Every year, the Academy Awards are watched by millions of people around the world, as the most powerful and glamorous industry honours its own. The awards function is an entertainment show by itself, and the host has to balance, wit, respect for peers and the occasional scandal which makes the all the difference between a classy event and a fireworks show. If John Cena had not walked naked on stage to present the Best Costume Designer Award, to remind viewers of that year when, in 1974, a streaker ran across the stage as David Niven was speaking, the 2024 Oscars would just have lacked some sizzle.
A pick of 10 scandals and controversies over the years:
A bribery charge came about early in Oscar history. Mary Pickford’s first adult role in Coquette was widely panned. So, she invited the five members of the Board of Judges to have tea at her legendary Beverly Hills estate called Pickford. So dazzled were they that she was named Best Actress at the 1928–29 Academy Awards. The ensuing protests led to a change in the rules, so that all Academy members could vote for the winner, instead of a five-member panel.
What is a grand ceremony without a gaffe or two? Frank Capra was a three-time Best Director winner, yet a mistake caused him much humiliation. In 1933, when announcing the Best Director winner, presenter Will Rogers called “Frank” to the stage, without mentioning a last name, seemingly unaware that both Frank Capra and Frank Lloyd were nominated for the award. Capra excitedly walked to the stage before realizing that the actual winner was Lloyd for Cavalcade. Capra, later recalled the moment with shame, saying to The Hollywood Reporter, “I wish I could have crawled under the rug like a miserable worm.“
Image courtesy – ocars.org
In 1940, Hattie McDaniel won Best Supporting Actress for Gone with the Wind, making her the first Black Oscar winner. However, segregation was practiced in the US then, and the Academy Awards were held at the Ambassador Hotel, which did not permit Black into the premises. Producer David O. Selznick had to get special permission for her to be allowed in, but she still had to sit at the back, separate from her white co-stars. This was shocking racism but it was much later that Blacks started getting the respect they deserved.
In 1973, Marlon Brando’s performance as Don Corleone in The Godfather was a shoo-in for the Oscar. But the star, notorious for his eccentricity, declined to attend and sent Apache actress Sacheen Littlefeather on his behalf and she delivered a powerful speech about the “poor treatment of Native Americans in the film industry.” The term trolled had not come into usage then, but that is what she had to put up with. She was allegedly told that she must condense her speech to 60 seconds or risk being arrested. In June 2022, the Academy sent Littlefeather an apology which read “The abuse you endured because of this statement was unwarranted and unjustified. The emotional burden you have lived through and the cost to your own career in our industry are irreparable. For too long the courage you showed has been unacknowledged. For this, we offer both our deepest apologies and our sincere admiration.”
Sacheen Littlefeather at the 1973 Oscars
The Academy Awards red carpet is now a moving exhibition of fashion—some elegant, some outrageous. In 1986, Cher, shocked in a barely there Bob Mackie outfit, that was made up of a very low-waisted skirt, a very cropped top and a bizarre feathered headpiece. When the dropped jaws were back in place, Mackie told New Yorker that the dress was, in part, an act of revenge. “She was pissed off, because she didn’t get nominated for Mask. There were a lot of people who said, ‘That’s not fashion!’ And I said, ‘Of course it’s not fashion. It’s a crazy getup for attention.’ And it did get attention—people talk about it still.”
Cher; 1986 Oscars
Beating Cher’s controversial dress, was Icelandic singer-actress Bjork’s swan outfit in 2001, by Macedonian designer Marjan Pejoski, that had her leaving “eggs” in her wake. The tulle dress is still voted the worst Oscar outfit ever. Later, she said in an interview with The New York Times, “They wrote about it like I was trying to wear a black Armani and got it wrong, like I was trying to fit in. Of course I wasn’t trying to fit in.”
Bjork’s Swan dress is still voted the worst Oscar outfit ever
In 2015, after seeing all 20 nominations for acting roles go to white actors, April Reign started the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite, and started a movement for diversity and inclusivity, It took another year for it to be noted that the Academy had a history of racism, and also, the Academy membership was 92 per cent white. Prominent Hollywood stars like Spike Lee and Jada Pinkett Smith joined the campaign, calling for boycotts of the ceremony. Eventually, then President Barack Obama made a statement, saying “I think when everybody’s story is told, then that makes for better art. That makes for better entertainment. It makes everybody feel part of one American family. So I think, as a whole, the industry should do what every other industry should do, which is to look for talent, provide opportunity to everybody.”
One of the most memorable moments in Oscar history happened in 2017, when presenters Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway mistakenly announced La La Land as the winner of Best Film instead of the actual winner, Moonlight. This mix-up caused confusion during the live broadcast and embarrassment all around. When the acceptance speeches had started, the bomb was dropped and La La Land producer Jordan Horowitz had to announce, “There’s been a mistake. Moonlight, you guys won Best Picture. This is not a joke.”
The biggest mix up in Oscar history?
When Kevin Hart was named as the host of the 2019 Oscars, he did not realise that the world had become excessively politically correct. Some of his homophobic tweets from the past surfaced, and Hart was forced to step down, following a huge backlash. That year the Oscars went on without a host.
One of the biggest what-the-hell moments happened in 2022, and came to be known as ‘slapgate‘. The host Chris Rock made a snide comment about the shaved head of Jada Pinkett Smith, and her husband Will Smith got on to the stage and slapped him yelling, “Keep my wife’s name out of your f***ing mouth!” It caused an uproar that led to Smith resigning his Academy membership and apologising to Rock. Months later, just about saving his career from total ruin,he told TV show host Trevor Noah: “That was a horrific night, as you could imagine. There’s many nuances and complexities to it, but at the end of the day, I just lost it. I guess what I would say is you just never know what someone’s going through.”
Image courtesy – LATimes
