Now that Sacheen Littlefeather was off stage, Rock Hudson and Raquel Welch (of Kansas City Bomber) came to present Best Actress, and were very harrumph-y about what just happened. "Hope none of them has a cause," Welch said. Unfortunate!
As far as people go, it's a good lineup. A past winner, Judy's daughter, a foreign language performance, and, for the first time, two Black actresses nominated (the next time it would happen was...just this past year, Viola Davis and Andra Day). The actual performances in the films? Let's talk:
So now we come to the last five categories: Screenplays, Lead Acting, and Best Picture. Up to this point, the only Best Picture to have won anything at the ceremony was Cabaret, cleaning up with seven awards, and only three to go! Deliverance? Zilch. The Godfather? Nada. Sounder? Not a thing. The Emigrants? It won for Best Foreign Film last year, so it was fine. And now came Jack Lemmon, who just bared all in Avanti!, to present the writing awards:
Good news for The Godfather, finally, and for poet/critic/novelist/political speechwriter Jeremy Larner! It's his second and final credited screenplay, following the adaptation of his own novel, Drive, He Said, the previous year.
An Honorary Oscar was awarded to Charles S. Boren, who for almost 40 years worked to improve labor relations in the industry - 'twas he who negotiated the five-day workweek, pension plan, and nondiscriminatory policies - presented by Richard Walsh. Following that, spouses Robert Wagner (of Madame Sin) and Natalie Wood (who cameoed as herself in The Candidate) announced Marjoe as the Best Documentary Feature of the year. Marisa Berenson (of Cabaret) and Michael Caine (nominated for Sleuth) awarded Best Costume Design to Travels with My Aunt's Anthony Powell. Eccentric legend and past Oscar winner Greer Garson came out with Laurence Harvey (of Escape to the Sun) to give Cabaret its fourth award of the night, this time Best Art Direction. Now came the Music Categories, starting with the Original Dramatic and Musical/Adaptation Score nominees. Burt Reynolds (of Deliverance) and Dyan Cannon presented.
There is a lot happening in the Original Score category this year. The winner is Charlie Chaplin's Limelight, a 1952 film about a fading music hall performer and his romance with a suicidal ballerina. Because of Chaplin's politics and legal struggles, it took twenty years to come and play in Los Angeles theaters (it played in New York, though, and was cited in 1952 by both the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Board of Review). It was Chaplin's only competitive Oscar win and instigated a rule change where the time between a film's initial release and LA release had to be a much smaller window.
The Godfather originally received eleven nominations, the highest of any movie that year. Nino Rota's score was later rescinded when it was discovered that the "Love Theme" was a new arrangement of a theme he wrote for 1958's Fortunella. Now, I think there's plenty of other music besides the "Love Theme," but it seems so did the Academy - they allowed the Music Branch to vote one more time from a smaller pool of shortlisted titles. They changed their minds the second time around - Sleuth took the film's spot. Oddly, The Godfather: Part II would later win this category in 1974, despite being made up of arrangements of the original's themes and old Italian standards.
