Award ceremony for films of 1968
The 41st Academy Awards were presented on April 14, 1969, to honor the films of 1968. They were the first Oscars to be staged at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Los Angeles, and the first with no host since the 20th Academy Awards.
"Oliver!" became the only Best Picture winner to have received a G-rating prior to winning, the ratings system having replaced the old Hays Code on November 1, 1968 (though a number of Best Picture winners have received the rating retroactively). It was the last British film to win Best Picture until "Chariots of Fire" in 1981, and the last musical to win until "Chicago" in 2002.
The year was notable for the first—and so far, only—tie for Best Actress: Katharine Hepburn and Barbra Streisand shared the award, for their performances in "The Lion in Winter" and "Funny Girl", respectively. Hepburn became the second actress and third performer to win an acting Oscar two years in a row (having won for "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" the previous year), after Luise Rainer in 1936 ("The Great Ziegfeld") and 1937 ("The Good Earth"), and Spencer Tracy in 1937 ("Captains Courageous") and 1938 ("Boys Town"). She also became the first to win three acting Oscars in lead categories (an achievement later matched by Daniel Day-Lewis and Frances McDormand).
Stanley Kubrick received his only career Oscar this year, for Best Visual Effects as special effects director and designer for "".
Cliff Robertson's performance in "Charly", which had received a mixed-to-negative reception from critics and audiences, engendered controversy when he won the Academy Award for Best Actor. Less than two weeks after the ceremony, "TIME" mentioned the Academy's generalized concerns over "excessive and vulgar solicitation of votes" and said "many members agreed that Robertson's award was based more on promotion than on performance."
A few people griped over the failure of Paul Newman to get an Academy Award nomination for his direction of the film "Rachel, Rachel", despite him receiving a Best Director award from the New York Film Critics Circle.
Also notable this year was the only instance to date of the Academy revoking an Oscar after the ceremony: "Young Americans" won the award for Best Documentary Feature Film, but on May 7, 1969, it was discovered that it had premiered in October 1967, thus making it ineligible. "Journey into Self", the first runner-up, was awarded the Oscar the following day.
A minor controversy was created when, in a sketch on "The Tonight Show", which was recorded three hours before the awards ceremony, Johnny Carson and Buddy Hackett announced "Oliver!" as the winner for Best Picture and Jack Albertson as Best Supporting Actor. Columnist Frances Drake claimed that most observers believed Carson and Hackett "were playing a huge practical joke or happened to make a lucky guess". Referring to it as "The Great Carson Hoax", PricewaterhouseCoopers stated in a 2004 press release that it was "later proven that Carson and Hackett made a few lucky guesses for their routine, dispelling rumors of a security breach and keeping the integrity of the balloting process intact". Carson would go on to host the ceremony five times.
The televised ceremony.
On the day after the broadcast, the live ABC television audience was estimated at 60 million in the United States. It was the first Oscars to be widely telecast throughout the world – live in the United States, Canada and Mexico, and licensed for delayed broadcast in at least 30 other countries.
The show opened outdoors at night in downtown Los Angeles. English actors Ron Moody and sixteen-year-old Jack Wild were in character as Fagin and the Artful Dodger, from Best Picture nominee "Oliver!." Fagin assured Dodger that if they didn’t win the golden statuette, they would “pinch it.”
The president of the Academy, Gregory Peck, taped a pre-recorded opening in the empty lobby of the new venue, the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Peck introduced Ingrid Bergman, the first of ten "friends of Oscar." Each actor presented the next in turn, with Jane Fonda introducing Frank Sinatra as “Nancy Sinatra’s dad.” Sinatra responded by thanking “Henry Fonda Junior.” Tony Curtis was a last-minute replacement for Warren Beatty, who had the mumps.
Jack Albertson was presented with the first award of the night – Best Supporting Actor. Albertson got choked up thanking Frank D. Gilroy, the screenwriter of "The Subject Was Roses".
