program, were as bad as TV's worst: guided by Cinemactor Paul Douglas, who used to be a radio announcer, the plugs for the sponsor were overdone and oversold. Complained Daily Variety next day: "The industry . . . found itself demeaned by an overanxious huckster . . . The real blind fault lies with the film biz, which lets an outsider take over the Academy Awards on the world's best-selling medium. Oscar night should find pictures being sold—not cars oversold ... If the film biz should continue its stupid failure to sponsor its own event, then the Academy . . . must take steps to hold sponsors in line."

Television's real contribution showed up in some tricky camera switches from Hollywood to New York, where expectant nominees were gathered, and in the use of split-screen images and intercutting of film clips. Between the commercials and some movie-style musical productions, the announcements of Oscar awards brought few surprises:

¶ From Here to Eternity, voted best picture, picked up seven other Oscars as well: best supporting actor, Frank Sinatra; best supporting actress, Donna Reed; best director, Fred Zinnemann; best black & white cinematography, Burnett Guffy; best screenplay, Daniel Taradash; best film editing, William Lyon; best sound recording, John P. Livadary.

¶ Best actor: William Holden, for his portrayal of the heel turned hero in Stalag 17. Holden's versatile performances in two other good pictures, The Moon Is Blue and Escape from Fort Bravo, probably contributed.

¶ Best actress: Audrey Hepburn, for her wistful princess in Roman Holiday.

¶ Cinemaker Walt Disney, already the winner of 18 Oscars, won four more for his documentaries Bear Country, The Alaskan Eskimo, The Living Desert, and the cartoon Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom.

¶ The Irving Thalberg Award ("achievement in the production field") went to Producer-Director George Stevens (A Place in the Sun, Shane).

¶ To 2Oth Century-Fox went two Oscars for CinemaScope, one simply "honorary," the other in recognition of Fox's technical development of the process.