Show Business: History Crunches Popcorn

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This year, says Producer Lester Persky (Taxi Driver), "they voted for everything they thought was noble. Gandhi was a good, safe vote for people who wanted to look above their bellybuttons." Wrote Columnist Joe Morgenstern in the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner: "Gandhi was everything the voting members of the academy would like to be: moral, tan and thin."

Academy Awards reflect the concerns of the time as well as the merits of the films themselves; a winner one year might be rejected the next, when the public's mood has shifted to a different topic. This year's dominant concern surely is fear of war, and Gandhi has had a ready and receptive audience. "People are preoccupied with destruction and nuclear war, and this story of nonviolence is irresistible," says Pollack. "When the academy voted, it was saying, This is the most important subject in the world, and this picture must be rewarded.' "

That, at least, was the opinion of the winners themselves, who in speeches that occasionally verged on the sanctimonious, continually invoked the magic name of Gandhi. "I believe he had something to say to all of us everywhere in the world," said Attenborough, as he accepted the award for Best Picture. "In all truth, it is not me . . . that you truly honor. You honor Mahatma Gandhi and his plea to all of us to live in peace." In India, where Gandhi is a smash, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi (no kin) used almost the same phrases, adding that Gandhi's ideals are "very relevant in a world of increasing violence."

Peace and good will on earth are clearly what most of the voters believed in as well. E.T. is peaceful too, but he is sitting there in his galaxy 3 million light years away. He will have to be satisfied with those Reese's Pieces that he used to munch and, if he wants it, a pot of gold awaiting him here below. —By Gerald Clarke. Reported by Joseph J. Kane/Los Angeles and Janice C. Simpson/New York