Hollywood's Revenge

Hollywood has never forgiven TV for taking away most of its audience and its income, and every year it exacts a kind of Montezuma's revenge with perhaps the worst TV special of the season--the Academy Awards. This year's show should satisfy all the movie industry's grievances, past, present and future. If anything went right, the faithful TV cameras did not record it.

The pattern of failure was established during the first five minutes when Charlton Heston, the first of four hosts, failed to show up. Clint Eastwood, looking as if someone had pushed him from the wings, took Heston's place--and immediately ran into trouble with his cue cards. "This isn't my bag, man," he complained to the cameras shortly before Heston, who had been delayed by a flat tire on the Hollywood Freeway, relieved him. And so the night digressed.

A major interest was the battle between the year's two big hits, Cabaret and The Godfather. Cabaret nearly made a clean sweep of the awards, including best actress (Liza Minnelli), best supporting actor (Joel Grey) and best director (Bob Fosse). All told, Cabaret picked up eight Oscars and The Godfather countered with three, including best picture and best actor.

The real suspense the awards achieve these days, however, lies not in who will win, but who will accept. Two years ago, George C. Scott refused the best actor award, and there was speculation that Marlon Brando, the odds-on favorite for his role as the godfather, might do the same this year. When he failed to reply to its telegrams and phone messages, the academy glumly assumed Brando would not even be present. Hopes brightened when his secretary phoned for his tickets the morning of the presentations--and quickly dimmed once again when an aspiring actress who said she was an Apache Indian by the name of Sacheen Littlefeather claimed them.

Afraid that Littlefeather would make a militant speech if she were called on to receive an award for Brando, academy officials held a panicked powwow. "We even considered arresting her," admitted Howard Koch, the show's producer. (The tickets were supposedly nontransferable.) With stars taking their seats all around, Koch decided to talk to her instead; she promised not to read a yawning five-page speech on the plight of the Indians that Brando had prepared for her.

After all that quiet, nontelevised diplomacy--the most interesting part of the evening--it was inevitable that Brando would win as best actor. It was also inevitable that Littlefeather would give his reason for refusing the award: "The treatment of American Indians in the motion picture industry, on TV reruns, and what's happening at Wounded Knee today." Some in the audience booed, some applauded, but it was left up to Raquel Welch to sum up the prevailing mood of silliness. "I hope," she huffed as she read off the list of nominees for best actress, "that the winner doesn't have a cause."

Bad as it always is, the academy show is a box office smash, often the highest-rated special of the year. This year was no exception, and NBC, which carried it, estimated that a record 80 million Americans watched the 2 3/4-hour show. Overnight Nielsens indicated that in New York alone it had an astonishing 83% of the audience. Almost everyone, it seems, is morbidly drawn to the scene of an accident--particularly if stars are involved.

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