Ten Academy Award-related pieces of trivia to tickle your fancy:
1) The only Oscar to ever win an Oscar (two, in fact) was Oscar Hammerstein II, who won for Best Song in 1941 and 1945. You'll probably know him best as one half of Rodgers and Hammerstein, who produced such hits as Oklahoma!, South Pacific, The King and I, and The Sound of Music.
2) The unluckiest nominee in Oscar's history is sound mixer Kevin O'Connell, with twenty nominations and no wins (as of 2011). It all started with Terms of Endearment in 1984, and his unlucky streak has continued through Top Gun, Twister, Armaggeddon, Spider-Man, and most recently Transformers.
3) Who are the two actors to win Best Actor for playing the same character in different movies? The characters name is Vito Corleone: Marlon Brando played him in The Godfather, and Robert DeNiro played him as a younger man in The Godfather, Part II. In his career, Marlon Brando won two Best Actor Oscars, the first for On the Waterfront. He accepted the first, but refused the Godfather award, boycotting the 1972 awards on the grounds that Hollywood discriminated against Native Americans. Interesting aside: Brando was married three times, to an Indian actress, a Mexican actress, and a Tahitian actress.
4) A now defunct Academy Award is the Juvenile Award, last presented in 1960 to Hayley Mills. It was a special, miniature version of the Oscar statuette, created for younger stars. Winners included Mickey Rooney, Shirley Temple, and Judy Garland for her role in The Wizard of Oz.
5) As of 2011, the youngest actor to win a best actor award a full-sized statuette is Adrien Brody (29 at the time) for The Pianist. (The youngest nominee was John Travolta (24) for Saturday Night Fever.) The youngest actress to win the best actress award is Marlee Matlin (21) for Children of a Lesser God. (The youngest nominee was Keisha Castle-Hughes (13) for Whale Rider.)
6) X-Rated. The Academy Awards are a family affair; in their history only one X-rated film has ever won an Oscar for Best Picture. Midnight Cowboy, rated X for nudity and drugs use, was later downgraded to R when it was re-released.
7) For the votes to be a tie is a very rare occurrence, but it can and does happen, most notably in 1968 when Katherine Hepburn (for A Lion in Winter) and Barbara Streisland (for Funny Girl) were each awarded Best Actress. The rules state that if first and second place are within three votes of each other, a tie is declared, however in this instance it was apparently an exact match.
8) The Lost Oscar. Whoopi Goldberg won Best Supporting Actress for her role in Ghost (1990). She later shipped her statuette to be professionally cleaned, but it was stolen en route. It eventually turned up in an airport trash can. Maybe the thief realized at the last minute that it would be no easy task to sneak thirteen inches of gold-plated tin past security. Or that he could pass himself off as Whoopi Goldberg, considering her name was etched on the thing.
9) Mississippi Burning was nominated for seven awards in 1989. It won one, for Best Cinematography. Peter Biziou is a veteran director of photography, and has collaborated with Alan Parker on many projects, as well as bringing his visual flair to films like The Truman Show, 9 1/2 Weeks, and Life of Brian. But one of the possible reasons why the film won the Oscar is because of something you DON'T see in the film. According to Stephen Tobolowsky, the actor who played the clan leader in the movie, a special effect called OMD was used: a grey coloured dye that was painted onto the actor`s clothes, the chairs, the tables, everything except human skin. In a movie about race, the paste - invisible to the viewer - had the effect of dulling the colour of everything, which in turn accentuated the human skin tones of the black and white actors. And what does OMD stand for? Why, Old Man's D**k, of course...
10) Charlie Chaplin's Limelight was made in 1952, but didn't get a wide release in the U.S. until 1972. Suspected of being a communist sympathiser, whilst Chaplin was attending the London premiere of the film, J. Edgar Hoover ensured that his re-entry permit to the United States was revoked. Most theatres in the U.S. then refused to play the film.
Chaplin returned to Hollywood for the first time in 20 years to receive an Honorary Award in 1972. His film was finally granted a wide release, and scooped the Oscar for Best Original Score. Three statuettes for the score were awarded, to Chaplin, Ray Rasch, and Larry Russell. Both Rasch and Russell were awarded the Oscars posthumously. Russell's needn't have been. Not that he wasn't dead; it was given to the wrong person! The actual writer of the score was Russell Garcia. Interviewed in 2008, he was asked if he was upset by what happened? "Of course not... At my age, 92, I'm more focused on moving forward." I think we can all take something from that.
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