The Morning After The Academy Awards

   

It is the evening of April 10th, 1968.

The 40th Academy Awards is honoring the best that cinema has to offer
 in 1967.

The Awards have been slightly delayed because of the horrific assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. earlier that month.

 Trivia:  Prior to the two-day postponement, four African-American stars who were scheduled to take part in the ceremony: Sidney Poitier, Sammy Davis Jr., Louis Armstrong and Diahann Carroll, announced they were withdrawing in mourning for Dr. King. Prior to the postponement, Jack Lemmon was announced as a replacement for Poitier, and Shirley Jones for Davis, but once the event was delayed, the original quartet returned.

Sammy Davis Jr. is asked to sing the nominated song from Dr. Doolittle: Talk To The Animals
The fashion forward entertainer announces he will be wearing a Nehru suit instead of the traditional tuxedo. This causes quite the commotion within the Academy.

Nominees for Best Film:

1) Bonnie and Clyde
2) Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?
3) In The Heat of The Night
4) The Graduate
5) Dr. Doolittle

THE winner was "In The Heat Of The Night."

1968 WAS ONE OF THE MOST VIOLENT AND CONTROVERSIAL YEARS IN AMERICAN HISTORY.

The following is an excerpt  from Bosley Crowther's review of "In The Heat Of The Night" in "The New York Times"


The hot surge of racial hate and prejudice that is so evident and critical now in so many places in this country, not alone in the traditional area of the Deep South, is fictionally isolated in an ugly little Mississippi town in the new film, In the Heat of the Night, which opened at the Capitol and the 86th Street East yesterday.

Sounds exactly like 2017.

• The following are the nominees in the acting categories.

  Warren Beatty – Bonnie and Clyde as Clyde Barrow Dustin Hoffman – The Graduate as Benjamin Braddock Paul Newman – Cool Hand Luke as Lucas "Cool Hand Luke" Jackson Spencer Tracy – Guess Who's Coming to Dinner as Matt Drayton	Katharine Hepburn – Guess Who's Coming to Dinner as Christina Drayton Anne Bancroft – The Graduate as Mrs. Robinson Faye Dunaway – Bonnie and Clyde as Bonnie Parker Edith Evans – The Whisperers as Mrs. Ross Audrey Hepburn – Wait Until Dark as Susy Hendrix
  Best Supporting Actor	Best Supporting Actress
  George Kennedy – Cool Hand Luke as Dragline John Cassavetes – The Dirty Dozen as V.R. Franko Gene Hackman – Bonnie and Clyde as Buck Barrow Cecil Kellaway – Guess Who's Coming to Dinner as Monsignor Ryan Michael J. Pollard – Bonnie and Clyde as C.W. Moss	Estelle Parsons – Bonnie and Clyde as Blanche Barrow Carol Channing – Thoroughly Modern Millie as Muzzy Mildred Natwick – Barefoot in the Park as Ethel Banks Beah Richards – Guess Who's Coming to Dinner as Mrs. Mary Prentice Katharine Ross – The Graduate as Elaine Robinson

  There are no lightweights in any of these categories.
• If you were to study their mostly long and varied careers individually, you would simply be blown away by their impact on their peers, the craft of acting, and our culture.

Rod Steiger took home the award for Best Actor in "The Heat Of The Night."

Katharine Hepburn won for her performance in "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner", she did not attend the awards that evening. The following year, Ms. Hepburn will take the Oscar home again for her performance in "The Lion In Winter". She will share the award with newcomer, Barbra Streisand for her performance in Funny Girl.

Under no circumstances, will Miss Hepburn be lured by Revlon to become a pimp for their lipstick or nail varnish.

She will continue to act and will win another Oscar for "On Golden Pond."

Estelle Parsons wins in the supporting category. No one remembers what she wore that evening and to the best of my knowledge she and Karl Lagerfeld never had any kind of tiff over any kind of schmatta he might have conjured up in his head or sewing machine.

Which brings us to last evening.

                                                   

Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty unite after fifty years.

Red carpet talk will be all about how old Dunaway looks and about her plastic surgeries and not about her Oscar winning performance in "Network", a film that is more relevant NOW than it was when it was released in the seventies.

Beatty is Hollywood Royalty.

His film career started in 1961 playing Bud in Elia Kazan's, "Splendor in the Grass."

He will be eighty years old at the end of this month and is still making films.

His credits are formidable not only as an actor, but a director and producer.

How is it that twice in one year the most important moment of the evening has been FUCKED up by a wrong envelope?

First at the "Miss Universe" awards where Steve Harvey announced the wrong winner and last night where the wrong film was announced.

As I write this, Mr. Beatty and Ms. Dunaway are asking who is responsible for this debacle?

Was it a mere publicity stunt?

Is Putin behind this egregious error?

I mean giving the last envelope of the evening out isn't exactly neurosurgery.

You know what I think?

I think people who really love the art of film conspired to do this because they want the work to count.

They want to make great, important films again.

They know Emma Stone's freckles have  more lasting power than her film career.

And they know "La La Land" is not "West Side Story" so what did they do?

They made sure Oscar Night 2017 will go down in history as the night that an envelope was the biggest star of the evening.