10/20/22
Newletter133
The Crack of Dawn
Although I don’t care about the Oscars at all anymore, they used to be the highlight of my year. The Oscar telecast was my New Years. Throughout the 1960s, and into the early ‘70s, the host was always Bob Hope, who had been hosting since 1938 and always did a good job. Then Johnny Carson took over for the next decade, and he was great. But then they went to multiple hosts and the show never functioned again. Anyway, I loved any screw up at the ceremony. The first big faux pas came in 1933. Previous to Bob Hope, Will Rogers hosted a number of times. When he announced the Best Director award, he said, “Frank, come on up and get it.” Well, there were two directors nominated named Frank – Frank Capra and Frank Borzage – and both of them came up on stage. Will Rogers handed the Oscar to Frank Borzage for Cavalcade, and Frank Capra had to slink off the stage. As fate would have it, the next year, 1934, Frank Capra’s film, It Happed One Night (1934), swept the awards and Capra got the first of his three Best Director Oscars. The film also won Best Actor for Clark Gable and Best Actress for Claudette Colbert. It took 41 years until another film won Best Picture, Actor and Actress, and that was One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in 1975. In 1942 Greer Garson won Best Actress for Mrs. Miniver and gave a twenty-minute thank you speech – including her 5th grade teacher – and that’s when a time limit was imposed. In 1970 80-year-old Helen Hayes won Best Supporting Actress for Airport. As she made her way on stage she fell flat on her face. She got up with great dignity, but from then on the Oscars have had young, attractive escorts to make sure the winner makes it on and off the stage. And the greatest screw up just happened in 2016. The elderly Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway gave the Best Picture Oscar. You could plainly see on Warren’s face that he knew he had the wrong card, so he manfully handed it to Faye so she could mistakenly announce the wrong winner. I found the ensuing mayhem a complete joy.
In 1974 I was attending Oakland Community College (“Harvard of the highway,” as it was called). In speech class my speech just happened to fall on the day of the Oscars. I tossed out my prepared speech and instead gave my Oscar predictions. The teacher said, “Your grade will be based on how many you get right.” Well, I got them all wrong. I was certain that Chinatown was going to sweep, and in fact The Godfather Part II swept. True to her word, the teacher gave me a D.
I was the film critic on the school newspaper at OCC. I gave Bob Fosse’s Lenny (1974) a terrible review. I thought it failed on every possible level. As I was walking up the hallway a woman stepped into my path, pointed directly into my face and said, “Are you the Josh Becker who gave Lenny an awful review?” I said yes, and she promptly slapped my face.
I transferred to Eastern Michigan University in 1975 and immediately became the film critic on their newspaper. After I dissed about five of the films showing on-campus, and subsequently attendance was low, I was banned from reviewing anymore on-campus films. When I gave the school’s theater production of Babes at Sea a bad review, I was banned from reviewing anymore school productions. That whole semester strangers would confront me with, “You didn’t like Babes at Sea?” I’d say no. Then they’d say something like, “My girlfriend was in that show, and it was great, so fuck you.”
I reviewed films for a local Detroit free newspaper incongruously called Magazine for a couple of years, then I quit. I was writing mostly negative reviews which just depressed me, and didn’t help the film business. As Jean Luc Godard said, “A film critic is a soldier who fires on his own men.” So I gave up reviewing films.
And a jolly good day to one and all.
Of course you are correct, Billy Crystal was a terrific host, and so was Steve Martin. And the moment with Hal Roach was a good one -- not a giant fuck up, but funny.
Josh! Big fan here but you are forgetting a truly great host and an Oscar fuckup he saved brilliantly. 1992. Billy Crystal, acknowledged an almost 100 year old Hal Roach. The audience gives him an ovation. I guess he was so overwhelmed by the audience reaction that he started to talk. And there wasn’t a microphone near him. This goes on for over half a minute while flapping lips and dead air are going out to the world. Then Billy Crystal made his great comment, “I think it’s only fitting, because Mr. Roach started in silent pictures.”