The Oscars

Hollywood's ordinary state of schizophrenia produced some extraordinary symptoms last week with the 28th annual awarding of Oscars. For the third year, the tab for the festivities (upwards of $350,000) was picked up by Hollywood's dreaded rival, television. For the third year, despite all the moviemakers' feverish concentration on wider screens, lusher colors and bigger budgets, the Best Picture award went to a normal-size, black and white movie. This time it was Marty, made by Harold Hecht and Burt Lancaster for a mere $343,000--partly because they needed a flop to write off as a tax loss.

Moreover, for the first time in film history, the winning picture--which also won Oscars for Scriptwriter Paddy Chayefsky and Director Delbert Mann--had first appeared as a television play. Furthermore, the traditional capital of glamour, youth and beauty handed its coveted Best Actress and Best Actor awards to two performers who have contributed nothing whatever to the greater glory of Max Factor, Technicolor, Helen Rose or CinemaScope 55. Unglamorous Italian Actress Anna (The Rose Tattoo) Magnani is 46. Homely, overweight (215 Ibs.) Ernest (Marty) Borgnine is 39.

The lucky holders of gilt pasteboards who pushed their way through the mobs to seats in Hollywood's Pantages Theater (and to the Manhattan end of the TV tandem in the Century Theater) had one notable advantage over the millions who watched the show on television. Televiewers were subjected to Oldsmobile's four long-winded commercials, at 2 minutes 15 seconds each, plus the opening and closing plugs. While these were in progress, M.C. Jerry Lewis got his biggest laughs of the evening by pacing the stage of the Pantages, fidgeting, scratching himself, manfully but unsuccessfully fighting his drooping eyelids, and yawning. Nobody saw the best part of the show, which took place about 6,000 miles from Hollywood, in Actress Magnani's bedroom. Her telephone rang early in the morning. It was a reporter, who told her the big news. "If you are kidding," she grated, hoarse with sleep, "I will get up right away to kill you wherever you are!"

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