I was 10 years old the first time that I stayed up --unbeknownst to my parents -- to hear those final Academy Awards handed out to the best that film had to offer in 1973.
Lying silently in the hallway on a school night, I could hear Bob Hope’s glib jokes in between announcements: Jack Lemmon, best actor for “Save the Tiger,” Glenda Jackson, best actress for “A Touch of Class,” and for best picture, it was “The Sting.”
Lemmon was there, full of nervous excitement in accepting his statuette. Paul Newman and Robert Redford were in the house, smiling like Butch and Sundance at one another for their “Sting” triumph.
I wonder how excited anyone will be about this year’s awards show if it looks anything like the recent Golden Globes, with non-stars reading winners off cue cards and nothing to hand out due to the writers’ strike.
Scintillating stuff.
Maybe the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences could lure some viewers if they promised the same event from that 1973 ceremony, a streaker running across the stage between Lemmon and Jackson’s awards.
I didn’t catch an eyeful from the shag carpet floor, well out of sight, but I was in earshot of presenter David Niven’s deadpan reaction, a classic that bears (bares?) repeating here.
“The only laugh that man will probably ever get is for stripping and showing off his shortcomings,” Niven said in one of those moments that remind us why there’s nothing quite like the Academy Awards when it comes to handing out trophies.
Come on, writers, producers, unions -- this is no country for old men like me to miss out on the annual Oscar ritual.
It gets harder every year for me to stay up that late on a school night, watching to see if one of my kids is asleep on the floor in the hallway.
