Oscar
by Maggie Van Ostrand
Oscar must be very gay right now, or, to put it mildly, quite happy. It's his one night out of the vault so I should think gay is the least he'll be on March 5th when the Hollywood folks come out to see who's wearing what. Everyone's making book on who'll return their borrowed dresses to the designers and their jewels to Harry Winston's. And who won't.
There was a time when fans eagerly awaited the entertainment industry's night of nights to see real stars, like Clark Gable, John Wayne, Humphrey Bogart, and to find out if the votes cast by members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences agreed with our own opinions.
Now that we have no longer have stars, we can only watch as backless, frontless, mindless starlets and media-created celebrities blithely pose for the cameras and slither their way down the red carpet. Technically, since the festivities are held in ultra-political Hollywood, the carpet should be blue.
Back in the days when studios created magical fantasies into which we could escape our ordinary lives, the name "Warner" meant Cagney, Bogart, and Davis, MGM meant Gable, Garbo, and Garland. 20th-Century Fox meant Gene Tierney, Tyrone Power, and Marilyn Monroe.
It's not the same any more. One of the last corporate giants in the business, Ted Turner, is ready to say goodbye to the industry, and, in particular, the gargantuan media conglomerate, Time Warner. All the Warner name means now is shareholders, mergers, and board meetings.
MGM is now Sony, of which Ryoji Chubachi, of Japan, is President, and 20th Century Fox dumped everything but the word, Fox, and is now a subsidiary of News Corporation, another media conglomerate, owned by Rupert Murdoch.
There are no stars left working, except Eastwood.
Difficult as it may be to believe, the following actors and actresses did not get the Oscar for these movies.
Oprah Winfrey . . . . . The Color Purple
Bette Midler . . . . . The Rose
Cary Grant . . . . . The Awful Truth
Judy Garland . . . . . A Star is Born
Kirk Douglas . . . . . Ace in the Hole
Rita Hayworth . . . . . Separate Tables
Marilyn Monroe . . . . . Some Like it Hot
Shirley MacLaine . . . . The Apartment
Jackie Gleason . . . . . The Hustler
Peter O'Toole . . . . . Lawrence of Arabia
Peter Sellers . . . . . Being There
Gloria Swanson . . . . . Sunset Boulevard
Anthony Quinn . . . . . Zorba, the Greek
Steve McQueen . . . . . The Thomas Crown Affair
Richard Pryor . . . . . Lady Sings the Blues
Angela Lansbury . . . . Manchurian Candidate
Dustin Hoffman . . . . Lenny
Fred Astaire . . . . . The Towering Inferno
Al Pacino . . . . . Dog Day Afternoon
Robert DeNiro . . . . . Taxi Driver
John Travolta . . . . . Saturday Night Fever
Paul Newman . . . . . The Verdict
Angelica Huston . . . . The Grifters
Michael Caine . . . . . Sleuth
Virginia Madsen . . . . Sideways
Robert Mitchum . . . . The Night of the Hunter
Some of us remember the big stars because we imitated their behavior. We had Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn as role models. We hoped their elegance would be contagious. Who are the role models today? Emaciated Uma? Battling Russell? Pouting Renee?
Sunday night's Oscarcast will be a far cry from the old days, but, though we threaten not to, we'll watch it anyway, if only to find out how many tearful thanks marketing genius Harvey Weinstein manages to garner from this year's winners.
Assuming the Oscars reflect today's trends as they have done in the past, Oscar will not only come out of the vault, he may even come out of the closet.
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