The teleprompter was not yet invented, so the presenters read off of handwritten cue cards. During the Best Original Screenplay presentation (which was won by Mel Brooks for "The Producers"), comedian Don Rickles carried a cue card up to Frank Sinatra at the podium.
A surprise "friend of Oscar" was revealed by Walter Matthau; a little monkey dressed in a tux brought John Chambers the statuette for special achievement in makeup for "Planet of the Apes".
Ten-year-old Mark Lester, who portrayed the title role of "Oliver!", handed an honorary Oscar to the musical’s Canadian choreographer, Onna White.
Towards the end of the ceremony, Bob Hope presented an emotional Martha Raye with the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. Hope, the host of seventeen previous Oscar shows, quipped “I finally made it,” adding that he had been waiting at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, the Oscar home from 1961 to 1968.
Hope later observed that “Oscar is more naked than usual…They’re doing things on the screen today I wouldn’t do in bed, even if I had the chance.”
Ruth Gordon won Best Supporting Actress as the nosy neighbour in Roman Polanski’s "Rosemary’s Baby". The 72-year-old actress exclaimed, “I can’t tell you how encouraging a thing like this is!" In closing Gordon said, "thank all of you who voted for me, and all of you who didn’t – please excuse me.”
The director and choreographer Gower Champion wanted the show to appeal to a younger audience. He relaxed the dress code from white tie and tails to black tie and tuxedos. He reduced the show’s length to two hours, partly by easing access to the stage with a wide center ramp over the orchestra pit. The brevity of several speeches also contributed to the overall running time.
Champion also targeted the youth market "with a little help from" Jane Fonda’s friends, "The Soul Rascals". The rock group played cover songs as choreographed dancers displayed the Best Costume designs. Danilo Donati, the costume designer for Franco Zeffirelli's "Romeo and Juliet", was not present, so Fonda handed the Oscar to the dancers portraying the star-crossed lovers as a “symbolic” gesture.
Throughout the ceremony Champion introduced rear-screen projection of photos and film excerpts onto five movable screens that filled the stage.
This rear projection was used to set-up the Best Actress category. A "choreographed" photo montage of Katharine Hepburn in "The Lion in Winter", Patricia Neal in "The Subject Was Roses", Vanessa Redgrave in "Isadora", Barbra Streisand in "Funny Girl" and Joanne Woodward in "Rachel, Rachel", was displayed on the massive screens. The orchestra, conducted by music director Henry Mancini, played an instrumental arrangement of Lew Spence and Alan Bergman’s 1957 song "That Face."
Announcing the best actress winners, Ingrid Bergman gasped “It’s a tie!” According to an Academy spokesperson in 1969, the actual vote count by the 3,030 eligible Academy members was "never divulged."
Katharine Hepburn was not in attendance, so 38-year-old Anthony Harvey, the English director of "The Lion in Winter," accepted on her behalf.
Twenty-six year old Barbra Streisand briefly tripped, stepping on the bell-bottomed leg of her Arnold Scaasi-designed pantsuit, en route to the stage.
Streisand was shocked to discover her Scaasi suit appeared transparent under the stage lights and photographers’ flashes.
Looking down at her Oscar, Streisand said “Hello, gorgeous!” – her opening line from "Funny Girl." She acknowledged the honor of “being in such magnificent company as Katharine Hepburn.”
"Sidney Poitier" had the distinction of presenting Best Picture, the final award of the night, declaring that “1968 was really a vintage year for motion pictures.”
Later that night at the Governors Ball held in the Beverly Hilton Hotel, the show’s producer, director and choreographer Gower Champion was applauded for his achievement. The show earned mostly favourable reviews for its informality, look and pace, but some critics lamented the lack of glamour of previous Oscar nights.
Winners and nominees.
Nominees were announced on February 24, 1969. Winners are listed first, highlighted in boldface and indicated with a double dagger (‡).
Multiple nominations and awards.
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Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.
Martha Raye
Performers.
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